Why I Never Excelled in Sports

There is no reason that I should like men’s college basketball as much as I do, I just do. A while back, I watched Oklahoma State and Texas battle through three overtimes until Mario Boggan of OSU finely outdid Texas’s freshman phenom Kevin Durant, icing the game when he sank a long, desperation shot with less than four seconds remaining on the clock. It was an exciting basketball game, and I have seen quite a few.

What makes my love for basketball so unlikely? As a kid, I was always the last person selected when Captains chose sides for baseball, football, etc. Well, unless my friend Rod was around.
I have an excuse, though. Near-sighted does not come close to explaining my vision. When I first got glasses in the fifth grade, I remember seeing the blackboard clearly for the first time in my life. Corrective lenses cured my vision problems but did nothing to enhance my depth perception, or should I say my lack of it.

Its hell standing in the outfield, tracking a baseball as it plummets from the sky toward you, hoping beyond hope that you will somehow snag it deftly with your trusty glove before it hits ten feet away. It’s even worse hell seeing the looks of derision on your teammate’s faces when you drop the ball and the winning scorer reaches home base, ending every chance of their pulling that elusive upset of the best team on the block. Hey, if you look up klutz in the dictionary, you will see my picture beside the definition.

I tried every sport: football, softball, basketball (when I tried out for the team in the fifth grade, the coach simply shook his head and frowned), track and field. Being a skinny kid, I was a good runner, but nothing special.

Why do I like basketball so much? My first three years at Northeast Louisiana the football team lost every game. My senior year, they tied a game. Basketball was different. When I was a freshman, the team went sixteen and three.

Every home game, sixteen-hundred or so fans and students would crowd into our painfully tiny gymnasium, and go crazy when five-foot-nine basketball legend Tommy Enloe started dunking balls. We never lost a home game and for about two hours, we basked in the team’s success and felt (pardon the cliché) like kings of the world.

Watching first-year head Coach Sean Sutton almost faint after a particularly stressful play (I’m not kidding) I remembered that feeling. As Boggin’s winning basket swished through the net, it intensified even further. Hey, I am old, I am fat and blind as a bat, but at that moment, I was once again King of the World.

P.S. – Kudos to my old bud Rod. He was no athlete either, but he was one of the best and most intelligent persons I have ever met to this day, and he served his country well, and with pride, as an armored company captain during Vietnam. He is now a wine expert, living in Napa, California.

Gondwana

Dream Erotic

I had a dream last night – a vivid dream. I was in a group of people, but I was alone. At least I did not have the feeling that I knew any of the minions around me. I was standing against a wall, observing the passing people, when someone approached me.

At first, I thought it was three females but soon it was only one.

“Hi, Eric. Long time no see,” she said.

She was a gorgeous young woman with frizzy black hair; she was wearing a very short dress that emphasized her curvy figure. I did not recognize her nor have a clue of her identity and began searching my mind for a glimmer of recognition. I could not find one.

“Have we met?” I finally asked.

She was still smiling when she answered, “You said you would never forget me.”

Her flashing eyes, dark as night, gazed directly into my brain. She was standing very close to me, invading my private space but I did not recoil. Her body was so warm that she lit a fire in my soul, heating my psyche almost to the point of boiling. I did not know her name but somehow felt as though I had known her forever.

“I’ve had a sudden attack of Alzheimer’s,” I said.

She moved closer to me, static electricity raising the hairs on my chest. I had raised my palm to halt her advance. Instead, I took her hand in mine and pulled her toward me until her body’s warmth began overloading my senses.

“I’m Esme,” she said.

Esme grasped my face and kissed me. Our embrace was slow, soft and sensual. I did not know this woman, but it did not matter. We were, at that moment, as close as any two individuals could ever be. She pulled away, but only to turn her back to me so that I could stroke her neck and let my hands trace a downward path.

I lifted the edge of her short dress stroking her legs and rear with my fingers. She turned her head toward me, reveling in my touch and then kissed me one last time before dissolving away like a smoldering flame.

I was still hot when I awoke, Esme’s beautiful eyes, and her cat-like smile imprinted on my brain. Even though I did not recognize her, I somehow felt that I had known her all my life. Maybe it was in another life or perhaps she is someone that lives in that dark and mysterious realm that is our dream world.

Fiction South

Old Friends

While googling articles on Arkansas quartz, I came across a blast from the past: the website of a person that I had attended grad school with and haven’t seen in probably thirty years.

Mike went to work for the Arkansas Geologic Commission after graduating from U of A and has one of the largest collections of Arkansas minerals in the world. Mike and I made a trip to Oklahoma looking for work shortly after we finished our course work at Arkansas. I am still here, after all these years.

Seeing Mike’s website got me to thinking about other old friends that I haven’t seen in many years. After several wrong numbers, I reconnected with Joel in Colorado, a close friend that I haven’t talked with in years. We decided a reunion in Arkansas is in order. Now all we have to do is plan it, and then reconnect with all the others we haven’t seen in years.

I went even further back and tried to reconnect with old friend (a person featured in the article Summer of Bologna) Russ, doctor of geology at Nicholls State University in Louisiana. I found that he is no longer there, so I guess I will start calling wrong numbers until I find him.

These days, friends seem disposable. You can always make others. Well, maybe not. Maybe some of your old friends are the best friends you will ever have. Tonight, I began testing this theory and after talking with old friend Joel, I am convinced of it.

Gondwana

William Holden and Kim Novak (from Picnic, 1955)

This is the sexiest scene ever filmed in a movie.

Marilyn's Story

Marilyn had fallen asleep in the back bedroom with the TV still on, the room illuminated by the picture tube when a noise aroused her later on that night. Looking in the mirror, she saw something black and flying through the room. Turning toward the window, she watched as it flew past the TV, and then out the closed window. She said that the incident didn’t scare her as much as it simply disturbed her, and she had trouble returning to sleep that night.

“That was weird,” Marilyn, unafraid of an evil spirit, thought to herself. We both believe there are spirits in this house (from where, neither of us are sure) but we both have no feeling that they are evil spirits. I have always felt safe in this house, somehow protected.

Perhaps the dark flying creature was but a friendly specter, checking on our well-being while we slept.

Louisiana Mystery Writer

Relationships

As I sit at my computer, I hear Celine Dion singing on the radio in the background My Heart Will Go On, the theme song from the movie Titanic. This song has great meaning to me because I heard it the first time, at the movies, just before my second wife Anne died.

Music definitely evokes memories and Celine’s song brings back many memories for me - some good and some bad. Anne was in horrible shape, almost ready to give up her battle against the Big C. Then Barrett, her law son arrived from Stilwell to bolster her resolve.

Barrett is neither Anne’s real son nor mine, but it would be impossible to imagine having a biological son as incredibly caring as he was. It seemed all our friends and family was abandoning us at the time, certain that Anne was about to die and not wanting to be around when she did. Barrett was different. He may have felt that she was going to die, but he wanted to spend as much time with her as possible before that event actually occurred.

That weekend, Anne dragged herself out of bed. Later, we had a call from old friends Sam and Stephanie. They asked us to join them at the movies to see Titanic. I do not know how Anne made it, but she did. The movie was long but heart-rending, and prophetic for what was about to happen. Still, it was one of the best of Anne’s last days.

I consider myself a lucky person because I have had two great loves in my life – first Anne and now Marilyn. As I tap this little story on my computer, I think about Celine’s song, and the last days of a wonderful relationship.

Gondwana

A Dip in the Lake

I was only four when I took my first dip in Caddo Lake. Both of my parents loved to fish and they did most of their fishing with worms on a hook dangling from cane poles. This they did while sitting on a boat dock jutting out into the lake.

The sport was far too passive for Brother Jack and me, and we often wound up playing cowboys and Indians instead. Jack and I were usually cowboys, as movies in the fifties most often portrayed Indians as villains - Tonto and Little Beaver noted exceptions. We both had felt cowboy hats, boots, and holsters complete with cap pistols. Because of our noisiness, the parents were happy to have us wander off to some other place and play.

It was one those hot Louisiana summer days, with not enough wind blowing to ripple the Spanish moss draping from the bloated cypress trees that grew in the shallow water near the bank. Mom and Dad were concentrating on their red bobbers floating in the coffee-colored water, at the ends of their lines. Realizing that no one was paying any attention to us, Jack and I went looking for a little shade, and a little fun.

There were boat docks every hundred feet or so, all extending well out into the shallow water. No one minded much if someone fished, or used them to play cowboys and Indians. Jack is two years older than I am and we were very close while growing up. That did not mean that we never had any disagreements.

Jack was always bigger and constantly used his strength to bully or taunt me, whenever he could get away with it. He was having a grand time snatching my cowboy hat and sailing it into the air. Jack loved to see my face turn red. The madder I became, the more he would torment me. My felt cowboy hat was my prized possession, and I was less than happy seeing it landing in the dirt.

When I finally retrieved my hat, I ran away from Jack, my hands clamped on the brim to keep him from yanking it off again. I made a strategic error by running onto a ramp extending into the lake; I quickly realized big brother would have me cornered once I reached the end of the dock.

He was almost on me when I spotted an old paddle propped up against the railing. Grabbing it as I reached the end of the dock, I twirled around to face my brother. When I took a swing at him with the paddle, he grabbed the other end. When I yanked, he pushed.

I was at the end of the dock. Losing my footing, I sailed backwards into the tepid water. I could not yet swim but it didn’t matter. Water barely came up to my chest, but I was frightened because Jack started yelling, “Look out, there’s an alligator behind you.”

Jack stopped laughing when I started screaming bloody murder as I attempted in vain to crawl up the algae-slick posts that supported the dock. My desperate wailing soon got the attention of my Mom and Dad who dropped their poles and came running.

“What in cornbread hell are you two into now?” my Dad yelled as he rushed toward me, just ahead of my Mother. He quickly reached down and pulled me out of the water.

Jack did not stick around to see the action. Expecting a whipping, he ran toward the car and hid. Dad did not bother. He had a fish on the line, handing me, wet and flopping, to my Mother and then hurrying back to his fishing pole.

Mom fished my hat out of the lake and then took me to the car, stripped off my wet clothes and draped them on the hood of the car to dry. With only a frown and shake of her head, and not a single word of reprimand, she hurried back to the fishing dock to see what my Dad had caught.

Brother Jack finally came out of the bushes, still laughing but more subdued because of his fear of a whipping. He also had the good sense to realize how upset that I was, my favorite cowboy hat lying in a misshapen lump on the hood of the brown and white Ford sedan.

My parents never punished Jack for pushing me into the lake and I was not too upset because my Mom somehow managed to reshape my cowboy hat and dry out my boots. That hot summer day, long ago, was not my first fight with Brother Jack, but it was my first dip in Caddo Lake.

Fiction South

Marching in the Venus Parade

As a freshman in college during the 60s I joined a precision marching group called the Fusileers. The college I attended required two years of ROTC and the national paranoia concerning Vietnam hadn’t yet begun to set in. Besides, we got to do some neat things like take trips to Mardi Gras and march in parades.

In 1965 I went with the Fusileers to New Orleans to march in the Venus Parade. Although I did not know it at the time, Venus is one of the older Krewes, or carnival clubs. Our group spent the night at Jackson Barracks, an old army post on the Mississippi River named after Andy Jackson.

The night before the parade most of us left the barracks on foot in groups of five or six and made our way toward Bourbon Street. My group stopped at a neighborhood bar and drank Regal Beer for twelve cents a glass and sampled the gumbo. We made it to Bourbon Street around dark.

Much time has passed since then and even the best memories fade. As I remember it, open containers of alcohol were legal. I bought a fifth of Early Times at a drug store a block or so from Bourbon Street. Most of us got separated in the throngs of people crowding the French Quarter. John T, the last member of the Fusileers that I’d arrived in the Quarter with disappeared down Conti, towing a college girl he’d just met.

I found my own college girl but we were separated in the massive crowd pushing shoulder-to-shoulder in two directions, up and down Bourbon Street — though not before a jealous suitor sucker-punched me and broke my only pair of glasses. Somehow I made it back to Jackson Barracks before the midnight curfew and stayed up all night reading the Terry Southern classic Candy.

Mardi Gras that year was my first taste of Carnival, crazy and surreal, and I lapped it up, maybe because I viewed it through tired, near-sighted, hung-over eyes. Even though my feet hurt like hell after the seven mile parade that lasted six hours or so I would gladly have done it again. Soon after the trip, things got worse in Vietnam.

John T dropped out of school, was drafted, sent to Vietnam and dead within the year - one of the war’s many victims. I didn’t sign up for a third year of ROTC and quickly forgot my childhood dreams of becoming a soldier. I had my face rubbed in my childhood dreams when I was drafted shortly after graduation and I quickly learned the truth about the old saying, “don’t wish too hard for anything. It might come true.”

Gondwana

Greatest Geological Spectacle

As a graduate student at the University of Arkansas, I quickly learned the beauty and mystery of the geology around me. My thesis advisor, Dr. K, wanted me to complete a thesis on the stibnite deposits in southwest Arkansas. Dr. K was, and is, my geologic hero, and I wanted whatever he wanted.

I began spending every weekend in Sevier County near the little town of King. The campground where Gail, my ex-wife and I stayed is a dead-ringer for the one that I describe in my novel A Gathering of Diamonds. Gail and I spent days, deep in the forests of southwest Arkansas. Although we are no longer together, I will say this for her: she was a trooper, following me into blind canyons, dark abandoned mines and musty caverns with no fear for her life.

In Gathering, Tom and Mary Ann meet two deranged hillbillies, deep in the Ouachita Mountains. I did not make this up. Gail and I were actually terrorized by two crazy-as-hell hillbillies and were both happy that we lived to tell about it.

There is a road cut near Caddo Gap that is a geologic wonder, perhaps the greatest geologic spectacle of them all. I wish I could find my old pictures, and someday I will return to duplicate them.

I want to visit three more geologic wonders, Jamaica, Iceland and the Afar Triangle before I die, but I have already seen the ultimate, and it was deep in the heart of the Ouachita Mountains.

Fiction South

Other Inhabitants

My dog Princess sees ghosts. I have no doubt that there are ghosts in the house. Marilyn and I have both seen the evidence. A few nights ago, Marilyn heard a loud crash. When she investigated, she found nothing.

Neither Marilyn nor I are afraid. Ghosts are rarely, if ever, harmful beings. I think they just subsist, alongside of the people that are presently alive.

I am aware of only three spirits that might inhabit it – Anne, my wife that died of lung cancer; my mother that died of lymphoma, and Randy, the man that Anne and I bought the house from that committed suicide three days later. The house that we live in is more than thirty years old and there could be even more.

I admit that I don’t understand the afterlife. I barely understand the present life! Still, my pug sees spirits. When she does, she barks and carries on. I have a new pup now, Scooter, her little brother. He also sees them, but even as young as he is, he isn’t really afraid of the other inhabitants of our house.

Louisiana Mystery Writer

Girlfriends, Guitars and Karma

I left a secure job with Texas Oil & Gas years ago to start my own company, soon learning that running your own business was tough. I persevered and managed to learn a few things along the way,

I had less than a thousand dollars saved when I decided to vacate a secure job in lieu of starting a new company. Times were tough and I ended up borrowing a thousand dollars from my girlfriend and mortgaging my motorcycle for a thousand dollars. Six months passed without having earned a single penny and I was starting to become desperate.

My girlfriend Carol knew that I had talent. I had often thought that I was the world’s greatest oil finder. Of course, I have many other delusions as well. We had gone to a movie at Shepard Mall (the first mall in Oklahoma) and were passing a music store.

Carol and I stopped, gazing in at the most beautiful guitar that I had ever seen. It was a maroon-colored Guild and I knew the moment I saw it that I could not live another day without it. I bought it about ten minutes later with the last few dollars of credit remaining on my last credit card.

“You are an idiot,” Carol told me. “You haven’t made a penny in six months and you are wasting money on things you don’t need.”

“I’m making a statement,” I argued. “I’m demonstrating that I think my financial situation is temporary and showing my resolve that things will soon turn around.”

Carol left me shortly after I bought the guitar but I was soon able to repay what I owed her because I made almost four-hundred-thousand dollars the second six months that I was an independent.

Many years later, back in 2003, my business was also failing. Remembering the crimson Guild, I talked myself into buying an electric guitar on eBay that I could ill afford. Amazingly, business turned around almost overnight, shortly after it arrived.

Times are tough. The stock market has crashed, along with the price of oil and gas. Like almost everyone else in the country, I feel as if someone has nailed me square in the gut with a steel pipe. I know what I intend to do about it. When I sign off on this post, I am going to log on to eBay and buy a twelve-string Martin. Wish me luck because if this works, I will take everyone along with me.

Fiction South

Slick's Story

As a new widower, I increasingly found myself playing hours of solitaire on the computer, unable to cope with even the simplest of tasks. Lucky, my Labrador Retriever was my constant companion, seeming to sense my pain. On the days when I could gather the strength to drive to my office, Lucky would come with me. He did more to ease my transition back to a fully functioning human being than anything else.

As time diminished my pain, I immersed myself in the business of writing and finding oil and gas. I often needed to leave Lucky at home to conduct the business that I had neglected for nearly two years and quickly learned the big boy did not like being alone.

It got to the point that I would have to sneak out of the house in the mornings. I do not take guilt well and was already shouldering an accumulated load. At least, that is how I felt. I tried to compensate for my daily absences by overfeeding him. I had already gained twenty-five pounds myself.

One day, on a trip to the local pet store, I found what I thought was the solution to my problem. As it turned out it was the start of many new issues. A local pet group was adopting out dogs and cats. There were many people there and it seemed like every one of them was standing in front of a single cage. When I investigated, I saw why.

Slick was a full blood Gordon Setter. For those of you that have not heard of the breed, a Gordon Setter looks like a small, black Irish Setter. Gordon Setters are Scottish in origin. What a gorgeous dog! I adopted him on the spot before anyone else could get their clutches on him. Here is the perfect companion for Lucky. It will end his separation anxiety. At least that is what I thought.

Slick and Lucky did hit it off, just like brothers. What I soon learned was that Slick liked to run. I also learned he could jump a chain link fence and climb over a stockade fence. I came to expect a message on my answering machine when I got home saying, "I have your dog Slick. Can you come and get him?"

Get him I did for nearly a year. Three boys rode bikes in the neighborhood and when Slick saw them, he would jump the fence and chase after their bikes. The doorbell would eventually ring, the boys bringing Slick home for the night. One evening I answered a knock on the door. It was the boy's mother.

"We just love your dog and he spends more time with us than he does at your house."

"Are you asking me to give Slick to you?"

She was and I did. I loved him but their whole family also loved him and he had two boys and their sister that adored him. It was just Lucky and me again. I began taking him wherever I went, even on a 360-mile trip to Louisiana. Then one day the pump went out on my pool. A friendly puppy came up to me as I was talking with the people at the pool repair and maintenance place.

"What a great little dog," I said.
"Then you better take her. The boss told us to throw her out on Western Avenue at five before we go home. She's just a stray.”

I was horrified. I took the puppy home with me, intending to post a note at the vet and give her away. That never happened. Within a day or so, I found myself permanently attached. So was Lucky. Velvet is the dog on the back cover of all my books. Slick still lives nearby. He often dropped by to see Lucky and me but his visits became less frequent as the years passed.

Not long ago, one of the boys dropped by the house and brought Slick with him. James is now twenty-four and Slick much older also. Lucky is twelve and we estimated Slick’s age at fourteen.

“Mom doesn’t want to take a chance on having the tumor on his chin removed. She loves him more than anyone does. He’s getting old and doesn’t run as much as he used to,” James said.

I understood how James’ mom felt.

“It doesn’t matter how fast you are when you reach our age,” I said, patting Slick’s head. “You still get to where you’re going, sooner or later.”

Louisiana Mystery Writer

Dancing the Wild Bamboula

There is a park in New Orleans not far from Bourbon Street. Officially, it is Beauregard Square, also known at various times during New Orleans’ past as Place Du Cirque or Place des Negres. Most locals still call it Congo Square.

Before the Civil War, wealthy New Orleans slave owners would let their slaves congregate on Sundays at a place that became known as Congo Square. There, they would sing their songs, dance their dances and practice their religion. When the West African Vodoun religion reached Jamaica, it rapidly integrated with Catholicism and many of the prevailing pagan practices of the Caribs, the native population of the Caribbean. This amalgam of beliefs known as voodoo, had offshoots from often called hoodoo.

Not knowing the true meaning of the various ceremonies that took place at Congo Square, many benevolent white slave owners often participated in the drumming, and the dancing of the wild bamboula, a frenzied and sensual dance. The songs created at Congo Square were the musical seeds that sprouted, matured and grew into what we now know as jazz.

The cultural center located in a part of Beauregard Square isknown as Louis Armstrong Memorial Park after the man that brought jazz to the world. Everyone has heard of Louis Armstrong, but few realize that his musical roots began with the rhythmic beat of West African drums and the dancing of the wild bamboula.

The Louis Armstrong Park is a must-visit. The entrance to the park, a large white arch that proclaims the name Armstrong, lies at the intersection of St. Ann and N. Rampart. The park is also close to Basin Street, made famous by both song and myth. It is also near the St. Louis Cemetery # 1 and the Iberville Project.

Gondwana

Conch Fritters - a recipe

Here is a recipe for Conch Fritters. Believe me; they taste great, but good luck finding any conch unless you live in Florida!

2 cups freshly bruised conch, cleaned and diced
3 teaspoons tomato paste
1-1/2 Tablespoons flour
2 onions, diced
1 Bahamian sweet pepper, diced
2 stalks of celery, chopped
3 Tablespoons baking powder
3-4 cups vegetable oil
Hot Peppers and salt to taste

Combine all ingredients (except oil) in a large bowl. Blend well. Heat oil in deep frying pan or pot until water dropped into oil sizzles. Drop batter by the tablespoonful into hot oil. Fry until brown. Drain on paper towels and serve.

Makes 40 fritters

Louisiana Mystery Writer

Woodstock - 40th Anniversary

The concert that changed the world began forty years ago this weekend. Not all of us were able to attend. I was sitting a deep wildcat well in east Texas. That summer of '69 was supposedly the summer of love and the beginning of an ever-peacful (this is the dawning of the age of Aquarius -lyrics from the hippie musical Hair) but it was actually the beginning of a world our parents could never have imagined, a world fraught with drugs, the Vietnam War, Hell's Angels and the Manson family. Oh, and there was also Watergate. Here is a peace montage I created to commemorate this seminal event that marked the beginning of a much changed world.

Summer of Love

We experienced the “Summer of Love” in 1969, along with Woodstock and the first man on the moon. There was also Vietnam. I had just graduated from college and planned to marry in August. Before the marriage occurred, I sat my first oil well.

It was early July and I waited in Houston, Texas for my first assignment as a mudlogger with a company called Core Lab. My new mentor was a degreed geologist named Ed M. and we were soon on our way to Mississippi. The 60s in Mississippi were still racially charged and we had to peel off the Core Lab sticker from our company car before driving into the state.

Many in Mississippi thought of CORE as the Congress of Racial Equality, not an oil and gas service company. Being from Louisiana, I was somewhat used to racism, but not even close to what I encountered in Mississippi.

My first well was a 17,500’ wildcat, just outside of Laurel, Mississippi. Ed and I found a room at a local boarding house. Ed liked boarding houses – he had married the owner of the last boarding house where he had stayed in Monroe, Louisiana. I liked them too because I did not have a lot of extra money for the local Hilton.

The drilling rig was big and noisy, but I was not destined to see the well through its total depth. Instead, I drove to Weslaco, Texas to finish logging a well drilling there. I never finished that well either because Core Lab sent me to log yet another deep wildcat, this one near Talco in east Texas.

While young hippies were smoking dope, cavorting around with no clothes, and listening to rock music, I spent the “Summer of Love” on an assortment of noisy drilling rigs from Mississippi to Texas. My boss begged me to sit a wildcat for him in Nicaragua and put off my marriage until later. I thought about it, and the extra money he offered, but my bride-to-be would have none of it.

Five months later, I was married, drafted into the Army and training for a traumatic trip to Southeast Asia as a hired gun for Richard Nixon. Yes, I missed the wild and decadent parts of the “Summer of Love” but I tried making up for it during the “Disco 70s.” Maybe it is a good thing because I don’t think I could have survived both.

Fiction South

Yellow Fever in New Orleans

The devastation of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 ranks as the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States. New Orleans alone suffered more than 1,500 casualties. Bad as it was, the single biggest killer of citizens of New Orleans was not Katrina.

Some called New Orleans, founded in 1718 by John Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, a “damp grave.” Each spring brought flooding to the city, along with rats, mosquitoes and snakes. The mosquitoes and rats, in turn brought cholera and yellow fever. These two diseases, along with many other tropical fevers, killed far more than 1,500 citizens of New Orleans that died because of Hurricane Katrina.

How many you say? Perhaps as many as 41,000 people died of yellow fever from 1817 to 1905. Many more likely died before 1817, but accurate records only began that particular year.

During the spring rains, as many as one-third of the population of New Orleans would evacuate the city leaving those that remained to face the wrath of the killer known as “Bronze John,” the “Saffron Scourge,” and “Yellowjack.” From 1851 to 1855 along, 7,000 to 12,000 citizens succumbed to the disease, fully 10% of the population.

Families buried bodies in mass graves and the profession of corpse carriers formed to meet the daily need. They would pull their carts down the streets, collecting bodies and announcing, “Bring out your dead,” to the people in their houses.

Yes, the people of New Orleans are a hardy bunch. Hurricane Katrina was devastating, but the City survived – just as they have survived the hostile environment surrounding them for almost three-hundred years.

Fiction South

Strange Encumbrance

I was in my last semester of graduate school at the University of Arkansas and still married to my first wife Gail. Our best friends, Toni and Terrence went with us to Chalmette to celebrate Mardi Gras. Terrence was an animal husbandry major and we spent a day and night in Ferriday, Louisiana where Gail's father was the supervisor of a large cattle ranch. We enjoyed a personal tour of the ranch and some of Ms Lili's gumbo before heading to Chalmette.

Gail had four sisters and two brothers. Each regaled us with drinks, dinners and frivolity, leading up to Mardi Gras Day. That Tuesday morning we awoke early and headed downtown. Drinking on the street was legal and we began imbibing by ten in the morning. We watched every parade we could get to, and along the way, we continued drinking.

We tried to pace ourselves, eating hot dogs and gumbo from various street vendors. All we really succeeded in doing was sobering ourselves for an awkward moment before plunging back into the depths of drunkenness. Somewhere around ten that night, we finally stumbled to the car and headed north to Fayetteville.

When we reached Jackson, Mississippi, we stopped at a Denny's for breakfast. My stomach felt like hell, but still slightly better than my head. We reached Fayetteville at six the next morning, hardly time for a shower before I had to take a final test at eight.

Do not ask me how, but I aced the test, perhaps the best score I ever had in grad school. A few months later, Gail and I moved to Oklahoma City and never saw Toni and Terrence again.
I have never really thought much about that Mardi Gras, my lost friendship and failed marriage. Maybe it is because youth is a strange encumbrance whose weight you never really feel until long after Father Time finally removes it.

Louisiana Mystery Writer

Love Potion - a recipe

Jilted by your lover, or maybe just temporarily lost use of your mojo? Here's a recipe to reverse your fortune when it comes to amore:

1 cherry, the juice from
3 grapes, the juice from
1/4 cup of banana paste
1 cup of ice chips
1/4 cup basil
1 pinch sage
1 tsp vanilla
1 honeysuckle bloom
Crushed pieces of geode, preferably with amethyst
3 rose petals
Few drops of rainwater - March rainwater is best2 pine needles
3 spiderweb threads

Mix the potion and add but a few drops to the drink, preferably alcoholic, of the person you wish to desire you. Use sparingly.

Fiction South

Duke's Story

I love animals and grew up with many pets – dogs, guppies, parakeets, tarantulas. Well, you get the picture. Still, I was thirty-two before I ever owned my first cat. Maybe I should say that I was thirty-two when a cat first owned me.

His name was King Tut, and he was a big orange, longhaired, full-blooded something-or-other. Tut was as regal as his name. Other adjectives also well described him – haughty, picky, and possessive, etc. Tut and I were together almost sixteen years and somewhere along the way, he decided that he liked me.

Since Tut, I have had more cats than I can count. You cat people out there know where I’m coming from. You can’t own (there I go again) just one cat. They sense when you like them and start appearing at your doorstep from out of nowhere. Well, all this explanation brings me to my latest cat Duke.

I must digress. Before I inherited Duke, I had a kitty named Bob, a yellow tabby with no tail. Bob was a wonderful cat, but always pitifully skinny. He was that way when Shannon, my stepdaughter, left him with me. I think he may have had cat AIDS.

I was afraid to take him to the vet because I had once had a favorite kitty named Silky with the incurable malady. The vet wanted to put her down because she was so contagious. It broke my heart and I didn’t cotton to repeating the experience with Bob. Yes, I know, you can’t hide your head in the sand. Well, yes you can, at least for a while.

I found Bob stuck in the fence, too weak to pull himself our. He was dead and I cried when I found him. I was writing my New Orleans murder mystery Big Easy at the time of Bob’s demise and I somehow incorporated his story into the plot. This brings me back to Duke.

Duke, like Bob, was skinny when he appeared on my doorstep. He was also a frightened little mass of kitty hood. There was nothing that I could do except feed and pet him. He has now killed and eaten three squirrels and goodness knows how many birds (thanks to Marilyn, my house is a bird sanctuary.)

I’ve never gotten the little fellow fixed because I’m afraid to pick him up. I tried one night after chugging a few brewskis and almost lost an eye during the attempt. Duke has finally quieted down, maybe because he’s gotten a little older, or maybe because he ran into a bigger tomcat. That happens in life sometimes.

Fiction South

French Quarter Pics

Here are some New Orleans pics taken a few years ago.

Louisiana Mystery Writer

Mysteries of Life

The lives of people often entwine inextricably. Take my family, for instance. In 1969, during the first Vietnam-era draft, my lottery number was thirty-eight. My father’s lottery number during the first draft of the World War II era was the same number. Coincidence? Maybe.

My brother, father and myself were all born in Louisiana, my mother in Mississippi. I was twenty-six when I first visited Oklahoma, my brother the same age although he is two years older than I am. My mother was eighty-four before she ever set foot into Oklahoma, my father eighty-six.

My mother died here, two years ago. My father has Alzheimer’s disease, in assisted-living care, and I am almost certain that he will die here. Both my brother’s family and my family now live in Oklahoma and both of us will likely breathe our last breaths in this state.

You are all in the same family, you say. It is logical that you will all die in the same place.

I am not so sure. Life’s mysteries may be no more than coincidence. What statistical analysis do scientists have to prove this? Perhaps we are all actors destined to play many parts opposite the same members of a large cast. Clad in ever-changing costumes, cultural backdrops, different eras and mores, we act out a play cast and directed by some nebulous being.

Reality is only what we perceive, or think we perceive. My father with Alzheimer’s is but a semblance of his former self, but he still functions, eats, sleeps - He still knows my brother and me. His recent memories are gone, but he can remember his childhood and his experiences in the war. Still, what is reality when perception has vanished?

My father is now more like my child. Maybe, once, he was my child. Who really knows? Yes, he is still my father but like so many sons before me, he remains almost a complete mystery. There are many questions I have for him. Now that I am brave enough to ask, all that I get in return is a blank stare.

Yes, some lives entwine inextricably. Of this, I am quite certain. Well, maybe not. In the words of Bob Dylan, “the only thing I know for sure is that I don’t know anything for sure.”

Gondwana

Iceland, Jamaica and the Afar Triangle

I am a fiction writer but I am blessed, or perhaps cursed by also being a scientist of the Earth. Years ago I visited a road cut in Arkansas near the tiny town of Caddo Gap. What I witnessed that day truly blew me away, both metaphorically and metaphysically. I stood on the side of the road, staring for what must have been many minutes, or perhaps hours, at what could only be described as a visual slice of the Earth’s core. It called to me with its siren’s song as I stared in lust at its naked earthen breasts.

As a geologist I may never again experience such a visceral feeling as I did that day, but three destinations beckon to me and I hope to visit each one before I die. They are: Iceland, a land created by sea-floor spreading, dominated by geysers and ice floes; the Afar Triangle, a place in southern Africa that is the site of a triple juncture, a spot where three plates intersect and truly one of the rarest geologic places; Jamaica, an island I believe is Atlantis reborn – perhaps the most exotic geologic location on earth.

I’ve never visited any of these places. The closest I have come is Nassau in the Bahamas. I was there years ago with my deceased wife Anne and friends Ray and Kathy. We hailed a cab and had our cabbie, an islander name King, drive us around and show us the sights. King was quite the character – loud, direct, friendly and informative. He took us to a little café beneath a bridge where only the locals ate.

“Mon, you have to try the conch fritters,” he told us.

We tried them and they were wonderful. I have no recipe for conch fritters for you tonight but I wish I did. I guess my mind was somewhere else. While the Bahamas isn’t Jamaica I was in the Caribbean and the bowels of the earth were calling to me. And yes, it was nothing short of visceral!

Fiction South

Mystery of the Gurdon Lights

Gurdon is a little Arkansas town located about halfway between Texarkana and Little Rock, on Interstate 30. It’s known for three things, logging, the Gurdon Lights and as the place where the International Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo was conceived.

Marilyn grew up there and during a discussion about the place, she provided me with an answer to a mystery that has haunted southwest Arkansas for decades – the mystery of the Gurdon Lights.

The railroad runs through Gurdon and residents have reported seeing unexplainable lights on the railroad track for many years. Many people have seen the phenomena and reported it – too many sightings to easily be discounted. Some people think it is the ghostly lantern of a man that lost his head in a railroad accident.

Gurdon has twenty-five hundred residents, about sixty-five percent white and thirty-five percent black. Growing up, Marilyn’s mother Joy had a black assistant named Hattie and when Marilyn was only twelve Hattie conveyed this extraordinary story to her and her sisters.

The story is ghostly, and creepy, but it is plausible. It is a real mystery, and also perfect Halloween fare. I’ll reveal the true story of the Gurdon Lights to the world on that day.

Louisiana Mystery Writer

Throwing the Bull

Marilyn watched the Country Music Awards on television earlier. While passing the set, I stopped to hear an interview with Reba McIntyre. “This,” the interviewer said, “is your tenth year to host the Awards. How does it make you feel?”

Reba’s answer went something like this: “I can’t believe it’s been ten years and I can’t believe they keep inviting me back.”

Ten years is a long time but not as far back as the first time I saw Reba in person. It was at Gilley’s – the honky-tonk immortalized by the movie Urban Cowboy - in Pasadena, Texas near Houston, the year 1981.

I was on a road trip with friends Andy and John to attend off-road motorcycle races at the Houston Astrodome. All the racers were riding road bikes. All except for one racer. He had a small-block dirt bike, I can’t remember the make, and he did a number on all the other racers.

Dirt bikes weren’t a novelty at the time and I wonder now why someone hadn’t thought of the idea before 1981. As it stands, I now think that I witnessed the changing of the guard when it comes to off-road racing.

John, Andy and I – especially Andy – were motorcycle enthusiasts, Andy a racer himself. Andy had an Italian Laverda Motoplast and we once rented Hallett Motor Speedway, just outside Tulsa, for the weekend. But that’s another story. We saw plenty of motorcycle racing during the weekend and we also did lots of drinking. One of the bars we visited was Gilley’s.

The disco era was all but done but country and western line dancing was almost like disco. John Travolta is a great actor but was probably thought of more as a dancer after his hit movie Saturday Night Fever. I’m sure it was his dancing ability that got him the part but his acting was flawless – as was everyone else’s in the movie.

We were already half-tanked when we made it to Gilley’s. The place was large, loud and dark. It seems like it had about four distinct areas, the bar, a game room, dance floor and the mechanized bull area. I could be wrong about this because, like I said, we were all half-tanked.

I’m sure we paid a cover charge at the door because there were two bands that night, a warm-up band whose name I can’t remember, and the one that backed up young C & W singer Reba McIntyre. It didn’t take anyone in the place very long before realizing she would soon be a certified country super star.

After many more Buds, I tried a little line dancing. The steps, as I mentioned, were a lot like disco line dancing and I had no trouble melding in, though I wore no jeans, boots or Stetson. Finally, sufficiently liquored up, we made it to the room with the motorized bull. John and Andy were too intelligent to try the mechanized beast but, well, I wasn’t that smart. Before long I was waving to the cheering crowd and climbing on the bull.

There are no mechanized bulls anymore, at least as far as I know. The reason is simple: they are far too dangerous. I found this out about ten seconds into the ride. The operator started out slow as I held on with one hand, whooping it up like some deranged banshee. Finally, he cranked it up a notch, sending my heart, and my rear end, up around my throat. I landed on the hardwood floor like a sack of ripe potatoes, bouncing a time or two before coming to an ignominious stop.

All the pretty cowgirls and the less-than-impressed cowboys booed me as I limped off the stage. A real cowboy took the bull shortly after my unending, thankfully stealing away the attention from me as I slunk away into the darkness. John and Andy were rolling in laughter but at least they had a cold beer for me.

As I watched Reba I realized the years have been good to her. And me? I’m a little smarter now because I still remember that saucer-sized bruise on my butt from bouncing around on Gilley’s hardwood floor. Hey, not much smarter because with the right amount of Budweiser, I might give the old bull one more try.

Gondwana

Disbelieving Parents and Back Seat Sex

My parents bought a new two-toned blue and white Chevrolet station wagon in 1959. It had a V8 engine but it wasn’t particularly fast, nor did it get very good gas mileage. Still, it was the car in which I learned to drive, had my first wreck in, and the place where I engaged in backseat sex for the first time.

The old Chevy was horribly unreliable. It had the habit of dying and then not starting again for thirty minutes to an hour. Funny thing, it never happened to anyone else but me. When I came home late, my parents would reprimand me for using car trouble as an excuse. It seemed I was in a no win situation.

This went on for about a year, the car dying on me unexpectedly at least a dozen times. It never happed to anyone else and it was apparent my parents considered me a bald-face liar. Whenever I told them about the car dying and then failing to start, they would just frown and shake their heads.

This all changed one day as my mom and dad were on their way to Shreveport. Dad always had a lead foot and couldn’t bear to follow behind a slower moving car. The road from Vivian to Shreveport is narrow, hilly and has lots of curves.

On a short straight-away, Dad yanked the Chevy into the passing lane and stomped the gas pedal. A car was approaching from the opposite direction but Dad’s passes were always close. This time, halfway around the car he was trying to pass, the engine died. With heart in throat, he braked hard, let the car he was trying to pass pull ahead, and then got off the road, narrowly averting a head-on collision.

My mom and dad sat on the side of the road for thirty minutes until the car finally started again. They stopped at the Chevy place on the way home and left it with the mechanics. A few hours later, the problem was diagnosed and cured.

The spark plug wires were filled with carbon instead of wire. One of the carbon conduits had a crack in it. When it got hot, the spark would fail and the car would die. When the wire cooled, the car would start again.

“I’m happy to find out you haven’t been lying to us all this time,” my mother told me.

I had mixed feelings about Mom admitting that they may have been wrong about my honesty. I never thought of myself as the dishonest sort, but when your own mother doesn’t trust you – well, it makes you consider all your other possible faults.

As I think about the old Chevy, I miss it. It wasn’t a perfect car but it always got me where I wanted to go (at least sooner or later), and managed to teach me a few lessons about life and human nature along the way. And hey, it was the car I learned to drive in, had my first wreck in, and the place where I engaged in backseat sex for the first time.

Gondwana

Old Jeems Bayou Oil Well

Here is a picture of an old oil well once located just north of the Jeems Bayou bridge, on the way to Trees City, Louisiana. The area is now cleared and the site of a dock where small fishing boats can access the bayou.

Gondwana

Stealing Watermelons

Driving back to the office from lunch today the car thermometer said the outside temperature was 111 degrees. While I doubt the temperature was that high, it was hot, at least a hundred. The weather made me think about another hot summer, many years ago.

My ex-partner John and I drilled and operated our first well in 1978. The Kelln, located a few miles north of the tiny Major County, Oklahoma town of Cleo Springs is still producing after thirty years. Thirty years ago we weren’t so sure how it would turn out.

John and I are both geologists (he is also now a lawyer) and knew little at the time about drilling and completing wells. We hired a man that did, a geological engineer named Bill A. Bill had engineered hundreds of wells in the area, mostly for Texas operator T.F. Hodge, and there was little he didn’t know.

Much like today, it was hot and dry when we drilled the Kelln well. The area north of Cleo Springs is largely agricultural and Bill knew the location of a nearby watermelon patch.

“We’ll load up the trunk,” he said. “There’s so many out there that the farmers won’t miss a few.”

I was riding shotgun as Bill drove his Chevy field car off the section line road, into the large watermelon patch that stretched as far as we could see. Following a farmer’s trail, he drove into the middle of the patch and parked beneath the sparse shade of a stunted blackjack tree. After watching him pop the trunk lid, I followed him down a row lined with huge watermelons.

Bill was tall and had to really bend to thump each melon to determine its ripeness. We soon chose six prime specimens and loaded them into the Chevy’s deep trunk. So enthralled were we with our search, we never heard two men in a pickup truck pull in behind us.

“What are you boys doing?” a voice behind us said.

Bill and I turned to see two large farmers, both dressed in sweaty overalls. Neither man appeared particularly pleased. I was at a loss for words but not Bill. Reaching for his wallet, he pulled out a twenty and handed it to the older man.

Bill was as tall as the men confronting us but lanky, unlike the two barrel-chested men with huge arms and farmer’s tans. With a big Texas grin on his face Bill never missed a beat.

“We were just coming to look for you two boys,” he said, purposely adopting the local drawl in his speech. “Is twenty enough for these melons we bought?”

The big man nodded and took the twenty without answering or returning Bill’s mile-wide smile. Glancing at me and cocking his head toward the door, he signaled me to get in the car. He slammed the trunk shut and followed me, not bothering to say bye to the two farmers.

They watched us drive away, mopping sweat from their heads with their worn out ball caps and ignoring our dust. Bill didn’t say a word until we were about a mile down the road. That’s when his infectious grin appeared again on his expressive face.

“I’ve been stealing melons from that patch for years. Guess it was about time I got caught.”

By this time he was laughing and I joined him, wondering as I did if stolen watermelons tasted better than ones you purchased. As we continued down the road in a trail of dust I decided that was information I didn’t need to know.

Gondwana Press