May 9, 2015 · 2:51 pm

The Perfect Sazerac Cocktail

SazeracCocktailThis is a continuation of my recent post A Short History of the Sazerac Cocktail.

The Sazeracs Ethan drank in The Last Day of Forever and An Eternity of Four Years were not as sophisticated as the modern versions. Sazeracs in the 1850s and 1860s were probably only Sazerac Cognac, a couple dashes of Peychaud’s Bitters and some sugar. While ice was available then, the drink was more likely served at room temperature.

The modern Sazerac is not an easy drink to make and requires a bit of ritual. While a well-made Sazerac is a delightful drink, a poorly made Sazerac is truly awful. Many bars and restaurants in New Orleans make good Sazeracs, and some not so good. A safe bet to have one is at the Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel. You can use theirs to gauge what a good Sazerac should taste like. Or, make one according to my recipe.

The original (modern) Sazerac consists of five simple ingredients: Sazerac Rye Whiskey (I use Sazerac Rye 6YO), simple syrup, Peychaud’s Bitters, a sliver of lemon peel (the yellow part, not the pulpy white part or the juice), and good quality ice. You will also need two heavy-bottomed, Old Fashioned glasses, a teaspoon to measure and stir with, a two-ounce jigger, and a cocktail strainer of some sort. There are variations on this ingredient list; some use Angostura Bitters along with the Peychaud’s. While that is a common practice these days, that is not the original (modern) recipe.

You must prepare ahead. One of the two glasses needs to go into the freezer for at least 30 minutes to chill down. In a pinch, you can pack it with ice and let it chill that way, but the freezer method is much preferred. You must also prepare the simple syrup far enough ahead so it can come to room temperature or even be chilled. I make small batches and store mine in a jar in the refrigerator. They say it keeps for up to a week, but I have kept it a bit longer.

Lane’s Sazerac Cocktail Recipe Secret #1: Most make simple syrup using white refined sugar, but I have recently experimented with Organic Turbinado Raw Sugar, which is partially refined sugar. It retains some of the natural molasses flavor of raw sugar. That little hint of molasses adds a wonderful subtle bouquet and flavor to the Sazerac. I make all my Sazeracs with Turbinado Raw Sugar simple syrup these days.

Simple syrup is easy to make, but you must be careful or you will have a sticky mess to clean up. I make mine in the jar I am going to store it in, and I suggest you use a cooking container that you will not fill to more than one fourth. (Why in a moment.) Mix one part Turbinado Raw Sugar (or white sugar) with one part bottled or filtered water by volume. I usually make only a two-tablespoon batch (two tablespoons sugar and two tablespoons of water). Using only a teaspoon of simple syrup in each Sazerac, this is more than enough for my relatively infrequent needs. Mix it as best you can, but much of the sugar will not dissolve. Next, the mix goes into the microwave or on the stove. I use the microwave because it is faster.

VERY IMPORTANT: You must not leave the cooking simple syrup unattended. Once it starts boiling, it is like a volcano erupting, only much faster. You must stop the cooking before it erupts all over the inside of your microwave! This is why I suggest the total contents not exceed one fourth of the cooking container.

Cooking time will depend on how much is being made. Stop the cooking as soon as it begins boiling. Take it out and stir it to dissolve the sugar. One trip through the microwave will probably not be enough to dissolve all the sugar. Stick it back in and bring it to a boil again. It will boil sooner this time. Take it out and stir. Make sure all the sugar is completely dissolved. Twice usually does it for me, but if a third trip into the microwave is needed, then do it. You can, of course, make simple syrup the old fashioned way in a pot on the stove. Bring it to a very low boil and stir as it cooks. Once all the sugar dissolves, take it off the heat to cool.

If made with Turbinado Raw sugar, the resulting simple syrup will have the color of motor oil. That is because of the molasses content of the sugar. This has to cool before you use it. Once it reaches room temperature, I cap it and stick it into the refrigerator to be used when needed. It will hold for at least a week.

The third ingredient that needs pre-prep is the lemon peel and use good fresh lemons. As mentioned, you want only the yellow part of the peeling and none of the white pulpy part. You are after only the oils in that yellow peel. Use a sharp knife and carefully shave off a strip about a quarter to a half-inch wide and an inch to two inches long. You can experiment with size. I prefer a larger peel.

Lane’s Sazerac Cocktail Recipe Secret #2: Recently, I started experimenting with orange peel instead of lemon peel, and I like the very subtle flavor the orange peel adds. Lemon peel is traditional, but try both and see which you prefer. Whether lemon or orange, you need good quality fruit to harvest the peel from.

Gather your ingredients and get ready to build a fabulous Sazerac. Everything should be at hand and ready to grab except the frozen glass, which I leave in the freezer until the last possible moment.

Step 1 – In the unfrozen Old Fashioned glass, add one teaspoon of your simple syrup, three dashes of Peychaud’s Bitters, and two ounces of Sazerac Rye Whiskey. I use Sazerac Rye 6YO (SPAR did the package), but their Antique Collection Sazerac Rye 18YO, the winner of American Whiskey of the Year (SPAR did this package, too), makes a Sazerac to die for. However, you may have to arrange bank financing to buy a bottle of the 18YO, assuming you can even find it. It is usually released in October and gone before the end of the month. If you want a bottle, make friends with your local liquor store owner. (You might want to consider bribing them.) And expect to pay above MSRP. It is that good and that popular.

Next, fill the Old Fashioned glass containing the ingredients to the top with a good quality clear ice and stir (not shake) vigorously until the ice is partially melted. This usually takes about ten seconds. I stop when I see the ice has melted enough the cocktail is nearly covering it. Obviously, more melt means a weaker drink. Experiment and find your perfect melt level.

Step 2 – Now, you must move fast! Retrieve the frozen glass from the freezer (or dump the ice from it if you chilled it that way). I usually have my wife hovering near the freezer awaiting my call for the glass. Best to do the following over a sink, because you might spill some of the Herbsaint. Put about a tablespoon or less of Herbsaint into the frozen glass. Rotate the glass so the Herbsaint coats all around the inside of the glass as far up to the rim as you can get it. (This is where you are likely to spill some.) Work fast; you want that glass to stay cold! Dump any remaining Herbsaint out. You want only a hint of the Herbsaint remaining in the glass. Too much will ruin the drink.

Step 3 – Using the cocktail strainer, strain the mixed cocktail into the frozen Herbsaint–coated glass. Some drink it “on the rocks.” That is not the original, but if that is “your perfect Sazerac,” go for it.

Step 4 – Wipe the rim of the glass with the lemon (or orange) peel then twist the peel over the drink to squeeze out some of the oils. I toss it in for good measure, but that is not the original. Some say never toss it in but hook it over the rim of the glass as a garnish giving off a citrus aroma as you sip the drink.

Step 5 – After all that work, you must be tired? Head for your favorite recliner and rest from your efforts while you enjoy your perfect Sazerac Cocktail.

I think I hear a Sazerac calling me now?

The Sazerac Cocktail name is a trademark of the Sazerac Company of New Orleans.

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May 8, 2015 · 7:04 pm

A Short History of the Sazerac Cocktail

Both The Last Day of Forever and An Eternity of Four Years mention a drink called the “Sazerac” but give only minimal information about how it is made. I am going to boast that I make the finest Sazerac in the world, maybe even the Universe.

But first, in the interest of full disclosure: The Sazerac Company of New Orleans is one of my clients at Spar, Inc. In fact, the man who owns the Sazerac Company and the five distilleries that Sazerac owns, starting with the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, KY, plus two others in Kentucky, another in Virginia, and one in Canada, also owns SPAR, Inc. I have worked for SPAR since I got out of the Air Force in 1973. Started as a graphic designer, and now I am the general manager and creative director. SPAR designed most of the packages for the Sazerac Company, such as Buffalo Trace Bourbon, Sazerac Rye Whisky, Herbsaint, W.L. Weller, Old Charter, Elmer T. Lee, Nikolai Vodka, and a ton more. You get the picture?

So, I have a financial interest in the Sazerac Company, so to speak. They generate my paycheck. But that isn’t why I mentioned the drink in my story. I mention it because the Sazerac Cocktail is such an integral and beautiful part of New Orleans history. It was created here, and its ancestry goes all the way back to the eighteenth century when Antoine Amedee Peychaud, a refugee from the slave uprising in Haiti, landed in New Orleans in about 1795 with his family recipe for bitters and eventually set up shop as an apothecary.

CoquetierAs the story goes, Peychaud served shots of brandy laced with his bitters in a little double-ended eggcup called in the French a cocquetier. Legend has it the term “cocktail” comes from the Americans arriving in New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase, tripping over the unfamiliar French word, and anglicizing it. To be fair, that is under dispute. Some claim the term “cocktail,” describing a mixture of whiskey, bitters, and sugar, came into usage around 1800 before Peychaud started serving his coquetiers, but I am sticking to the New Orleans version.

The Sazerac name came from the brandy that was originally used to make the drink. That would be Sazerac Cognac Brandy imported from Sazerac des Forges et Fils in France. That Sazerac Company did exist until fairly recently. Evidently, they have folded, because I cannot find them on the internet anymore. (UPDATE: Sazerac New Orleans bought the French company and is making the original Sazerac Brandy again. They also opened the “Sazerac House” on Canal Street in New Orleans, a museum showcasing the history of drinking in New Orleans. Free but reservations required.)

People in New Orleans always seem to do things just a little differently. For example, we had lots of coffee houses back in the nineteenth century, only they weren’t really coffee houses. Oh, they served some coffee, usually laced with brandy or rum and later American bourbon, but they were, in reality, saloons. By 1859 there were 204 saloons coffee houses in New Orleans. In the early nineteenth century, New Orleans entered its coffee house gem period, with owners naming their saloons coffee houses after various precious stones. Each new saloon coffee house tried to top the other by selecting a more valuable gemstone for its name. One named the “Gem” opened in 1851. The Gem featured the Sazerac, as did most other saloons coffee houses in New Orleans, but this one became famous. It was located in the first block of Royal Street with another entrance on Exchange Alley. Its name was eventually changed to the Sazerac Coffee House. This is where Ethan with Morgan and later his friends, when he enlisted in Wheat’s Battalion, shared many Sazeracs. Don’t bother to look for it, because it isn’t there anymore. The Sazerac Bar eventually moved into the Roosevelt Hotel and remains there to this day. The Sazerac Bar is not owned by the Sazerac Company.

Originally, the Sazerac was made with Sazerac brandy and Peychaud’s Bitters, but American rye whiskey began replacing the brandy around 1870 because of the phylloxera epidemic in Europe that devastated the vineyards of France, making brandy scarce (brandy is made from grapes). Kentucky had been settled by many of Scottish origin and they were converting their corn crops into whiskey, because it was easier to move whiskey to market than corn. Packed in barrels, Kentucky whiskey made its long trip in flatboats down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Storing the whiskey in barrels and the long trip actually aided its flavor, and the product that arrived in New Orleans was less like the raw fiery spirit that left Kentucky. About the same time, a bit of absinthe was added to the recipe of the Sazerac, and the recipe was sealed until the 1930s when Herbsaint, a New Orleans product, came into common usage in the Sazerac.

Herbsaint Absinthe was produced using a recipe ­­­­New Orleans native Marion Legendre brought back from his service in France during World War I. Legendre began producing his Herbsaint during the mid-thirties and ran afoul of government regs that had banned absinthe back in 1912. He was forced to change his recipe to suit the government bureaucrats. Only recently has absinthe reappeared in America again, and that is only because it was discovered the law banning absinthe was written in a way that actually allowed its production as long as the amount of wormwood, a botanical, was below a specified amount, and absinthe’s wormwood content is well below that point. With that, the Sazerac Company, owners of the Herbsaint brand, dug into their archives and came up with Legendre’s original formula. The Original Herbsaint is back (and SPAR did the retro package).

The Sazerac Cocktail, now enjoying something of a revival, is served in bars and restaurants all over New Orleans and many other cites, as well. But I must warn you. Not everyone makes a good Sazerac, and a poorly made Sazerac is truly awful, usually because they put in too much absinthe. But I am going to tell you how to make a good one, in fact, a perfect Sazerac Cocktail. You will have to wait for the next post to get my “secret” recipe.

Wikipedia absinthe page.

Absinthe deserves its own post. It is featured in the opening chapter of An Eternity of Four Years, and will get that post eventually.

Coquetier photo credit: Coyau / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0

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May 4, 2015 · 6:13 pm

AT LAST! It is published!

Cover B1Well, almost. The digital version of The Last Day of Forever will be released for sale on Friday May 8! It is available as a preorder NOW. To order it now for delivery May 8 (digital versions) go here.

BUT, the paperbacks are available for purchase NOW. To get your copy go here.

This is what will be available:

Digital versions of The Last Day of Forever – Right now, it is only available on Amazon for Kindle devices. You can download free Kindle reader apps for other devices like iPads. There is a link for that at the Amazon page for The Last Day of Forever.

Print version of The Last Day of Forever – The link will take you to CreateSpace, a division of Amazon. (Eventually, it will be listed on the Amazon page also.) These books will be PoD (Print on Demand), meaning they will be digitally printed as they are ordered. They will be 6×9 paperbacks, but the quality is very high. Sorry, but I will not have any to sell direct, because I will not be applying for a retail sales tax license from the parish and state. If you simply must have it signed, I will be glad to do so. Contact me, and we will work something out.

Here is what you need to do:

  1. Buy a copy now.
  2. Read it and enjoy it.
  3. Go back to where you bought it and post an honest review.
  4. Tell all your friends.

What is next?

Assuming you like The Last Day of Forever, you will probably want to read An Eternity of Four Years, which continues the story. While The Last Day of Forever is mostly a coming of age love story, An Eternity of Four Years is much darker since it takes place during the Civil War, and both Ethan and Rachel are, of course, involved in it. The Last Day of Forever will probably appeal more to women; An Eternity of Four Years will probably appeal more to men. Not sure that was a good idea or not, but it is where the story went. I expect to release An Eternity of Four Years very soon.

Will there be a Book 3? Working on it. Working title is The Avenging Angel, but it has a long way to go. There may also be other stories in the Catahoula Series based on spin-off characters, like Silas Riddle, whom you will meet in An Eternity of Four Years.

Lastly, I want to thank you, my friends and relations, who have been supportive of me and patient during this process, especially my bride. I truly enjoyed telling this story, and I hope you will enjoy reading it. By all means, email me with your comments and suggestions. The nice thing about digital publishing is if something is broken, it can be fixed. I can simply correct the digital file and upload the new one. I did my best to rid the files of issues and had several beta readers review the story and edit it, but I am sure something slipped past all the eyes that were on it.

As my teachers in school used to say, “Put down your pencils and turn in your papers.” Pencils are down and the papers are turned in—warts and all.

Thank you! Enjoy!

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May 3, 2015 · 7:38 pm

“I hate that rabbit!”

I was about 18 when the incident I am about to tell about took place. We had a black rabbit, and his name was Messa Brother. (Don’t ask me to explain that.) I think I may have been the one responsible for introducing him to the household one Easter? It seemed like a good idea at the time, but like many of my “good ideas,” it was really a bad idea. (I should have learned my lesson with the chickens.)

Messa Brother soon grew from a cute little Easter bunny into a full-grown pain in the rear. He had free-range of the house, and I mean anywhere in the house. Even though my mother housetrained him (sort of) to use a litter box like the cats, he sometimes got lazy, and if he was at the far end of the house from the litter box when the urge hit, he simply left his “buckshot” wherever it suited him. And the “far end of the house from the litter box” was my bedroom.

Like all rabbits, he had a need to chew stuff, and what he chewed didn’t matter all that much to him—most of the time, that is. He seemed to have a strong preference for my dad’s shoes. It took the loss of a few pair of shoes before MB made sure his closet was always closed to keep Messa Brother out. After that, he shifted his chewing needs to the electrical wires for the various appliances, like lamps, alarm clocks, radios, and TVs.

One day while I was watching TV, Messa Brother hopped into the room and went behind the big console TV standing in a corner. I paid him no mind as long as he was leaving my shoes alone. Suddenly, the lights dimmed, the TV went dark, and Messa Brother rolled from behind it and ricocheted off the wall like he had been shot out of a cannon. When he came to rest, he was lying on his back with his black fur looking real frizzy and a wisp or two of smoke rising from it.

Messa Brother had discovered electricity—again!

How it didn’t kill him, I am not sure. He laid there for a while looking kind of dazed, then eventually rolled over, shook a little, and hopped off to find some shoes. They didn’t bite back.

Well, maybe they did bite back, in a manner of speaking.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and I came in to find my dad sitting at the kitchen table drinking his Regal beer. Like most people in New Orleans, everyone consumed alcohol in some form. MB’s favorite was beer. I can remember seeing him what I would consider as a bit snockered only one time, and that Saturday was the time.

I took a seat at the table to talk to him. I believe my mother and two sisters were in Waveland at the time, so we were the only two in the house. I asked what was troubling him.

He just sat there and kind of nodded before taking a pull on his Regal. “I hate that rabbit!”

He wasn’t going to get any arguments from me on that point, since Messa Brother had taken to chewing my shoes now that my dad’s was safely behind a closet door, and wiring seemed to bite back. My Weejuns didn’t look very cool with the back chewed out!

He continued in a low monotone voice, “Lane, I gave that rabbit enough morphine to kill a horse.” (Being a doctor he had access to morphine.)

Somehow, I knew there was a “but” coming, because Messa Brother was still very much alive and apparently enjoying good health. “What happened?”

He shook his head and eventually continued after another long pull on his Regal. “He just slept for three days! He should be dead, but he slept for three days! I hate that rabbit!”

Messa Brother lived less than a year after that. He suddenly died while on a family trip to our house in Waveland one summer evening. Heat prostration was my dad’s diagnosis. Those cars we had back then without air conditioning could be very, very dangerous! (Snort!)

But I always suspected it was a two-horse dose of morphine that did Messa Brother in.

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April 28, 2015 · 7:31 pm

What I planned…

Plans

I have been making bold promises about a release date for The Last Day of Forever, which seems to be taking forever, but maybe we are getting close to the last day? (Sorry! Couldn’t pass up all the puns.)

I found the above illustration on FaceBook. It kind of explains it all.

Regarding a release date? I am about to hit the publish button.

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April 21, 2015 · 3:35 am

School Daze

Few who knew me also knew the principal of East Jefferson High School where I attended, Stephen J. Barbre, was my grandfather. I told a few fellow students, and only those teachers who were from Kenner were aware of that fact. I liked it that way. I flew under the radar most of the time. My art teacher, Mrs. Grant (not from Kenner), somehow knew, because I found out years later she took one of my projects to my grandfather and showed it to him. She thought it was well done, except I had a huge misspelled word in it. Whoops!

EJ had a cafeteria, and the food wasn’t that bad; it wasn’t good either. One day I forgot my lunch money at home. Lunch was only 25¢ or so in 1960. So, I made my way to the principal’s office. As I entered I spied Buck (what I called my grandfather) standing behind the counter in the outer office talking to one of the admin types. There were maybe six or eight other people present on both sides of the counter. I caught his eye and approached, saying simply, “I forgot my lunch money.” He reached in his pocket and gave me enough to cover it and maybe buy some candy after.

After I left, one of the school secretaries who witnessed the whole thing and did not know me began to chastise my grandfather. “Now, Mr. Barbre, you ought not do that. You know you will never see that money again.”

He replied, “Yes, you are probably right, but that was my grandson.”

Electricity

What I knew about electricity at seventeen years old could be summed up in one sentence. “It bites me when I mess with it!”

That bit of education came earlier in life when I was lying in bed reading a book one day. I had a reading lamp clamped to the headboard above my head, but there was no bulb in it, and I am not sure why. It was daytime, and the overhead light was on, so I really had no need of it.

As I read, holding the book with my left hand, my right was over my head clicking that bulbless light off and on and off and on. Eventually, I realized I did not know if it was off or on. Distracted from my reading by that nagging question, I looked up at the hole where the bulb should have been and wondered, is it on or off?

Sometimes I do things with no regard for the ultimate consequences. Dumb things. Really dumb things.

I was compelled by my warped sense of curiosity to know the status of the light switch. The index finger of my right hand pointed at that gaping hole.

Oh what the hell! In it went.

ZZZEEEETTTT! It was on!

Those wires were just calling to me…

Flash forward a few years to high school, and I am seventeen. I had just finished my lunch and was headed back to wait for the bell to go to my next class. As I climbed the stairs, I noticed the light switch at the top that controlled the second floor hallway lights had no switch cover. In fact, it had no switch either. Bare wires poked out from the box, beckoning me to come and mess with them.

And like that empty light socket years before, I gave in to their siren call.

From previous experience and a bare minimum of common sense, I had learned enough about electricity to understand touching bare wires was guaranteed to generate a shock, so I grabbed the two wires, careful to grasp them in the insolated area. I then proceeded to touch the ends or the two wires together, and low and behold, the lights in the hall went on and off and on and off as I touched and separated the two wires.

As mentioned, sometimes I do things with no regard for the ultimate consequences. It never occurred to me that what I was doing could possibly draw unwanted attention.

It did.

A tap on my shoulder, and I turned to see a teacher I did not know glaring at me. Must have been a new one, because he was quite young. “Let’s go to the office,” he said as sternly as he could.

I was escorted down to the principal’s office. This was a really trivial infraction. I didn’t remove the cover or the switch, and a warning would have been more than sufficient, but I went along without protest. Obviously, this new teacher didn’t know who I was, or he would not have wasted his time, and I did not enlighten him. I was told to have a seat in the outer “customer” area, while my “arresting” teacher went in to tell on me to Mr. Breaux, the vice principal and disciplinarian at East Jefferson High School.

The “arresting” teacher soon came out and, savoring his victory, kind of sneered at me as he passed. Mr. Breaux followed a few minutes later.

Mr. Breaux knew who I was. He took one look at the offender, me, shook his head and said, “Lane, I understand you are studying to be an electrician?”

I grinned sheepishly.

He said, “Get out of here!”

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April 17, 2015 · 8:05 pm

Whose idea was this, anyway?

Lane Alaska_1It was Halloween 1972, and in the vernacular of the times, I was “short with 31 days and a wake-up” before discharge from the Air Force on 2 December. My roommate and fellow weather observer Phil (last name redacted) had a bit longer to go but not much more. With our four years of service so close to finished, we are in a festive mood.

We were stationed at King Salmon AFS, Alaska, a remote Air Force station along the Naknek River in the Alaskan wilderness. The town of King Salmon, with a population of less than 200 souls, mostly FAA and weather bureau types, with a few locals, plus maybe another 150 Air Force personnel, decided to throw a Halloween costume party. You can’t pop into Walmart or the Dollar General on the way home and scoop up a quick and cheap costume, because there is nothing in King Salmon even remotely resembling such a place. Ya gotta get creative. I didn’t bother, but Phil took it as a challenge.

King Salmon MapOne of the Weather Bureau forecasters we worked with (USAF supplied the weather observers) was married to a German lady he met while stationed in Germany when in the AF. (Wish I could remember their names.) She and Phil cooked up a costume for him to wear.

Phil was going to the party in drag. He was pretending to be the visiting sister of the lady from Germany, and “she” (Phil) was named “Elsa.” Elsa didn’t speak English, and no one in King Salmon spoke German, so Phil only had to say things like ja and nein while fluttering his fake eyelashes.

I had worked a day shift at the weather station, so I arrived late at the home of Elsa’s “sister” to meet them to go to the party in downtown King Salmon, which consisted of a general store and a bar. Phil/Elsa was already costumed and made-up, and “she” was getting into character, fluttering those fake eyelashes and pursing those red lips seductive-like.

King SalmonAnd let me tell you, Elsa was one pug-ugly woman!

Laughs over, we made our way “downtown” for the party. The hall was decorated with orange and black crape-paper, and a scratchy phonograph turned up very loud supplied the dance music.

And everyone was smitten by the “exotic” Elsa. Considering that Phil worked part-time in the general store, and everyone in King Salmon knew him well, surprisingly, only a few figured out the pug-ugly Elsa was really Phil. Some of those in on it asked Elsa to dance to further perpetuate the hoax.

King Salmon Sat2Don’t-ya-know, someone falls in love with Elsa! I mean head-over-heels in love with pug-ugly Elsa. The poor misguided sucker was a local native-American. Phil was about six feet tall, and Tonto is barely five feet tall and getting along in age. Other than the fact that Tonto was obviously drunk, I am thinking he fell in love with Elsa, because when he danced with her, his head fit nicely between her breasts, which must have been rather lumpy since they were made of toilet paper stuffed in a bra.

While dancing, Tonto would look up from between those “mounds of joy” and ask Elsa questions or comment on how cute she was, and Elsa would flutter her eyelashes and mutter ja or nein, whichever seemed appropriate at the time.

This was all rather hilarious for those of us in on the gag, but it began to get serious.

At first we thought this was just a passing infatuation on the part of Tonto, but he kept asking Elsa to dance. To complicate things, Tonto had friends at the party, and they were all probably armed with knives and maybe even an ulu or two. (Google it.)

Alaskan_Air_CommandWe decided this had the potential to get real ugly very fast. Phil was getting nervous and concluding this was a bad idea. Meanwhile, I suddenly get a mental picture of the fists and ulus coming out, followed by an Air Force Times headline that read, “U.S. Air Force Declares War on Eskimos!”

Time to decamp! Someone distracted Tonto, and Elsa slipped out a back door. Then we had to deal with the lovesick Tonto pining for his lost Elsa, and that was a pitiful sight. The poor man really was in love—or maybe just in lust for the “lovely” Elsa—with the lumpy boobs—right at face level.

I wonder if he ever found out Elsa was a guy?

PhilElsa King Salmon 72

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April 13, 2015 · 1:47 am

PIBALS, Helium, and Boys

Lane PIBALBeing in the Air Force as a weather observer, we had access to some really large weather balloons, mostly red where I was, and the helium needed to inflate them.

We blew these things up with a specific amount of helium so they would rise at a known rate of assent and tracked them with a device called a theodolite. At night we attached a small flashlight size bulb with a water-activated battery and tracked that tiny light up to 10,000 feet. We usually cheated and use two lights to make tracking easier. Kinda hard to see that tiny light against the bright stars we had in the clear skies of the Mojave Desert where we were taking these PIBAL (Pilot Balloon) obs.

We took azimuth and elevation readings at one-minute intervals and recorded those to plot them and arrive at pretty accurate wind speed and directions at 1,000 foot intervals. We did this at Cuddeback AGGR (Air to Ground Gunnery Range) north of George AFB in the Mojave Desert of southern California. The F-4 fighter crews used our winds aloft obs to adjust their approach and aim on the targets.

Big balloons and helium in the hands of young men who sometimes had too much time on their hands was a combination ripe for mischief.

One of my favorite ploys was to breathe the helium and call Janis, usually around 0100 when she was sound asleep, and talk like I was Donald Duck. The helium affected your vocal cords and changed your voice to sound just like the Walt Disney character. I thought this was hilarious. Janis never seemed to find much humor in it—can’t understand why.

Another observer calculated he could inflate three 1,000 gram balloons and jump off the roof of the barracks at Cudde and float like Mary Poppins with her parasol. I think he miscalculated. I figured the three balloons had the lifting capacity of maybe half a pound.

Mary Poppins crashed.

One time the range officer was really ticked his pilots were missing the targets, and he blamed my PIBAL obs. He called me to the tower and reamed me out, told me I had five minutes to get him fresh winds, implied correct winds. That presented a problem. It would take me at least two minutes to get down from the tower and to our balloon shed, and that would be running. Then you have to fill the balloons at a certain rate, which was quite slow, and I have no idea why. We ignored that rule anyway. Tracking the balloon would take at least another ten minutes, and plotting the winds would take another five or so. That was well over my allotted five minutes. I had a choice: lie and make something up, or do it right? I took the high ground. I figured if he wanted my stripes because I did it right, I would be OK with my DETCO (Detachment Commander). I gave him fresh winds that indicated little change from the previous obs and never heard about it again.

On a side note, right after Cuddeback AGGR got their new electronic target scoring system that detected hits by the passage of the 20mm round within a set detection area, they had an issue with a fighter squadron commander back at George AFB. The CO was sorely disappointed with his pilots strafing scores and questioned the new equipment. He called and chewed out the Cuddeback crew then announced he was coming right up in his F-4 and would do strafing runs on the target to prove how screwed up the new system was.

The clever boys at Cuddeback thus warned, cranked up the gain on the electronic scoring system. They had it high enough, if the 20mm round hit the dirt anywhere in southern California, it would score as a hit. The CO shot really well that day and called and apologized to the Cudde crew when he got back to George. He then proceeded to ream out his pilots for their lousy shooting.

The Air Force could be a lot of fun!

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April 10, 2015 · 11:14 pm

An Eternity of Four Years – Excerpt 1

I am moving right along on An Eternity of Four Years, Book 2 of the series. Took three days vacation from work. Since we are real close on The Last Day of Forever, I thought I might start teasing you with Book 2. This is from the first chapter titled The Duel. I also made some changes to the cover.

*****

Book 2 1The sun was just peeking over the eastern horizon. Its feeble rays stabbed fitfully through the dense morning fog to give the gray monotones of dawn an ethereal glow. The chilling mist that hid the features of the so-called “Dueling Oaks” along Bayou St John restricted my visibility to but one hundred paces or so. The oak’s massive branches, touching the ground in places, had the appearance of being overly burdened and unable to lift up to reach the sun. Spanish moss dripped from those branches like ghostly fingers probing towards the earth.

As I stood upon the Field of Honor and awaited the arrival of my opponent, my clothing was damp from the fog, and my head throbbed from the copious amounts of absinthe I had consumed the previous night and well into the morning.

My Second, Jean DuBassey, having arrived only a few moments before, seemed irritated that I had sent for him to act in that capacity. He arrived in a bit of a huff.

“Forgive me, Ethan, for I’m a bit confused. The last time I saw you was five years ago at your father’s plantation in Catahoula Parish . . .”

I interrupted him, “More or less, and the plantation is also called Catahoula.”

He shook his head, frustrated at my response. “No matter! And now, five years later, you want me to act as your second in a duel? And you do realize dueling is illegal in New Orleans?”

“As I recall, Jean, five years ago you said if I needed anything just ask, or words to that effect. Besides, you are the only person I could think of.”

“You’re drunk!”

I dismissed that accusation with a wave of my hand. “Maybe a little.”

“Maybe a lot! How do you expect to fight a duel while drunk?”

“Actually, I was hoping you might help with that. You did claim you were an accomplished duelist, did you not? And don’t you teach the use of the sword and pistol?”

“You want me to teach you how to kill someone in ten minutes?”

I nodded. “Personally, I have not found killing someone anymore complicated than that?”

“Who have you killed?”

“Just a few renegade Indians out west when I was in the Army.”

He leaned in and smelled my breath. “What have you been drinking?”

“Absinthe. Say, did you know there is a saloon on Bourbon Street—oh wait, you call them ‘coffeehouses’—and it sells mostly absinthe, and you drip water from these marvelous little marble fountains over lumps of sugar­­…?” I paused and considered what I had said. “Well, I guess you do know; you live here, don’t you?”

Jean shook his head again. He was becoming quite exasperated with me. “You dragged me from my bed, which I was sharing with a beautiful lady, by the way, to help you fight a duel? Who did you insult?”

“An arrogant fellow by the name of Toutant.”

“Emile Justin Toutant?”

“The same. Friend of yours?”

“Not hardly. There are two people in this city you do not want to get into a duel with. I am one, and he is the other. What did you say that caused him to take offense?”

“He called me a coward, so I punched him.”

“And why did he call you a coward?”

“Because I said the South is likely to lose this war.”

“And he took offense at that?”

“That—and maybe I called him a name.”

“This is like pulling teeth! What did you call him?”

“An ignorant buffoon.”

Jean sighed in resignation. “What is the choice of weapons?”

“Pistols.”

“Not ten pound mauls in five feet of water on a sandbar in the Red River?” he said sarcastically to remind me of our “almost” duel five years before.

“That worked for you because you are only just over five feet tall, but the buffoon is as tall as I am.”

Jean looked past me and said, “The buffoon here.”

I turned and saw nothing at first but heard the trod of the horses, the rattle of the harness, and rumble of the carriage wheels. It appeared like a specter drifting out of the swirling fog and came to a stop under a gnarled and sagging oak thirty paces or so from where my second and I stood.

A gaudily dressed black man of immense size drove the rig. He was well over six feet tall and weighed 250 pounds or more. He was dressed in sky-blue, silken, knee-length pantaloons and matching swallow-tailed coat, vest and cravat, with a ruffled shirt, white silk stockings and black pumps. He wore a matching blue ostrich-plumed turban on his head. Costumed so, he looked like some eunuch from the Arabian Nights. He jumped down from the driver’s seat with a grace that seemed in stark contrast to his huge size and opened the door for his master.

A man I assumed correctly to be my opponent’s second stepped out of the carriage. The surgeon followed, identified by his black bag.

Then Monsieur Toutant stepped arrogantly up to the carriage door and stood there for a moment smiling sardonically before dropping to the ground, alighting like some bird of prey. He drew a dainty, lace-trimmed handkerchief from his sleeve and dabbed his lips, and with a flourish, returned it to its place. He was handsomely dressed in a very fine, white linen suit and a ruffled shirt, a white silk brocade vest, and maroon, silk cravat. He carried a silver handle cane, using it more as an extension of his arm and part of his costume rather than for any assistance while walking.

He stabbed the ground with his cane, and with his other hand upon his hip, struck an arrogant pose. His head thrown back, he looked down his long slender nose at me and said, “Good morning, Monsieur Davis.” He took a deep breath and pursed his lips before saying, “A good day to die, is it not?”

I suppose that statement was meant to unnerve me. It did not, because I was in an absinthe-induced daze. Quite frankly I was so distressed as the result of other matters, matters of the heart that is, that I really didn’t much give a damn if I lived or died. As a result, I stood upon this so-called Field of Honor to answer my insult to this finely dressed, pompous ass, and I was totally unafraid of the outcome. In retrospect that attitude likely saved my life that morning. Events that had brought me to this state of depression were out of my control. I was, therefore, forced to place the whole miserable affair into the hands of the Lord—along with my life. As it were, He had plans for me but had not seen a need to take me into His confidence concerning them.

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April 10, 2015 · 12:18 am

Sisters

Easter 1958I have two sisters. Jeanne is the elder of the two and seven years younger than me. Martia followed Jeanne by almost two years. Because they are so much younger than I am, I didn’t have a lot to do with them, plus they seemed always underfoot, especially when I started dating. Actually, very annoying would be a better description. They were always up to something, and I suspect Jeanne was the instigator since she was the oldest. I have already posted about the girls and the Dwarf Parrot, and here follows a few more Jeanne and Martia incidents I can remember. I’m sure more will come to me.

Snow in July?

Some of you may recall Ivory Snow. It was a laundry detergent that was in the form of soap flakes rather than granules or liquid like most laundry detergents today. The stuff looked like you took a pocketknife to a bar of Ivory Soap and cut off thin flakes about the size of a fingernail. Except for its flake form, it had all the usual properties of a bar of soap.

I have no idea why they did it; you will have to ask Jeanne; but they took a whole box of Ivory Snow and spread it (the WHOLE box) on the oak flooring all around the dining room table. THEN, they took their tricycles and rode round and round the dining room table through the Ivory Snow turning it back into a bar of soap, albeit one that was now a very large and thin donut shape.

I think this transpired while my mother was sleeping and MB was on his morning calls. I have no idea how MB got all that ground-in soap off those hardwood floors.

“Do you know where those girls are?”

My grandmother and grandfather lived on the corner of Sixth Street and Minor at the other end of the block from us. My grandfather never drove a car, and no one would ever explain why. Of course, that led to all manner of speculation. My grandmother drove him everywhere he went, or he bummed a ride with someone. Since he was the principal at Kenner High School, my grandparents were always up early, and Buck (what we called him, Prof Barbre to the rest of Kenner) was at school before most everyone else.

On the way home from dropping him at school one morning, my grandmother drove by our house on Sixth Street. It was January and cold, and my mother got a wakeup call from her mother. “Neva Lou, do you know where those girls are?” she asked in a very demanding tone of voice, a voice she had perfected through years of asking similar questions.

My sisters were not yet school age, so my groggy mother replied, “In bed?”

To which my grandmother replied with an even harsher tone, “No, they are not! They are running around in the front yard buck-assed naked, and it is cold outside!”

No, I have no idea why they were doing that. You will have to ask them.

Smokes

Back in the fifties everyone smoked, including my mother and dad. My mother’s favorite brand was Chesterfields. MB favored Lucky Strikes as I recall. Brands were, of course, unimportant to Jeanne and Martia, they just wanted to pretend smoke cigarettes, which usually meant my mother’s because they were left laying around. The girls, only about five and three at the time, would have several cigarettes in their mouths at one time, and they were all slobbery wet with little girl spit from saliva glands over stimulated by the taste of tobacco.

One time in Waveland, they were doing their cigarette slobber thing, and big brother decided to teach them a lesson about the evils of smoking. This was another of those “it seemed like a good idea at the time” things. As usual, each had at least three cigarettes in their mouths, so I lit them all! Two puffs later and just about the time my mother entered the room, both hurled cigarettes and breakfast all over the kitchen.

Needless to say, I got punished, but the girls never touched a cigarette again, at least until they got a lot older.

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