Wolves, Bobcats and Black Panthers

A while back, I serialized a short story about wolves and panthers in northeast Texas. The story is whimsical and a work of fiction. There are no wolves and certainly no black panthers in east Texas. Or are there?

The answer is maybe. Northeast Texas remains an under-populated part of the state. A region known as the Big Thicket extends north from Beaumont. The Big Thicket is a vast pine forest that stretches for hundreds of miles. This large forest, by anyone’s count, contains more wild animals than humans, many of which moved up from Mexico, or south from the huge Ouachita forests in central Arkansas.

The Big Thicket, by definition, doesn’t extend into far northeast Texas. In reality, however, the vast forest comprising the Big Thicket continues into northwest Louisiana and even into Arkansas, all the way to the Ouachita Mountains. Anyone that has ever visited the area knows if you stray very far off the main highway and follow a winding blacktop or dirt road, you’ll soon find yourself surrounded by a sea of green often called the “pine curtain.”

Behind this curtain of trees and vegetation lies a world as mysterious and haunting as the day the first white man visited it. If you take this road, don’t be surprised if you hear the howl of a wolf, or the low throaty growl of a panther – yes, maybe even a black panther.

While growing up, I often spent the night at my grandmother’s house in the piney woods of Cass County. They still had no electricity when I was young and burned coal oil lanterns at night for illumination. People went to bed early in those days, the smoke, soot and acrid odor of burning fuel more than most people could tolerate for very long.

Wolves were very much a part of east Texas in the 1950s and I still remember their mournful howls when we finally snuffed out the lanterns for the night. Don’t believe me? They had a bounty on their heads and were hunted to near extinction. I recall seeing the carcasses of an entire pack hanging in a row by their hind legs on fence posts. I was probably ten or twelve at the time.

Are there still wolves in east Texas? Not likely. Wolves are social creatures and usually run in packs. Still, it wouldn’t surprise me if an occasional Lobo passed through the area. Black panthers are a different story. Locals have reported seeing them many times, although this is unconfirmed and denied by the Authorities. Have I ever seen a black panther? No, but I’ve seen bobcats and heard their woman-like screams in the woods.

If you’re still unconvinced, travel south to Cass County, Texas sometime. Leave the main road and follow a blacktop until it dead-ends. Hike a mile or so back into the piney woods, maybe until you reach a cypress bayou. Pitch your tent and then wait for the sun to go down. But zip the door up tightly. The howls, growls and woman-like screams you will definitely hear may just raise those tiny hairs on the back of your neck.

Still don't believe it? Read some of the comments for this post and you'll change your mind.

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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 and Noble, Kobo and iBook author pages. You might also like to check out his website.

A Short Geologic History of New Orleans

In 1718, Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville founded the colony that became New Orleans. Sieur de la Salle had claimed the territory for the French in 1682 and France was looking for an outpost from where they could take advantage of the resources of the vast domain. They desired a location with access to the Gulf of Mexico at a spot they could easily defend from possible hostility from other countries. These two factors, high ground, and access, likely resulted in the choosing of the present location of New Orleans.

High ground, you say? Everyone knows that a portion of New Orleans is below sea level. This is true but much has changed since the City was founded in 1718. The fact is the mean elevation of Louisiana is only 100' above sea level. To put this into perspective, Morgan City is 7' above sea level, Lafayette 39' above sea level, Baton Rouge 60' above sea level and the far northwestern city of Shreveport only 177' above sea level. Why then did Bienville situate the City of New Orleans at the second lowest spot in the United States, higher only than Death Valley that has an elevation of 282' below sea level? The answer is, he didn’t.

There were no topographic maps or GPS devices in 1718. Still, seasoned explorers Bienville and his brother D’Iberville understood the concept of high ground. They had located and chosen the site for New Orleans on an expedition more than a decade before the City’s founding. Although no records exist to confirm this assumption, a look at present-day Louisiana geography and geology indicates New Orleans in 1718 may have been at or near the highest elevation at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

New Orleans is part of the Mississippi River Delta, a geographic region that encompasses 13,000 square miles, fully 25% of Louisiana. Deltas are comprised mainly of silt. A look at the mechanics of the Mississippi River explains why. The Mississippi River drops 1,475' from its source in Minnesota to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico. Water flows down the river because of gravity. Along the way, the Mississippi is intersected by many smaller rivers.

The Mississippi and the rivers that feed it transport many tons of alluvium picked up along the way because of erosion. The energy of the flowing river carries this alluvium in suspension. As the elevation nears sea level and this energy is dissipated, the river can no longer maintain its load and it is deposited in the form of silt. Often, extra silt is deposited at a meander in the river where energy is locally dissipated. This is a likely scenario for the location of New Orleans in 1718.

Just north of the small town of Donaldsonville the Mississippi turns abruptly eastward. Interestingly, Donaldsonville is near the point the modern Mississippi River threatens to abandon its present course and flow into the Atchafalaya River Basin. The Corp of Engineers has prevented this occurrence for many years by constructing special levees along the course of the Mississippi River. Near Donaldsonville, the Mississippi River flows eastward until it reaches a point just east of New Orleans where it again turns, this time abruptly southward.

Old New Orleans is located in a crescent-shaped bend in the river, a meander. The crescent that formed the Crescent City is really a meander. What happened in 1718 at this meander was a dissipation of energy that resulted in higher ground because of an unloading of sediment. Likely, New Orleans was the highest point near the mouth of the Mississippi River in 1718.

Why is much of New Orleans presently below sea level. The answer is subsidence. Geologically speaking, silt is very unstable. When loaded, it readily compresses and subsides. During the early days of New Orleans, there were no man-made levees separating the City from the Mississippi River. Because of this, the City was flooded with silt and knee-deep water every Spring. City fathers soon began building up the natural levees to prevent this from happening. The result is that much of New Orleans, without the yearly addition of silt from the river, has subsided in the centuries following 1718. Even with this subsidence, the French Quarter and the Central Business District, part of the original settlement, remains at or near sea level and was surely even higher in 1718.

Another reason Bienville chose the present site of New Orleans was access. Native Americans had shown the French a shortcut from the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans - a strategic advantage over any foreign power that might attempt to wrest the region from France. This shortcut came through a pass from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Pontchartrain, and then from St. Johns Bayou to present-day New Orleans.

Everyone is aware of the tremendous damage done in 2005 by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. How can we alleviate a future disaster without moving the venerable old City? Here is my suggestion. Cut the levees near Donaldsonville and let the mighty Mississippi follow its preferred course: into the Atchafalaya Basin to the Gulf of Mexico. Will it change history? Only time will tell.

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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.

Legend of Texas oilman Dad Joiner

During the summer of 1969, having just graduated from Northeast Louisiana State College with a degree in geology, I got a job as a mudlogger with Core Lab. I had already been on deep wells in Laurel, Mississippi and Westlaco, Texas. August found me near Mt. Pleasant, Texas, in a horse pasture, on my third wildcat of the summer.

I lived in a little one-room apartment in Lone Star, a Texas steel mill town, and worked from 7 at night until 7 in the morning, 7 days a week, until the 13,500’ Smackover test reached total depth. During this time, I witnessed a shoot-out, a stabbing and numerous fights on the rig. It was my welcome to the East Texas oil patch.

What I learned from this experience was that east Texas roughnecks were a hard-working, hard-drinking bunch. Every night, when drilling was going smoothly, they would invade my air-conditioned logging trailer to play poker and tell stories. One of the stories they told me was about Dad Joiner and the discovery of the East Texas Field. True or false, it varies somewhat from official accounts. As memory serves me, here is the story told by those wild east Texas roughnecks more than 36 years ago.

Already 66 years old, Dad Joiner was a broken-down wildcatter when he moved from Dallas to East Texas in 1926. An educated man, he’d practiced law in Alabama and had served in the legislature there. It wasn’t enough for him. Like many others, he was drawn by the lure of Oklahoma black gold and the whispered promise of riches beyond his wildest dreams. Answering the siren call, he made and lost two fortunes during his 28 years in the Sooner State.

Joiner was an oil promoter, a breed spawned by “oil fever,” a disease for which, even today, there is no known cure. Having seen the blow-outs in Cushing and heard of the 25,000 BOPD uncontained flows in Oklahoma City, investors, greedy for instant wealth, fairly threw their money at often unscrupulous oil promoters, rife with promises of easy money. Many of the early Oklahoma oil discoveries were funded by these investors, even though most never realized a penny from their investments.

Some of the reports of Dad Joiner portray him as a principled visionary, a man with divine knowledge of the infinite riches located in the subsurface of east Texas and determined to find them. The truth is quite different. Joiner went to East Texas because of one thing — cheap leases.

17 dry holes had already reached total depth in the area and most legitimate oil companies had long since abandoned east Texas for more promising regions. Taking advantage of unsubstantiated, earlier-generated reports of possible oil in the Woodbine Sandstone, Joiner used this sparse information to raise enough money to lease a large block of acreage from Daisy Bradford. With these leases, he parlayed the drilling of a wildcat well on the block.

Oil rigs were primitive affairs in the late twenties. They shut down drilling at dark, sometimes after penetrating only a few feet during the day. At night, Dad Joiner would hold court at a saloon, drinking whiskey and playing poker with the locals. He also used this time to raise money for his ongoing venture.

After drilling two dry holes, Joiner’s money was beginning to “dry up.” In the manner of all good oil promoters, both before and after him, he devised a way to raise enough money to drill a third well, and help fund his high-rolling lifestyle. What he did is now called checkerboarding.

Simply put, he subdivided his block of leases like the squares on a checkerboard. He kept the red blocks and sold the black ones. When money got tight, he would subdivide the blocks even further. Through his continued promotion, he raised enough money to drill the third well by May 1929.

In October 1930, the Daisy Bradford Number 1 struck oil and became the discovery well for the largest oil field in the world. Dad, also in the manner of many oil promoters, had over-sold the well. What does this mean? It means that he sold the interests in the well two or three times. Lawsuits against him began soon after oil was discovered in the Woodbine Sandstone at the Daisy Bradford Number 1. Supposedly, he had sold the offset leases to oilman H.L. Hunt shortly before the Daisy Bradford discovery.

The roughnecks that played poker nightly in my logging trailer told a different story. Hunt was also an oil promoter and poker player – one that would be a card playing legend, even in today's high stakes Texas hold-em era. He won Joiner’s offset leases in a poker game - at least according to my roughneck friends - and the rest is history.

Don’t mourn Dad Joiner. Even though he died a pauper, he lived one of the most interesting lives of anyone I know. And despite his lack of altruism, he inadvertently discovered a legitimate super-giant oil field, one that may ultimately produce 8 billion barrels of oil.

History is the foundation of what we know today, and it’s important to understand what happened in the past. Sometimes, however, words on the printed page are but a shadow of reality. A month in a steamy, east Texas horse pasture taught me that.

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All of Eric's books are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and on his iBook author pages, and his Website.

Gumbo Yaya

Bertram Picou is a recurring character in my French Quarter Mystery Series and first appeared in  FQM No. 1 Big Easy. Bertram is the owner of an eclectic bar on Chartres Street in New Orleans. He cooks some killer gumbo and always has a pot simmering in back for his regular customers.

Everyone in New Orleans makes gumbo, some tasting better than others. The best gumbo is like ambrosia, a gift from heaven itself. It’s now made all over the world but one thing is sure. You’ll never find better gumbo anywhere in the world that tastes as good as the worst gumbo from New Orleans.

Some say that Bertram’s gumbo is the best in the Big Easy. Don’t believe me? Next time you’re in the French Quarter, stop by his place and give it a try. The bar’s a little hard to find, but keep looking. Bertram's mother taught him how to make gumbo. Below is her recipe, told in her Cajun son's own words.

Bertram Picou’s Mama's Gumbo

"First thing is making the roux. Pour some oil in your big cast iron skillet and put it on the fire, medium heat. Add some flour and start stirring. Whatever you do, don’t leave the stove, even to chase Ol’ Shep, until the roux cooks to a pleasing shade of brown, maybe a little darker if your taste buds are more Cajun than most. Be careful now! Don’t burn that roux cause it’s the most important part of the gumbo! If it starts to smoke and curdle up, you done screwed up! Throw it out and start over.

Once you got the roux done, its time to make the gumbo. My mama throws in crawfish, shrimp, chicken, sausage, squirrel, deer, or even fish. "Whatever floats your boat," she used to say.

Fill up your big stock pot with water and set it on the stove. Get it to boiling then add the roux. Mama always uses four tablespoons, more or less, depending on the weather, how dark she had let it cook, and how she feels that particular day. Good cooks don’t read recipes. They just sense how something ought to taste. However many tablespoons she used, her gumbo always tasted damn good!

Keep stirring till the roux and water are mixed, then add a couple of chopped onions, a chopped bell pepper, six minced garlic cloves and your chicken, seafood, or whatever. This is where it gets tricky. You need to add salt, cayenne, and black pepper and this must be done to taste. Using too much, or not enough, can make or break the gumbo and practicing is the only way to learn how. You’ll have to do this yourself cause mama can’t go to everyone’s house.

Cook the gumbo on a medium hot flame and keep stirring till everything starts getting tender. Don’t put a lid on the pot.

Finally, boil up your rice till it's perfect (just about the hardest thing in the world to get right, but that’s another story). Add parsley and scallions to the gumbo, and, if you like, a little file, then ladle it on the rice and enjoy!"

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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.

April Birthstone

As a geologist, I am fascinated by minerals and gems and I have a collection of spheres and eggs carved from various stones. I bought some nice spheres from an internet company called Mystic Gems and I’m now on their list to receive their newsletter.

I was working on something else for Musings today when I got their most recent newsletter which included an article about April birthstones. The article is so interesting that I am putting it on the blog, and there is a link to Mystic Gems at the bottom of the article.

April Birthstones, Traditional, Spiritual and Mystical - by Tammarah Davis, Gemologist

While April's diamond is deservedly the stone of everlasting love, the Opal from ancient Rome and a millennia beyond of Tibetan tradition is a fascinating mystical alternative. Sapphire and Amber arise from the religious realm as breastplate stones of the High Priest and as Zodiac stones for Taurus. Of these Opal brings the most varied beliefs. From the Tibetan tradition Opal is believed to help overcome challenges of one's birth month.

Opal - the name opal is derived from the Greek Opallos, meaning "to see a change (of color)." It is an amorphous mineral which can be of almost any color but most commonly white and green shades, and exhibits beautiful internal color play. Opal has been believed to strengthen faithfulness and loyalty in regards to business relationships, personal affiliations, and love. Some believe that it holds the energies to help one seem invisible in situations that the person does not want to be noticed. Native American Indians and Australian aboriginal shaman believed opal held the power to invoke visions and used it during ceremonies referred to as vision quests (Native American Indians) and "dreamtime" (Australian aborigines).

Opal has a curious darker side though. There is a superstition and belief by some that opals are bad luck to those that wear or carry them except for those whose birthstone it is. It started out being carried and highly prized by the Romans, second only to the emerald. As the centuries passed, more and more magical properties were attributed to the opal. By the 11th century opals were believed to be the stone of thieves, spies, and robbers (attributed with the magical ability to make the wearer invisible to others).

It was likely the Medieval Europeans who gave opal its "bad name" though. They equated the stone to the "Evil Eye" because of its likeness to the eyes of creatures that were feared and / or considered evil, such as cats, toads, snakes, and other reptiles and amphibians. But it was during the 18th and 19th centuries when the opal truly fell from grace as it became associated with disease, pestilence, famine, and the crumbling of empires and monarchies. There are still some areas that these superstitions run strong but there are very few if any stories to support these beliefs of the malign properties of opal.

Amber is the 7th stone of the Breastplate of the High Priest, and is a zodiac stone for month beginning on Apr 21. Actually a fossilized resin rather than a true mineral, amber is relatively soft and malleable. Strictly speaking, Baltic Amber is the only true Amber although Dominican Amber (retinite) and Copal (much younger resin) are also generically accepted as Amber. Amber has been used to trap and transform negative energies into positive energies. It is also been used as a symbol for the renewal of marriage vows. It is said to aid in choice, helping one to choose or allow them to be chosen. It is believed to be a pseudonym of the biblical "jacinth", and thus the seventh breastplate stone.

Turquoise is also from the zodiac month of April 21. It has a pale green-blue color and waxy luster, and can change colors when in contact with human oils. Turquoise has been referred to as a "stone of communication". It has been used to help speakers communicate their thoughts and ideas more clearly and precisely. It has been given to loved ones to help facilitate open and honest communications, while still allowing for those thoughts and ideas to be expressed in the most helpful and concise manner. Turquoise is also used as protection by those engaged in astral travel or going on a vision quest. It helps to provide a link between the unconscious and the conscious, helping to act as a protective mechanism during meditation work. The name turquoise is from the French expression Pierre tourques or Turkish stone, and originated in the thirteenth century.

Here is a link to Mystic Gems for you mineral lovers - http://www.mysticgemcreations.com http://www.ericwilder.com