Coincident

By Alan Neil

This book is a collection of memories and friends. I was born and raised in the woods of East Texas, but my travels carried me around the Earth four times a year for 27 years. Living and working in foreign countries tested my personal beliefs daily but the more I learned the more I know exactly why my parents and family taught me the values that guided that guided me to happiness and success wherever I went and whoever I worked with. Fear was never an option or something that I understood because I understood from my family teaching me that GOD created everything and everybody.

I am sure that life is never ending because I know that others live within me, and I will live in others as a memory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9781663263391

Alan Neil

Alan Neil came home from Viet Nam as a fully trained soldier but with an attitude because the Army had spent hundreds of thousand dollars making him to into a Special Operations soldier but the seemed unwilling to spend one dollar to train him to be a civilian. He really didn’t care for politics of any kind because he had seen politicians get his friends killed and his priorities in serving in the Army was God, Family, and Country. When he read the history of Viet Nam and its history of struggles for freedom he cried. He hid from society and became buried himself in education and work. When he had the opportunity he started working overseas and for 27 years his friends were the places where he worked. The jungles, deserts and wastelands were his friends. He always came home four times a year and to the National forest in East Texas where he grew up and found solace in the woods and the animals. He traveled around the earth 4 times a year for 27 years and was just as comfortable in Singapore, Hong Kong, London, Paris or Vienna as he was in Houston but his favorite place to sleep was on the ground in the National forest that he grew up in. In his travels to Asia, Africa, Europe, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Middle East he made friends everywhere he went. The people he worked with became his family and he loved them like family. Somehow he always knew that this work family would cry when he left them but they would remember what he said and what he did. Their smiles would always guide him on down the road of life. His love of all people was his greatest possession but in the National forest the animals were his guardians and he trusted them with his life. Whenever his battery got drained he recharged it in the National forest.

Book preview

Copyright © 2024 Alan Neil.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

844-349-9409

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-6338-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-6339-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024910708

iUniverse rev. date:  05/31/2024

Contents

Chapter 1   Coincident I think not

Chapter 2   The Future is Now

Chapter 3   The Wall

Chapter 4   White Oak Tree

Chapter 5   Poems that Make no Sense

Chapter 1

Coincident I think not

1962 was the beginning of life away from home. The world was waiting and the journey began. Decisions were hard to make. Neil had spent his early life growing up on the family farm in Trinity County Texas. The family farm was next to the Davy Crockett National Forest and each non-school day of his young life was spent playing in the woods of the national forest. Life in the forest was more than just play, it was also work because Texas had an Open Range Law that allowed people to raise cattle and allow them to roam free. The law was changed in the late 1950’s because the major roads had been rebuilt as paved roads and the cattle sleeping on the roads cause lots of accidents.

Neil and his two brothers and dozens of cousins spent their non-school days in the forest looking for adventure or trying to get meat of wild life for the supper table. All of them could shoot a rifle or shot gun long before they were as tall as the rifle. Wearing shoes and shirts was reserved for the cold winter weather or for school. They all learned to ride horses before they were ten years old and they were taught to ride the horses without a saddle and sometimes without a bridle. They would use a small rope in the horse’s mouth and teaching the horse to move in accordance with the movement of the rider’s body or hand. Neil’s grandmother gave him his first horse when he was 8 years old and he rode her every day teaching her where to go, when to go and when to stop. They could run thru the woods with him holding on to her harry mane with one hand and one hand holding the rope in her mouth. The horse and him learned to trust each other and they were friends.

Twice a year all the family cows would be rounded up for branding, doctoring and sales. This was a two-day adventure as the entire family of men rode thru the wooded forest looking for cows. The cows were mostly Brahma’s mix breed and were as wild as any animal in the woods. The roundups were hard work but grandpa and daddy knew how to identify leader cows and they would always put a bell around the neck of the lead cows. When the cow moved the bell would make a sound and the clapper bell was made to make different tones that identified the specific leader cow. When the riders heard the specific bell, they would surround the Bell cow and drive her to the corral and the other cows would follow but with reservations that required constant herding. The riders and the horses would sweat all day and after the round up they all required a bath of cold water and a rest from the sun up to sun down work. The boys weren’t allowed to use saddles because their parents feared them falling off and being entangled by the saddle and dragged to death: at the end of the day their jeans would be white from the sweating salt and their legs and butt would be raw.

After all the cows were in the pen everyone felt good and each one was proud of their horse. Sometimes selling cows would result in buying a new horse or truck and the branding always helped the family improve the family status with the neighbors and bankers.

After Texas law makers closed the Texas open range, the family moved in to town and the schools were large with kids from all walks of life and religions. It was a major adaption but when he was 15 years old, he found a job. His first job was delivering the Dallas Morning news paper to more than 200 subscribers. Delivery was every day, good weather and bad weather. They picked up the bundle of 200 newspapers from the Grey Hound Bus station and started rolling them and tie them with string so they could deliver them from a moving car. Wet weather required them putting the newspaper in a plastic bag. Most of the work was done while driving and they always knew where to throw the newspapers. The route covered most of the city and waiting at the bus station at 2 am for delivery of the newspapers was always an adventure. The people around the bus station at 3 in the morning seemed stranger than the wild cows in the National Forest.

The best part of the job was getting to read the newspaper every day and it was reading some stories from previous headlines from years before he was born that gave him a prospective of how to read the news of the day and considering the real history after the fact. Every morning, that he was in town, the local US congressman was out for his morning walk. He had a subscription and knew that his morning paper would be waiting on his lawn. He would always wave at Neil and Neil thought it funny that he always took his early morning walk wearing a suite and a bow tie. A few years later Texas would name one of their man-made lakes after him. His name was Martin Dies and he did more to identify communist than any other congressman. Years later people would remember him as being one of the very few honest congressmen to ever serve in the US government. The largest man-made lake in Texas was named after his boss Sam Rayburn, who was Martin Dies’s boss. Sam’s honesty while serving as the "Spearer of