Driving a Mercedes on Route 66

Great story and pictures.

Route 66 Story and Pictures

Eric'sWeb

Rundown Shacks Part of Native Culture

Fascinating! I've lived in Oklahoma for many years, but never heard this.
Oklahoma Native American Burial Practices

Eric'sWeb

Shannon's Logan County Venison Chili - a weekend recipe

My stepdaughter Shannon lives on a ten-acre farm west of Guthrie in Logan County, Oklahoma. She has nine horses and far too many cats, dogs, chickens, peacocks and other assorted animals. Like her Grandmother Joy and Mother Marilyn, she is a wonderful cook. When Scotty, her significant other, returns from a hunt during deer season, she often prepares her own version of venison chili. Take it from me, it’s wonderful!

Ingredients
• 2 T vegetable oil

• 1 onion, large, chopped

• 1 green pepper, chopped

• 2 garlic cloves, large, minced

• 2 ½ T chili powder

• 1 ½ lbs venison, well trimmed, cubed

• ¾ lbs venison, well trimmed, ground

• 1 28 oz can tomatoes, crushed

• 1 c red wine

• 2 T cumin, ground

• 2 T Worcestershire Sauce

• ½ t red pepper

• ½ t salt

• 1 t black pepper

• 2 t Massa powder

Directions
Heat oil in large skillet. Stir in onion, green pepper, garlic and chili powder. Sauté until tender. Add venison and stir with a wooden spoon until brown. Drain off fat. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes or long enough for chili to thicken. Serve in festive bowls topped with shredded cheddar cheese.

Eric'sWeb

Big Billy's Catfish Gumbo - a weekend recipe

Here is a quick and easy dish Big Billy used to whip up when he entertained, which was often. Big Billy was so big and athletic that he could have made a career in pro football. Ironically, he was more into talking politics than watching sports on television. Still, his catfish gumbo is a perfect winter dish for watching college bowl games and the Super Bowl. This recipe serves eight.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs catfish filets, bite-sized

• 10 oz okra, sliced

• 1 c celery, chopped

• 1 c onion, chopped

• 1 c green pepper, chopped

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• 3 T cooking oil

• 4 c beef broth

• 16 oz tomatoes, diced

• 1 bay leaf

• 1 t salt

• ½ t thyme, dried

• ½ t red pepper, ground

• ½ t oregano, dried, crushed

• 4 c rice, cooked, hot

Directions

In a large Dutch oven, cook celery, onion, green pepper and garlic in hot oil until tender. Stir in beef broth, tomatoes, bay leaf, salt, thyme, red pepper and oregano and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

Add catfish bites and okra, uncover and return to a boil. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes or until fish flakes easily. Remove and discard bay leaf. Serve in bowls over rice.

Eric'sWeb

Total Eclipse of the Moon

Mavis, Anne, Jack, Dale Rood, Isey, Thanksgiving, circa the 80s

When I went outside very early this morning to watch the lunar eclipse, I realized I was in for a mystical treat. A golden moon brightened hazy sky, back dropped by luminous Christmas lights decorating neighbors’ houses. My big tomcat Goldie joined me as I watched the unfolding event.

I had no telescope and only gazed up at the lunar phenomenon with my naked eyes. The realization that I was witnessing a total lunar eclipse the same day as the Winter Solstice, two events that occur on the same day only once every four hundred years, or so, caused me to recall another story recounted many years ago by my Grandmother Dale O’Rear Rood. Grandmother Dale was born on October 27, 1891. She was nineteen when she witnessed Halley’s Comet in 1910.

“Halley’s is the only naked-eye comet that a human can witness twice in a lifetime. Mark Twain saw it twice and so did Papa Pink. I’m going to live until it passes one more time.”

Grandmother Dale didn’t quite make it, dying February 27, 1985 at the age of 93, less than a year from the date (February 9, 1986) Halley’s Comet last passed close enough to Earth to be seen with the naked eye. She actually came closer than Papa Pink; despite his boasts to the contrary, John Pickney O’Rear was born September 9, 1837, almost two years after the comet’s passing November 16, 1835.

I thought about Grandma Rood’s story as I watched the moon disappear into darkness, and then reappear the color of burnished bronze. Goldie didn’t seem to care but shared my moment like a spiritual being that somehow understood the importance of the celestial event.

Marilyn usually leaves the radio in our living room all the time. I’m not a religious person, but I couldn’t help but reflect on the Christmas song, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, playing as I opened the front door and cast one last glance at the sky. It caused me to reflect on my own existence. I won’t be around in 2061 when Halley’s Comet appears again, much less in four hundred years.

Giving Goldie, my big tom a last scratch behind the ears, I grinned, deciding not to ponder the thought further as I plodded off to bed.

###

Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He is the author of the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans and the Paranormal Cowboy Series. Please check it out on his Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBook author pages. You might also like to check out his website.

Wind Chimes and Bad Times-a Vietnam War Story

It’s the 4^th of July. Tonight, as I sat in my backyard listening and watching the nearby fireworks display, I was reminded of an event that I’d witnessed many years ago. As a grunt with the 1^st Cav, somewhere deep in the jungles of Vietnam, I’d experienced, up close and personal, a B-52 attack. The planes were carpet-bombing a bunker complex; softening it up for infantry foot soldiers, of which I was one before we had to go in on the ground the following day. To say that the explosions dwarfed any fireworks display I’ve ever seen almost goes without saying. Now, I’m a bleeding heart liberal who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Then, I was praying the 1000-pounders would kill every enemy soldier in the compound we were set to attack the following morning. Tonight’s fireworks also reminded me of another memory of Vietnam that I’d chronicled several years ago. I was in the boonies for almost six months and memories have a way of fading and running together. I saw several B-52 attacks during my tour and this story doesn’t mention the bunker complex. Whatever, after reading the story I re-experienced the same abject dread that I’d felt some fifty years before when the event occurred.

Wind Chimes and Bad Times

Marilyn’s wind chimes are performing a chaotic symphony tonight because of an approaching storm. Their resonance reminds me of an incident that happened in Vietnam, but not because of the weather. I had the same eerie feeling—a warning from somewhere deep in the primitive portion of our brains that scientists never discuss: our animal brain that screams at us whenever something very bad is about to happen.

The mind plays tricks, even the animal part of our brains. This is particularly true when the elements rob your senses. Such is the case after darkness falls in triple-canopy jungle. I was a grunt in an infantry line company. We were somewhere near the Cambodian border. Hell! We were probably in Cambodia.

The area was hot (firefight hot) and our sister companies had all made contact with the NVA during the past days. Earlier that night we had watched and heard a B-52 attack as the big planes carpet-bombed a nearby patch of jungle, hoping to disrupt Charlie’s intricate system of trails that somehow managed to keep supplying arms and supplies to their soldiers in the south.

I sat in a damp hole in the ground, my senses disrupted and seeing nothing, not even an occasional flash of light. It’s true that when you have no vision your hearing becomes acuter. I was aware of the sounds of the night. A tiger stalked in the distance and I could track its progress through the jungle by the low growls it periodically emitted. I could also hear elephants and horses – yes, horses. Don’t ask me how or why they were there in the jungle but their sound is unmistakable. I also heard other things.

Helicopters supplied us every three days. After cutting a landing zone in the jungle—a small LZ (landing zone) barely large enough for the chopper's rotors—the birds would bring us food, water, and fresh ammo. They also brought us beer and pop and each of us got three beverages of our choice every three days.

You didn’t want to drink your beer immediately because everyone would beg a sip and there would be little or nothing left for you to drink when the can came back around. Most soldiers savored theirs while pulling guard duty because it was about the only time you were ever truly alone while on patrol. As I sat there, listening to the tiger, elephants, and horses, I heard someone pop the top on a Black Label. Then I heard something else—the low moan of a soldier, thinking of his wife or girl as he masturbated in the darkness. I knew very well how he felt because I was thinking about doing the same thing myself.

Tension mounted as days went by without encountering Charlie. As we cut our way slowly, single file through the jungle, a signal began being passed back to the rear. The soldier in front of me pointed at a snake in the branches over our head. I didn’t know its real name, but we called it a three-step snake because that’s about how far you could go before dying if it bit you. Not far from the snake, I witnessed something as eerie as I have ever seen.

It was a thousand pound bomb lying flat on the ground amid broken jungle vegetation—a relic of a B-52 attack, a monster bomb that had not detonated but still had the stark power to blow a forty-foot hole in the ground. Everyone in the row of soldiers realized as much and to say that I was frightened would be lessening the aching fear throbbing in the pit of my gut. The bomb was longer than I am tall and even lying flat it came up to my chest. We snaked around it, no one touching it for fear that it was booby-trapped by the NVA.

Fifteen days passed without encountering the enemy and I still remember climbing the incline to the firebase hewn out of a Vietnamese mountain. We were stopped at the perimeter and told the bad news that instead of our expected five-day stand-down, we would be re-supplied where we stood and then sent back into the jungle for another fifteen-day stint.

One of the men—a southern black man—heard his animal brain louder than the rest of us. Pulling off his pack, he sat down and refused to move. I remember our idiot Lieutenant holding a .45 to the man’s forehead, threatening to blow his brains out if he didn’t get up from where he sat. He ignored the lieutenant’s threats and military police from the firebase soon led him away at gunpoint to an inevitable stay in the Long Binh Jail. As we watched them leave, all the rest of us wondered if he wasn’t the smart one in the bunch and perhaps doing the right thing.

We stayed on the perimeter of the firebase that night, not allowed on the safer side of the razor wire. Next morning we reentered the jungle for another fifteen days. At this point, my mind numbs and my memories become blocked by the events that ensued.

Tonight, as wind whistles out my back door, distant thunder rattles the windows and lightning illuminates the western sky like a fiery B-52 attack, I get that same eerie feeling that I had so many years ago.

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Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He is the author of the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans and the Paranormal Cowboy Series. Please check it out on his Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBook author pages. You might also like to check out his website.

Hand in the Dark

Wyatt Thomas is a disbarred attorney turned private investigator in my French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans. Wyatt learns from an old voodoo woman that he is a traveler, a person that has lived many lives and that has the ability to travel through time. He has problems with memories from many pasts that don't always make sense to him. In Courtyard of Forbidden Secrets, the French Quarter Mystery that I'm presently writing, he is suffering from a recurrent dream with which he can't quite come to grips. The idea occurred to me because of a dream I once had. Sounds creepy, I know, but would a fiction writer lie to you?

Hand in the Dark

We don’t always remember our dreams, but sometimes, awakened during the middle of one, we do. I recently dreamed I was lying on my stomach in what was likely my parent’s house. The bed was small, a single. It could have been the old house, but the bed was positioned in a way, and in a room that I didn’t remember. As I lay there, I heard someone come in the door. Someone with a dog.

The dog was a border collie, strangely similar to the one in my new book. It bounded into the darkened room, scurried to the front of my bed and licked my face. The warm tongue awakened me, at least in my dream, and I became aware of footsteps approaching the back of my bed. Footsteps halted beside the bed and a hand groped between my legs.

Really awakened this time, I swung my arm, hitting the lamp hanging from a ceiling cord beside my bed. I opened my eyes to see the flash of a human-like form pass through the window and disappear into the darkness. Wide awake, I glanced around the room as the lamp swung like a pendulum.

I’ve always contended that ghosts and spirits abound, not just in my house but everywhere. The touch seemed like a trick my brother might have played on me when we were younger. Brother Jack is not a spirit, and I doubt I will ever know for sure who, or what, it was that awakened me from my dream. I only know I was awake, wide awake when I saw the shadow figure fly out the window.

###

Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He is the author of the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans and the Paranormal Cowboy Series. Please check it out on his Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBook author pages. You might also like to check out his website.

Luna

Temperatures here in central Oklahoma have been hot as the hubs of Hades this last week or so. It was just as hot last night, humidity causing it to feel like the inside of a steam cabinet. When I turned on the water hose to cool things down, a beautiful luna moth flew to a nearby tree. Since this is the first such moth I can remember seeing since I was a child, I rushed to get my camera.

After dark, I lit the Tiki torches by my pool and played with my two pugs, Princess and Scooter, in the backyard. The night was magical, a breeze fluttering the tree branches. There were also dancing shadows and the sound of ice tinkling in a large glass. I don’t know if it was a spirit, but the sound was suddenly behind me, and then to my side.

Marilyn’s morning glories and moon flowers haven’t bloomed but the foliage has grown up over the back fence of my pool. We blamed my Mom, joking that her spirit prevented the plants from blooming until my Father joined her. This is a funny explanation but one I don’t believe. There are no bees this year. I heard on NPR that many hives have succumbed to a virus. Without pollinators, there are no blossoms.

It was still almost a hundred degrees when I went walking today at six. Because the trees are stressed by the lack of water, dried leaves cover the sidewalks, making it look almost like fall. Temperatures belie the fact that it is anything other than summer. As I walked up Coltrane, I found a turtle that had crossed the road and then was too exhausted or too small to crawl up over the lip. I picked it up and sat it on the sidewalk, out of the road. It looked at me a moment, as if to see what I was going to do, and then hurried away into the shelter of nearby trees.

Upon returning from my walk, Patch wagged his tail and licked the salt off my arms, happy to see me. I was also happy to see him, but sad that Lucky and Velvet are no longer alive.

My Maine Coon cat Rouge also disappeared and the neighbor that owns Fang came and got him and took him to Pennsylvania with him. A bag of cat treats still sits by the front door, awaiting a new cat to delight. Marilyn called me as I was resting at the kitchen table.

“Looks like the heat got your big moth,” she said, pointing at a spot on the sidewalk.

The big luna moth had indeed succumbed and lay stretched out, as if in life, on the hot cement. I don’t know the life expectancy of a luna. A week? A month? It made me think about my Dad, and dogs and cats. Nothing lasts forever. We only exist for what period of time is allotted us. The turtle would probably still be alive long after I am dead and gone. My time will be shorter, but like the luna moth, it will be enough.

Eric'sWeb

Not Our Dog

Many Christmases ago, my wife Anne and friends Lanny and Kathy were invited to a party at a mutual friend’s house. The weather was mild, as it sometimes is in central Oklahoma, even in the middle of winter. We arrived in festive dress carrying obligatory bottles of wine as gifts for the hosts. The front door was open and we could see through the screen door that the party was already in full swing.


A friendly German Shepherd joined us as we walked up the porch. When we opened the front door, it entered in front of us and began mingling with the guests. We found the hosts, presented them with the bottles of wine, and then proceeded to sample the appetizers and mix drinks for ourselves. We noticed that everyone was staring at us and keeping their distance. Finally, a young man dressed in sports coat and Christmas tie edged closer. He smiled and nodded.

“Do you always bring your dog to parties?” he asked.

“It’s not our dog,” Kathy quickly said. “We thought he lived here when he followed us in the door.”

The young man grinned, shook his head and then corralled the dog, leading it to the door and putting it outside.

“We’re sorry,” Lanny said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “He’s not ours. He just walked in with us. We thought he belonged here.”

Everyone laughed and we were soon the hit of the party, all the guests wanting to hear just how stupid we felt.

Eric'sWeb

A Big Black Dog Named Chuck

Several years ago when my stepdaughter Shannon was living with Marilyn and me, she brought home a big black Rottweiler. She is a sucker for animals and according to Marilyn, was always bringing home a stray dog or cat, or bird with a broken wing when she was young.

The dog’s name was Chuckie. He was big and black with white and tan markings. He was around ten years old and had belonged to an old woman that was going to a nursing home. There was no one else to take the dog and if Shannon hadn’t come along the only other option was the pound. Shannon moved to other digs shortly after bringing Chuckie home. Even though she dropped by regularly to take care of him, much of the feeding fell upon Marilyn and me.

Chuckie was old but he was an imposing animal, weighing in at well over one hundred pounds. We have a large pen on the north side of our property and Chuckie took to it right away. I was a little afraid of him and we got off on the wrong foot. The first week that he was here, I went into his pen to fill his water bucket with the hose. It was after dark and I’d had a few toddies. After filling his bucket, I turned to leave the pen only to find my way blocked by the big dog, his teeth barred as he emitted a low-throated growl.

I thought that I was a goner but walked slowly toward him and said, “No Chuck, you sit,” as sternly as I could muster.

Chuck didn’t sit but he did stop growling and let me move past him without tearing my arm off. I learned the next day that Rottweilers are territorial, and that before the old woman adopted him, Chuckie had lived with a man that often beat him when he got drunk.

“He doesn’t like men,” Shannon told me the next day as she arranged his food bowl and water bucket closer to the fence so that I didn’t have to go into his pen.

“Thanks for telling me,” I said.

From that point, I was determined to make friends with the giant dog. Every morning when I went for my morning paper, I would stop by his pen and give him treats. Every day when I got home from work, I would take him treats. Soon, he would jump up on the fence and let me rub his ears

The first time it rained after he moved in with us, I looked out the window and saw him standing in his pen, getting soaked. Considering the time that I had spent in the rain, in the boonies of Vietnam, I decided that he needed shelter – the sooner the better. I had a six-foot length of wooden fence in the yard so I lifted it over the fence and made a quick and dirty lean-to. I covered the structure with black plastic sheeting to shield it from the rain. Within minutes, Chuckie got under the lean-to as if he had lived there all his life.

When Shannon visited, she would let him out of the pen and allow him to run around in the back yard. During these times, I improved Chuckie’s lean-to by adding cedar chips. Before winter arrived, I got him a big doghouse and he loved it.

Soon, I was comfortable enough with the big dog to let him out of his pen even when Shannon wasn’t there, and I was happy to learn that he was just a big overgrown puppy. When I sat by the pool, he would rest his large head on my knees and let me rub his ears. He also liked to swim in the pool.

Shannon often took him with her during the day. He loved riding in the back of her truck, hiking with her and swimming in the nearby lake. Chuckie had found a home but that is not the end of his story.


Chuck had lived with us a couple of years when we noticed that he had a tumor on his belly. We watched it for a while and could tell that it was growing. Shannon’s vet finally told her he needed to remove it. He did and Chuckie was in horrible pain for what seemed like hours. He wouldn’t lie down because of the pain in his belly, despite the efforts of Shannon and Marilyn to soothe him. Finally the pain killers kicked in and he fell into an exhausted sleep.

The operation worked, at least for a while. Chuckie was more energetic and responsive during this time and I have little doubt that it was the best days of his life. The tumor stayed gone for around two years before recurring. This time it was much worse, Chuckie had grown quite old for a Rottweiler and suffered from hip problems (a common genetic trait of Rottweilers).

Chuckie’s health soon began degenerating at a rapid pace and it was obvious that he was in constant pain. One day, Shannon took him for his last ride in the back of her truck to their favorite hiking trail by the lake. The old dog could barely walk but it enjoyed lying in the shallow water one last time. Finally, she took him to the vet, gave him one last ear scratch and had him put to sleep.

My big Lab Lucky is also getting old, now eleven. He lives in a large pen (quarter acre) on our property with Velvet and Patch. Marilyn and I were considering putting him in Chuckie’s old pen so we had it cleaned out last week and reseeded with grass. Yesterday, I strolled through the enclosure with my Pug Princess.

The pen is large – twenty by thirty feet, at least. Several large trees provide plenty of shade, although there is enough sun to lie beneath on a chilly day. One side faces the road and honeysuckle vines cover the chain link fence. What I found at the end of the pen was a very healthy clematis plant with eight purple blossoms growing amid the honeysuckle. The essence of their beauty reminded me what a wonderful dog that Chuckie was and what a pleasure he was.

The big black dog was an abused castoff, neglected most of his life. He was intelligent, had a wonderful personality and had probably dreamed doggie dreams of having a real friend someday. I am so thankful for Shannon and her soft streak. Because of her, he got his wish.

Even though Chuck and I got off to a rocky start, I came to love that big black scary-looking dog, and I miss him now.

Louisiana Mystery Writer