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 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 a 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.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Mick is one of my closest and dearest friends.  I met him when I went to work for Cities Service Oil Company and we both knew each other during our first wives.  I went skiing the first time with Mick, had fun with him and I’ve fought with him, just like a brother.  When he asked me to be the best man at his wedding, I naturally said yes.

Mick and Ginette had been a number for quite a while and the time had finally arrived for them to marry.  I was to be Mick’s best man and Anne was Ginette’s first lady.  Mick and Gin lived near our house, in a condo in Hefner Village.  When the day came for the wedding, Anne and I made our way to their condo and knocked on the door.  Gin met us with a smile.

“Mick’s running late and still at work,” she said.  “I’ll get you something to drink.”

Anne and I were both dressed for a wedding and I felt uncomfortable waiting for Mick as I drank beer in my suit and tie.  An hour passed with no word from Mick.  This was in the days before the cell phone and there was no way for Gin to call him.  When another hour passed, Gin began to cry.

“I knew he would never marry me.  He’s probably out drinking with his buddies, not even worried about getting married.  Tomorrow he’ll have some lame excuse.”

“He’ll be here,” I said.

“How do you know?” Gin asked.

“Because I know Mick,” I said with my tongue firmly in cheek.

Anne put her hands on Gin’s shoulders to console her, a task that became even harder as yet another hour passed.  Finally, we heard the key in the front door and Mick stumbled in.  Yes, he had been drinking and he had a resolute expression on his face.

“Sorry guys,” he said.  “I just had to think about awhile.”

“And what did you decide?” I asked.

“I don’t think we’re ready for marriage yet.  I’m calling it off.”

By this time, I was mad.  “The hell you are,” I said.  “Get your suit on.  I’ll call the limo and tell them you finally showed up.”

“Eric –“

“Don’t Eric me.  Get your suit on.  We’ve been waiting almost three hours and by God you’re going to get married, and I mean tonight.  I’m not taking no for an answer.”

I must have been persuasive because Mick returned from the bedroom dressed in suit and tie – just in time as the limo driver was knocking on the door.

Mick had found a marriage chapel, really the home of Reverend Sweeney, in an older neighborhood of Oklahoma City.  The good reverend answered the door on the first knock.

“Sorry we’re late,” I said.  “We had a few problems.”

“Quite all right,” he said.

Reverend Sweeney led us to the back yard where he had a rose garden and an arbor decorated with flowers.  Oh, and it was a full moon that night.  As late as we were, it was at its zenith and beautifully full.  Mick and Gin exchanged vows and sealed the ceremony with a kiss.  After we filled out the necessary paperwork in Reverend Sweeney’s kitchen, we returned to the limo waiting out front.

The driver took us to Junior’s, a restaurant where all good oilies always go to celebrate something good, even today.  It was Friday night, Junior’s filled to capacity.  Junior’s was known as much for its strong drinks as for its wonderful food, and Anne, Gin and I soon caught up with Mick’s state of inebriation.

Later, after celebrating with two rounds of brandy ices, Mick stood, tapped his glass with a spoon until he had garnered everyone in the crowded restaurant’s attention.  When the room went quiet, he said something like, “I love this beautiful woman and want everyone to know.”

Seeing the confused looks on everyone’s faces, I stood and said, “This is Mick and Gin.  They are very much in love and just got married about an hour ago.”

The entire restaurant exploded with a round of applause and cheers.

I felt bad about badgering Mick into marrying Gin and told Anne as much when we finally returned home that night.

“He’s a grown man and is perfectly capable of making his own decisions.  He must have wanted to marry Gin or nothing you said could have made him do it.  You just sort of nudged him in the right direction.”

True words as Mick and Gin have now been married, through thick and thin, for more than twenty years, and have two wonderful children, Ashlee and Will, to show for the union.

Do I take the credit?  Let’s put it this way.  I’ve been a best man four times during my life and all four marriages are still going strong.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Interesting article.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=a3d3VXW5vPNo&refer=energy

http://www.ericwilder.com

I had just started a new job in 1976 and was undergoing a divorce from my first wife.  With the divorce finally finalized, I found myself truly free for the first time in seven years.  I was already drinking and partying too much, so the only thing left for me was to buy a motorcycle.  When Dave, a fellow geologist and my closest friend, told me he was going to put an ad for his motorcycle in the newspaper, I naturally asked him how much he wanted for it.

"Five hundred bucks," he told me.

"I'll take it, but you'll have to teach me how to drive it."  I'd never been on a motorcycle.

A lesser friend would have told me to go jump in the lake.  Dave, in fact, did grumble a bit but in the end he promised to teach me how to ride a motorcycle, even if I didn't buy his motorcycle.  That Saturday, he drove it to my house and gave me my first lesson.  The bike was a 500cc Triumph dirt bike.  I know!  There's no such thing anymore and the bike would probably be worth ten grand these days if you could even find one.  Anyway, Dave showed me the ropes and perservered until I finally got the hang of it.

I began riding the bike to work but soon found its knobby tires were more suited for off-road than freeway.  I also soon learned that my ex-girlfriend was a better rider than me.  I found this out as the reluctant passenger on back as she demonstrated how to race around a corner while nearly kissing the pavement.  I traded the little dirt bike for a 750cc Triumph Bonneville street bike, quickly discovering the gears and brakes are on opposite sides than those on the dirt bike.  Again, my bud Dave helped me transition through the difficulty.

My ex and I were unable to sell our house immediately so we took turns living in it until it was sold.  One night, we had an impromptu party that included many of my new friends and many of hers.  Don't ask me to explain!  We were incompatible and didn't hate each other.  I soon began getting requests to take people for rides on the Bonneville.

The long trip around the block would begin as uneventful but ended the same way a half dozen times.  The grass on the front lawn was wet and everytime I jumped the curb and hit the grass, I would lose control and we would slide across the wet yards on our rear ends.  Did I mention that we were all drinking?

No one was hurt and the Bonneville suffered only a few superficial scratches.  I have a picture of the Bonneville around somewhere but only a memory exists - not even a tiny scar - of my first motorcycle.  It's a shame because that cycle and friends like Dave helped me through a very rocky patch in my life.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Frequent readers of this column know how superstitious I am.  Business took me to rural Oklahoma today and something I saw there gave me an instant case of the creeps.  Here’s a little background info:

My business partner, fellow author r. r. bryan and I recently bought an old oil well in with the intent of recompleting in a new zone.  Being oil promoters as well as writers, we turned a percentage to a man we know in Dallas named Pat O’Neil.

Today, I was in the county on other business.  A few miles from the well in question, I came across an old sign so I stopped to take a picture.  I was blown away when I read the inscription and this is what it said:

This land was founded by Jacob Derr in the land run on September 16, 1893.  Others making the land run of 1893 were C.B. Kirk to the southwest and the west, H.C. Swingle to the east, W.R. Whitaker to the northwest, B. Lowman to the northeast.  Pat O’Neil to the southeast.

I know, the name is fairly common and it could just be a coincidence.  Maybe, but I can think of at least two more possible explanations that involve reincarnation and the supernatural.  On the other hand, I am a fiction writer with a well developed imagination.  I’m posting the picture at the bottom of the page and fiction writer or not, I think you will agree that it’s still kind of creepy, and you can draw your own conclusions.

http://www.ericwilder.com

If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Oil prices up on word US ship fired on boats in Persian Gulf: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

http://www.ericwilder.com

My deceased wife Anne, like myself, was a boxing fan.  When she was alive we often hosted fight parties for many championship boxing events.  There was always lots of beer and our friend Ray, immortalized in my story Chicken Fries would always bring brownies.

Dave, my buddy who sold me my first motorcycle would bring his famous sausage balls.  Later, when times were tight, just Anne, Dave and I would get together for a fight.  One fighter we never missed was Mike Tyson.

Tyson, at the time, was still young and going through opponents like an Oklahoma tornado.  When he was scheduled to fight a no-name boxer, Buster Douglas, no one wanted to watch the likely one-round event except the three of us.

I don’t remember much about the evening, or the fight, except that Buster Douglas connected with Tyson’s jaw and knocked him clean out.  I also remember Dave’s sausage balls.  This week, Dave was kind enough to send me his sausage ball recipe.  Here it is and I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did.

Basic:

3 cups biscuit mix (Bisquick or similar type mix)

1 lb. bulk sausage

½ lb. grated Cheddar cheese

Combine the sausage and cheese first, then add the Bisquick mix until the mixture will hold together, mix thoroughly with hands (or spoon, easier with hands), mixing is easier if the sausage is warmed slightly in a microwave first.  The amount of Bisquick mix used to hold the whole thing together will change as you change the type of sausage used.  Now, form mixture into balls (about a ping-pong ball size), a perfect ball shape is not important, in fact it is better if formed into odd shaped imperfect balls.  You can freeze you balls for baking later or bake now.  I like to bake now and freeze for heating later in microwave.

Place balls on non-greased bake/cookie sheet and bake in over at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, but check after 12 minutes.

That is the basic recipe, now for the Cajun version:

Cajun Version - Sausage Balls

3 cups biscuit mix (Bisquick or similar type mix)

1 lb. bulk sausage  (sausage can be any type you like, as long as it can be broken up and mixed with the other ingredients, I sometimes use hot sausage)

½ lb. grated Cheddar cheese  (extra sharp cheddar cheese is the best to use)

From now on, you are on your own to add what ever floats your boat, some of my favorites are:

1 nice sized onion - chopped

Several cloves of garlic - chopped

I have been known to put several drops of Tabasco sauce on each ball before cooking.  It leaves a very nice red color on each ball and adds a good kick.  Note:  If while mixing, you are having drinks, or whatever, the Tabasco sauce goes on the Sausage Balls, enough said.

Then mix and bake as above.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Here’s a pic I thought you might like.

http://www.ericwilder.com

We all have benchmarks in our lives that we recognize as signs of our moving in a positive direction.  For me, it has always been owning, or at least leasing, a hot tub.  I bought my first redwood hot tub in 1979, just before marrying Anne.  Since then, I’ve had four more, including the one that I have now.

Following the oil bust in the early eighties, the fortunes of Anne and I took an abrupt downward turn.  We lost out house on Ski Island and our three rent houses (yes, I know, we were over-consumers at the time).

The hardest part of curbing your lifestyle is finding a quick way of halting your monthly expenditures.  I’m talking about the house payment on your mansion and monthly car payments for your Mercedes and Jaguar (I know, I’m not eliciting much sympathy here!).

Anne and I reined in our lifestyle, still managing to maintain a comfortable existence until 1995.  The oil biz was hurting.  No one was buying prospects or drilling wells.  We found a little rent house and had just enough money left after the first month’s rent, deposits and everything to rent a U-Haul truck.

My nephew Kevin helped me move and we single-handedly transported years of our lives from a five thousand square foot house to a fifteen hundred foot house.  Well, not totally alone.  Later that night, I finally called my Brother Jack and Anne’s brother David to help us with the last load.  To say we were exhausted is an understatement.  To this day, I don’t think Kevin knows how much he helped me.

Anne and I lived in the rent house for two years - past the time we learned that she had lung cancer.  I finally sold a prospect and made a down payment with it on the house I still live in.  Anne died about six months later.

The house had a swimming pool but no hot tub.  The oil business dragged on for several more years and I scrapped by, making the house payments, buying groceries and little else.  I still wanted a hot tub and the entire time I plotted how I might acquire one.

Three years after Anne passed away, I saw an ad for an eight-foot octagonal hot tub in the Daily Oklahoman.  The party was asking two hundred and twenty five dollars.  I had the money, called and purchased the shell.  Three days later, the owner brought it to me and dumped it unceremoniously in my back yard.  It remained in the same spot, through more hard times in the oil biz, for three more years.

I did figure out where I wanted to put it and I began digging a hole in the ground, beside the oak tree where I had buried my nineteen year old cat Chani when she finally died.  The hole was long dug, half filled with rain water, and I still didn’t have the money to set the hot tub, much less get it plumbed and ready to use.

Two years ago, my financial fortunes took a turn for the better and I finally got the hot tub plumbed and working.  I took my first dip on the night of my birthday and surely it was a birthday present from someone that had gone before me.

Last week, my step-son Shane built a gazebo to enclose the outdoor hot tub and today I mucked it out after a winter of non-use.  This house is my little piece of Eden, Marilyn and I Adam and Eve.  If there’s a snake out there with an apple, well, hey, give me a bite.

When I finish writing the last words of this treatise, I’m going outside and give the hot tub a spring test.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Here’s a pic of the Dukester in the garden.

http://www.ericwilder.com

When I worked for Cities Service Oil Company my primary duty was sitting (staying on location, describing samples and calling for drill stem tests) drilling wells, mostly in Kansas.  After months of learning from other geologists, I was allowed to sit a well in Comanche County, Kansas all alone.  My first solo experience was quite traumatic.

The well was a wildcat (more than a mile from established production) scheduled to drill into the Arbuckle Dolomite, a very old carbonate that sometimes produces lots of oil and gas.  At Cities, the technique for describing and drilling a prospect was well defined but had many flaws.

The powers-that-be considered Cities a technologically advanced company and would not drill a wildcat without seismic control.  The geologist would locate an anomaly by doing subsurface mapping.  He would then propose a well and management would either agree or can the prospect.  If they agreed, the geophysicists would get involved and have a seismic survey conducted over the prospect.  If the geophysics agreed with the geology, then Cities would drill a well there.

When I started working for Cities, the Mid-continent Division had not had a discovery in more than ten years.  Part of the reason, I soon learned, is that seismic surveys never work perfectly.  My opinion is that they rarely work, at least in Kansas.  There are many reasons for this, most too technical to delve into in the space of a few hundred words.  I had an inkling of this fact the first well that I sat alone because I had already had discussions with other disillusioned company geologists.

Every well is different and only a trained wellsite specialist can tell you exactly where you are in the hole, and if you are running structurally high (very good) or structurally low (very bad).  There is a marker zone, the Heebner Shale, in Kansas that is almost always used to determine how you are running.  When we reached the Heebner, I knew exactly where I was in the hole and called my boss to report the information.

“You must be mistaken,” Don W. told me.  “If what you say is true you would be running fifty feet low.  The seismic map says you should be running fifty feet high so you obviously have a hundred foot error.”

I tried to argue with him, explain that I knew where we were and that we really were running fifty feet low.

“You’ve missed a correlation point.  Go up the hole a hundred feet and try again.  You’ll find your mistake.”

From that point, my daily report was in La La Land.  I knew where we were but my boss was becoming increasing confused to the point that he called me an idiot and threatened to send out a more experienced geologist to correct my obvious mistake.  At one point, he almost had me convinced that I didn’t know what I was doing.

We finally reached total depth and when I looked at the electric log I knew that I had been correct all along.  By this time we were almost seventy feet low to the nearest correlation point.  There was no email in those days or any way to quickly transmit the logs to Oklahoma City for the honchos to view.  It was four in the morning when I looked at the last log and realized that we had a dry hole.  In a near state of despair, I called Don, my boss.

“Calm down, Eric.  Everything will be okay.  Is there any possibility that you are miscorrelating the log?”

There wasn’t, but it hurt my feelings that he was still blaming the failure of the well on me – at least that’s the way I felt at the time.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Bring the logs to the office.  We’ll have a meeting first thing in the morning.”

Management cared little about their minions.  Another geologist, a close friend of mine, had rear-ended a parked semi on the side of the road as he headed for a remote well site in the wee hours of the morning.  He didn’t survive.  It didn’t matter that I had been awake for almost twenty-four hours.  I had my orders – drive all night and present the logs for management’s inspection the following morning.

I drove into Oklahoma as the sun was arising and made it to the corporate offices before nine the next morning.  Three of my bosses studied the logs, frowned and scratched their heads, finally dismissing me without so much as a thank you or well done.  Later that day, Fred, the older geologist that had taught me almost everything I knew, came to my office.

“Don’t worry about it.  It’s not even your prospect.”

“I just can’t believe that management trusts a tool that almost never works over the word of their geologists.”

A big grin spread over Fred’s face.  “Welcome to life as a geologist,” he said.  “When you drill a discovery, someone else takes the credit but you get all the blame for every dry hole.”

“But Fred, seismic sucks.  How can management continue to believe in it?”

“Eric, a geologist is nothing but a justifier, someone or something that gives the okay for a company to dump millions of dollars into the ground.  You don’t really know any more than the seismic tool whether or not there is oil where you are planning to drill.  We use the best science we have but once you are a foot below the surface of the earth - and you can take this to the bank - it’s all Mother Nature, and she doesn’t give up her secrets easily.”

Fred was correct.  I have drilled many dry holes in my career and I’ve worked with lots of people and many companies that have had their discoveries.  And sometimes when I wake up at night and stare into the darkness, I can hear old Mother Nature giggling to herself.

http://www.ericwilder.com

A very interesting comparison between the price of Btu equivalents for natural gas and heating oil.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=axvw3.6H8Kqo&refer=energy

http://www.ericwilder.com

Here is an interesting discussion in This Week in Petroleum concerning the prices of oil and natural gas.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp

http://www.ericwilder.com

Harvey, my first father-in-law, was a fur buyer.  I was just back from Vietnam, scheduled to start graduate school the next spring.  Still, Harvey apparently mistrusted my intentions and assumed that I intended to be a perennial student, and somehow on the dole – his dole.  The thought was the furthest from my mind, but it seems to be the opinion he and all my other relatives had at the time.  He was worried about it enough that he even tried to teach me how to grade fur.

Harvey had a shed where he kept his furs before transporting them downtown to the French Market where he ultimately sold them.

“This is a rat fur,” he said, pointing to a muskrat skin.  “I pay a dollar for a regular pelt and a little more for a grade A pelt.  Know how I tell the difference?”

I didn’t have a clue.  The pelts were turned inside out and he stuck his hand inside one, showing me what to do.

“I pass my hand over the fur to see if there are any bald or thin spots.  If there are, the fur isn’t worth as much.  I always give at least a dollar a pelt or else the trappers would take their furs some place else.  If they bring me a hundred rats, I give them at least a hundred dollars.  Everything over that amount is a bonus.  You understand?”

I nodded to indicate that I did, but I really didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

Gail and I had intended to live with Harvey and Lilly for three months, and then three months with my parents before moving to Fayetteville just before the beginning spring semester.  It didn’t happen that way.  After about a week, they began treating us like bad breath.  My sister-in-law even called and offered to pay my way through a real estate course so that Gail and I would stop sponging off their parents.  I’m fairly dense, but I was starting to get the hint.  That night I had a talk with Gail.

“I can’t take much more of this,” I said.  “Your parents obviously don’t want us here.”

“But what will we do?”

“Leave here and spend the rest of the time with my parents.  I think they are more understanding.”

Next day we packed and drove to Vivian, Lillie crying but not begging us to stay.  After a week at my parent’s house, we got another rude awakening.  They too began treating us like, well like blood-sucking leeches.  After just a few days, we packed our bags again and left for Fayetteville.

For the first time in my life I learned that families are strange, really strange.  The may love you but they don’t want you living with them, or for you to give the rest of the family the impression that you are living off of them.

It was a good lesson but it leaves me with one question – why can’t I  get rid of my own kids as easily?

http://www.ericwilder.com

I wrote this short story for Earth Day many years ago and I think you will agree that it gives a whole new meaning to the slogan “Go Green.” 

EARTHEN REMAINS

By Eric Wilder

The odor of salt and dead fish permeated air near the ocean’s edge.  A gull flying overhead screeched, and then plummeted into the water.  Its rigid body wafted in the water, then floundered in foamy surf before joining floating garbage already on the beach.

            Mahatma sat in the mud of the nearby salt marsh staring at yellowed saw grass withering in the sun.  He touched his neck and felt the sting of ripe blisters.  The ocean’s stench made him cough, and then gag.  His lungs expanded and he almost fainted in the thin atmosphere nearly depleted of oxygen.

            He glanced at the cloudless sky streaked with orange and yellow patterns.  The purple remnant of a recent chemical disaster billowed in the distance like a noiseless Technicolor explosion.  Summoning the remainder of his dwindling strength, he dragged himself up out of the mud.  Feeling like a beaten man, he knew if he didn’t move that he would soon join the bone piles bleaching in the sun.  Even though frail and light as a wisp of water vapor, he still sank into the stinking mud as he hobbled toward higher ground on spindly legs assisted by his antique oak walking stick.

            Mahatma had lived a long and depressing life, and had come to the ocean’s edge to die.  He had planned to wade into salty surf and let the steady undertow take him out to sea.  Instead, the force of waves continued to push him back toward the bank and he found himself lying in the mud, exhausted.  Hours later, he remained alive.

            Mahatma felt like a supreme loser.  He couldn’t even muster the strength to kill himself.  Still, he hadn’t lived to the comparative old age of eighteen by being a weakling.  He took the day’s events as a life sign and smiled to himself as he hobbled toward low-lying foothills bordering the salt marsh.

            Mahatma had pledged to kill himself before ever becoming so weak that he would succumb to tongue swelling thirst or stomach wrenching hunger.  Now, the ordeal in the surf had left him so weak he didn’t know if he had the strength to reach the Great Dump, or the power to dig for nourishment even if he did.

            He passed the decaying bodies of a fish and a large bird, and nudged the gull with his toe, seriously contemplating eating it.  The nearby bloated body of a dead rat, bloody saliva dribbling from its mouth, warned him it would be a poisonous and deadly mistake.  Singh, his lifelong companion, had consumed a dead fish from the Great Sea.  Mahatma had watched helplessly and in horror as he died an excruciatingly painful death.

            Twelve hours spent in direct sunlight had reopened many of the sores and blisters on his bare head.  Bloody pus oozed down his face and into his eyes.  He rubbed them with the back of his arm.  Getting little relief, he finally gave up, and like his life he simply endured the murky discomfort.  Knots on his neck and arms had grown.  If he lived to be twenty, there would be nothing left of him by one great tumor.  Despite himself, the thought made him laugh.

            Many times during Mahatma’s tortured journey he thought he would join the fish, rat, and bird.  It didn’t matter.  He persevered, eventually reaching the Great Dump’s western flank.  The giant feature stretched for hundreds of miles in every direction.  Once a veritable storehouse of nourishment, the Great Dump had declined - picked over many times in the last fifty years by countless hungry foragers.  Still, Mahatma somehow knew that undiscovered pearls remained.

            Not knowing why, he chose a spot on the scattered garbage heap and began digging with his walking stick.  Two feet below its desiccated surface he found a treasure - a dozen unopened six ounce cans.  Removing the tiny can opener suspended from a chain around his neck, he opened one.

            Mahatma had no idea what the can contained so he dabbed his finger into the pasty concoction and touched it to his tongue.  The taste was like nothing he had ever experienced and he could think of but a single word - wonderful.  He allowed himself to eat only a small portion of the can’s contents, covering the rest with a plastic baggy and storing it in his gunny sack.

            An hour or so of sunlight remained before darkness and Mahatma knew he should stay no longer at the dig.  Thanking his lucky stars for his good fortune, he headed toward a sheltering ledge in the distance.  Halfway there, he realized his good luck had ebbed away.  Three withered men traveling together had spotted him and were already closing in for the kill.

            Strengthened by the food from the can, he hurried away in the opposite direction with a worried but steady gait.  The men followed after him but two were weak and quickly fell behind.  The largest man of the group was not so weak and began shortening the distance between them.  Mahatma could probably fight off one of the assailants, but knew he had no chance against all three men at once.  When he glanced around, he saw the big pursuer was rapidly closing the distance between them.  Finally, he raised his walking stick over his head and turned to face the man chasing after him.

            Mahatma had never met another ozomute as large as himself - possibly the reason for his longevity.  The man he now faced was larger, a head taller and ten pounds heavier.  He was also grossly deformed.  Mahatma had never seen anyone so large or so ugly and the steely taste of fear filled his mouth and swept over his lips and tongue.

            “What is it you want?” Mahatma demanded.

            The man didn’t answer but his piggish eyes narrowed even further.  Pulling a long knife from his belt, he stepped toward Mahatma.  What was worse, the other two men, not quite as ugly as the one staring at him, were catching up to them.  With no time to waste, Mahatma attacked the big man, landing a glancing blow to his head.  Before jumping back from the non-lethal blow, the man slashed Mahatma with his knife.

            Wounded, Mahatma swung away with his cane, laying himself open for another vicious slash to the arm.  Sensing his dilemma, he backed away, tripping in a pothole as he did.  The ugly ozomute, smelling blood, raised his blade and lunged at him.  With little time to react, Mahatma shoved his cane between the man’s spindly legs and gave it a violent twist.  Screaming as his leg snapped like a dry stick, the ugly ozomute fell backward in a moaning heap, the other leg also breaking beneath his falling weight.

            “Help me,” the man pleaded.

            Mahatma stared at the helpless man, guilt cleaving his soul.  At that moment, guilt played no role in his decision to turn and run.  The other two men closing on their position had already decided that for him.  Listening for footsteps and expecting a knife in the back, he experienced neither.  Glancing around, he saw why.

            The man’s two companions had sliced his throat with his own knife and were now squatting on the ground beside him, happily devouring him.  Feeling repulsed, Mahatma started again for the distant sheltering ledge.

            Deadened darkness engulfed the Great Dump as Mahatma finally reached the overhang.  Falling exhausted to the ground, he lay there without moving, listening for sounds of danger.  He heard none and soon sank into a listless stupor, too bone-weary to sleep.  Gazing at distant celestial bodies barely visible through swirling dust, he lay there, until sounds disturbed his thoughts.  He gazed around, looking nervously for the two men.

            Again the sound - a whimpering cry of pain.

            Mahatma raised himself to his feet and began searching the expanse of bare rock beneath the overhang.  Dim vestiges of light caught his eyes.  Blinking away the gloom, he looked again.  Something or someone had enlarged a hole beneath the overhang and he saw the flickering of light coming from it.  Bending forward for a closer look, he gazed into the hole.

            None of his experience prepared Mahatma for what he saw.  Sitting with her back to the earthen wall beside a small fire was a frail female, one of less than a dozen, including his own mother that he had ever seen.  Even more amazing, she clutched a tiny infant to her shriveled breast.  He stepped through the stooped portal and stared.

            Recoiling in fear when she finally saw him, the woman placed the infant behind her and grabbed a knife hidden beneath her garments.  Mahatma held up a placating palm and shook his head.

            “I won’t harm you or your child,” he said softly.

            His words didn’t matter.  Abject horror had washed across the woman’s face and she began to shake so violently that she could hardly hold the knife.  When she finally spoke, her words quivered with emotion.

            “Then why are you here?”

            “The light made me curious.”

            “If that is all, then leave us now.”

            Mahatma nodded.  Stooping, he started back out of the portal but the woman shrieked and grabbed her chest before he could make his exit.  He watched as she slumped over in the dirt, apparently too weak to support herself.  When Mahatma tried to assist her, she slashed at him with her knife.  Grabbing her wrist, he took it away from her.

            “Do what you want with me but spare my child,” she pleaded.

            Mahatma raised her, cradling her head against his chest.  “When did you eat last?”

            The woman didn’t answer but continued to convulse in his arms.  As she did, he studied the emaciated female.  Like him, she was bald - almost.  A single golden lock occupied the top of her head.  Her eyes were pale blue, a color he had never seen before in another ozomute.  Her right foot lay cocked at an absurd angle.  Broken, he knew without asking.

            Propping her against the wall, he removed the gunny sack from his shoulder.  He placed a glob of food on his finger from the open can and gently poked it into her mouth, holding it there until the food dissolved, and then for a moment longer because the touch of her lips sent inexplicable waves of pure pleasure through his finger and entire body.  He continued until she had consumed the can’s entire contents.

            “My baby,” she said.

            The infant lay asleep beside her.  Mahatma touched it, then picked it up and handed it to its mother.  Soon, the last flickering ember of the small fire died away and he went to sleep against the cave wall.

*    *    *

            Mahatma awoke to the gentle pressure of the woman cleansing his two knife wounds and the broken blisters on his head.  He savored her touch, feeling an emotion he had never experienced during his adult life.

            “What’s your name?” he asked.

            “Melinda.  And yours?”

            “I’m Mahatma.  We’re not safe here.  Too many ozos roaming this sector.”

            A tear appeared in Melinda’s blue eyes.  “Where would we go?”

            Shrugging, he fished in his gunny sack for a second can of the wonderful concoction.  When he held it out to her, she smiled and licked it off his finger.

            “Are you thirsty?” she asked.

            “You have water?” was his response.

            Nodding, she crawled away into the darkness of the cave.  Mahatma followed, watching as she filled a vessel with water from a crystal pool.

            “Where does it come from?” he asked..

            “Artesia,” she answered.  “That’s all I know.”

            “Is it pure?”

            Touching the vessel to his lips, she answered only with her smile.

            “If there were just a source of food, this would be paradise,” Mahatma said.

            Melinda motioned to a spot behind her.  Several scrawny plants grew in a row beneath a small opening in the cave’s roof that provided a little direct light.  A stunted red fruit grow on one of the plants.

            “How?” he asked.

            “Seeds I dug out of the dump.  Someone threw them there long ago.  I ate some but saved enough to plant.”

            “Amazing.  Are there more seeds?”

            “They are rare.  The ozos eat them.”

            “You have a broken foot,” he said.

            “I haven’t been able to forage for many days.”

            “I can set it for you, but it will be painful.”

            Touching the broken skin on his forehead, she said, “I trust you.”

            Mahatma helped Melinda back into the other chamber.  She never winced or cried as he set her foot and then bound it tightly.  When the baby awoke and began to cry, she crawled to its side.  It was then that Mahatma heard something from outside the mouth of the cavern.

            It was the two remaining ozomutes from the previous night.  Strengthened by the flesh of their companion, they were moving up the hill toward them, their knives drawn.

            Mahatma glanced across the barren expanse of the Great Dump.  Food and water had strengthened him and he knew that he could easily outdistance the two ozos.  It didn’t matter.  He wasn’t going to run away.  Something had strengthened his resolve even more than the taste of pure spring water and sustenance from the can he had only ever dreamed of.  Hearing the crying infant behind him and Melinda’s comforting voice, he eased himself out of the cavern’s mouth.  He raised his cane and walked toward the two approaching ozos.  He was about to live, or perhaps to die.  Either way, he had something for which to fight.

END

http://www.ericwilder.com

Supply and demand aren’t the only factors affecting the price of oil.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Attacks in Middle East, Nigeria send oil to record $117.40: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

I was incensed when my oil company went belly up at the end of the last oil boom.  I had never before faced total failure and I felt emasculated, both mentally and physically.  Anne and I had an IBM AT, the state-of-the-art personal computer at the time, and an early word processing program called Framework.  Unable to save my ailing oil company, I began writing an expose instead to tell the world what we had endured.

Within ninety days I completed a novel of a hundred and twenty thousand words.  The book, a total disaster, still resides in my trunk.  I’ve read it since and it is still horrible, but it taught me one thing - I truly love to write, even if I never make a penny doing it.

Realizing my shortcomings, I began reading every writer’s magazine I could buy, and every how-to book of writing that I could find, or check out from the library.  One day in the Daily Oklahoman I saw an announcement for the annual Oklahoma Writer’s Federation Inc. (OWFI) meeting.  Anne and I barely had money for groceries at the time, but she somehow scraped together the money for me to attend.

The first meeting that I attended was at the Lincoln Plaza, defunct for perhaps the last ten years.  It was going strong at the time and there were probably two hundred writers in attendance, including Clive Cussler the keynote speaker.

After registering on Saturday, I went to the main hall, like everyone else, to hear the President of the OWFI launch the conference.  I found an empty chair at a large table.  I was the only man at the table and I got my first lesson in Writing 101, learning that most of the authors in the world are females.  The women at my table were all romance writers and they all knew each other.  It’s a true but little known fact that there are more romance writers per capita in Oklahoma than any other state in the Union – I’m not making this up!

The ladies at my table were all wonderful.  When they asked me what I had written, I had to tell them, “Not much.”  It didn’t matter because they had all been there.  Everyone has to start somewhere and they were all supportive.

The chair beside me was vacant, perhaps the only vacant seat in the entire large room.  As I was talking to the women at my table, someone took the seat beside me, banging into my chair as they did.  I turned to see a slender man in a white shirt and blue jeans.  He was a good looking man with a trimmed beard and I could instantly see the attraction in the eight sets of female romance writer’s eyes when he spoke.

“Hi, ladies, hope I’m not disturbing anything.”

“Not at all,” the woman next to me said, almost poking out my eye as she reached across me to shake his hand.  “I’m Glenda so-and-so,” she said.

“Glad to meet you,” the man answered.  “I’m Clive Cussler.”

Every woman at the table practically swooned.  I never got a chance to speak but I’m sure that I was Cussler’s biggest fan at the table.  Having grown up with Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard, I had just finished reading Cussler’s wonderful adventure novel Cyclops and I thought that he was the second coming.

Later, when I listened to Cussler’s keynote address, I learned that nothing comes easy in the writing world.  He was in his forties before he ever had a book published, and then only after tricking an agent into representing him.  When he finally told his agent of many years what he had done, the man was so angry that he walked out of the expensive New York restaurant in a huff.

Cussler was rich and famous when I met him, but you wouldn’t have known it by talking to him.  He was humble, courteous and as down-to-earth as any long-haul truck driver.  Yes, he was a real gentleman and hey, the romance writers at my table liked him too!

http://www.ericwilder.com

Here is an excellent article from the USGS website discussing earthquake activity in Illinois.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Illinois.

I got an email from Dr. K, my graduate school adviser, yesterday.  I had emailed him after seeing his address in a University of Arkansas geoscience newsletter.  He mentioned that the geology department had merged with the geography department and that it was much larger than when I was there.  He bemoaned the fact that the department was leaning more and more toward geography and less and less to geology.

“When the last three of us geology professors retire, most of the students won’t even be able to spell geology, much less practice it.”

He also bemoaned the fact that I never became the “King of Antimony,” a title he had bestowed on me because of my thesis about stibnite, the ore mineral from which antimony is derived.

While at the U of A, Dr. K had me rewrite my thesis at least seven times, no mean task in the days before Wite-Out, and on a manual typewriter. 

“It’s the academic process,” Dr. K told me.  “The only way to really learn something.”

I disagreed vehemently at the time but now I’m not so sure.  The first draft of a novel may take a year to write, but that is only the beginning of the work needed to be done.  Strangely, most books require about seven edits, and even then there are probably mistakes lurking to be found by the people reading it.  With the advent of the word processor, this process is easier, though no less time consuming. 

“Didn’t know you were such a well known author,” Dr. K said in his email.  “I will have to look some of your works over and make sure the sentence structure is correct.”

Well it doesn’t seem to me that Dr. K will ever retire because, no matter the passage of time, a leopard never really changes its spots.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Shades of New Madrid!

http://www.ericwilder.com

Rare, Large Earthquake Hits Midwest - AOL News.

Southwest Arkansas is like a foreign country to those unfamiliar with its vagaries.  There are miles and miles of mountainous terrain there, often heavily forested.  Once in the woods it is unlikely that you will see another human, and if you do you should view the meeting with trepidation.

I was completely unfamiliar with the terrain, as was Dr. K, but one of the State's geologists volunteered to meet us in DeQueen and then take us on a field trip to familiarize us with it.  I was apprehensive of the trip because Dr. K didn't tolerate fools and I knew that I would have a hard time being on my best behavior for two days.

BC, the state geologist, had secured a cabin for us in DeQueen.  The little wood-framed cabin had three bedrooms, a kitchen and a black and white television in the tiny living room.  It also had indoor plumbing, for which I was grateful.  We ate dinner at a barbecue joint and everything was going great, at least until Dr. K and BC stopped at a liquor store and purchased a large bottle of whiskey, and a bag of ice.  When we returned to the cabin, they turned on the black and white and began mixing drinks.

"Have a drink, Wilder," BC said.

The whiskey looked inviting but I was afraid of embarrassing myself and being booted unceremoniously out of the geology department.

"I probably better pass," I said.

Dr. K had other ideas.  "No self respecting geologist ever goes on a field trip without having a little whiskey.  It's a tradition."

When I said, "We don't have any Cokes," they both cracked up.

"You can't spoil good sipping whiskey with Coke," BC said.  "You have to drink it neat." I wasn't a very sophisticated person.  Seeing the confused expression on my face, BC added, "With nothing added."

I almost gagged from the first sip of the strong whiskey but it got better the more I drank.  I soon became very drunk.  Still, everything would have gone okay if it had been for the show on TV.  It was a local talent show, an early-day American Idol, and one of the contestants was a local with a distinct hillbilly twang, and his singing mule.  I kid you not!  Prompted, the mule began braying, keeping perfect time with the man as he sang Old Kalijah.  It didn't end there.  Soon the two were singing and dancing, yes dancing, across the stage.  It was more than I could take!

Losing it, I rolled on the floor, overcome with uncontrollable laughter.  Dr. K and BC were also laughing, caught up in the hilarity of the moment.  The talent show continued and we kept drinking until the large bottle was empty.  The next thing I remember was waking with a huge splitting head and sour stomach, wondering what I might have done to end my college career.

Dr. K and BC seemed none the worse for wear, although neither spoke a word until they'd had a couple of cups of coffee at the local diner.

I knew that I was okay when Dr. K said "Wilder, it's a good thing you're in geology.  That damn mule last night can sing better than you."

http://www.ericwilder.com

Bloomberg.com: Energy.

On a weekend break from my freshman year in college, I decided along with my bud Clay to drive to Shreveport and see what trouble we could stir up.  Clay was driving his sister Betty's Triumph Spitfire.  The car was bright red, it was summer and we were driving with the top down, trolling for any interesting females we might happen to encounter.  Not even noon yet, we decided to stop for a beer, just to wet our whistles.

We stopped at a place called the Carousel, primarily because it had a rotating bar in the center of the dark little establishment.  After grabbing a stool we got a pleasant surprise.

"You boys are in luck," the bartender told us.  "The Schlitz people are here and they're sponsoring free beer all afternoon."

Beer wasn't expensive in those days but we were both students, always strapped for money, and free was the favorite word in both of our vocabularies.  Supplying Clay and me with free beer was little different than throwing raw meat to a starving dog.  Before an hour had passed, we had both consumed half a dozen, or so, cold draws.  'When I got off the stool to visit the facilities, I got a big surprise.

They don't have 3.2 beer in Louisiana, every draw a strong one.  When I stepped down from the slightly elevated bar, I almost fell on my face.  The bar's floor was black and white tile, similar in appearance to a diagonal checkerboard.  After staggering back from the bathroom, I was so dizzy that it took me a while to find Clay.  When I did, I discovered that I had another problem.

The bar was rotating, not moving fast but just fast enough to provide problems to a person with impaired senses.  When I finally managed to regain my seat at the bar, I found a fresh draw in front of me.  Clay's head was drooping, resting in a lopsided manner in the palm of his hand, his elbow on the bar, and barely supporting the weight.  It was then that I noticed the jerky motion of the rotating bar.  As I tried to focus on the checkerboard floor, I began to feel very queasy.

"Clay, we gotta get outa here or you might have to drag me out."

"I'm ready but I need to visit the little girl's room first," he said as he stepped off the stool, almost falling on his face.

We somehow made it out the door only to be accosted by hundred degree heat and a bright Louisiana sun when we opened it.  It wasn't even mid-afternoon but neither of us was in any shape for meeting nubile college girls.  Somehow we made it home, ruined for the rest of the day for anything except a nap.

I learned a valuable rule that day and I have observed it ever since, except once and that's another story.  Never, ever drink at a rotating bar.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Oil prices are again on the rise, over $113 a barrel, and the possibility is good that we will see that price go over $115 a barrel before the end of the week.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Oil Sets New High Above $113 a Barrel: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

The official Islamic Republic News Agency of Iran reported a statement made by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia over the weekend in which he said his nation’s new oil discoveries must be saved for the benefit of future generations.

The agency gave no details of the new discoveries but the remark is interesting because it infers that the world’s  largest producer of oil has found significant new deposits that could impact world supply.

http://www.ericwilder.com

In my book A Gathering of Diamonds there is a scene where Tom Logan and Mary Ann Stewart crawl into a dilapidated Arkansas mine shaft in search of Logan’s missing brother’s journal.  Tom Logan is a Vietnam vet facing recurrent nightmares caused by his tour of duty.  One of the experiences that haunt him was being lowered by rope into a dark pit filled with viperous snakes.  Saddled by his claustrophobic paranoia, the muddy trip into the old mine doesn’t go well.

I was also in Vietnam but luckily I was never lowered into a pit of viperous snakes, although I did hear a similar story and believe that it is true.  I have, however, crawled into many old mine shafts in Arkansas and I can attest to feeling much of the claustrophobic paranoia that Tom Logan experienced.

I entered the mines while working on my master’s thesis in southwest Arkansas.  I was looking for veins of antimony ore in order to piece together the geologic history of the area.  Exploring a hundred-year-old mine is dangerous and something I would never risk again.  Still, like Tom and Mary Ann’s journey into darkness, the need to know often exceeds the danger of discovery.

Here is a short excerpt from A Gathering of Diamonds and the trip into the mine:

       The entrance to the mine was barely four feet high and the crowning timber had fallen, partially blocking the opening.  Red filigree fern cloaked the collapsed entrance making it impossible to see more than ten feet into its mouth.  I nudged a rock with my foot.

       "You shouldn't go in there.  Too dangerous."

       Mary Ann continued attaching the lantern to the metal clamp on the front of her cap.  She added carbide and water from her canteen before screwing the cap back on.  When she finished, she wiped her face with the back of her hand and looked at me.

       "This is carbide.  When you add water, it gives off acetylene gas.  You coming with me?"

       "Are you serious?"

       "As a heart attack.  Well?"

     "You're really crazy."

       Mary Ann read something in my expression that told her more than my reply.

       "It's all right if you're scared.  Many people are scared of holes in the ground.  You stay here.  I'll look."

       She removed a ball of twine from her pack and said, "I'll tie this at the entrance and unwind it as I go.  Unless it breaks, it'll keep me from getting lost."

       My heart had begun to thump above the sound of thunder and my throbbing temples signaled an approaching migraine.  Moisture, along with rainwater, dripped from my forehead.  I shrugged and frowned at the angry clouds, blinking away water from my eyes.

       "I'm going with you," I said.

 http://www.ericwilder.com

As a geology student, I took a field trip to Mexico to study the geology there.  There were about ten of us on the trip, including two professors, one of the professor’s wives and about seven students.  Most of the students were already in graduate school and most of them married.  It didn’t matter much because our first night in Saltillo, after dinner with the profs, we students headed for the nearest Mexican brothel.

They had a bar in front and we sat at a large table, all the married students trying to pretend they weren’t interested in the ladies of the night working there.  Before long, a North American walked in the bar, unusual because we were so far south of the border.  We invited him over for a drink.

He was, it turned out, also a geologist, an employee of a large Mexican mining company.  He was overseeing a cinnabar mining operation in the hills outside of town and he invited us to come by for a tour.

We had no difficulty the next day finding the mine and only a little trouble explaining to the professors how we had come by the invitation in the first place.  What we found on the beveled mountaintop overlooking the town of Saltillo was a six-foot hole in the ground with a hand-made ladder protruding from it.

The miners were all native Indians.  There was no modern equipment.  There was no equipment at all except for pick and shovel and the sacks of ore the miners were bringing out of the mine on their backs.  Most were even barefooted and none distracted by our presence.

The miners would come bounding out of the vertical pit with a sack of ore on their back.  The large sack had a pocket that wrapped over their heads and we noticed that every miner had muscular necks and calves.  When one of us tried to lift one of the filled sacks, we understood why.

“Does anyone want to go down for a look?” the company geologist asked.

Three of us did, including me.

I was the last one to enter the hole in the ground.  There were no lights in the pit.  I mean none, and soon it was literally pitch dark.  I continued descending the ladder, rung after rung, the air in the mine becoming increasingly stale.  I won’t even mention the dust in the air.

I didn’t think that I would ever reach the bottom of the ladder but I finally did.  I lowered my foot, trying to find the next rung but there was nothing there.  Unsure of what to do, I waited.

“The pit keeps going down but you’re at the end of the ladder,” I heard one of the grad students say.  “Swing your leg to the left and you’ll feel solid ground, then push over here.  Don’t worry, I’ll grab you.”

My heart in my throat, I dangled my foot, trying to connect with something solid.

“Stretch,” the grad student said.  “It’s not real close.”

I did, finally touching solid rock with the toe of my shoe.  Someone grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the precipice.  When my heart quit racing I noticed the faint glow of a light coming through the haze of dust that I was trying hard not to inhale.

“We’re almost there,” the grad student said.  “Stay close to me and follow the light.”

The air was very thin, dust almost suffocating, and the darkness as eerie as a sealed grave.  I followed the older grad student down a slope to where we found the company geologist and the other grad student.  The company man had a carbide lamp, its hazy glow focused on the colorless wall of rock.

“That’s the ore seam,” he said.  “We just keep following it until it disappears and then we have to do some blasting to relocate it.”

“How far down are we?” I asked.

“Two-hundred and sixty feet,” he said.  “Pretty much straight down.”

The Indian miners weren’t intimidated by the mine or its darkness.  Paid by the load, they literally ran down the vertical stairway, filled their sacks and then ran back up.  When we finished studying the ore vein, some signal was passed and the Indian miners waited until we climbed out of the pit.

I am not bothered by claustrophobia but I can’t tell you how happy I was to see sunlight and breathe fresh air again.  I have been in many mines in my life, all of them dangerous.  Mining in the United States is regulated and supposedly safe.  Remembering the recent mining catastrophe at the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah, one wonders, and you only have to Google “mining catastrophes” to realize that it is a problem all over the world.

I survived that trip to Mexico and I even had a cerveza or two with a pretty senorita along the way.  Still, it instilled in me a new understanding of what danger and hardship miners endure every single day so the industrial world can continue to meet an ever increasing demand for products built from natural resources.

http://www.ericwilder.com

As I have chronicled many times in these pages, my days as a geologist at Texas Oil & Gas were some of the wildest and wooliest of my life – and for me, that’s going a stretch.  One party in particular was woolier than most and still sticks in my mind:

TXO usually hosted several parties every year, a hold-over from earlier days when oil companies like Cities Service hired employees for life, every person working there part of a family that played together as well as worked together.  The party I am thinking of happened during spring, the weather more than pleasant.

There was a tennis club at the time built on the old Gaylord (think Opryland and the Grand Ol’ Opry) dairy farm.  Residing in an upper class Oklahoma City neighborhood, Summerfield Racquet Club often hosted oil industry events such as the now defunct Midcontinent Oil Man’s Tennis Tournament (once won by a woman, but that’s a different story.)  That particular year, TXO had rented the clubhouse for a sit-down dinner.

Miss C (a person that I have told many stories about in these pages) was my girlfriend at the time.  Like every other oil patch party during that era, alcohol flowed in copious quantities, both Miss C and I consuming our fair share.  It was still daylight, bright and sunny outside, when we sat down for dinner.

The Oklahoma City branch of TXO had fifty or so employees at the time.  The service personnel of Summerfield Racquet Club had assembled a series of tables in the shape of a long rectangle, all done in festive candles and white table cloths.  It didn’t really matter because most of us were already well oiled (sorry!) by the time dinner was served.  As fate would have it, Miss C and I were sitting across the table from the head OKC TXO honcho and his wife.

The dinner went well, the noise level moderate but just high enough that I couldn’t converse with my boss across the large table without shouting.  Still, I was trying hard to watch my P’s and Q’s and not embarrass myself out of a job.  As it turned out, I didn’t need to worry.

The dinner, and dessert complete, people all around me were starting on their next adult beverage and lighting up cigarettes.  Miss C was drinking and also lit one up, but her’s was not a cigarette.  The moment I whiffed the odor of marijuana, my heart quit beating – well, only for a moment.  After a long draw off the joint, she handed it to the person sitting to her right, and thankfully not to me.

I watched in awe as the joint began circulating around the table, one puff after the next, finally making it all the way around to my boss.  My rear end puckered as I waited for his angry explosion.

The explosion never came.  Honcho put the joint to his lips, pretended to take a puff and then passed it to the person next to him.  There was little left of the joint when it finally reached me so I handed it to Miss C as nonchalantly as I could muster.  Everyone was in a jovial, nay drunken mood by this time, nothing said about the joint passed around the table.  Next morning, I sat in my office waiting to be called down the hall to confront the honcho about my personal shortcomings.  The call never came.  Nothing was ever said about the discretion and I wasn’t about to bring it up.

That was years ago, before Mother’s Against Drunk Drivers and before the War on Drugs.  It was also the last hurrah for an oil industry that prided itself in being wild, flamboyant risk takers that wore gold nugget neckaces and rings, ten gallon hats and thousand dollar ostrich cowboy boots, and traveled everywhere in private jets.  Hey, and it was a time when oil companies couldn’t afford to fire their best oil finders just because they drank a bit of whiskey and smoked a little dope.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Natural gas in storage fell below the five-year average last week for the first time since the week of June 4, 2004.  This is surprising because there was nearly 3.5 TCFG in storage at the beginning of heating season in the Fall of 2007, the most ever reported.

Since the week of November 9, 2007, storage has declined 2.3 TCFG compared with the 5–year average decline of less than 2.0 TCFG, and decline one year ago of only 1.86 TCFG.

The extra 300 BCFG is attributible to either greater consumption or less production, or more likely a combination of the two factors.  Despite this warning sign, the price of natural gas on the NYME - BTU vs BTU - is still quite low compared to the price of crude oil, already soaring over $110 per barrel.  Article contributed by Eric Wilder

http://www.ericwilder.com

I encountered this interesting sign while driving along a lonely country road in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, about a hundred yards from the Cass County, Texas border.

http://www.ericwilder.com  http://www.gondwanapress.com

Here is an article just released by AP.  Natural gas is also high, over $10 per MCF today on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

http://www.ericwilder.com

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080409/oil_prices.html

Here’s another interesting article from Bloomberg.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Bloomberg.com: Energy.

Sometime back I sold a geologic prospect to a company in Amarillo.  They drilled the well, looking for a deep formation called the Arbuckle.  After setting production casing, they began testing the deeper formation.

Finding no commercial production in the lowest zone, they still managed to exhaust all their completion money.  They did have a zone up the hole that looked prospective, but they had no money left to test it.  They decided to plug the well as a dry hole even though I lobbied them to continue testing up the hole.

“If you like it so much, we’ll sell it to you,” they told me.

“How much?” I asked.

“It’ll cost us about fifteen thousand to plug it.  If you pay us that much and take the plugging liability, you can have the well.”

After taking a deep breath, I somehow managed to scrape up the fifteen thousand bucks and began thinking of a way to test the zone up the hole without bankrupting myself in doing so.  I began selling bits and pieces to my buddies and the largest share to an operator that saw things the same way as I.  I ended up with a small carried interest in the well and my money back.

The untested zone up the hole was the Mississippi Lime.  The day finally arrived to perforate the Mississippi and fracture it with fifteen thousand barrels of water.  The operation went without a hitch, the well soon making so much natural gas that it was rocking the frac tank catching the return water.

After making a rough calculation of how much the well was producing, I quickly began thinking about all the debt that I would be able to repay, the vacations that I would be able to take and the new cars I would be able to buy with my new-found wealth.  It didn’t turn out quite the way I planned.

Because of a title glitch in the ownership of the well, my override was disputed and put into suspense.  After five years, it is still in suspense.  Even though the well is producing primarily because of my efforts, I am the only one not benefiting from its production.

Well that’s the way of the oil patch!  You should never count your chickens until the zone you are testing is producing into the tanks and in my case, when and if you actually begin seeing some money flowing into your bank account.

http://www.ericwilder.com

The year I graduated from the University of Arkansas, I also had my thesis published by the Arkansas Geological Commission.  My thesis advisor, Dr. K, co-authored the article with me and gave the talk at the regional Geological Society of America convention held in Little Rock that year.  The keynote speaker was John Rodgers, a famous geologist and co-author of the renowned textbook The Principles of Stratigraphy, along with Carl Dunbar.

As part of the convention, we took a field trip to nearby Lake Catherine, a location in the heart of the Ouachita Mountains.  Rodgers had a full head of bouffant white hair that bounced in the wind and caused him to look like Moses.  Whenever he glanced at a fault or tortured slab of rock, everyone halted what they were doing and listened to his ensuing proclamation.  He was quite literally the most famous geologist that I had ever met and I, along with everyone else, was in awe.

Dr. K had assigned me the job of slide projectionist for Dr. Rodger’s keynote speech, the last of the convention.

“I don’t want his talk screwed up,” he told me, “And you’re the only one I trust to work the slide projector.”

I was terrified, but it didn’t stop me from accompanying Garland and Ed later that first night to Hot Springs.  Hot Springs was once known as a wide open town, complete with gambling, gangsters and prostitution.  We were only looking for strippers, and we found them shortly after arriving in the little resort town located not too far from Little Rock.

Ed and Garland were both from Shreveport, Louisiana.  Being from that fair state, they could party with the best of them.  Since I was also from Louisiana, we proceeded to spend every penny we had and to paint the town a very bright red.  It was six the next morning when we made it back to the hotel in Little Rock, my stomach churning and head pounding.  I only had time for a quick shower, drink a cup of coffee and down a couple of doughnuts before the talks began, along with my duties as slide projectionist.

The day wore on and I frankly don’t know how I made it – by cursing Ed and Garland, still asleep in their beds upstairs, I guess.  Finally it was five and time for Professor John Rodger’ keynote address.  My body felt like hell and my rear end was puckered as he began.

Everything went well until Professor Rodgers’ last slide.  I don’t remember much about his talk but I’ll never forget that last slide.

“I hope I’ve conveyed some of my love for the science of geology today and nudged some of you fledgling scientists in the right direction.  I just want to leave you with one thought.”

When Dr. Rodgers stopped talking, looked me straight in the eye and nodded, I pressed the button for the last slide.  When it appeared on the large screen, I almost had a heart attack.  It was a fifties pinup of a very naked, extremely well-endowed woman.  Oh my God! I thought as my mind raced.  Someone has played a cruel trick on me.  As I sat there, expecting the filled auditorium to start hissing at me, Rodgers added, “If you can’t think fast, then think big.”

Within seconds, the stunned audience regained their composure and broke into universal, belly-rolling laughter, quickly followed by thunderous applause.

The slide was not a plant.  It was Rodgers’ own wonderful way to end the convention on a note of levity and laughter.  It also taught me a much needed lesson in life – no matter how famous you are, or think you are, don’t ever stop acting like a normal human being.  Oh, and also, if you’re going to get wasted the night before, be prepared for the consequences the next day.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Here is a pic of two of Ron and Shannon’s (RE: Shannon’s Wedding Video) pugs, Sammie and Princess.

http://www.ericwilder.com

During my tenure as a grad student at the University of Arkansas, I took a road trip along with four other grad students and a professor to the Geological Society of America Convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  We headed north from Fayetteville, through Kansas City, and reached Iowa soon after dark.  Our plan was to reach Minneapolis that night, but it didn’t work out quite that way.

The car was a small Plymouth, six of us packed in, along with our luggage.  None of us had much money and we only had so much budgeted for gas.  We were heading north on I-35 when our trip suddenly took a turn for the worse.

I was jammed in the back seat, sitting in the middle, trying to sleep when the screeching of brakes and rapid deceleration caused me to open my eyes, just in time to feel the impact as we struck a large deer that had run into our path from the darkened side of the road.  I still have vivid memories of seeing the large buck slam into the windshield and then disappear over the roof.

The front end of Joe’s Plymouth was smashed, along with the radiator, the windshield cracked and the car, along with the big deer, dead on the side of the road.  The Iowa Highway Patrol soon came to our rescue.  The nearest town was Osceola and he took us there to stay for the night.

“We’re on a tight budget, officer,” Dr. M told him.  “Please take us someplace reasonable.”

The nice police officer took us to the Blue Haven Motel.  It was old but nice and very reasonable.  Next morning Dr. M, Joe, two Ed’s, Garland and I found a body shop that would fix the Plymouth.  We then took a taxi to the airport to secure a car rental, soon on our way again to Minneapolis.  It was winter, darkness arriving early, and it was night when we finally reached our hotel.

Even though we were twenty-four hours late, the hotel had not given away our rooms, unlike one year at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans when I had to spend an entire convention stay on a cot in a clothes closet.  This convention lasted two days and went mostly without a hitch, except for a side trip to a strip club where we were unfortunate enough to catch the act of a three-hundred pound woman.  At least she was dressed in a nude body suit instead of au natural.  The trip home wasn’t so uneventful.

When we tried to rent a car for our return trip we learned that there were none available in the entire city.  We split into groups of two and began hitchhiking to Ames, the home of the University of Iowa and the place where Dr. M had graduated – a good thing as all our funds were growing tight.

“There’s a Holiday Inn near campus.  The first group that reaches it, tell the manager that there are six of us and that we only have forty dollars.  They’ll let us all stay in one room, even if some of us have to sleep on the floor.  I guarantee.”

Either fortunately or otherwise, Joe and I were the first two to reach the Holiday Inn.  To my utter amazement, the night manager smiled, shook his head and led us to a very nice room.  He even brought cots so that none of us had to sleep on the floor.  When the others arrived, we went across the street to a Mexican restaurant and had tacos, enchiladas and beer.

The remainder of the trip went without incident.  We found a rental car and made it back to Fayetteville later that night.  The next year the same fearless six of us went by car to the American Association of Geologist’s Convention in Dallas.  We had no car wrecks and saw no strippers – well, at least none that weighed three-hundred pounds.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Cafe Du Monde is a French Quarter destination for visitors to New Orleans.  They serve basically two things: coffee, the strong, chicory flavored variety liberally laced with milk, and beignets.  Beignets are doughnut-like confections, dusted with powered sugar, without the hole.

There is limited seating inside but most patrons prefer to sit outside on the covered patio where they enjoy a wonderful view of the St. Louis Cathedral, the Pontalba Apartments.  It is perhaps the best place in the Quarter for people watching.  Detective Tony Nicosia, one of the characters in my murder mystery Big Easy, loves Cafe Du Monde.  The location exudes character and provides a pivotal scene in my short story Diamonds in the Night.  Here is an excerpt from the story:

From Diamonds in the Night, a short story in the book Name of the Game

Salty air, drifting up from the Gulf, mingled with piquant chicory-laced coffee and slowly rotting vegetation as he walked along the levee.  Cold rain had ceased falling, leaving only outsized puddles on the streets.  When he reached the heart of the Quarter, he found a late-night, early-morning crowd milling around outdoor patio tables at the Cafe Du Monde.  Because of incessant rain, the crowd was thinner than usual and Johnny T quickly found an empty table.  He ordered coffee from a white-smocked waiter, and then rested his head on the table, allowing spilled sugar to dust his forehead like carelessly applied makeup.

As Johnny T. Sampson listened, music from a mellow clarinet floated through the Quarter, and shouts and laughter billowed up from beyond Pirate's Alley.  He could hear the traffic clamor over on Canal Street as it punctuated muffled darkness, creating illusions of reality and allusions of transmutation.  It didn’t matter much.

A carriage pulled by a mule with clattering hooves dropped off a romantic couple at the corner.  The smiling duo, holding hands and ignoring light rain that had again begun to fall, took a table next to Johnny T.  He didn't notice.  He just sat in silence as rain dripped down his head - rain that reflected neon’s gold and purple rainbows, and sparkled like diamonds in the night.

http://www.ericwilder.com