American Beauties

Farrah Fawcett's famous 1976 poster. Betty Grable's famous World War II pin-up pose.

And the great American eagle. Happy Fourth of July to all!

Bad day on the rolling plains

Here's a photo of a pileup Friday on Oklahoma's Will Rogers Turnpike near the border with Kansas and Missouri. Nine people dead at last count. Two pileups were involved. The second happened when a big rig plowed into a line of cars still stopped after the first one.

The speed limit is 75 mph, way too fast, in my opinion, for anyone except a professional race car driver to have control of a moving vehicle. To add to the misery, the temperature was 100 degrees. Emergency crews delivered water to stranded survivors.

Aside from the tragedy, it's a good picture of Oklahoma's rolling plains. After so many years of living in California's flatlands, I may never get used to roads that follow the earth's curves.

Even in town, roadbuilders didn't bulldoze the ups and downs. It makes for some half-scary entrances and exits from shopping centers and filling stations.

The photo is from the Oklahoman. The photographer was Gary Crowe.

Pssst! Want a free book?

Photos: Betty Sullivan Pierre clowns around in the hospital, and Betty's hair is growing in

Betty Sullivan Pierre is making her e-book THE ENEMY STALKS available as a free download (.pdf) on her web site -- http://bettysullivanlapierre.com. It was published in 2003 and is the first book in her long-running Hawkman series.

Betty is one of those Oklahoma girls who went astray. Born in Oklahoma City, raised in Chickasha, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in speech therapy from the college there when it was still Oklahoma College for Women. Degree in hand, she got married and moved to California, where she has lived ever since.

Betty’s life has been full and productive, but not without heartaches. Her first husband was from the Erwin family in Meridian, a small farming community in the Oklahoma City metro area. Seven years after their marriage he was killed in an automobile accident. Betty stayed in California and remarried.

Betty has also survived lymphoma. It’s in remission. She doesn’t dwell on it but she doesn’t mind talking about it. In going through my old blogs, I came across one dated Aug. 29, 2005 where she calls cancer “just a fact in my life.” There are a couple of photos taken while her hair is growing back.

Through it all, she has just kept writing, and she’s still at it.

Here’s the blog from August 2005.
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Say “survivor” and I imagine someone staggering out of a jungle, half-starved, half-nuts, needing a bath and a haircut.

None of that applies to Betty Sullivan La Pierre. This Oklahoma native and OCW grad kept writing her Hawkman mysteries. She kept her sense of humor. Now that she’s finished with chemotherapy, she expects her hair to grow back.
She doesn't shy away from talking about cancer. She says: “It's just a fact in my life and I hope it's gone forever. Chemo is hell, but if it did the trick, then fine. It will be so nice not to be bald anymore. I don't know how long it will take, but I'm watching the mirror everyday.”

Betty attended the University of Oklahoma and graduated from the Oklahoma College for Women with a bachelor’s degree in speech therapy. She has lived in California’s Silicon Valley for many years. Her mystery/suspense/thriller novels are published in both digital format and print.

Hawkman is a private eye who’s fond of cowboy hats, falconry and fresh donuts. Betty has just published the 7th book in the series, CAUSE FOR MURDER ... BLACKOUT, an earlier book in the series, won the 2004 Bloody Dagger Award for best mystery/suspense book of 2003, and ranked in the top ten of the P&E Reader’s Poll. EuroReviews recently picked THE DEADLY THORN (Book 4 of the Hawkman Series) for their 2005 May Book of the Month.
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Since I first posted that blog, Betty has kept writing and there are now 11 books in her Hawkman series. For those who like to read a series in order, the free download of THE ENEMY STALKS will get you started.

Get it while it’s hot – and free! -- at

http://bettysullivanlapierre.com.

Hey, girlfriend!

Browsing through my old blogs I found this photo from Oct. 9, 2006. Karen Robertson in California sent it to me in celebration of National Girlfriends Day.

The message says: I am only as strong as the coffee I drink, the hairspray I use, and the friends I have. To the cool women who have touched my life. Here's to you!

That's pretty profound when you think about it ... well, the picture's a hoot ... makes my day!

Baby Shark Takes Another Bow

I met Robert Fate and his wife, Fern, on May 5, 2007 at Full Circle Books in Oklahoma City.

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Robert Fate (calling from Los Angeles): “How're you doin'?”

Pat Browning: “Fine, except for this lousy weather.”

Robert Fate: “If I remember, it's pretty humid right now.”

Take the boy out of Oklahoma ...

Robert Fate (real name Robert Fate Bealmear) has done some interesting things since graduating from high school in Oklahoma City.

Sample: roughnecked on a Texaco rig, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, modeled fashions in New York City, worked as a chef in Los Angeles, wrote scripts for the soap opera “Search for Tomorrow,” won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement.

But when it comes to writing his popular BABY SHARK mysteries, he sets them in the Fort Worth-Oklahoma City area. Like I said, you can take the boy out of Oklahoma ...

My Advance Reader’s Copy of BABY SHARK'S JUGGLERS AT THE BORDER, fourth in the series, arrived on a day hot enough to suck the breath right out of me. I just turned up the air conditioner and started reading.

It’s 1958. The story opens with Baby Shark (Kristin Van Dijk) trussed up “like a lamb roast” by a couple of silverware thieves. They take her guns but
she cuts herself loose with the commando blades in her boots.

Gunfire erupts. When all is quiet, Kristin sneaks out and finds her guns. The two thieves are dead. Enter a third thief, a hard case who wants the silverware all to himself. Kristin has to shoot him full of holes to save herself.

Otis Millett, her partner in his Ft. Worth P.I. agency, says, “ Hell’s billy goats, Missy. Can’t you just follow a couple of two-bit burglars around town without startin’ a war?”

But the silverware case is penny ante stuff compared to what happens when Otis’s estranged wife is murdered. Otis is still married to Dixie Logan, also known as The Dallas Firecracker, and still in love with her. Turns out Dixie fell in with a group of hoodlums who were into bank robbery, and Dixie was right in the middle of it.

Bodies pile up as a variety of law enforcement officers, aided by Otis and Kristin, pursue the suspects in a wild chase by foot, train and automobile. (No airplanes or helicopters in the Texas boondocks in 1958.) The trail ends in the most unexpected of places. There was more
to The Dallas Firecracker than even Otis suspected.

Despite gunfire and body count, an underlying theme in the Baby Shark books is love and loss. In the latest book, it has been six years since Kristin and Henry Chin survived a massacre in Henry’s pool hall. She
recuperated at Henry’s farm, still considers it home, and visits when she can. Every year they go to the cemetery to visit the graves of his son and her father. This time Otis goes with them, mourning the loss
of “my Dixie.”

Dixie is a major character even though we only know her through others. Fate introduces her this way: “It was said that Dixie had a better figure than Candi Barr, and could’ve had a career to match the best in the exotic dance business, if she hadn’t run so wild.”

It so happens there was a real stripper in 1950’s Dallas who called herself Candy Barr. She wore a scanty cowgirl costume with fake cowboy hat and six shooters. The audience loved it. The web site TruTV has a mug shot of Candy Barr wearing the hat.

I saw her show once just before I left Dallas for Fresno, California. The office manager where I worked moonlighted as a nightclub hostess. I tagged along one night and she introduced me to Candy Barr.

My impression? She led a rough and ragged life, but aside from a hot body, part of her appeal was her good-natured sass, and part of it was her innocence, to be expected in a farm girl whose real name was Juanita Dale Slusher. If Robert Fate thought of Candy Barr when he invented Dixie Logan, he picked up the right vibes.

This book has the best last line since “Nobody’s perfect,” Joe E.Brown’s famous parting shot in the movie “Some Like It Hot.”

After the bad guys are dispatched to whatever hell awaits, Otis and Baby Shark meet Henry at a roadside café and tell him the whole story. Henry, still adding to his English vocabulary, recalls a Bogart movie and says, “Dixie was a stand-up broad.”

Robert Fate grew up in Oklahoma City, due north of Fort Worth, Texas where Otis Millett has his P.I. office. Both cities are located on the Great Plains that stretch from the Mexican border through Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas and into Canada. Fate evokes
the area perfectly in short descriptions such as:

“The mild breeze smelled of rain. No bugs or animals; they’d long ago hunkered down. Here and there across the silent farmland, single points of light pierced the darkness. Many miles away, along the thin southwestern horizon, lightning danced.“

It’s always a pleasure to read a Baby Shark book. I’m hoping that Robert Fate includes Oklahoma City in his booksigning tour this fall.

BABY SHARK - How It Began

Robert Fate and his wife, Fern, at Full Circle Books, May 5, 2007

From my blog dated May 10, 2007:

Teen-aged Kristen sees her father murdered. Se herself is beaten, gang raped and left for dead. The only other survivor is the pool hall owner, Henry Chinn, whose son is among the victims.

When Kristen is well enough to leave the hospital, Henry takes her to his farm to recuperate, and to keep her safely out of sight if the killers go looking for witnesses.

Henry's a gem, generous, shrewd and practical. He gives her a pistol to put under her pillow with instructions: "Point, pull trigger."

He also knows some interesting people. When Kristen decides to avenge her father's death Henry hires a PI and calls in two trained killers as her teachers.

There's Sarge, a construction foreman who had parachuted into France on D-Day. His job is to teach Kristen fight strategy and body movement and the use of concealed hand weapons. His advice: "Look vulnerable.Never let them see your confidence."

There's Albert, a part-Comanche Marine who lost a leg in Korea and came home with medals. He's fast with a pistol. He says: "Tell lieswith your eyes, Little Sister. ... give them a smile when they don't expect it, anything so they don't watch your hands."

Finally Harlan, her father's pool-hustling buddy, arrives to turn Kristen into Baby Shark. He tells her: "Show nothing. A poker face is the best face in a pool hall."

How they plan for and carry out their revenge, aided by a handful of trusted associates, kept me turning the pages. It's a cracking good story about the dish best served cold, but it seems to me that there's a secondary theme as well.

Kristen realizes that she's being trained to "kill without conscience." It's a case of kill or be killed, or walk away and live with it, which she will not do.

Sarge says, "It's just a job, Little Miss, and whoever does the best job gets to go home. Going home. That's the incentive."

I closed the book wondering if Sarge and Albert represent those who are called to war and learn the art of killing without pity, or if they represent everyone, with survival instincts built in at the start of human history and always lying close to the surface.

Let us eat cake

Ba’s Pound Cake. Flower optional.

Nothing perfumes an apartment like a pound cake baking in the oven. This old tried-and-true recipe comes from author Vicki Lane, who lives in North Carolina and sets her mystery novels in the mountains of Appalachia.

Vicki’s web site is at http://www.vickilanemysteries.com. Among other things there’s a section called Lore – fascinating mountain lore about herbs and folk remedies. Did you know that powder made by crushing a dirt dauber’s nest will cure diaper rash? That a dusty cobweb will stop bleeding?

I made the pound cake last night, and it is yummy. My oven runs a little hot so my cake got pretty brown. Next time I’ll test it 50 minutes. It’s easy to make so there WILL be a next time! Here’s the recipe I got from Vicki.
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BA’S POUND CAKE
By Vicki Lane

Ba was my maternal grandmother and she probably made this pound cake once a week. It was almost always around, there on the counter by the refrigerator, under the aluminum cake dome with the wooden acorn knob on top. It is a dense cake -- but pure, basic goodness -- requiring no frosting. If somehow it stays around long enough to get stale, it's good toasted.

The original pound cake required a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, and a pound of eggs. That makes this a half-pound cake.

2 sticks butter (1/2 pound) at room temperature (softish but not melting)

1- 2/3 cup sugar2 cups flour (unbleached -- and I don't sift)

5 eggs (also at room temperature)

1 tablespoon vanilla

That was Ba's recipe -- I have taken to adding the following in these approximate amounts:

3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Cream butter and sugar thoroughly, by hand or with an electric mixer. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each one. Add flour and (optional) spices; mix in; add vanilla. Mix thoroughly.

Put batter in very well-greased tube pan. Put in cold oven; turn to 350 F; bake one hour.

Turn out to cooling rack but be sure to try a slice while it's still warm.

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Lemonade from lemons

I checked into the Hanford Sentinel online this week and there was an obituary for a long-ago, long-time friend. During many of the years I worked in downtown Hanford, California, I spent my Friday lunch hours having my hair done by Ruth, who was of Japanese descent. An American, but of Japanese descent.

Living in California's Central Valley for so many years made me aware of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Many of the Valley's Japanese were farmers. In some cases, neighbors tended their farms until they could return. In some cases, others moved in and confiscated the farms.

Though she seldom mentioned it, I knew that Ruth had been interned during World War II. My memory is hazy. It’s been a long time ago, after all, but I seem to remember that she was allowed to go to Chicago to attend beauty school. Her husband, Tom, joined the 442nd “Go For Broke” regiment in Europe. Their legendary exploits included rescuing a group of Texas GIs trapped behind German lines.

Two more congenial people than Ruth and Tom I have never met. I have fond memories of a couple who knew how to make lemonade from lemons

As it happened, I had just finished reading a novel with Japanese internment as a theme. HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET is set in Seattle and switches back and forth between the 1940s and 1980s.

There’s quite a page devoted to the book at www.amazon.com. There’s a 14-page excerpt from the book, plus two videos under “Related Media.” In the first video, Jamie Ford Discusses His First Novel, Ford notes that the internment of Seattle Japanese-Americans drives the story. A button reading “I Am Chinese” is the iconic centerpiece.

In life, as in fiction, Japanese-Americans leaving for the camps stored their belongings in the old Panama Hotel. There the belongings stayed, virtually untouched, for more than 40 years. The hotel appears in the second video, Take a Tour Through 1940s Seattle. On the tour Jamie Ford points out locations that he used in his book. It’s amazing that so many of the old places are still there, including the Panama Hotel.

On the Amazon page there’s also a 14-page excerpt from HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET. It begins:

Quote:
Old Henry Lee stood transfixed by all the commotion at the Panama Hotel. What had started as a crowd of curious onlookers eyeballing a television news crew had now swollen into a polite mob of shoppers, tourists, and a few punk-looking street kids, all wondering what the big deal was. In the middle of the crowd stood Henry, shopping bags hanging at his side. He felt as if he were waking from a long forgotten dream. A dream he’d once had as a little boy.

The old Seattle landmark was a place he’d visited twice in his lifetime. First when he was only twelve years old, way back in 1942 -- “the war years” he liked to call them. Even then the old bachelor hotel had stood as a gateway between Seattle’s Chinatown and Nihonmachi, Japantown.

Two outposts of an old-world conflict -- where Chinese and Japanese immigrants rarely spoke to one another, while their American-born children often played kick the can in the streets together. The hotel had always been a perfect landmark. A perfect meeting place—where he’d once met the love of his life.
End quote.

Henry has recently retired from Boeing, and has lost his wife, Ethel, to cancer. With time on his hands, he frequently visits Ethel in the cemetery

Quote:
She now had a gorgeous view of Lake Washington, and was interred with Seattle’s other Chinese notables, like Bruce Lee and his own son, Brandon. But in the end, each of them occupied a solitary grave. Alone forever. It didn’t matter who your neighbors were. They didn’t talk back. When night fell, and it did, Henry chatted with his wife, asking her how her day was. She never replied, of course. “I’m not crazy or anything,” Henry would say to no one, “just open-minded. You never know who’s listening.”
End quote.

I did some quick research on internment camps and found an interesting list of assembly centers on the West Coast. This list is from the web sitewww.bookmice.net/darkchilde/

FRESNO, CALIFORNIA: 5/6/42--10/30/42
Peak population: 5,120
Primary destination: Jerome, Arkansas; Gila River, Arizona
OWENS VALLEY, CALIFORNIA: 3/21/42--5/31/42
Peak population: 9,666
Primary destination: Jerome, Gila River
MARYSVILLE, CALIFORNIA: 5/8/42---6/29/42
Peak population: 2,451
Primary destination: Tule Lake, California
MAYER, ARIZONA: 5/7/42---6/2/42
Peak population: 245
Primary destination: Poston, Arizona
MERCED, CALIFORNIA: 5/6/42--9/15/42
Peak population: 4,508
Primary destination: Granada, Colorado
PARKER DAM, ARIZONA: 5/8/42--5/31/42
Peak population: ll,738
Primary destination: Granada
PINEDALE, CALIFORNIA: 5/7/42--7/23-42
Peak population: 4,792
Primary destination: Tule Lake, Poston
POMONA, CALIFORNIA: 5/7/42--8/24/42
Peak population: 5,434
Primary destination: Heart Mtn., Wyoming
PORTLAND, OREGON: 5/2/42--9/10/42
Peak population: 3,676
Primary destination: Heart Mtn., Poston
PUYALLUP, WASHINGTON (also known as HARMONY CAMP): 4/28/42--5/6/42
Peak population: 7,390
Primary destination: Tule Lake; Minidoka, Idaho
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA: 5/6/42--6/26/42
Peak population: 4,739
Primary destination: Tule Lake
SALINAS, CALIFORNIA: 4/27/42--7/4/42
Peak population: 3,594
Primary destination: Poston
SANTA ANITA, CALIFORNIA: 3/27/42--10/27/42
Peak population: 18,719
Primary destination: Poston, six others
STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA: 5/10/42--10/17/42
Peak population: 4,271
Primary destination: Rohwer, Arkansas; Gila River
TANFORAN, CALIFORNIA: 4/28/42--10/13/42
Peak population: 7,816
Primary destination: Topaz, Utah
TULARE, CALIFORNIA: 4/20/42--9/4/42
Peak population: 4,978
Primary destination: Gila River
TURLOCK, CALIFORNIA: 4/30/42--8/12/42
Peak population: 3,662
Primary destination: Gila River

The Dark Childe website is fascinating. Under Book Reviews you’ll find many links to the internment of Japanese-Americans, and many links to World War II, Pacific Theater.