friends and gumbo

My old friend and his girlfriend will be coming to town tomorrow and hopefully they will be staying overnight. He wanted me to make them some gumbo to which I agreed. The deal is this, if they eat they have to stay, that's the new rules. Vick and I met back in 85 just after I moved to Hobbs and we became quite good friends almost immediately. There was always trucks to work on, repairs on our houses, bar-b-que, beer, and more work on the trucks. Over the years we enjoyed countless hours of hunting and fishing in those public areas of southeast New Mexico where other folks enjoyed these things as well.

The number of hunters and fishermen in the public areas increased over the years so we moved from these overused spots to the more out of the way places that we constantly searched out. The knowledge Vick had of this area was key to much of the success we had in our hunting and fishing trips. He worked in the oil fields helping to build locations for tank batteries and often had to make the roads as well. Since this work was done in areas that hadn't seen much in the way of people it left him with a wealth of information not only of the locations and routes into these places, but on the dove,quail and deer as well. Another plus with all this was, if there was a rancher to be dealt with in getting access to the land he knew who to talk to.

Not only did I have to put up with the fact he was the trail blazer, Vick was also an excellent shot and seldom let me forget. I could do a fair amount of bragging when it came to fishing but not so much on the hunts. Although I improved over the years with my shooting I still am not the shot that Vick is, and to this day he can smoke me every time, so his bragging stood that test, but I tell you this bit of information, when it comes to a gumbo, I can smoke his butt , having said that, I'll leave the rest for another time.