Purpose:
Keep Citizens Informed of Crucial Issues
Contributors:
Thinking Members of the Community
Solely Owned and Operated by Alden and Micki Nellis
Editor:
Micki Nellis
Micki Nellis was born in a log cabin on a subsistence farm in southeastern Oklahoma, the youngest of four children. Her mother, with a third grade education, would tell the children during a rest in the shade at the end of a cotton row during picking time, “You go to school and get a good education and you won’t have to do this for the rest of your life.”
The children came to understand that a good education was something that could never be taken away. The parents moved to Oklahoma City where her father worked on construction jobs to help the children through college.
Micki graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a Bachelor of Science with Distinction in 1965 with a triple major in microbiology, chemistry and zoology, and a Phi Beta Kappa key. She worked in the science field and research for ten years while caring for two children.
Alden Nellis was born in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, the oldest of eight children. He grew up in Winfield and Haviland, Kansas, and majored in geology at Southern Methodist University where he worked as a dorm counselor for three years for room and board.. He served in the Army, stationed in Panama where he was a teletype and crypto repairman during the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, on duty 24 hours a day.
He worked in oilfield services at Production Profits in Dallas (later became Sonics International), where he met Micki when she was hired as a chemist. He was head of research for an ultrasonic downhole tool and other projects.
Later he was president of a firm that developed and produced stovetop fire extinguishers.
In 1975 Alden and Micki turned their backs on big city life and moved to Iredell, Texas, a community of 400. There they operated a hardware store. Micki got bored and started a newspaper, the “Iredell Times.” This led to her later editing and publishing the “American Agriculture News,” the communication link of tractorcading farmers in the late 1970s and early 80s.. Its purpose was to try to save the American family farmer. She also edited and published the magazine “Life in the Heart of Texas,” a monthly magazine featuring central Texas towns, events and lifestyle.
Interest quickened in making fuel alcohol out of farm crops in 1979. Micki wrote and published “Makin’ It on the Farm: Alcohol Fuel is the Road to Independence”, a how-to book on making fuel alcohol. One of her readers sent a copy to the Liberty Lobby newspaper, which reviewed the book and gave ordering information. The Nellises went to their mailbox in Iredell one day to find it filled with hundreds of orders. This continued for many months. They sold 35,000 copies of the book. (In 2000 she updated it and turned it into an ebook, now distributed on the internet and on CD.)
Alden took photographs and developed them in their own darkroom. (When you live in Iredell, you can’t send your photos for overnight service). Keep in mind that this was before computers or personal printers! At that time a color separation of one photograph cost $100, and the print job had to be run through the press four times, once for each color, with perfect registration.
Computers had captured Alden and Micki’s interest in the late 80s. They started a computer store in Iredell. Reality set in, and they moved the store to a larger town.
Micki has combined her knack with computers and software with her publishing for the last 20 years. She works as a computer software troubleshooter, and writes and publishes. Other books by Micki include a children’s book, “Logan and the Duck Patrol,” interactive CDs in English and Spanish, “Constitution: Fact or Fiction” co-written with Dr. Eugene Schroder, “War, Central Planning and Corporations,” (edited) and “Tales of Pollard, Oklahoma, written by those who lived there.”
Alden has been active in politics since his SMU days. Several years ago he wrote a series of articles on the Republic of Texas for the Cleburne Times Review. His critics like to “uncover” this fact and pass it on as if it had been a secret. If it had been a secret he would not have published it in the local newspaper and on the internet. Duh!
“I’m totally unrepentant,” says Nellis. “I still feel that a free and independent Texas is in the best interests of Texas and its citizens. It does not make sense to send tax dollars to Washington where they rake off 80% and send back a small pittance.”
There have been at least eight movements to re-establish the Republic of Texas since the original republic was melded with the US in 1845. The last movement pretty well disintegrated when an ousted leader was arrested for encouraging another party in kidnapping. Thenceforth, news media mentions of the Republic of Texas were always accompanied by a video of a smoking gun or an AK 47, and the Republic of Texas was always referred to as a radical separatist group.
Alden has been active in other politics. He has been an unofficial watchdog
of the Cleburne City Council, 4B Committee and the Cleburne Independent
School District. He and a group of local citizens are working for accountability
and publicly accessible information in local governmental organizations.
