A photo taken in December on the icy banks of the Cimarron River in Logan County, Oklahoma.

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This graph appeared in today’s online edition of This Week in Petroleum, the Government’s weekly statististical report relating to oil and oil products.  I find it very interesting because of the duplicated slopes (both rise and fall) of the two events occurring during November of 2007.  This rapidly echoed 15 day trend strongly suggests that something (perhaps a single set of conditions) is manipulating and closely controlling the rise and fall of oil prices.

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Here are a couple of pics of an oil well in Noble County, Oklahoma.  The prairie stretches for miles with little change in elevation.  This well sits on a small hill and hasn’t operated for months, maybe years.  Suffering from time, rust and neglect, the jilted little pumping unit sits, waiting in vain for its long disillusioned owner to return and impart a little TLC.

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Here’s a pic taken a few years back at a motorcycle race in Houston at the Astrodome.  Pictured are Eric Wilder, friend John Callaway, and a gorgeous model (I believe she is a Denver Bronchos cheerleader).

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

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

The house that we live in was built in 1975 and I am aware of only three spirits that might inhabit it – Anne, my wife that died of lung cancer; my mother that died of lymphoma, and Randy, the man that Anne and I bought the house from that killed himself three days later. There could be easily be others. 

I admit that I don’t understand the afterlife.  I barely understand the present life!  Still, my pup sees spirits.  When she does, she barks and carries on.  She’s just a baby but even she isn’t really afraid of the other inhabitants of our house.

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I don’t follow most sports but one that I do is car racing.  Like many other little boys I grew up loving cars.  When I was ten or so I remember waiting for the new model year, in rapt anticipation for the body style changes.  As a boy I also liked speed and consequently started following auto racing.

In the fifties, sixties and probably even the seventies, all motor sports were mostly an unorganized mélange of racers, racing enthusiasts and promoters, and Europe was the motherland of racing.  In Vivian, where I grew up, there were mostly Chevrolets and Fords.  In Europe there were Jaguars, Mercedes Benzs, Ferraris and Maseratis.

I loved European cars and I loved European racing, and I had my heroes, the greatest of whom was Stirling Moss.  Moss was the most fantastic racer that ever lived.  He rarely had a car as powerful or as fast as the competition, but he almost always found a way to win anyway.  The cars were just as fast then as they are now but they weren’t nearly as safe.  If you wrecked at speed in the 60s you were likely to die, or at least sustain horrible injury.

Formula 1 was in its infancy and I always rooted for the American racers – Phil Hill, Ritchie Ginther and Dan Gurney.  In 1962, there was a sports car race track in Bossier City, Louisiana called Hilltop Raceway.  I talked my parents into taking me and my best friend Rod to a race there.

I can’t remember the exact month but it was following the 12 hours of Sebring in 1962.  Sports Car Illustrated, my favorite magazine, reported that the Gonzales Brothers, Dan Gurney and Stirling Moss would race at Hilltop the weekend following Sebring.

My all time hero, Stirling Moss didn’t make the race, nor did the Gonzales Brothers but Dan Gurney did.  The race was sanctioned by no one in particular and there was a variety of race cars in the field.  Gurney had a modified formula 1 open-wheeled race car that was the class of the field.  He took one practice lap in a rented Corvair and then proceeded to smash the track record.

There were Porsches, Ferraris and probably even a few Triumphs in the race.  None were as fast as Gurney’s car, even though there were a couple of other open wheelers there, notably Lloyd Ruby and Roger Penske (yes, he was once a very good race car driver).  There were two one hundred mile races and Gurney easily won both of them.  I remember him screaming through the other racing cars, nonchalantly waving to the crowd as he lapped the field over and over.  One of my greatest treasures was Gurney’s autograph that I lost somewhere along the way.

I still love watching fast race cars.  Today I watched the finish of the 24 hours of Daytona, one of the world’s greatest endurance races.  It is always the first major race of the year.  This year it was won by the Chip Ganassi-Felix Sabates racing team with drivers Scott Pruett, Juan Montoya, Memo Rojas and Dario Franchitti.  Pruett, Montoya and Franchitti were all open-wheel racers in the old Champ Car series.

Many of the observers of motor sports in the world say that Formula 1 is the greatest form of racing, and the home of the greatest racing drivers.  To this I say BS!  The old Champ Car series spawned the best racers and the best racing that I have ever seen.  There is rarely a passed car in Formula 1 so how exciting can it be?

Despite the fact that many Europeans say there are no great American racers, I say their racers never raced against Al Unser, Jr. during his prime.  He was unbeatable.  Perhaps the greatest racing driver of all time, Little Al never got his due.  There is little doubt in my mind that he could have waxed the likes of Fernando Alonzo or Michael Schumacher in a head-to-head race.

That’s not to say there aren’t wonderful European race car drivers.  My favorite is Alex Zanardi.  It took the great Italian racer to finally dethrone Little Al.  If you watch the finish of a NASCAR race these days you will undoubtedly see the winner doing a burn-out donuts, a very American thing to do.  Was an American the first to cut celebratory donuts?  I don’t think so.  I think it was the great Alex Zanardi.

I digress.  Today I watched the finish of one of the premier events in motor sports.  Fox and the Speed Channel, to their great credit, aired fifteen hours of the spectacle.  In addition to the millions watching on TV more than 50,000 spectators observed the event from the infield.

The cars of NASCAR champs Jimmy Johnson and Kurt Busch finished 2^nd and 3^rd, a testament to the talent overflowing in what is today the greatest forum for motor sports racing.  Shortly before his death, Dale Earnhardt, himself a consummate race car driver, and his son Dale Jr. finished 3^rd overall driving a GT class Corvette.  I realized then that these Americans can race with anyone on earth, and win.  Three years ago, another wonderful race driver Tony Stewart, came within twenty minutes of winning the 24 hours of Daytona, before his rear suspension disintegrated.

My only regret about NASCAR is that most of the events are held on ovals.  This is a promotional deal because you can get more spectators into the stands and these spectators are never out of sight of the racers.  Problem is they are going so fast that it is hard to tell one car from the next – except on TV, and I guess that is the point.

I missed seeing my hero, Stirling Moss race in person back in 1962.  I did get to see Dan Gurney easily best a field that included Indy champ Lloyd Ruby and racing owner great Roger Penske.  Today I watched as Gurney’s son Alex finished second.  Am I a fan?  Dyed in the wool.

Who is the present greatest race car driver on earth?  I don’t know I like A.J. Almendinger, a racer that can compete in anything on wheels.

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Here is a picture of a bridge on Highway 77 between Mulhaul and Guthrie, Oklahoma.  A pump jack is framed through a bridge over Beaver Creek, a tributary that drains into the Cimarron River.

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I'm watching the LSU - Ohio State championship football game.  As I watch, I think of two things:  the game is in the Superdome of New Orleans.  My thoughts return to 2005, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Geraldo Rivera is reporting from outside the Superdome.  The building resembles a giant sarcophagus, the gray people in the background little more than eerie wraiths all but devoid of life.

My second thought goes further back, to the fifties.  When I was a boy, my family and I would listen to the LSU games on the radio, enraptured by the running of Billy Cannon.  He always somehow found a way to pull victory from the jaws of defeat.  Listenting to our scratchy old radio, I always felt that Billy would break a tackle, put his shoulder down and run for a touchdown.  I was never disappointed.

Seeing the two grand teams playing tonight in the Superdome, I get the same feeling about the people of New Orleans.

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Barely two days had passed of the new year when oil reached the historic price of $100 barrel.  Many factors are involved, including a surprise admission by OPEC.  The following excellent article ably summarizes these factors:

Bloomberg.com: Energy

Marilyn and I visited New Orleans six months after Hurricane Katrina and parts of the visit are chronicled in my book Murder Etouffe. I came across this picture today while looking at some of the photo files on my computer.  It was taken on a street in the French Quarter, Chartre Street I believe, although I’m not sure.

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