King of Vivian

My mother had three sisters, Wardie, Marguerite and Dot, and a brother, Grady, and they would all usually congregate at my grandparent’s house for Thanksgiving. I loved it, playing outside with all my cousins and inhaling the wonderful aromas coming from the kitchen.


No one loved it more than my grandfather, the head of the family we all knew as Grandpa Pitt. On Thanksgiving Day, he held court, his arms folded and a smile on his face as all his children and grandchildren paid homage to him. On Thanksgiving Day, he was truly “King of Vivian.”

It was never really cold in northwest Louisiana. Still, by Thanksgiving Day tree leaves had all turned red and gold and there was usually a nip in the air that went well with the nip of excitement the holiday brought with it.

What I remember most are the post-dinner conversations that always took place outside on the back porch if the weather was warm, or in my grandparent’s bedroom if it was too cold outside. What I remember is the sound level caused by four sisters and a brother, all talking at once and not one of them seeming to notice, or care.

My Grandma Pitt would be lying on the bed, contentment showing on her otherwise stoic face. My Grandpa Pitt would sit on the edge of his old cane rocker, occasionally interjecting a comment into the raucous conversation. Whenever he raised his hand the room would go ghostly quiet, waiting for his latest regal pronouncement.

My Aunt Artie, Uncle Grady’s wife, would usually join in the melee but not my Dad Jack and Uncles Frank, Henry and Bert. They would be standing together in the tiny kitchen, their arms folded and knowing expressions on their faces. They had all been there before.

Those days are long gone, as are my grandparents, all my uncles, my mother and one of my aunts. Dot, Marguerite and my Dad are still alive, all with their own grandchildren and great-grandchildren now. Still, when I see a turkey emerging from the oven and smell the wonderful aromas coming from the kitchen, I think of Grandpa Pitt, the first and the last “King of Vivian.”

Eric'sWeb

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

Struck by Lightning

Big Billy had an Oklahoma oil company during the late 70s, early 80s oil boom. Like many others during that era, his went belly up when the economy flopped and oil prices collapsed. He moved to Texas and started a restaurant, visiting me years later in Oklahoma City after I ran into him in a dark Dallas bar. I had some leases in Noble County along with a geologic idea. I showed it to him and he bought it from me, intent on drilling a well.


The prospect was a reentry of a previously drilled well that had “shows” that were never tested. Big Billy had money but to say that he was cheap would be an understatement. Even though he could easily have afforded a Jaguar, he drove an old Chevy until the wheels practically fell off. Sometimes, when you are drilling, it doesn’t pay to go with the cheapest bid.

Big Billy somehow dug up an old drilling contractor with a cut-rate price and very old rig to drill our well. The wash-down that should have taken three days was only 250 feet deep after a week.

I told him what I thought. “The bit is out of the old hole. You’re drilling a new hole and with this piece of junk you are drilling with, it’ll take forever.”

Big Billy was stubborn but he wasn’t stupid. Taking my advice, he released the dilapidated old drilling rig while we scratched our heads about what to do. We soon decided to perforate a shallow zone already cased behind surface casing. Big Billy’s good luck hadn’t gone far away and we completed the zone for lots of natural gas.

The well turned out to be a prolific producer and spurred the drilling of another ten shallow wells offsetting it. There were numerous, potentially productive sands in the area and I finally talked him into drilling a well to test this possibility. We called it the Big Boy.

We drilled the Big Boy to a depth of about three-thousand feet. Ed G., a friend of mine since Cities Service days, and also a cracker jack well-site geologist, watched the well as it was drilling. Before reaching total depth, we had recorded “shows” of natural gas in two zones. Ed and I both recommended that Big Billy set pipe.

“Do either of these zones produce in offset wells?” he asked us.

I shook my head but explained, “They calculate productive on the electric logs and we had positive shows while drilling through them.”

Big Billy wasn’t convinced.

“I can’t let my investors set pipe on a wildcat zone.”

Ed was irate. “With that kind of logic, there would have never been a productive well ever drilled. Someone has to be the first.”

Argue as we might, Big Billy decided to plug the well. He did so with a temporary plug, thinking someone might come along later in the area and find production in the two zones. He didn’t have to worry about lease expiration because shallow production held them. Everything would have been hunky-dory, except for Old Mother Nature.

A year or so later, Big Billy got a late-night call from the Corporation Commission, Oklahoma’s oil and gas regulatory agency. The temporary plug he had set on the Big Boy was leaking natural gas to the surface. During a spring thunderstorm, lightning had struck the surface plug and set it on fire.

“Plug it or produce it,” the Commission ordered.

Big Billy grumbled, but complied with the Commission’s order by reentering the well and completing in the same shallow zone as all of his offsets, still overlooking the two untested deeper zones.

Natural gas prices languished for several years, during which time Big Billy bought out all of his partners. He called and told me that he intended to sell the little natural gas field, buy a sailboat and retire to Washington with Kathy, his significant other.

“You’re too young to retire,” I said.

Unable to convince him, Ed and I found a buyer for the property.

Because of depressed natural gas prices, Big Billy sold the wells for $100,000. Ed, still enamored with the prospect, bought ten percent of the producing property for ten grand. He shortly had a pleasant surprise.

The price of natural gas, like all commodities, is controlled by supply and demand. When the supply is high, the price is low. When it stays low for a lengthy period, gas operators stop drilling. Since all wells decline, the supply always, sooner or later, drops below the demand. If no new wells are drilled to take their place, a shortage occurs. This is what finally happened the month after Big Billy sold his gas properties, bought his sailboat and moved to Washington. After realizing the imbalance between the supply of available natural gas and the demand for it, marketers began bidding in earnest. The price suddenly soared, returning Ed’s investment in a single month.

Big Billy either didn’t care or else decided not to let it bother him. He and Kathy lived on their boat, docked near Seattle, for several years until they both became bored with retirement. The oil and natural gas boom was still going strong so they sold the boat and moved back to Texas. His luck was still good and he and Kathy managed to amass yet another fortune during the ensuing Texas land boom.

Stubborn to the end, he never acknowledged being wrong about not testing the two deeper zones in Noble County.

Eric'sWeb

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.

Eric'sWeb

Bullshot City

I am a big fan of Eric Felten’s weekly column in the Wall Street Journal. Felten highlights cocktails and rather than just providing his many readers with instructions on how to build the perfect Zombie or Mai Tai, he tells a story that is always interesting and informative. A recent column caused me to recall one of my own cocktail stories.

During the last oil boom, I began working as a geologist for Texas Oil & Gas, the most aggressive driller at the time and possibly since. My first day on the job, I had lunch at a downtown restaurant called Over the Counter with the district geologist and another company man.

Having just left Cities Service, a conservative, old-line exploration company, I was used to brown bagging a sandwich washed down with coffee or iced tea. Because of this, my lunch companion’s choice of beverages gave me a start.

Neither man actually had to order a drink. Gerlinda, our very German waitress brought Larry a Bacardi and Coke and Roger a Crown and Seven.

“You are a new one,” Gerlinda said. “What are you drinking?”

“Iced tea,” I answered.

Larry and Roger smiled when Gerlinda shook her head and said, “TXO geologists don’t drink tea.”

“A Coors then,” I said.

“There is no beer at Over the Counter. What kind of cocktail would you like?”

Larry’s grinning shrug clued me that he expected no argument from me.

“Bourbon and water, I guess.”

“What kind of bourbon?” It was my turn to shrug, and shake my head. “TXO geologists don’t drink house liquor and you look like a Wild Turkey man to me,” she said. “From now on I’ll bring you Wild Turkey and water.”

She did, three of them before we finished eating.

“Everyone drinks at lunch,” Larry informed me as I stumbled back to work. “Turkey and water suits you, Wildman.”

“Thanks,” I said as I returned to my office and tried not to fall asleep at my desk.

Lunch was the beginning of my indoctrination as a TXO geologist. I was instructed to put at least three-thousand dollars per month on my company expense account, even if I had to treat friends, cohorts and secretaries every meal. The Company expected me to create at least one drilling prospect every single week, no mean feat even when you are sober, much less when you can hardly hold your head up off the desk after lunch.

I - or I should say my liver - slowly grew accustomed to the daily consumption of alcoholic beverages that often continued into the wee hours of nearly every night. It did not seem to matter much as my seven-year marriage was already in shambles. An underground concourse wove a dark maze beneath downtown Oklahoma City, a pathway populated by restaurants, bars, barbershops and jewelry stores. The proprietors soon knew my name, and my poison of choice, greeting me happily when I stumbled through their door.

The last oil boom was populated by a cast of almost unbelievable characters – ex-used car salesmen sporting Rolex watches, diamond encrusted belt buckles and gold nugget necklaces, preying on the unwary investor, hungry to participate in the multitude of newfound riches and burning up with incurable cases of oil fever. I bought my own gold necklace, a half moon with a diamond eye, from an eight-by-ten jewelry store in the concourse that catered to the newly rich.

I managed to survive almost two years with TXO, having almost a hundred of my prospects drilled during that time. I do no remember if it was I that said uncle, or my liver. Whichever, I moved down the road with my life.

All this brings me to my cocktail story. Sometimes when I was simply too drunk to continue drinking Wild Turkey, I would switch to a drink called a Bullshot. A Bullshot is beef bouillon and vodka. I never learned the exact recipe although I tasted many varieties during my two years with TXO. The one I liked best came from an eight-ounce can. I cannot remember the company that produced it and I do not believe they are still in business.

The last oil boom is long gone, along with Penn Square Bank and thousands of drilling rigs cut up for scrap. Oklahoma now has liquor by the drink instead of liquor by the wink, and you can no longer leave a bar with a roadie to tide you over until you get home. Oklahoma City police no longer tolerate drunk drivers, nor should they.

An era of overindulgence died in Oklahoma City, along with the last oil boom. What survived was a group that could smile when someone said, “Last one to leave the State, cut off the lights.”

That was nearly thirty years ago and the lights in the City are again burning brightly. It has been nearly that long since I drank my last Bullshot. Still, the cocktail helped me survive an era every bit as exciting as the Alaskan Gold Rush, and Felten’s column every week reminds me that mixed drinks are more than a bartender’s recipe. They are an untold story.

Eric'sWeb

Bar Hopping with the Old Man

I visit my dad at least once a week and I try to take him somewhere every Sunday, usually to a seafood restaurant overlooking Lake Hefner because he likes watching the sailboats and seagulls. A few Sundays ago, I decided to take him to a new place.

Lake Hefner is a large, manmade lake that supplies Oklahoma City with fresh water. Because of the prevailing winds, it is perhaps the best inland sailing lake in the United States. I can attest to as much after spending an exhilarating afternoon on a super-fast catamaran with my friend David Beatty. It is also the deepest lake in Oklahoma, nearly a hundred feet in places. This past Sunday, I decided to take Dad to another restaurant on the lake.

There are at least three Louie’s restaurants in Oklahoma City and Edmond, one less than a mile from my office. My friends Jerry and Terry and I go there almost every Thursday after work, the food and drink tasty and relatively inexpensive, the friendly female waitpersons always easy on the old eyes. Since I had never tried Louie’s on the lake, I took Dad there last Sunday.

Dad and I sat in the bar area, looking out the large picture window at passing joggers, walkers and cyclists, and the gorgeous inland lake. We ordered chips and dip. I had a Sam Adam’s beer while Dad drank decaf. As I sat on the high bar stool, looking at my smiling father, obviously having a great time, I thought about the absurdity of the moment.

My Mom was, and Dad still is a teetotaler. Both disapproved vociferously their wayward son when he was placed on disciplinary probation as a sophomore in college for drinking beer in the dorm. Neither ever tried alcohol, much less frequented a bar. Seeing the confusion in Dad’s eyes, it made me grin as I finished my Sam Adams and paid the tab.

Eric'sWeb

Storms of the Past

Several days have passed since the Christmas Eve Blizzard of 2009 but there is still ice and snow on the ground, another snowstorm predicted for later in the week. When I first moved to Oklahoma City, cold weather and snow was common. This year’s snowstorm is a rare occurrence and reminded me of some of the storms from my past.

After divorcing my first wife, it took a while before we sold our house. I wanted to move into an apartment complex called Woodlake that featured multiple swimming pools, tennis courts, both inside and out, racquetball courts, weight rooms and many, many singles. Not unexpectedly, it was full and there was a waiting list so I moved to another complex.

The apartments where I moved still exist. When I was there, the name was Chandalaque. I lived on the bottom floor of the two story complex and soon learned that it had little, if any insulation. Not only was it cold and drafty, you could almost hear a pin drop in the neighboring apartments. The winter that I lived at Chandalaque, snow covered the ground for what seemed like months. I remember because the complex sat off the road in an incline and I would have to help people get out of the icy parking lot every morning.

Chandalaque was across the street from Deaconess Hospital and many nurses lived there. My bedroom wall abutted the bedroom wall of one such nurse. She was blonde and pretty and had lots of male friends. At all hours of the day and night, her bedstead would begin banging against the wall, rocking my own bed, her moans of pleasure awakening me and usually preventing me from returning to sleep – at least quickly. I don’t know if she knew that I was an unwitting participant to her sexual activity and doubt that she cared even if she did.

Fresh out of my marriage, self esteem began slowly seeping back into my body. In the days of disco and before AIDS, easy sex and one-night-stands were common and I soon had female company of my own, giving the nurse a taste of her own medicine. I only lived at the complex for six months. I never met the nurse but she always frowned when we passed on the sidewalk.

No matter how deep the snow, it always melts when spring arrives. When my lease expired, I learned there was an apartment available at Woodlake. Renting a U-Haul truck, I backed up to my door and began loading, not worrying how I would extricate my couch and bed without help. Before I got that far, my close friend Mickey arrived. Maybe it was ESP because he knew I needed assistance and I had not called him – at least by phone.

Years have passed since that snowy winter spent in a drafty apartment complex behind the world’s horniest nurse. As I glance out my kitchen window and see the two feet of snow still on the ground in my backyard, I think about Chandalaque and it makes me smile.

Eric'sWeb

Pully Bone Memories and Mama's Fried Chicken

Growing up in northwest Louisiana in the fifties, money was scarce but chickens were cheap. One of the meals my mom prepared at least once a week was southern fried chicken served with fresh-cut fried potatoes. Although I never thought about it at the time, the meal now ranks as my favorite southern comfort food.

My brother Jack and I both liked the wishbone, the piece of the chicken we called the “pulley bone.” He was older and usually ended up with it. Whichever one of us got it we would have a contest, each grabbing an end of the vee-shaped bone and pulling. The one of us ending with the biggest piece of the pulley bone could then make a secret wish guaranteed to come true.

The recipe is simple, with only a few basic ingredients, and the preparation straight forward. Still, no one could fry chicken like my northwest Louisiana mama. If I had a pulley bone wish today, it would be for a bite of her fried chicken and potatoes.

Ingredients:

1 chicken, e.g. wings, thighs, etc.
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ cup flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
1 ¼ cups milk
Preparation:
Combine chicken, salt, pepper, and the flour on large plate; toss lightly to coat. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken and cook until golden on all sides, 5 to 8 minutes. Remove chicken, pouring off excess oil.

Return the skillet to the heat and add milk, scraping pan to loosen any brown bits. Add chicken, skin side up. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until chicken is tender and juices run clear, about 15 to 20 minutes.

Eric'sWeb

Meeting the Southern Death Cult

Available on BN.com

Chicken Fries recounts an episodic ten days sitting a drilling oil well in Grant County, Oklahoma while staying in Wanda Jackson’s former RV.

Part of the story deals with the drilling of the well while another part expounds on many of the strange happenings going on in the area at the time – happenings that included cattle mutilations, crop circles and a County sheriff that seems to know all about it.

The story includes a midnight meeting with Ralph and Goldie, two people Anne and Eric suspect of Satanism. The reality is something quite different but still quite unusual. Here is an excerpt from the story Chicken Fries:

Hearing the throaty exhausts of a Harley pull to a stop outside the RV, we waited, listening to someone scrape their boots on the stair ramp leading up the door. Then footsteps –

Anne made a face as I opened the RV’s door. “Come in,” I said.

Ralph was not alone. A woman he introduced as Goldie his soul mate accompanied him.

Goldie had long blonde hair decorated with pink, azure and purple beads, and had big expressive blue eyes. She wore a leather-fringed jacket beaded with the same colors, along with American Indian totem signs. She seemed like a sixties flower child that had put on twenty pounds in the seventies to become the quintessential earth mother.

Ralph also wore a matching leather-fringed coat. For the second time since meeting him, I saw him without a hat or helmet. His dark hair was also long, draping almost to his shoulders and I could see that he was much younger than I had previously thought. Pointing to the built-in seating around the stationary table, I invited the Sonny and Cher look-alikes to join us.

“Would anyone like a beer?” I asked.

Ralph and Goldie both nodded so I brought a round of Coors from the RV’s little refrigerator before sliding in beside Anne. The lighting was dim. When Goldie began rolling a joint on the tabletop, the atmosphere became suddenly surreal.

The hallucinatory odor of burning pot permeated the RV as Goldie lit the joint, took a deep drag and then handed it to Ralph. After taking his own pull from the joint, he passed it to Anne. She took a hesitant puff and quickly passed it back to Ralph. Ralph shook his head and nodded in my direction.

I’m a non-smoker and no fan of the effects of marijuana, but I could already see the big picture. If Ralph and Goldie were going to impart their knowledge of Satanism and cattle mutilations to us, they first wanted us to join them in a simple illegal act.

Anne’s eyes grew large as I took the pencil-thin joint, drew a deep lungful of the smoke and held it for a long moment before blowing aromatic smoke rings toward the RV’s ceiling.

“Like it?” Goldie asked. “Home-grown from our own private patch.”

Goldie was grinning, as was Ralph and Anne. I soon realized that so was I. When I arose to get us more beer from the refrigerator I almost fell on my face.

“Creeper weed,” Ralph said. “It takes a while to catch up with you, but when it does –“

Anne lit a candle, put it in the center of the table and turned out the lights. Along with the pungent odor of marijuana, rising smoke and flickering candle light, all we needed was a little heavy-metal music. We made do with the chorus of crickets and tree frogs outside the RV. Finally, Ralph spoke.

“Word is going around that you’re meddling in things that aren’t your business.”

“Is that why someone tried to kill me the other day?”

“No one tried to kill you. That was an accident.”

It unnerved me that Ralph knew what I was talking about, even if it were an accident. The pentagram and dead chicken weren’t accidents,” I said.

“The boys was just trying to warn you to mind your own business.”

“Or?”

“Or nothing. They didn’t mean nothing by it,” Ralph said.
“We wouldn’t turn you in, even if you are Satanists,” Anne said.

Goldie laughed and rolled her eyes. “We’re not Satanists,” she said.

“Sheriff Arch called you Satanists. If he’s wrong about that, then what are you?” I asked.

“We worship the moon, the stars and the cycles of the earth and planets,” Goldie said. “Some people call us pagans.”

“Pagans?” asked Anne.

Warming to the conversation, Goldie spoke up and said, “It’s the oldest religion in Oklahoma, and maybe the world.”

It was my turn to ask, “How could you possibly know that?”

“Because of the excavations at the Spiro Mound sites in southeastern Oklahoma. The site was the hub of religion and government for prehistoric Indians for thousands of miles. The religion is connected to the Druids and Stonehenge and is likely the world’s oldest religion.”

Ralph droned in. “Like the people at Stonehenge and Spiro, we still celebrate the cycles of the earth and stars.”

“You worship cycles?” Anne asked.

“We worship the universal pulse that controls everything,” Goldie said. “We call ourselves the Southern Death Cult, after one of Spiro’s branches. Some of the followers are part of the Buzzard Cult.”

“How many followers are there?” asked Anne.

“Thousands likely,” Ralph answered. “No one exactly knows but there are branches all over the world.”

“And what about cattle mutilations?” I asked.

“We naturally get blamed for lots of things we don’t do. Sometimes coyotes kill cows in these parts.”

“What about the removal of udders and sexual parts with almost razor-like precision? How could a coyote, or any other wild animal, do that?” I asked.

“Bacteria,” Ralph answered. “It’s a proven fact that if you leave a carcass outside in these parts, bacteria will remove those parts in a matter of hours.”

Anne caused my heart to skip a beat when she asked, “Yeah, if you aren’t Satanists, then how do you explain your use of human sacrifice?”

The looks on both Ralph and Goldie’s faces told me that Anne had offended them. Like experienced diplomats, they both took deep breaths before speaking. Before answering, Goldie rolled another joint.

After making a production of lighting it, she took a deep drag before passing it to Ralph. Ralph took his own deep drag and I could see by the expression in his dark eyes that Anne’s comment had not made him happy. This time, when he passed the joint to Anne, she also took a long toke, as did I when she handed it to me.

As a Vietnam vet, I am far from a virgin when it comes to drugs. I like beer, but that doesn’t mean that I have never sampled the weed. This weed was different. By my second puff I was stoned. I stifled a giggle when I observed the hurt expressions on Ralph and Goldie’s faces.

“The Southern Death Cult doesn’t practice human sacrifice,” Ralph finally said. He giggled himself when he added, “maybe a chicken or two, but nothing more.”

At this point, Anne began laughing uncontrollably and Goldie, Ralph and I soon joined her. I staggered up to the refrigerator and got us more Coors.

When I returned with the beer I asked, “If you don’t practice human sacrifices then why have a name as ominous as the Southern Death Cult?”

“We couldn’t have made that one up if we’d tried. Southern Death Cult is the original name the Indians used. No one really knows why.”

“So why all the secrecy if you’re not really Satanists?” Anne asked.

“Oklahoma is the hub of the Bible Belt. The only Southern most of our neighbors understand is Baptist. What we came to tell you is you got a problem with the well.”

“What kind of problem?”

“The spot you are drilling on is hallowed, an old Indian burial ground.”

“Are you sure? I never found anything in the literature. How do you know?”

“It’s been passed down and there’s a curse against anyone ever making use of that spot of land. You’re drilling almost the exact location.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and neither could Anne. “What should we do? We’ve spent too much money to quit now.”

“This ain’t about money. It’s about sacred land. You got to make amends.”

“Or what?”

At this point, Goldie’s facial expression went from a pretty smile to an angry frown. Standing from the table, she said, “Seems like we’ve done all we can, Ralph. Let’s get the hell outa here.”

“Now wait a minute,” Anne said. “My father was a Baptist minister. You can’t just come in here and tell us that you’re members of a cult called Southern Death and that you are descended from Indians that believe in cycles of the universe and expect to convert us in one fell swoop! Tell us what it is you want us to do. At least respect us enough to give us a chance.”

Anne’s tirade caught them both by surprise, as well as me. Goldie and Ralph exchanged glances and Goldie resumed her place at the table. I went to the refrigerator and got us more beer. Then I said, “Now, please tell us what to do.”

Ralph drank some beer and leaned forward in his seat. “All right,” he said. “If you’re really serious, this is what you need to know.”

I know now that Ralph and Goldie are not Satanists - they’re Pagans. Pagans exist everywhere, even here in Edmond. It’s been many years but, since it is autumn again, a mystical time of the year, maybe I’ll just take a drive to Blackwell and see if they’re still around.

Eric'sWeb

Fading Memories and Watercolor Dreams

A creek runs through the area where I live and trees, ferns and creepers grow thickly around it. As I walked past it today, I had to step around a tree that had fallen across the sidewalk. Long dead, it had shattered when it hit the cement. One protruding branch looked like an arm, extended, perhaps, in a last attempt to break its fall.

The fallen tree reminded me of the bony remains of an old man. It also reminded me of an email I got from longtime friend and fellow North Caddo High graduate Clarice White Stephenson. Clarice grew up in Oil City, ten miles down the road from Vivian. She asked me if I remembered something. She has a poetic gift with words and this is part of her query:

“I dreamed about "old" Oil City last night, in particular the Chester Hotel that used to sit next to the Ford dealership. It was on the way home from school on the rare occasions my mother allowed me to walk with a friend. The unpainted frame hotel was never open while I remember it. It sat on the east side of the "old highway" and railroad tracks, and there were usually old men sitting on wooden benches under the porch overhang.”

I do not remember the old hotel so I asked my Aunt Dot. Her husband Bert grew up in Oil City, his parents the owners of the Pourteau Hotel and Café. She didn’t remember the Chester either but reminded me of the proximity of Bert’s hotel to the train tracks. The same track continued through Vivian, Myrtis, Rodessa and Bloomberg, and there were similar train tracks that ran through Belcher and Hosston.

These little Louisiana towns are only ghosts of what they once were - no longer the boomtowns that king cotton and big oil built. Some vestiges, like the fallen tree across the sidewalk, remain but many of the buildings and people that populated them are now little more than a close friend’s fading memories and watercolor dreams.

Eric'sWeb

Softball, Pizza and Red Bikini Briefs

With the temperature approaching triple digits as I began my walk today, my thoughts regressed to a time when my then business partner John and I sponsored a men’s slow pitch softball team. We did not win many games but we drank lots of beer, and the team was great for PR.

Most of the players on the team were geologists, or at least married to one. John and I traded off pitching duties. Neither of us could claim to be either a great pitcher or wonderful athlete, but since we footed the bill, we took advantage of our power. No one complained because we also picked up the tab for the beer and pizza after the games.

We usually went to a now defunct pizza chain called Shotgun Sam’s because they were kid, and obnoxious softball player, friendly. It was a common occurrence for the rowdy members of the team to become even rowdier after a few pitchers of beer. One night, they became more boisterous than usual.

The evening started with an unexpected win on the softball diamond. Our exuberance began with lots of rah-rahs and high fives, and continued as the entire team and their families gathered to celebrate the win at Shotgun Sam’s picnic-style tables. What started out as rowdy soon became even noisier.

The management was usually tolerant because we always spent lots of money, and the pizza place served as a haunt for many other loud softball teams. Things would have been fine, except for one of the players dancing exhibition.

Terry was a geologist and single at the time. Caught up in the revelry, he stood on the table and began dancing to a Creedence Clearwater Revival record blaring on the jukebox. Even that might have gone unnoticed, had everyone at our table not began chanting, “Take it off.”

Terry was no shrinking violet. Except for my friend Mickey, I have never known another male that liked to take his clothes off in public more than Terry. He quickly stripped down to only his red bikini briefs when the stunned manager could take no more.

Out of coins, the jukebox stopped abruptly, and all sound ceased in the large open room as the angry restaurant manager stood glaring at me, hands on his hips. Quickly, I handed wife Anne a handful of ones and nodded toward the jukebox. Instantly getting my drift, she hurried toward it.

My hand was still on my wallet and I extracted a hundred dollar bill that thankfully I had stashed for such an occasion. “We are so sorry for the disturbance. We don’t win many games and this was a special celebration. If you will take this for your trouble, we will calm down, finish our beer and pizza and leave.”

The jukebox fired again at just that moment, filling the room with sound before the man could answer. His expression quickly changed from anger to disbelief as he slipped the Benny into his shirt pocket.

“Fine,” he said. “Just hold it down to a mild roar.”

Duly chastised, we finished our beer and pizza in relative tranquility, but the people present that night, even after twenty years, have yet to let Terry live down his red bikini briefs.

Eric'sWeb

Pugs in the Pool

This is starting out to be one of the hottest Oklahoma summers in years. The temperature exceeded one-hundred degrees more than once in June, an unusual occurrence, and will probably top the century mark many times before September. Because of the weather, I have settled into an after dinner routine.

I usually turn on the backyard lights, fire up a few Tiki torches and then sit by the pool until well after dark. My two pugs, Princess and Scooter, always accompany me. Sometimes I take my laptop and write by the light of the moon, fireflies and torches. I usually swim a few laps in the pool and then sit on the steps at the shallow end, playing with the pups.

Scooter is fearless and loves the water. Princess accidentally fell in once as a pup and is more leery. Tonight, Scooter jumped down into the few inches of water covering the highest step. Feeling cocky about his accomplishment, he jumped out and chased Princess as she watched with curiosity. Close to the edge, he bumped her a bit too hard. She tumbled into the water, he following her. The plunge surprised them both.

They were only a few feet from the steps so I calmly pointed them in the right direction and watched as they scampered out of the pool and began shaking the water off. Thankfully, neither seemed too traumatized by the experience.

I petted them both, removed their wet collars, dried them with a towel and then gave each half a chicken strip. Dogs are like humans. If something scares them, they often go out of their way to avoid the experience again.

Some well-meaning people dunked Lucky, my Lab in the pool as a pup. It frightened him to the extent that he never wanted to go swimming, even though it is in his retriever genes. Something similar happened when my Mother was young. She had a frightening experience in the water and consequently never learned to swim, but made sure that my brother Jack and I did.

I hope tonight’s pug dunk has no adverse effect on them. For Scooter, I am almost positive he has already forgotten about it. I not so sure about Princess, though. Like my Mother and Lucky, she may already have a permanent phobia, further strengthened by tonight’s dip.

Eric'sWeb

Nutrias, Yashicas and Warm Pots of Gumbo

I visited New Orleans for the first time when I was eleven. My Aunt Carmol was an elementary school teacher, and she made sure my brother and I saw every historical site, museum and park in the City. Having grown up in rural northwest Louisiana, New Orleans was the first cosmopolitan area I ever visited. It was not the last, but it remains in my mind as the most unique city in the United States and perhaps the world.

My first visit was not my last. As a college freshman, I marched in the Venus parade during Mardi Gras, experiencing Bourbon Street and the French Quarter for the first time as an adult - or at least close. Most of that particular visit was spent in a drunken haze, much in the manner of college students today visiting the City and savoring Mardi Gras for the first time.

I worked in the City once during summer break from college. My job title was assistant micro-photographic technician seismologist. From my salary of two dollars per hour, you can tell the description was just a bit overblown, but it did look good on my resume. I bought my first camera that year - a 35 mm Yashica range finder, and New Orleans provided a plethora of scenic opportunities.

Shortly after that sweltering summer I married a girl from Chalmette, a city separated from New Orleans only by name. My marriage to Gail did not last but during our seven years together, I learned to love her French Acadian parents, Lily and Harvey, and her entire family. It is a shame sometimes that you cannot divorce a wife and keep her family.

Gail had two brothers, six sisters and many aunts, uncles and cousins. Most were wonderful cooks but none better than Gail’s mother Lily was. No two pots of gumbo are ever exactly alike. I know because I have consumed my fair share. Taste, as I guess just about everything else, is subjective. That said, Lily’s gumbo was the best I ever tasted and, in my opinion, the best in the world.

Harvey, Gail’s father, was a cattleman and fur buyer. During trapping season, raw fur filled the shed behind Harvey’s house. He gave me a lesson once on how to grade a nutria pelt. Like calculus and religion, the lesson did not stick. One short story - Harvey and Lily once found six-hundred dollars in cash in their deep freeze. They did not have a safe and trappers do not take Visa or MasterCard.

Eric's Web

Dr. M's Louisiana Cattle Ranch

Harvey, my former father-in-law raised cattle and had a small pasture behind his house in Chalmette where he ran a few head. Harvey had an old friend, a doctor that had a large cattle ranch in the eastern Louisiana town of Vidalia. Dr. M became very wealthy when a company found oil and lots of it on his ranch.

Shortly after the discovery of oil, Dr. M retired from medicine and spent his days trading stock and traveling. A devout Catholic, the Pope granted him and his family a private meeting during a visit to the Vatican. Dr. M was also a member of the Krewe of Rex and had once paid a million dollars for the privilege of being King of that Krewe during one Mardi Gras season.

Wanting to experiment with different breeds of cattle, Dr. M hired his old friend Harvey to oversee the operation. Relishing the challenge, Harvey and wife Lily began splitting their time between Vidalia and Chalmette. On a trip to Chalmette, Gail and I stopped along the way for a visit to the ranch.

Dr. M and his family rarely visited the ranch any more so Lily and Harvey had the main house all to themselves. The living room, I remember, had a large mirror on one wall made of one-way glass. Dr. M was apparently a voyeur and liked watching his guests through the one-way glass from an adjacent room that most knew nothing about.

The ranch was two full sections of land and abutted the levee on the west side of the Mississippi River. Harvey and Dr. M were trying to establish a new breed of cattle for the area - Black Angus. The weather turned out too hot and humid for this breed and the experiment ultimately ended in failure.

The ranch had a bunkhouse large enough to accommodate a dozen hired hands, if needed. During our visit there was no seasonal help and Gail and I had the bunkhouse to ourselves. We spent the day touring the ranch, examining the barns, stalls and cutting pens. Lily seemed unhappy when we left the following morning and I am sure she missed her large family in Chalmette.

Perhaps Harvey was also missing Chalmette and his own cows because shortly after our visit, he quit his job as foreman and he and Lily moved back to their own home. Gail and I were glad to see Lily happy again, but I am also glad that we had the chance to see Dr. M's large working cattle ranch before Harvey finally quit.

Eric's Web

Motorcycles, Fast Cars and Strong Beer

My first wife Gail became a player on a softball team shortly after we moved to Oklahoma. Oklahoma is a hotbed for women’s softball. The kind usually seen on ESPN is fast pitch. Gail played third base on a slow pitch team.

Gail’s new friend Vickie, who played second base, and her husband John, soon became our best friends. Not realizing that Gail and Vickie were already friends, I had met John when we inadvertently sat together at a game. Our wives were losing badly to a much better team. Some of the opposition’s husbands and boy friends began expressing their distain by braying like deranged jackasses whenever our team committed an error, or someone on their team hit a homerun.

John and Vickie liked doing many of the same things as Gail and I. Like us, they were both avid campers, but that was just one of the many things we did together. John, it seemed, liked everything that I liked – motorcycles, fast cars and strong beer. He also had a strong attraction for British sports cars.

When I met him, he had two Triumphs, a TR3 and a TR4 that he was restoring. I badgered him so much that he finally sold me the TR4, and along the way, I sold him my Triumph Bonneville 750 motorcycle that I had grown tired of riding only during the day. In those days British cars, and motorcycles, had electronics by Lucas.

For those aficionados out there, you already know that many called Lucas the “Prince of Darkness.” This is because of the propensity of the lights and wiring of cars and motorcycles using Lucas Electronics to fail at the most inopportune times. When the headlights would abruptly go out while driving the TR4 at night, I was deft at restoring power by manipulating the wiring behind the dash, all the while never removing my foot from the gas pedal.

Our marriages to Gail and Vickie are both defunct but John and I are still friends, even after several decades. I also still have the TR4, now parked in my garage, desperately in need of a new restoration. After all these years, I sometimes have to restrain myself from braying like a deranged jackass when I see someone performing at less than one hundred percent.

Eric's Web

Life's Little Speed Bumps

Still early spring in Oklahoma, the day began as wet and cool. Sometime after lunch, the sun came out and I decided to clean my spa, a task to which I was not looking forward. The problem, I quickly learned, was worse than I imagined.

While Marilyn and I live in the city limits of Edmond, we have no city water. Our house is on a well and septic tank. The water is palatable, yes, even healthy because it is loaded with minerals. Well, healthy for humans, that is.

There is so much calcium in the water that it clogs the pipes and hampers the cleaning ability of our dishwasher. The water is “hard.” Yes, we have a water softener but it never seems to stay ahead of the hardness problem. Because of the minerals in the water, our spa is a nightmare to maintain.

Water evaporates quickly in central Oklahoma making it necessary to add water to the spa almost every day. This means the ph of the water increases every time you add more water. The spa water was dark from dirt, sand and plant debris that had blown into it over the winter, so I decided to drain it and start over. Once the last drop of water drained from the fiberglass shell, I realized I had a larger problem than I had anticipated.

Thick calcium deposits coated the walls and bottom of the spa. My first thought was to throw up my hands in defeat and return to the house for a cold beer. No way, I told myself. I will not let this little problem get the best of me. Grabbing a gallon of vinegar, rags and a stiff brush, I went to work removing the calcium scale.

Commercial vinegar will remove some scale but is woefully lacking when it comes to strong deposits. What should I do? I wondered. My problem, I knew, was a simple lack of chemistry skills. I was not even sure if increasing the ph made things more basic, or vice versa. I was unaware of the fact that I am chemistry challenged until I left home to go away to college.

I had to take many science and math courses to complete my degree in geology and one requirement was twelve semester hours in chemistry. While I like cooking, and creating meals by systematically adding ingredients, I soon learned that the study of chemistry is, by nature, much more precise. Not a precise person, my last chemistry course almost became my undoing.

Advanced qualitative analysis was my last chemistry course; at least I think because I have tried for years now to block it from my mind. I had flunked the course at least once. Maybe it was twice, but I have effectively blocked that little failure from my psyche. This was the only course I had left to complete my degree.

My last semester occurred during the Vietnam War and undergrads deferred from serving as long as they maintained their grades and did not graduate. Because of this, colleges across the country experienced record enrollment. So many young people wanted to attend college that it became necessary to weed many of them out. Advanced qualitative analysis was one of the courses administrators used to accomplish their goal.

Most students completed this course their sophomore year. I was not so lucky. I quickly learned it was my nemesis and likely my undoing. I had a Dee, just barely, going into the final exam. I was far from the best student at the university, but I prided myself in never groveling. As the final exam drew near, I thought better of my pride. Catching the Prof in the hall alone one day, I took the opportunity to plead my case.

“This is my last required course,” I said. “If I don’t pass it, I’ll be drafted. If this happens, I know I will die in Vietnam without a degree. Please, please help me,” I begged.

When I checked the test results, posted on the door outside the chemistry lab, I saw that only twelve out of two-hundred and fifty students that had taken the course had passed. I was one of them. Even though I was last of those that had passed, I felt like the king of the world.

Years have passed since taking that last chemistry course but I thought about it as I pondered how to remedy my spa’s calcium problem. After checking the internet, I realized I needed to lower the ph. Luckily, I had two bottles of ph reducer. Add two capfuls, circulate for thirty minutes and then recheck the ph, the directions said.

I honestly attempted to follow directions, but after an hour had passed, I realized I had done little or nothing to change the high ph of the spa water. To hell with this, I thought as I dumped the entire bottle of ph reducer into the spa. Tomorrow I will check the spa’s chemistry again and hope no one takes a dip before then.

Eric's Web

Great Red River Raft

The Red River begins in Colorado and flows east, toward Louisiana. It forms a physical barrier between much of Texas and Oklahoma, Texas to the south and Oklahoma to the north. In 1806, President Thomas Jefferson sent Peter Curtis and Thomas Freeman to explore the southern portion of the Louisiana Territory.

They found the Red River clogged from bank to bank with trees, brush and impenetrable debris. The Great Raft acted as a dam, effectively raising the water level north and west of what is now the city of Shreveport. This system of interconnecting bayous and lakes, with time, became a watery pathway from New Orleans to Jefferson, Texas.

What did Jefferson have that brought up to 15 riverboats a day from New Orleans? It was cotton. Michener talks about the superior quality of East Texas cotton in his novel Texas. Fortunes were established and antebellum mansions sprang up around Jefferson as goods and celebrities reached the booming town. At one point, Jefferson was the largest seaport in Texas.

In 1872, the Corps of Engineers attacked the Raft with snag boats, an invention of Captain Shreve, the founder of Shreveport. The snag boats, along with the help of explosives, cleared the Raft within the year. The result was a drop in the area water level.

The lakes and bayous no longer interconnected. The riverboats that had plied their trade, up the Mississippi River from New Orleans, to the Red River, Caddo Lake and finally Jefferson, could no longer make the trip.

Farmers found new methods to get their cotton to market and, like a jilted lover, the City of Jefferson faded into a mist of distant memory.

http://www.ericwilder.com/

Boggy Creek Monster

I grew up about thirty miles from Fouke, Arkansas, the location of the 1960’s and 1970’s sightings of the infamous Boggy Creek Monster. I never personally saw the monster (read Bigfoot) but I discussed the sightings with a close friend that I trust and that lived near Fouke and had relatives there.

Bo Smith told me that at least two families in rural southwestern Arkansas saw the large humanoid on more than one occasion. Is it possible that at least one and perhaps a family of the creatures live in southwest Arkansas? The short answer is yes.

For those of you that have the pictures I published of Jeems Bayou, you already realize how much rough, swampy, hilly, unpopulated land lies within the three-state area known as the Ark-La-Tex. Could a wild animal hide forever in the woods of the Ark-La-Tex? Go into the forest and look for a deer in daylight, or a bobcat or coyote. It is unlikely that you will see one.

Have I personally seen a Bigfoot? No but I have I seen and heard strange things in the forests of the Ark-La-Tex more times than I can remember. Is there really a Boggy Creek Monster? Maybe not but spend the night camping in southwest Arkansas sometime and I think it will cause you to admit that at least the possibility exists.

http://www.EricWilder.com

A Place Called Storyville

French Quarter private investigator Wyatt Thomas is the protagonist in my six-book French Quarter Mystery Series. In Book No. 1 Big Easy Wyatt is approached by a wealthy Mississippian who hires him to locate the grave of his mother. Wyatt is instantly smitten by his new client’s beautiful daughter. A voodoo killer is on the loose in the city and the search for the grave of his client’s mother little more than an interesting side story. It takes on another dimension when Wyatt learns his client’s mother was a Storyville prostitute who had had a long-term affair with a rich Creole businessman. If you want to know more about Storyville then keep reading.  If you want to find out if Wyatt solves the case of the voodoo killer, satisfies his clients wishes and how his affair with the daughter from Mississippi turns out, then read Big Easy and the other books in the French Quarter Mystery Series.

A Place Called Storyville

I realized there was something exciting and quite different about New Orleans the first time that I visited the city. Today, if you go south on Canal Street you will eventually end up at the Mississippi River. The City is in the process of rebuilding, but if you had followed Canal to the River before Hurricane Katrina you would have encountered many tourist attractions such as the Aquarium of the Americas, the World Trade Center and the Canal Street Wharf. Unlike today’s tourist-driven atmosphere you would have found something quite different had you taken the same journey in the 1950's.

I first visited New Orleans during the Eisenhower Era and remember standing on South Canal Street and staring down the hill toward the Mississippi River. New Orleans is a major international seaport and what I saw was a bunch of seedy bars that sailors from many countries frequented when they were in port. The bars were off-limits to American military personnel, and for good reason. They were dangerous, the women you met there "loose," and venereal diseases rampant.

"Those bars are a good place to get killed," my Aunt Carmol, an ex-marine during World War II and no shrinking violet herself, had told my brother and me. "Don’t ever go there."

The Canal Street bars were long gone before I ever had the opportunity to defy Aunt Carmol’s advice. Still, even as a youngster I felt the potential danger and lingering intrigue present around nearly every corner of New Orleans. One less dangerous but very intriguing place that was eventually cleaned up by the U.S. Navy was Storyville, the Big Easy’s early-day fantasy land that did as much to establish the City’s reputation as a latter-day Gomorrah as anything else in its history.

During the early days of New Orleans, there was a shortage of females. To alleviate this situation, street prostitutes were released from French prisons on the condition that they migrate to the new colony. In 1744, the number of bordellos and houses of prostitution prompted a French army officer to comment that there were not ten women of blameless character in New Orleans. City-wide prostitution continued until 1897 when a puritanical city official devised a plan to control the problem. The plan resulted in the formation of Storyville.

Locals called Storyville "The District." It existed from 1897 until 1917, the concept of New Orleans’ alderman Sidney Story. Story’s plan wasn’t to legalize prostitution, but to control it by defining the boundaries within which it would not be prosecuted as a crime. The concept worked for nearly two decades and ironically the District became one of the City’s leading tourist attractions.

Despite the belief of many - likely propagated by fictional accounts in literature - Storyville wasn’t located in the French Quarter. It encompassed an area north of the Quarter, just east of Canal Street between N. Rampart and N. Claiborne. Elaborate bordellos, fancy restaurants, and dance halls quickly appeared and flourished, on Basin, the street that became a legend because of its association with early jazz.

Jazz flourished in Storyville, although it didn’t originate there. Each bordello was a place for music as well as prostitution and each establishment generally had a piano player to entertain its guests. The bordellos often hired bands to perform, as did the restaurants and clubs that sprang up in the District. Jazz superstars such as Buddy Bolden and Louis Armstrong often performed there. Storyville was near a train station and many visitors to the City also frequented the bordellos and the clubs to listen to jazz. These visitors, as well as sailors of all nationalities, took this new sound back with them to their cities and countries of origin.

In 1917 the Secretary of the Navy was Josephus Daniels and his nickname "Tea Totaling" perfectly described his tolerance for sin. Daniels insisted that New Orleans either shut down Storyville or else he would close the naval base across the river in Algiers. The base provided too much income to New Orleans for the City fathers to see it close so they shut down Storyville instead.

A wave of Puritanism swept across the United States during the era of World War I and the residents of New Orleans weren’t exempt from this phenomena. Embarrassed by Storyville, city fathers began systematically dismantling the District. In the years following 1917, all the elaborate bordellos were demolished leaving only a metaphorical scar in place of nearly two decades of irreplaceable history. Even the street names were changed, world-famous Basin Street becoming North Saratoga.

Toward the end of World War II, city fathers made yet another planning blunder. Soldiers were returning home from war and needed a place to live, so the Iberville Housing Project was built on the site of Storyville. Never spoken about in travel brochures or in tourist information, the low-cost Iberville Housing Project quickly became dangerous and crime-ridden. Close to the French Quarter, the Project was a place to avoid at all costs instead of the tourist attraction that the District had once been.

Even with the dismantling of Storyville, prostitution never left New Orleans. It simply spread out across the city to places like the seedy bars frequented by sailors on south Canal. Unlike south Canal, transformed now into a tourist attraction rather than a city blight, the area around Storyville remains largely unknown and off-limits to tourists.

New Orleans’ city fathers made a colossal blunder when they demolished the historical District. They compounded their error when they covered up their mistake by building the infamous Iberville Project. Finally realizing their horrible error in judgment, they did return the name Basin to the famous street that was home of legendary jazz and fabulous bordellos.

New Orleans still exudes a well-deserved aura of danger and intrigue and there are still more than enough historical sights to see, even though one of the most famous is forever gone. Few vestiges of Storyville remain, yet like the tang of Tabasco Sauce on the tongue, its memory remains long after the last spicy bite of Etouffee has been consumed.

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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.