Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and I always enjoy sitting down and talking to the Vietnam veterans because the previous two episodes I had about Vietnam, which you can find in the description below, They just blew my mind.
The books I read were just, it's like watching a movie. You don't think it's real. It seems like such a different world. And in our guest book today, he actually, it's funny. He talked about how they would refer to America as the world as if it was a different planet. And that is still the case today where their time was different from ours.
So I'm always excited to talk about this. That being said, ladies and gentlemen, I want to preface this with something. Uh, just so expectations are clear for everyone. This is not necessarily a Vietnam story, but a story about a person who went to Vietnam. And what that means is the book we're going to be talking about today, if you're one of those people who you are just here for history and straight Vietnam talk, this isn't for you.
You can get that, but this is so much more personal with the before life of the character, the afterward and so much more detail. And that's not for everyone, but if it is for you, then definitely check it out. There are huge parts of Vietnam in it, but again, it's a lot more personal. So if you're more of that history kind of person.
You might want to just keep that in mind, but I have enjoyed the book, and it is great, and it does tackle some stuff that other Vietnam books don't, which is really focusing on that before and after. And I'll get into this writing style and everything with the author here in a moment, but I want to give him some time to talk here.
So Mr. Tommy quills. So glad to have you here. Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. My first professional career was, started when I was 18 years old, I was recruited, by the army to attend army flight school as soon as I graduated from high school. So. I got my diploma and two weeks later, I was on my way to infantry training.
And they trained you as an infantry soldier first. So if you flunked out of flight school, they just give you an M 16 and send you to Vietnam, right? But, uh, it was a great incentive to do a good job in flight school. But I was an army pilot. I flew helicopter gunships called Cobras in Vietnam.
And then I was selected to be an instructor pilot at the army aviation center. And I served there after Vietnam for four years. And while I was there, I got my bachelor's and my master's degree and left the army at that point in time to go to law school and got my Juris Doctorate at Florida State University.
And practice law for probably 35 years, roughly. And now I'm working as the CEO, uh, for an immunology research and development company. Wow. I don't want to focus too much on that, but that does sound it's a big word for some of our listeners out there in the audience. So what, what exactly does that mean?
Well, we are utilizing, it's hard to explain without getting a little bit technical, what's called a double stranded RNA that is a toll like three receptor agonist or stimulant. In just its basic components, it's a nanoparticle, a small particle that stimulates an immune response, by replicating, for example, a virus.
And a lot of viruses and cancers survive because they evade the immune system. So what this, this does is it serves to activate an immune response that circumvents the tumor or the viruses camouflage, which prevents the immune system from attacking it. Okay. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you were able to follow most of that.
I actually, had studied for a project in high school. genetically modified viruses that target and attach onto those cancerous and tumor cells and then implant a Immune virus into it using viruses to fight viruses with viruses awesome stuff But we're here to talk about something a little more simple yet complicated in its own sense, which is horsemanship Specifically the horseman's tail now ladies and gentlemen I highly encourage you if you're listening to this on the audio only platform to check out the YouTube at some point We will have the book displayed on screen.
I do have it here with me, but I'm going to have it also as an image in the bottom left hand corner for y'all to check out. Uh, we're going to talk about the cover design in a minute here, and then later on, we are also going to have on display a painting that Mr. Equals wanted to share with us and discuss.
So, there are some visual elements to this, but don't worry, we've got two authors talking, so we, our specialty is taking those visual elements and turning them into words. Or in this case, an audio version for you. So let's start, Mr. Equals, with, you know, you talked about the Vietnam War and serving in the military.
And it's known now that no matter, when or where or how you served, there's a huge mental health component to it. I mean the VA is actually talking about every veteran having automatic 10 percent disability for mental health because it is just so common. And in your book, which by the way, ladies and gentlemen, brand new, so please go give it some love and support.
But in your book, it starts off talking about WET, W E T, Whiskey Echo Tango, also known as Written Exposure Therapy. Now, that entails nonfiction writing, talking about your life, just writing the thoughts that come to your head. But is this book, The Horseman's Tale, I mean, is that a version of what a fictionalized version of it?
Maybe for some of us veterans and military members who are dealing with stuff and we're like, you know, we don't write or like writing about our feelings or the stuff that happened in our life. Well, maybe a fictionalized version of our life or a fictionalized tale that Draws from certain elements of her life, that might be a solution for some of us.
So can you talk about that, if maybe that's what's going on here with your life? Sure. Sure. And, and first, if you don't mind being informal, please call me Tom for sure. And, uh, you know, I'll call you Mr. Whiskey or you, that is my casual name. . . Alright. The concept. Behind this book, came to me, when, I was watching in the evening about two years ago.
It was just almost, exactly two years ago because, they started having this flood of legal commercials, law firm commercials for Camp Lejeune claims. And the reason was that I know it's two years is the Camp Lejeune Claim Act, uh, as a lawyer, I was paying attention, allowed people to, remove the statute of limitations and gave them a two year period, no matter how old the claim was.
To file a claim for damages from the water contamination at Camp Lejeune, which is a Marine Corps base, uh, in the Carolinas. And, and the reason for that is because the water contamination. It was concealed. So they, you know, the, the people there, civilian contractors and everything didn't, let people know that there was a problem.
And the result was, you know, thousands of people were affected with horrible birth defects, deaths, Parkinson's disease, lethal cancers. And in watching that commercial. I got the idea of how to actually wrap up something that I'd done for probably 10 years. I've always liked to write horse stories and people have said, you know, you ought to turn those horse stories into a novel.
But it always looked more like a collection of horse stories because that's what it was. Right. So the idea was to use this mechanism, as a device. To bring in a lot of that content. Into a story about a Vietnam veteran who's retired. He's older.
And when he's watching this commercial, and this is, this is all fiction. And he's watching this commercial. He realizes that when he came back from Vietnam as a Marine and was stationed at Camp Lejeune and brought his wife and small son there that, the second child they had died.
As a result of birth defects shortly after he was born, and then his wife for many years suffered from Parkinson's disease and just a year earlier had died of liver cancer. And so the light bulb goes on and he just explodes. You know, because of the, the, you know, not only the loss that he suffered, which he's been suppressing his grief, but also the knowledge that it, uh, it happened and wasn't able to be addressed because of this misconduct.
And he has a glass of whiskey by him all the time. So it was, yeah, fits right in with the show. So he, he, he hurls his glass of whiskey at the television and. You know, and he gets up and then he realizes he's all by himself in his house. So the children are all grown and moved away. And for the first time he realizes he'd been receiving a VA treatment for PTSD, but it never seemed to work.
He was using what's called journaling therapy because he didn't like participating in groups. It was private and he didn't have to share it with anybody but himself. It never seemed to work, but this was the first time he understood the triggering event for his anger, and he vows, to sit down at his laptop and, and journal, you know, until he ran out of words and whiskey.
I think that's a quote from the book. And so the idea of this, written exposure therapy is a real therapy that's utilized at the VA and by many psychologists and psychiatrists for post traumatic stress syndrome. And oftentimes, a part of post traumatic stress syndrome is the fact that People are unable to come to grips with what it is that's causing the fear and the anxiety that imposes.
You know the psychological syndrome and they can't talk about it with other people but with written exposure therapy, it's not like you're writing in fiction I mean I was writing fiction, but right None of these facts really applied to me with yeah, I was in the army not the remains, you know, but the idea is It's similar to if you were writing in fiction, you're writing something that only you see.
So everybody, I think, you know, I'm 72 years old, so I have a fair amount of life experience. You know, almost everybody I've met, I know has had experiences in their life that they want to keep it private. They, you know, they're either ashamed or fearful or afraid of being judged, uh, you know, any number of reasons, but they keep it to themselves.
You know, and sometimes they lie about it, and sometimes they even lie to themselves about these things that are bothering. So, the written exposure therapy allows that to come out. So, this event, when it occurs, is like a psychological peeling of an onion. You know, you have layer after layer after layer.
It's an adventure story in many respects, but it's also, a psychological drama because you get to see in 300 and some pages, the psyche of, of a man unadorned, with nothing hidden. And, and that's a, that's a rare thing. Much of my post graduate work and everything was in psychology.
So I applied some of those things that I learned. In designing the plot and the dramatic structure of the book to, to make it not only interesting, but, but realistic in many respects. Yeah, you know, you brought up the one scene from the book that was part of my notes that when I was reading the book, I was like, I want to talk about this, which was his reaction to the commercial because I think it's such a.
You know, people see that commercial and all they think is someone's getting a nice payday or oh, there we go again with that and people don't think about the reaction which you wrote about, which was very real. I mean, he, it was such a beautiful scene, very well written that. You know a person who actually went through I mean, they don't care about the money, right?
So many people hear that commercial. They're like, oh nice someone's getting you know, xyz amount of dollars Well half his family's dead because of it I mean it doesn't really matter and I think it's so important to focus on that point because so many people just focus on the the compensation in the huya part of it and not the well it was concealed and now we have a bunch of Of dead people, civilian, military, and etc.
So, that was such a powerful scene to me, and definitely one that stood out. And, you know, you mentioned the word dramatic. Which, there were definitely parts of the book that I was reading, I was like, Was not expecting this, you know. I don't want to spoil too much of it for anyone. But there was definitely some um, plot twist that I was, Reading and I was like I I need to know what happened in in the author's real life and what didn't because uh, there are some things here that are just uh, Just mind blowing and I want to get into the cover of the book Again, I have it on the screen but i'll show it.
It's the silhouette of a woman with the horse stables In the nature making up that silhouette. So what's the meaning behind that when most people think of a horsemanship, story or a, a tale of Vietnam. They don't think of a woman's silhouette. So I'm really curious what played into that.
This story is adult contemporary fiction. These are adult themes that are in this book. And it goes into, you know, as he expresses You know, his thoughts that are, that are flowing, as a result of this triggering event, he's talking about, people that he's loved, making love, you know, suffering, violence, there are a lot of themes.
But ultimately, one of the overarching concepts here is about love and it's about his love for his wife and his family. He thinks about old lovers in the course of this. And also his love for the horses that have been a part of his life. You know, he, he was born on this horse farm.
And he'd been with horses almost his entire life. Some of which, you know, have been his horses And with whom he had a very strong emotional bond. And in fact, you know, the horses in his life, much like equine therapy that you've heard of. Uh, although, you know, he didn't have to go for equine therapy because he's working with horses every day.
But those horses, helped him, to get through many of these rough spots and there are some rough spots. You know, that are described here that are very dramatic and emotional and compelling. Yeah, for sure. The, the writing style is very interesting. I would liken it to, Mary Shelley's original Frankenstein in Slaughterhouse Five, which was written not by Mary.
Well, I appreciate putting me in such nice company. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I say that in terms of in, in Frankenstein, you have the story within a story. You have. The current day and then you had the letters to the sister, right? And that's kind of like this. You had the Marine and he's reflecting on his life through these letters that he's writing basically to himself.
And then I say Slaughterhouse Five because there are parts of the book where you jump around in time. For those of you haven't read Slaughterhouse Five, it's a great read. Read it's such an interesting read but the aliens in that book You know They see past present and future all at once and every chapter is like in a random spot in time And now tom's book is a little more organized than that.
Whereas Sometimes he'll be telling something, you know The the marine is in the story and he goes that reminds me of of seventh grade and he goes back and tells about that With significance. It's not just a random thought so sometimes people are dead and then later on they're alive But it does go in pretty much chronological order.
So I did like that writing style. It felt very real when we're thinking, when we're talking, when we're journaling, it's very realistic. And, and, you know, my work with, group therapy and journaling. When I was, uh, I'd finished my master's degree and, and was working, on a PhD in criminology before I went to get my jurist doctorate, uh, uh, mainly because I had to kill about seven or eight months to get into law school.
I was leading group therapy sessions at the federal prison near FSU. And, and, uh, also working, you know, with, with some of these journaling therapy techniques and. And, uh, a thing, uh, that Dr. William Glasser had developed called reality therapy. But one of the things I learned is, is that when people journal, and I've tried it myself, when people journal, they're involved in writing, and what they're writing is cogent.
I mean, it relates to something. You know, that's important to them. That's significant and relevant, but it's a stream of consciousness style of writing, because all they're doing is writing what's coming to their mind as it comes to their mind. You know, they're not, they're not trying to create a linear plot, you know, in the therapy.
So I tried to write the book as if it were the protagonist, his name is Jake Montgomery, whether it was this retired Marine colonels. His stream of thoughts, you know, from mind to, to laptop, as he works through, first of all, this explosive anger at this realization, and then, you know, he just gets into it to the point where it's just all coming out for the first time in his life.
And, and, you know, he's in his seventies, he's from Vietnam. So he's in his seventies. So there's a lot to come out. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I really appreciate that writing style and it made it great because mile spoiler alert for anyone who's like super crazy about no spoilers. You know, I have one part he's talking about, he's got this horse medallion on his chest and this Vietnamese woman is looking at it.
And then later on, you find out how he got it. It's like, Oh, that's the thing that was from before. So there's a lot of reference back and it was like an exciting little Easter egg. But you mentioned Jake, the main character, and I've got such an important question for you, Tom here. And this isn't a judgmental why, but why make the main character have autism?
I mean, where did that come from and why is that even part of the story? Well, the idea for the autism, is there a couple of layers to that? First of all, there's a tendency when people write, they try to make the protagonist like a superhero kind of, no, no warts, you know, perfect, uh, image, right?
And so the autism I used for a couple reasons. One, I have some family experience with autism. And, and I realized how important, loving and supportive, attention can be to, childhood development. And so I created a, sort of yin and yang where the father, because remember this is in the 1950s when this was, uh, it wasn't called autism, it was called, infantile schizophrenia.
And it was a major stigmatism. So the father was not going to let his son be labeled because he was relatively high functioning as autistic. Whereas the mother was, you know, they're, they're doing this on their own. Cause they don't, nobody's telling them how you deal with autism because they haven't even come up with what autism was at that point in time, from a psychological or psychiatric standpoint.
And the mother was taking a different approach, a more loving, you know, uh, you know, working through, you know, skill development. So, in the course of the book, part of what he does with his horses, I mean, it's a racehorse farm, but he also has. Made time for autistic children for equine therapy at his farm.
So that's built into the character development. Uh, and, and also it allowed me to with a very high functioning, autistic individuals, sometimes they have talents where they excel over other people. One of which is like identic memory, which was a characteristic that I gave to the protagonist, um, which is, you know, a device, if you think about it, it allows him to remember everything so he can talk about it.
So, you know, he, he's talking with a great deal of detail about what happened here and what happened there, you know, but that's because as his character development, he has this identic memory. Or photographic memory, that allows him to recall all these things. He also comments on, you know, it's good for some things, but it's also, you know, difficult because you can't forget things.
You know, you, you know, you can't lie to yourself by forgetting or reinventing what happened. It's always there, you know, burnt into your mind. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it was definitely interesting and the book covered in quite a bit of detail. Teenage angst, rebellion, lust, you know, awkwardness. And, Tom, an interesting pattern in the book was that Jay kept finding himself in relationships with women, having a bunch of sex, but never being allowed to say, I love you, never, romantic relationships, but a lot of kind of long term, you know, sexual relationships.
I mean, why write about that, and what role does that play overall? Well, I think that the, the, this sexual component, you know, the, the, the issues that, you know, will, you know, create the adult content in large part are the sexual component and the violence, you know, in, in the protagonist here is a very violent man.
He, he, he, he, uh, he's not, you know, he's not like, uh, You know, one, two, you know, when he loses his temper, there are big problems. And, and so those are things that, that are a part of everybody's life, you know, learning to control our temper and interact with other people and, and, uh, you know, you know, our sexual development.
Uh, these are things that we don't talk about often, uh, but, but they're almost, in fact, the outlier would be if somebody didn't have anger issues from time to time, didn't have sexual activities of some sort from time to time. They would be the one that's abnormal because 99. 9 percent of people deal with these issues, right now, a lot of times these are the very same issues that they hide from others and from themselves, so going into those things.
allows us to develop, a message, which is a, a message that I tried to communicate in the book, you know, through the story rather than just, you know, like preaching a message. Right. And, and the message is that one of the most important things that we can have in life is love.
And in order to have love, you have to have the, the capacity, uh, to engage in forgiveness. and acceptance of others. And you can't do that fully unless you're prepared to forgive yourself, to accept yourself, to love yourself. That becomes the foundation for how you react with others.
Now, anybody who's, who's done a lot of work with horses realize that horses Have a very highly developed empathetic IQ.
A horse can feel what you're feeling. Now, this is not a thought, it's a feeling. So if, let's say you're upset and you're sad, you know, that affects the horse. The horse feels that. You know, when you're angry, the horse feels that if you're anxious, the horse or fearful, the horse feels that now when they're feeling that.
You know, they start to mirror the way you feel. There's an old saying that the best thing for the inside of a man is the outside of a horse. And that old saying flows from this, relationship, because if you're going to be learn how to be a good horseman, you have to learn, over time to control your mood and your reactions and your emotions.
Because it affects the horse and I think it, it goes both ways. Some people have a high emotional, and empathetic IQ. So sometimes, it's a two way street, not, not all the time, but sometimes now another old horse saying is that, is that when you're having problems with the horse.
You smile, take a deep breath, think, you know, like a happy thought or, you know, calm, and it has an almost immediate effect on the mood of the horse. I've experienced, you know, circumstances where, I've gotten like semi hysterical on the horse.
And the horse immediately reacts by getting hysterical, you know, it's like, my farm is in north central Florida. And in the summertime, there's about two months, we call it the spider season, you're riding through the woods, and there are these big spiders like this, we call them banana spiders, even though there's no bananas.
And, you know, every once in a while, You're not paying attention. And the next thing you know, you got this giant spider crawl, crawling up your face. So that happened to me one time. And I always thought I was like, you know, like very much in control of everything, but it freaked me out for about, you know, like 10 seconds.
And in that 10 seconds, the horse was going from zero to 40, because it felt what I was feeling. There's an important connection there. This idea of the love of a horse too is. Horses, when they have a relationship with a particular person, you know, tend to love unconditionally.
Very much like, you know, if you've had a dog that, when you come home, that dog is just as happy as can be to see you, you know, and it's just happy, right? Well, horses are not quite as exuberant, but, but they, they have a very Unconditional emotional attachment, you know, when, when you've connected with the horse.
So I actually have my dog sleeping on my lap right now. She, uh, on the couch like 10 minutes ago. So. She, she sends the, uh, it's not a happy play time right now. She just, um, it took her forever to do. I was like, please just go ahead and do it so I can clean it up. But I was going to say, we actually just had on a few episodes ago, Mr.
Shane Jacob, who runs a program for young adults, helping lower teen pregnancy and suicide, and by having them learn lessons from horse ranching. It was a great episode. And. Highly encourage everyone to check it out where we talked about you know forgiveness lessons from a horse where you know if you do something wrong and You genuinely show the horse that you didn't mean it and you're going to do better again, they'll forget it, you know.
And in one of my favorite mangas, A Record of Ragnarok, when Chinese General Liu Bu is riding his horse, they describe it as, you know, it's not another entity. It's an extension of his body. You know, like him and the horse are one. And I'm sure you would agree with that, Mr. Ikuo, as you know. It's the two kind of become one.
And so, yeah, I mean, the Kauai knowledge and, and lessons of love, they are definitely throughout your book, and just a pivot from that, I know it's a bit of a pivot, but I know you had mentioned wanting to share, a painting, just because we're talking about love and forgiveness. And, ladies and gentlemen, if you're not watching, we now have it on screen here, and as a post recording, we have it on the screen here.
I know Mr. Equals looked like, I don't see it. We will have it on the screen once it's put out there, but It's a painting of what appears to be Jesus Christ holding the world in his hands and it says wisdom, mercy, goodness, acceptance, sacrifice, dignity, loyalty, courage, justice, reverence, patience, strength, honor, vision, duty, love, faith, truth, devotion, compassion, kindness, generosity, humility, respect, obedience, integrity, Honesty, trust, beauty, choice, and joy.
Now Mr. Equals, why did you want to share this artwork with us? No, actually, I thought about sharing it because I saw, one of the podcasts that you did about, faith. It was like a song, you know, related to faith and, um, so there's, uh, there's a lesson that I used to teach when I was an instructor pilot that teaches people how to have faith.
Sometimes faith comes as a result of grace, I'm sure, you know, but all of us, if we could, you know, have a way to learn it, you know, it might be at least a tool we can use. And when I used to teach students, to fly in the clouds where they can't see anything, one of the problems.
that everybody would have is you, you have a sense of vertigo because of the lack of visual references. And so you, you have to learn how to have faith in your instruments. And the way I taught that, and I would do this class for the entire flight. This would be a large group of students and we'd take a bar stool that spins.
And I would always pick the one who was sort of, you could tell, you know, in, in any class who everybody thought was the best pilot. Right? And put him, we didn't have female pilots back then, but put him on the barstool, blindfold him, and then you start to spin the barstool, you know, it's one of those spinning barstool.
Right, right. And say, now, you know, his job is to say what is happening. Like, I'm turning left, I'm turning left, I'm turning left, you know, that kind of thing. So, as the bar stool would spin, he's turning left, he's turning left, he's turning left, the bar stool stops and he's still saying, I'm turning left, I'm turning left, I'm turning left.
Then, that's because the, the inner ear is, you know, is still spinning, right? Even though the bar stool stopped. Now, at some point. even though the bar stool is completely stopped, he starts saying, I'm turning right, I'm turning right. Yeah. Yeah. Then everybody starts laughing. Right. But, but they get the point, you know, that what you feel, is not necessarily what is happening.
So you have to have faith in your instruments and use your instruments the same way you would use your eyes if you could see anything, you know, uh, to figure out what's level, what's turning right, what's turning left, you know, that's, that, that, that visual input is what controls those feelings. And the, the painting that I did is called the way.
It hangs in the cathedral in Orlando, St. James Cathedral. Now, I did that in 1996, but in many respects, it's very similar to the flight instruments when you're trying to fly in the clouds. Sometimes in life, we get into circumstances, where we don't know what to do. I mean, all of us have times of trouble and darkness and hardship and we feel hurt or we've hurt somebody and we're trying to find our way out.
Now, those words that are on that book behind Jesus they're like the flight instruments. When you don't know what to do, you have something that you can go back to, right, you know, to say, maybe I need to think about courage here because, I have to stand up for something, but I'm afraid, you know, and think it through.
Or if it's a situation where, you're holding a grudge against somebody, or you're holding something inside of yourself. You know, forgiveness and acceptance. These are like those flight instruments that allow you to get back to a place where you can have faith in yourself and faith in the light that guides you into the future.
So that was the whole idea, you know, about why I wanted to show you the painting was because your song triggered that for me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I really appreciate that. And it does play into everything we're talking about today. And you know, Mr. Tom, I want to call myself there, you know what I really want to focus in on before we close off, which is Obviously we want to recommend your book to everyone.
It's a great book I thoroughly enjoyed it and obviously you're a little biased yourself, but you know Who specifically should read this book who would really benefit from it? Whether that's vietnam veterans who are still trying to deal with some of those emotions whether it's Guys and gals from the Middle East nowadays, or even just civilians who can get something out of it.
Who should really read your book? I think this book is something that's interesting to people. It should be interesting to people on a lot of different levels. First of all, I think it's good fiction. You know, it's a compelling psychological drama. As you see this man's life sort of, you know, open up and the layers to it and the relationships and what he's been through and how he dealt with it.
And, some of these things are very dramatic and, and have elements of adventure, uh, elements of deep emotion, that makes for a good read, I believe. So I think it's general adult fiction. It's, it's something that I could recommend to anybody, but also the, the storyline here is very important, uh, as well.
Um, you know, I'm not trying to compare myself to Jesus in any respect because he was able to, he's able to do it with much shorter stories. But if, if you think about it, Jesus taught most of what he had to teach by telling stories. And then the story is what you, you know, if you understood the story, not everybody could understand it.
But if you understood the story, you'd learn something from the story. So there's a part of this book that's telling stories about life. Help people to grow and develop and maybe have an opportunity to find their own destiny and become a better person as a result of it. And then for certain specific groups.
You know, I think there's a strong interest. Uh, for example, if, if you love horses and, and horsemanship and, there are things in this book that, that people who have a deep, um, uh, interest in, in horses, I think will enjoy. And similarly with, with veterans, people who've served and understand, there's some combat scenes in here that are, That are very compelling, but also, you know, the effects of all that.
When you've been through, you know, these horribly violent events, where does that leave you and how do you work your way? Right. You know, back to normalcy. I mean, one of the things for me is I was. I was 19 years old when I was a pilot, a very young pilot, but at 19, I was in Vietnam. I turned 20 in Vietnam and the American involvement ended after approximately, I'd been there approximately a year.
And everybody was coming home and a lot of the people were part of a reduction in force where the army just, you know, said, go home. You don't have to stay in anymore. Um, I had a 4 year obligation beyond that, because of flight squad to sign up for 6 years, but they asked me to stay and become an instructor pilot.
And I think that one of the things that helped me was staying in the army after the war because it's very hard to go from when you're being shot at and shooting people every day, you know, that kind of, uh, that kind of an environment is not a normal environment. And the way you think starts to get twisted by that.
So being able to stay in the army for that extra four years was very helpful to me because then I was in a, I was in an environment in the United States that was controlled, you know, it gave me time to, work through some of these issues. and calm down a little bit. But not everybody had that chance.
And this goes into, some of those issues that will help people that are distressed as a result of their combat experiences. To maybe by thinking about it, they can start the decompression process and it's also a testament to how written exposure therapy or journaling therapy can be a powerful therapeutic tool to create healing for people who are having those kinds of issues.
Yeah, for sure. I completely agree with all of that. And. Before we sign off here, I'm going to go ahead and share my favorite quote. And then, Tom, I'd love for you to share either your favorite quote from the book or scene or something that you put in there that you really appreciate. For me, it was, there's a part where he says, I was wiping away my tears while it was raining.
That pretty much summed up my life situation. And uh, I think that quote is something very relatable for, for a whole lot of levels. And I'm not going to elaborate on it too much there. But there is so many different layers to that that I can relate to that other people can relate to and for me the biggest thing that comes out is I mean just pride and Maintaining this public face for when it doesn't matter for people who don't care but also just You know, the constant bombardment of life, there's so many different ways we can analyze that, but I want to pass the mic to you about, I mean, do you have a favorite quote or scene in particular, obviously you wrote the whole book and there's lots of great stuff, but was there just one particular one that you wrote and you're like, man, That's it.
You know, this is it. Well, you know, this book started with a horse story that I wrote when a horse that I, from the time he was a baby till he was 22 years old was my special horse. His name was Shiloh and Shiloh was a big, uh, spotted saddle horse, which is sort of, you know, a gated, horse, but, but large And, you know, we sort of not grew up together so much as, uh, you know, I, he was born when I was.
Probably 40, 41 years old. But he and I had a, a real good ride, you know, together over those years. And yeah, and he was my go to horse and we worked on the farm together. We, I would go on rides out into the forest with him, sometimes go hunting, things like that. But the The scene in the book, one of the things that's, that I didn't make fictional was a lot of the horses in the book are, are based on actual horses that I had.
And now some of, some of that's fictionalized, you know, to make for the story. But these horse characters, there was a real Pirata and there was a real Shiloh and a real Hidalgo, you know, so much, but Shiloh, I, I had a very deep love for Shiloh and, and I guess, it's hard to describe unless, unless you've been there, but.
When he died, you know the, probably the most, uh, emotional scene for me is, you know, holding his head in my lap as, as he passed away. And, and I felt like I was dying too. You know, I talked about the empathy, you know, it was like I could feel what he was feeling.
And it almost broke me when it happened in real life. So I think, you know, a lot of that went into that scene of the book. Uh, so it's, uh, I think a very powerful scene. And there's some other things that, that, uh, I like a lot too, but for me, that's the, that's the emotional pinnacle of this book.
Wow. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. That is just, you talk about this relationship between a horse and person. And, uh, I think. Death is, unfortunately, one of those greatest displays of that, to feel that and see that, and it's not something that most people think about, but that's definitely something to take a look at.
So ladies and gentlemen, whether it's that scene or another scene in the book, I highly encourage you to go find your favorite by checking it out. We'll have the link in the description below. to Tommy Quill's book, The Horseman's Tale, which when you, there's a, there, that was one of my favorite scenes where he becomes the horseman and, uh, you find out why he was named that and that I was like, Oh, that's the title.
I love that stuff. So it was great. But like I said, it's an amazing read. It's very unique. It definitely, uh, shocked me in a lot of ways, very different from most of the Vietnam books I've read. And I think it would be great for y'all who are looking for something new and to try something new and, uh, Yeah.
So Tom, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about it. I appreciate the copy you sent me. It was, uh, like I said, I'll be adding to my shelf and, uh, maybe buying some Christmas gifts for people who might need it. So, so. Oh, thank you very much, Mr. Whiskey. I always like to have satisfied customers.
Yeah. But Tom, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate you. Well, it's a real pleasure. Thank you very much for your interest in, in, uh, the opportunity to talk about my book.
