Neal was born in Martinsville, Virginia in 1948, near his father’s relatives, then moved to Lincoln, Nebraska in 1950, near his mother’s. Then all three moved again and found themselves at the southern crescent end of the Santa Monica Bay in Redondo Beach, California by the fall of 1953; here he stayed until 1979.

Fidus et Fortis

Mother had cause for her lack of enthusiasm about war, having lost her first husband while he was stationed with the Army Air Corp in Sardinia, attached to a bomber squadron of B-26s. They had married in the fall of 1943 at Barksdale AFB in Shreveport, Louisiana; he shipped out a month later and died…

Disease

This week I went to a seminar in Chico about how to get published. In the back room of a local bookstore, twenty or so of us sat around a conference table while Dan, our teacher and facilitator, spoke to us about self-publishing. As if to confirm that those younger than 50 have already figured…

Gravy Train

My working life began in places like half-addresses, gardening, clipping, pulling dead jacaranda leaves from a kidney shaped planter box edged in brick along a stuccoed garage wall under a cooling gray while my transistor radio quietly played its endless rotation of Top Forty singles. Other high school friends actually had to meet the public,…

The Angel Wrote and Vanished

A certain eccentricity ran among the three closest sisters of my grandmother’s family, Nell, Sue and Evelyn, and quirky stories followed each of them through their lives. In her one room school in the 1890s, on the Illinois prairie, Nell developed a taste for mischief and a discerning eye for the absurd. She enjoyed watching…

The Jesus Road

For a wild place, Buffalo had many soothing beauties. In the mid-1920s, after they had left the homestead and moved into town for good, in the summer evenings the family would drive in the car up Fort Road along Clear Creek. At one turn-in, you could park and look down on the water where Crow…

At Grauman’s Egyptian

We were coming up the aisle toward the lobby in Grauman’s Egyptian in 1954 when Father observed, “That Dan Dailey certainly loves to sing and dance, doesn’t he?” Mother often didn’t approve of irony. “Oh I love Dan Dailey!” she cried. However, on the way to the car, I pondered Father’s tone.  He was good…