Why the Big Book Is Not a Set of Suggested Steps – 1967 – Clarence S.

Thank you, Frank. I am Clarence Snyder, and for the benefit of the press and radio and film, just spell that S-N-Y-D-E-R. I'm about as anonymous as a barber pole, so I don't worry about these things. Somebody had to be this kind of a nut once, and I guess I would collect it. Why, first of all, I want to thank our leader, Wayne, and the committee for inviting me here. This has been a very beautiful weekend and inspirational, and the speakers have just about said it all. So all I, all that's left for me to do today is to ramble. Someone is talking about starting this meeting late. Don't worry about starting it late. This is going to end late. Uh, don't be surprised. I always enjoy getting around it's as fair as this and I last night I listened to Jack talk about everyone all dressed up here and Sunday go to meeting you know how nice they all look and it always impresses me when I come out and look at a crowd like this and I was looking the motorized and they're all dolled up in their dancing clogs and one thing another and it really looks beautiful and I just can get over telling my favorite rummy story when I see a crowd like this. Some of you folks have heard this story, but I think it bears repeating. I think most everything in A.A. is repetition, but this story I always enjoy and I think that fits us pretty well. The story about Jerry the town drunk. And Jerry had been drunk for as long as anyone could remember around town. No one had ever seen him sober. And Jerry was dirty, he's unkempt, he was unshaved, and behind him was a lot of his britches and his bare feet were on the ground. And this was Jerry Lottie who was always drunk. So the years passed by and finally the inevitable happened. Jerry turned up his toes and died. Well, this posed a problem them to the town. Jerry was a community affair then, so they had to bury him. So the local undertaker offered to furnish the box and embalm him. Local barbers shaved him, cut his hair and cleaned him up real good, give him a good bath. The local tailor furnished a suit and a little haberdasher putting the shirt in the next eye. And they laid Jerry out. Then the big problem was to find a preacher to do the service. They finally found one who would, there he was, and the whole town turned out for the funeral. So this preacher got up to start his funeral sermon and he says, well folks, he says i just don't know what to say i just don't quite find the word he said we all knew jerry and we knew him for what he is and what he was and of course the inevitables happened we're here to put him away with a christian burial says that i really don't want to say about him we'd like to say something about the person who's passed on but he says he says, I'll tell you, I'd like you all to do one thing. He says, I'd Like You All To Come Up And Take A Look At Jerry And See How Good He Looks As He Quit Drinking. This. I Always Think Of This When I See A Crowd Like This. It's Nice To Meet Old Friends And Make Some Noons Here. And Since We're Going To Talk About A.A. here, I might as well start by telling how I got here. This is generally the pattern of what we were and while we got here and what we're doing. Well, I'll say this. I'm a rummy and I was not a periodic. I didn't get in to see all these free shows that Jack was talking about last night, Tiger Claws and all this kind of jazz because I never stopped drinking long enough to get into that kind of entertainment. I was a chronic drunk. I drank all the time. I stayed drunk. This is my natural condition. I tried to quit drinking a number of times and I had a lot of people who had a lot suggestions and ideas for me. I am another one like many of you and probably all of you. I would give them a million dollars worth of good advice when I was drinking. Some very smart people talked to me and very interested people. And some of them who became very disinterested as time went on. They told me what was going to happen to me if I didn't quit drinking. And believe me, this advice was correct. It all happened. But it had no effect on me. I couldn't quit. Eventually I wound up on the bottom. I was living, I had a family, I was married to a gal who I should say had a family and they were a very clammish family and there was no time in my young life when there wasn't two, three or four of them living with us on it. And this family used to have conferences. And I was not invited to the conferences, I was usually the subject under discussion. And oftentimes I was thrown out of the house. I wasn't asked out, I was tossed out by my wife's brother who was quite a size. Eventually I was given my last chance to stay in this place, my home. And this was predicated upon the idea that I should go to work for this brother-in-law of mine. And he had a truck and a trailer out that he used to run from Cleveland to New York and deliver merchandise and then bring some back. Well, I might say that that is work. If I might stay right here, that I have always been opposed to work. I have not changed over these 29 years either. Work and I don't get along very well. I just never could understand people who enjoy working. I would be the world's greatest loafer if I had to wear what I wanted to do it. I had this chance once, and I spoiled it. I'll tell you about that later. Well, I had to take this challenge and agree to go to work for this brother-in-law of mine, whom I didn't think too highly of, and he had a similar opinion of me. So away we went. I'd been out of work for several years, I guess. I was unemployable. And I'll show you how unemployable I was while I'm on the subject. I tried to get work, and my wife was very much interested in me going to work. She was always jawed or gloomy about it. I just couldn't get a job. Nobody was crazy enough to hire me. Back in those days there was a depression on. And I'll tell you how bad it was. My wife had a terrific interest in my going to work. And she, her job. You know what her job was? She was the head of the men's department in an employment agency, and she couldn't get me a job. So I don't say I was unemployable. Some of the judge buddies of mine, all of them in fact, got on WPA, and they wouldn't take me. Now if you can't get on WBA, brother, you're dead. And they wouldn'T take me, I've always held their resentment toward Roosevelt for that but I thought I was the only guy in 8A that had that record but I was making a talk one time in Texas and I mentioned that and I thought I had a club all of my own and some guy in the back says me too they wouldn't take me either so there's two of us that I know and you can't get on that whether you really never really arrived at some predestination. Well, anyway, I started out with this brother-in-law of mine, and I had scrounged some dough that had a dollar and some cents in change. He treated me like my person, and he didn't know about this. I hadn't had a drink the day we started off, and I was really sick, and I would be shaking. I had to sweat, I had the chills, I had everything and probably the worst thing was that he stuck me up in the back of that sleeper cab and i looked out that little window and see that great big thing following me 20 some tons of merchandise in it this panicked me i was scared to death up there and he'd go up and down those hills and around those chairs with that thing at 60 or so man this is a panic well he drove and go, we wouldn't quit. Finally the next morning we got over into New York State and he stopped for breakfast and this was some deal breakfast cheese every time I think of breakfast you know because this is like one of my greatest blessings that we get out and have breakfast in the morning now you know I really enjoy it. Well he stopped at one of those roadside stands and his breakfast consisted of some Swiss cheese that they were selling there and some cider and some grape juice. This is breakfast, see? Well, I couldn't handle that. He drove all day that day, and we got to Albany that night. I still didn't have a drink, but I got away from him in Albany. He wanted to rest, so he was this sleeper cab deal, One sleeps on the seat and one sleeps up in the back, you know. My rooster's up in The Top up there, and he slept on the feet. He said, I'm going to take a nap for about half an hour. I said, good. We're in Albany. This is the capital of New York. I want to see the Capitol building. And out I went. Well, I found a place that's fitting to a man at my station, and I found an angel in there and I was throwing those things in with both hands and then I started back to the truck and of course I hadn't had a drink for two days and all this stuff seemed to hit me at once I don't recall much of this, I got back and I guess I stepped on the poor boy's face getting up into my room and he knew church was out right there But he carried me on into New York City, dropped his trailer somewhere and drove his tractor down to the waterfront where a lot of these fellas parked their things under that big bridge down there near the Canary Sea ship line. I remember that place very well and he threw me out, threw my butt out on that waterfront and told me a few sweet things in the form of goodbye. And he wrote his sister and told her what he'd done. Well, there I am. I'm 600 miles from home. I don't have any dough. I have no clothes. I have nothing. I know one person in New York City, a town of 8 million people, and that was another sister of his. The prospects weren't very bright, But I had spent my honeymoon in her house. As I say, this is a Clannish family. They all did everything together. So I made it out to Yonkers to see Virginia. I recall Virginia used to live way up on top of a hill there. But instead of going up there, I went down the hill and I wound up in the Italian section met some very interesting people down there and we all got mixed up to a bunch of dago reds and by the time i got to virginia's house that was probably a sight to behold i can only remember one thing about this visit to virginian's house two things in fact i remember rolling around on the floor with her two kids and she took a dim view of this deal so she put me me in the back of her car and headed into New York, down to the waterfront. I threw my butt out where her brother did that. Same place. It's a plot. Now I didn't have one friend left in New York or anyplace else. I was involved in Cleveland. I had worn out all my welcome there, and here I am in Newark. I don't know one soul under the eight million people there, and I shall never never never forget that feeling. I often think about it especially when I come to an AA function such as this because here I am in a town of eight million people and there isn't one person in this whole town that cares whether I'm alive or dead. Not once. Not once." And Jack was talking about friends, and I know what he's talking about. You're just having to get to that place where you haven't any, to have the real appreciation when you do that stuff. Well, there I am. I had to exist. So I made the best of it as a rummy will do. Now I want to tell you how I worked in New York, and I got a good thing going for me. Most of these jugheads get down on the bowery and fly around in the street and doorways and one thing or another, and some of them lay there. No one bothers them until they die and start to smell too bad, and they cart them off. It's about the deal. Nobody bothers drunks down in the biering. So I didn't go down there. I saw it. I went down once in a while to a mission to get some clothes and get something that I needed. You had this thing for everything you got. But I couldn't eat that food, and I found out I wasn't much for eating anyway. And, you know, when people prepare things in a real palatable manner like that dinner we had the other night, this is something different, you know. She thought it was something different. Let me talk about that a minute. We started out this with Alan on dinner the other night. This is really wonderful. That dinner reminded me of something. I asked some people about how they did all this, these gals, and said, well, they went around, people donated some of these curtains and all this material, and they got around and cooked it up. Well, that reminded me of the first potluck dinner that AA ever had. We were having training meetings in Cleveland. A lot of fellows were coming in. They had no homes. It was a depressing time. The fellows were on the skiff and on the bunk. And we got a guy in there, and I'll never forget this fellow. We really had some real characters. As we elaborate this book, you hear so many of these guys. This fella, I got a call from this fella out of the car. His name was Beilstein, and I'll never forget this. So I went out to this home. It was one of these neighborhoods that was sort of falling down just. Used to be a millionaire's neighborhood, and they had these big homes with 20 and 30 rooms in them. They were real mansions, and those places were turning into rooming houses and funeral homes. So I got out there, and here's the Beilstein funeral home. So I walked right up to the door and asked for Walter Beilsteins. He said, Walter, Walter! Well, he isn't back. You go in the back and see him. He's upstairs over at the garage. Well, I went back there, and there was Walter. And I rapped on the door, and some junkie jumped through the door with a beret on. Now remember, this is back in 39 sometime. Guys that wore berets in those days, they were just supposed to walk up walk up and kiss them, you know, if you don't shake hands with them. So, Walter comes to the door, and I introduce myself, and he's a rummy all right. He was one of the first remittance men that I had met in AA. The family paid him to stay out of that funeral home, and they gave him what used to be the carriage house, and we lived upstairs, and they had the dead wagons and the purses and things down below all the funeral cars he lived up above this is an immense thing that's in about the size of this room here and i'm pulling and water he was up there he had his living quarters and one end of it he had a stove four burner stove and everything and a bed and all the stuff that he needed and the rest of this place, he had it converted into a theater. Walter was interested in amateur theatricals, and he had built a stage up there and had bought a couple hundred of these old used picture show seats somewhere and had installed them and made a real show out of this thing, see? So I walked in there to see that, and we were desperately in need of a good meeting place for a training meeting. And I look at this thing and, of course, the light turns on right away. I'd get wound up. And of course, I made Walter a captain in AA right now. He was an officer. And he's one of the first captains we ever had. And being a ham, he ate this up. I told him what we were going to do and what he was going to go through. And we were gonna use this place every night for meetings. We were gonna fill this hall every night. And boy, This really tickled him, you know. He did right in the middle of everything. His old ego, you don't laugh. This is better than the show business, see? So that's how we started our training meetings there. Well, these fellows would come up there every night. They'd come up here at six, seven o'clock and they'd stay till they got thrown out at midnight or so. Well, it finally occurred to me one day that these guys weren't eating. They're not eating, you now. A lot of them are probably not eating all day. they don't have any homes they have no place to go so we got the idea that people should bring something there and we all throw it in a pot like we did when we were living on the stem there and so that's what they do every night these guys would bring something under their coat and put it down they'd bring butter and canned stuff they'd make some meat, they'd take this apple nobody ever asked them where they got it Remember, there was a depression. I remember these guys were working, but they bought food. This was probably the second coming of this manna business that you read about in the Bible. But I rather fact that they swiped out all that business. But it came in and it was edible anyway. It was good food. Well, that's how our... I thought about this the other night when they told me about the girl who was gathering up this stuff. stole this stuff, but it was very good. I don't know how I got into that, but there it is. Well, when I was in New York there, I had to live. I had to exist. I think I could call it living. So I found a good way to do it. These men, these truck riders of the community, they didn't want to sleep in their truck while they were in New York, they wanted to go and give them a cheap hotel room so they could get a bath and go out for a night in the town. So they wanted someone to watch their tractor for them. So I became a watchman. They paid me 50 cents a night to sleep in a tractor to see that no one stole the wheels off it or anything. Well, they would have stolen everything off it as far as I'm concerned. I would have known it when I had been sleeping it off. They payed me 50 cent for doing this. Now they can figure I've got a place to sleep. No room rent. They give me 50 cents. I was paying seven cents a pint for my booze I was buying in the wallpaper store. And believe me, you can't drink 50 cents worth of that stuff a day. I found out how to eat for nothing. I'll tell you about that. If anybody ever gets stuck in New York and you want to eat and you just don't have it i'll tell you how good i told some of these people telling me the trade secrets before but some of you don't know this but i found out that i can't eat that mission food i i just can't go you know i i try i give it the old try you have to eat once in a while you go to these missions and they get this new baked goods that's been returned from the routes and from the stores, and it lays around there for a week. And it absorbs all that fly pox and all that vegetable juice that they squirt around, and all the taste of that light salt and everything, and that's about all you'll pay for to get these donuts and stuff. And they lay there about a week, and then you don't get eaten. I think they take them to another mission. They just keep going around with this stuff, and it's great sometimes it's pretty horrible but anything but edible well i just can't go and eat one of those drinks now i really can't and i really stand to it i've been in them i have to do it when they ate functions once in a while but so i could eat this stuff so i found out how to eat i discovered the automath in new york and if there's anything that uh about new yorke Everybody's in a hurry. They don't know where they're going, but they're in an awful rush to get there. You get outside of one of those office buildings at noon and see that bunch coming out for lunch and boy you'll get run over. It's just a stampede. Some of them get 15 minutes or a half hour for lunch and they have to run out and get their lunches back to the rat race again. Oh brother. So I watched this performance and being a philosopher philosopher at heart, you know. And then I wandered into this auto-mat and I see a lot of those birds they run into the auto-mats and they don't even stop. They stand up and eat. They put their nickels and dimes in these little cubby holes and get their beans and their soup and their coffee and their cakes and their what have you. And they stand up there and they eat and they tell them that they don t even know they re eating them. This is the way to go. So this offered a possibility to me. I finally discovered what I could do. I would simply sidle up alongside of a couple of these guys that are visibly engaged in conversation and going through the motions of eating, and I'd upstairs start stealing off their plates and their grubs. The big thing is they get caught. You should get caught because the first thing the guy wants to do as vultures. But you look up at them, that baleful love when you're hungry. The funny thing about human beings is if you're hungry and they steal them food, they won't do anything to you. They want to, but they won' t. So what happens? The guy gets the damn frustrated and he leaves the whole thing. That's what I learned in the first place. Now that was a little trade secret. Now get this. I didn't have any clothes to buy. I got those from the I had three rents, I'm getting paid for sugar, I am getting fifty cents. I can't spend all this for booze because you can't possibly drink that much of that stuff. They can't stop it, they can't do it, there just don't have room for it. And I have everything free, free food, free everything. I have no package to pay, no bills to pay. There's no bills so I could know where I'm at even though I have no worries, no concerns. insurance. I don't have the old age job. I mean, I don' t have that family to contend with. I am a free soul and I'm saving money. Yes! Saving dollars. I went home with a bankroll of 14 bucks I had when I got back to Ohio. Well, that's just the way it works now in life. I get crazy like all these from me and I wanted to go home. And I gave up all that. Now, I owe about $20,000. And nobody knows where I'm at. They're bothering me for it. I've got a new wife and sometimes she gives me trouble. Not too often because I'm not home enough. But I have a lot of problems now. I have to buy my clothes. I had to buy myself food. I'd have to pay taxes. I haven't with the Internal Revenue Act from a lot of these people, and here I had all this going for me. Now this is what I gave up just to be in AA. All right, people talk about giving things up. Boy, I gave it my whole life. Well, I tell this story in New York for a reason. Here's what happened. It had a bearing on my coming to this fellowship. Sometime after I'd been to Virginia's house in Yonkers, she had her family doctor out, about one of the kids I guess, and they got to talking about drinking. And Virginia told this doctor about this drunken brother-in-law of hers who used to be such a nice guy once and who's such a dirty drunken bum now. He says, you know that's odd. He says I had a drunken brother-in-law like that myself once and he met some kind of a cult or the other and all these guys do is run around trying to fix drunks. He said since his brother- in- law and I joined this bunch he hasn't had a drink. And he says furthermore there's a doctor down in Akron, Ohio who belonged to this strange cult and he spends all his time fixing drunks and he told Virginia that if this brother-in-law ever gets back to Ohio maybe he can get down and see this doctor and maybe this doctor can fix him. He's talking about me behind my back. Well I don't know what this is going on of course I don' t know anything about this but he meant to say like everybody why we do this I suppose it's just human we have to go home we have no choice we have got to go home you know we're not well and where we have to go. So I finally got back to Cleveland, this was a long time later, and I tried to get into the nest but without any success. I can remember that it was the winter time, everything happened to me in a lousy weather. I got back there, the snow up my ears and I got up on that porch and I still remember this little detail, a screen door was still up. I pointed that out to my wife. I told her that she needed a man around the house. I didn't think she needed one that badly. So I didn' t get in. But she told me about this doctor and actor, and her sister had communicated his news to her about this Dr. and actor who fixed his drum. And she asked me if I'd like to get on and meet this doctor. So I had nothing to lose by going down, but sure, I could go down there I might as well be an actor in this tough solution, you know. So she put me in her car and took me down to the bus depot and bought me a one-way ticket to Akron and gave me the doctor's address and sent me goodbye. So she was shed of me. I went down and I told her I met my sponsor, who was Dr. Bob, Doc Smith. I shall never forget my meeting with him. I went up to the Second National Bank building in Akron and it was a very cold day. I was afraid to leave, he wasn't there when I got there, his office was locked. And I walked up and down in front of his office for what seemed to be an awful, awful long time. And every time I go past his office door, I see what is on the window there. It says, Dr. Robert O'Rourke Smith, rectal surgeon. I'm going down there to get fixed. And a thought occurred to me that this was certainly a new approach to alcohol. I was afraid to leave this building for sure I wouldn't get back, and I probably wouldn't have, you know. I stayed in there and it was warm. Finally Doc came in. And any of you folks who had the great privilege of meeting him when he was alive know that he was a tall, very tall, angular man. and he had fingers on about this long and he has a capacity when you look at you you have the feeling that you can see right to you that's what i felt right through you he was terrific man very spiritually motivated man so he came in and i got all prepared to tell him all about my symptoms as you generally do if you're going to a doctor but this is a free doctor and he didn't let me do this he took the ball away from me told me all about myself and he scared the liver out of me he scared me to death and i i don't want to tell you the story it's too long why i got scared but it is important but it's a long story so i'm not going into that but he scared him he frightened me knew too much about me and i figured he was going to get me someplace and use me for some experimental purposes and coming up like a damn rabbit or something so that was the gist of it anyway so i waited my chance and i picked this guy and ran out of me i got away from him and i beat it i got out of that building as fast as i could go when i got back down to eventually got back to the bottle gang that i was associated with currently and one day we were all lying around as usual and we got on our favorite subject which was quitting drinking this is one of our favorite topics of discussion we were always talking about it nobody ever quit but we always talked about it i think i must have brought it up this time it says something for our ego to bring stuff up like this so i can still remember this is what drove me back and put me in this fellowship here's a straw that broke the camel's back with me there's one big flannel mouth bump in that bunch he had a mouth a big mouth he was all mouth you know and when i made this big bland assertion that i was going to quit drinking he said you were drinking piss and you'll never quit drinking she says you don't have guts enough to quit drink this guy's drunk too you know my buddy he says look at you he said just look at him he says did you know how to quit drinking takes determination and he says to have determination he said you have to have a chin he said look at me i got a chin like there you go you're no damn good i just i'll show you i know a doctor can fix me he said nobody can fix you you're no good i'll show you it's nice to talk i got a hold of someone's telephone i don't know who i would like to know where i ever got this phone because they didn't have phones where we were they weren't connected up on their bridges and i got some i broke in someplace and got a telephone i know that because doc told me i called him about a dozen times i don t remember this. I remember calling him once, talking to him, and he told me to meet him in Akron City Hospital the next morning. And I was there, and I can never forget this. This was in February of 1938. It was a cold, blizzardy day, and the snow was up to my ears. I got to Akron, but I didn't have the contract to get out to the hospital, and as afraid to on the stem floor there because i got in that far and i was afraid to get put away and i walked out there i had no overcoat i had a little sweater and a hat about all i had for covering and i walk out of many many blocks through the city hospital and it was all up to the old passing and when i got out there and i I was sweating. Believe me, I was sweaty. It is sweating. And I walked into that hospital. I can just remember going in and that's all I remember. I coughed out and he had got away from the hospital. I came to up in a room and everybody seemed to be busy and there was an awful lot of people in this room. I had never been in a hospital as a patient or the objects of curiosity before and they had me in there and as all things they were giving me a bath i don't know why they do these things but i surely didn't need it but they were doing this like a tested hospital routine and there's all kinds of girls and nurses around and men around and all kinds people it seemed like i was on exhibit or something and the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes in that room, where on the windowsill was a bottle of rub. The old boy said, I've come down here to quit drinking, but if I start hearing bells and rings and seeing funny things, there's my answer. And I knew there'd be a bottle of that rub in every room in that corridor. So I thought through it. I thought to the It just gave me my assurance, my lace in the hole. So the next thing you know the girl comes in a nurse and she has a tray with two things in it. She says, Mr. Snyder, I haven't been called Mr.Snyder for a long, long time. She says we have some medicine for you. You take this medicine and you can wash it down with this nice bikini. I killed out my horse. I said listen, I come down here to quit drinking. I don't like the day on the beach. And I give her just an ounce for that. What she wanted was to give me some of that Corral, that stuff that tastes like the bottom of a bird cage, you know? And I wouldn't go for this. So I didn't take their sobering up drink. I lay in that hospital for a week and if you don't think... If you think I'll ever forget this, you're crazy. I'd been drunk for a long, long time and to quit drinking like that without a drink in your silver up arms, it was something I shall never forget. I weighed 130 pounds when I hit that hospital, according to my hospital records. Doc didn't have me in there for alcoholism. They weren't taking people in for alcohol. He had me in for acute gastritis and I bet I had it too. That is my malady. I stayed in the hospital weeks. I shook and I shook, and I sweat and I am scared. After I was there a few days every one of the fellows who had preceded me in this fellowship, there weren't too many of them, they came in to visit me. And every one of those men told me the story of their life, what had happened to them through booze. and i might say they were all much older men than i was i was pretty young at that time uh i was just 35 when i came in i had my birthday in december and i came here in february you can don't have to take your shoes off i'll tell you how old i am i'm 64 right now and I've been sober for 29 years, less to worry. Now, those brothers told me this story of their lives, that I recognized something in those men. They had something I wanted. But one thing they once told me before he left is that they had the answer to my problems. Every man told me this, but nobody told me what this answer was, what I had to do or what they were going to do to me. I lied there for a week, and I shall remember the last day I was in that hospital. Paul Stanley came in. All these fellows are dead and gone now, every one of them. But Paul came in, and Paul was a real talker. This guy had low voice and ego. His tongue was hanging in the middle of his waist, wagging both ends. And Paul had been a Catholic at one time, and he fell away from that and got mixed up in Christian science. His wife was a reader in the science church, and she absorbed a lot of this science business from her, and he got into Hamlet's box, and then he got mixed-up in his Oxford group. Brother, he could really talk, you see. So he came in early in the morning when I'm eating my breakfast and he ate my breakfast for me. I wasn't eating yet. And he stayed and got my lunch. I got a peach that they gave me for dessert. I've got that. He got the rest. And he was there late in the afternoon when Doc came in, my sponsor, Dr. Bob. And old Doc come in and I could still see him as I noticed yesterday. He came in every day to see me. And Doc had been there weeks. He sat on the foot of my bed and he looked at me for a couple minutes and he said, well young fella, he always called me young fella when I was in good graces with him He was mad at me. He called me Clarence. When he called me Clarenc, I know I'm in trouble for some reason. He was a rough sponsor and Jack was talking about tough sponsors last night. Believe me, I had a rough time. So he said, well, young fellow, what do you think of all this by now? I said, well, Doc, I think it's great. All these fellows coming into this business with me, they're all telling me the story their life and says they're great guys i know they're all running because they taught my language but i said i puzzled about one thing he said what's that i said they all tell me that they have the answer to my problem but none of them will tell me what it is what happens now what do i have to do what are you going to do with me where do i happen where do I go he says I'll never forget this. He looked at me and he says, well, young fella, we don't know about you. You're pretty young, and we don' t know that you're ready yet. Jeez! What is to be ready? I weighed 130 pounds. I hadn't worked for three years and a half, and I remember us. I had no home. I didn't know where I was going when I left this hospital. little. I didn't have a dime, I had no clothes. I had absolutely nothing. Absolutely, I was tapped out in an elite fight. And he didn't know whether we were, that I was ready. They weren't too sure about me. Man, what do you have to do to be ready? So I guess I finally convinced him that I wasn't. So he says, okay young fella, I'll be with you after today. And I thought, well, here it comes now. I'm going to be operated on or something. Being a medical doctor, I didn't expect anything. So he turns to me and he pokes a big bony finger at me. I can still remember his schedule, that kind of thing. He says, young fellow, he says, do you believe in God? Holy smoke, this is the last thing I ever expected to hear from a doctor. This was really a shocker, because the first thing that went through my mind was, holy smokes, I'm in this place and I'm obligated to a bunch of religious nuts. The last thing I wanted to get tangled up with. And he wants an answer. So, of course, being a Rummy, I have to evade this question. But you can't evade his guy. So I sent it down to the National Theater. Any good Rummy would say, I suppose. And he says, well, what does that have to do with it? That's a good answer. He says, young fellow, that has everything to do with it, do you or don't you? This is giving the spiritual aspect of the program to the guy with a real soft touch. These birds that run around nowadays try and be afraid to mention God to a new person I often think of. So he wants an answer right now. There's no fooling around with this, and I'm there for a week, and where am I going? So I have to figure another bright answer for this guy. So I said, well, I guess I do. He says, there's no guessing about it, you do or you don't. Just like that. So he wanted an answer. So I finally had to tell him, yes, I believe in God. He said, that's fine. Now we can get someplace. Now we're going to get someplace He says, get out of that bed I haven't been out of this bed only to go to the bathroom and then it'll be a story So I said, for what? He said get down on your knees, we're gonna pray I said who's gonna pray? He said you're gonna play I said I don't know anything about praying He said well I don' t suppose you do He said He says, I'll pray and you can repeat it after me and that will do for this time. So he gets me on my bones on that concrete floor and he uttered a prayer and I repeated it after him and I felt like a damn fool. But it didn't hurt me, it didn' t kill me. From what we have, from that I concluded here, he shook hands with me. He said, young fellow, you're going to be all right. I still remember that. So that night, he carried me off to a meeting. Now this meeting, as you heard Frank say a while ago, was a meeting with the old Hotspur crew. This was not known as AA yet. This was now known as AACO. That book was written in the fall of 38 and came out in 39. We took the name from the book. We were, Bill Wilson came into the Oscar group in New York at Calvary House. I mean, Dr. brought him in there every other night. Doc Smith was in the Oscar Group in Aspen, Ohio. He'd been a member of the Oscar groups two years and a half before he ever met Bill. But he never could stay sober. He would get drunk all day every night. He went to the Oscar-group meetings, smocked all the time. No one had ever communicated like Bill with Doc until Bill came along. When Bill came long, Doc had one more drunk in him and that was all. And Bill was there when Doc came back from this convention he attended and got him sobered up and Doc stayed sober till the day he died. All right, Doc carried me to this meeting. meeting these meetings are different than they are they are formats as much to create uh i want to tell you something about this because it's history and you don't hear this there's a lot of fantastic tales i hear about the beginning of a day and i wonder where i was when all this is going on did you hear some of the real fairy stories about about AA, about somebody getting a flash of light or all this kind of jazz. It isn't true. AA started like it goes now. It started in a riot. Here's what happened. In those meetings, these Oxford group people were in the majority. The alcoholics were way in the minority in the Oxford movement. The Oxford group were people who were trying, mostly civilians, in who are trying to live good lives by spiritual principles and they live according to guidance they surrender they make their surrender and they lived by guidance and they try to pattern their lives after the four absolutes of honesty unselfishness purity and love or charge of principles. All right, their meeting, they'd have a guidance meeting prior to the meeting. That's how they'd find who would be their leader for the night. We had leaders then. I'm glad we've still got one here. And they had leaders for the nights. He wasn't a speaker, he was a leader. and he would he'd read out of a good book he'd reach something out of scripture anything he was guided to read then he'd comment on it and then he would witness as to what had happened to him of late then he was open for witnessing from the floor when people were coming up all over the place after his open confession this was the way these meetings went. And they lasted quite a long time. Then they had their house parties the last weekend and a week at a time, things like that. They're very interesting. As I say, mostly civilians. Now after the rummies got into the Oscar group, you see the Oscar group, they had the strong conviction of these people that they just thought they could fix anybody. They were taking anyone in there who was all mixed up in their life. And there They took those three big jobs until they got all of these drunks, and they damn near ruined the Oxford Group. Believe me. You know how Bill Wilson got out of the Oxford group? They threw them out of New York. They made a classic statement up there about the time that we'd go down to Cleveland. They booted them out up there. The Oxford group people at Calvary House said, that we want no more to do with alcoholics, gypsomaniacs, drug addicts, or pickpockets. So we were in fine company. They had enough of us. But in that room it was a little different. They were getting along pretty good with them until the rummings had to display their importance and their ego. And, of course, some guy would get up and he'd tell about his awful sins. I can still remember, when I was quite new in this jet, some civilian there, he was smoking a pipe. I have a thing about pipe smokers, but this guy was smoking a pipe and he holds that pipe up. He says, there is my chief sin. There is my real sin, that smoking that pipe. I said, you know what happened. Some rummy got on his back right away and told them about this pipe would never put him in the gutter and he'd never lose his family and his job and all his home and everything, and they were there too over that bloody pipe. So they just, you know, there. And they'd get this friction going, and it was going pretty badly. Well, I came into this fellowship, this is what is going on, and I was tentative meeting for 15 months. I was given a I got convictions my sponsor impressed things upon me my sponsor I might say never suggested anything to me he told me he told I didn't get any suggestions these monkeys around are all suggesting something they even get the steps followed up they talk about the suggested steps these are not It doesn't say that in the book. Some of these guys say these are the 12 successful steps. Read that book, read it right. Don't get the word turned around that these are 12 steps which are suggested as a means of recovery. There's a lot of difference, you know? We were really good at following that thing. Well anyway, these meetings they were held in that manner And after I was convicted of the idea that I was supposed to spend my life serving, and the best service I could give to God was to help alcoholics. And brother, I became the champion bar school snatcher of all time. I had an immense territory up in Cleveland. That is one of these meetings in Akron, Ohio, and I was up there in Cleveland, and I went out every place where I could find rummies and I talked to them and they lied still wrong. I didn't kiss, I lied right down the room. I pulled them off the barstool and I got thrown out of bars. I got kicked out. I got everything happened to me. But I tried to get these rummies. The first place I went was back in the jungle where I used to drink with some of these guys and I told them they ought to be like me. They ought to quit drinking They looked at me and they didn't want to be like me. They all thought I was nuts. So I didn't get any place, you know, a prophetess without honor, little or no. So I did get any places with these people, these fellows. So I had devoted my time to strangers and I devoted hours and hours and days and weeks and months to this purpose. But I wasn't getting any place. It was heartbreaking. I never really knew a member until I sponsored somebody and this, I was consumed with this idea. Finally the time came, it took me seven long months, and I sought three thousand rubies or more. Seven long months before I got my first guy into the group. And I got that bird down. It's a long story and it is an interesting story. I don't want to take the time to tell it was a tremendous story how this happened he's got the fellow in the hospital in akron and i've walked this high off the ground and talked about a honeymoon i had accomplished something i had one night of feather i will remember i belong after that they came easy i could just figure out this is i just i was carrying a message but But I didn't have any money to carry. It took me about seven months to ever get a message, I guess. And apparently I must have had one from that point on, because they come pretty fast after that. And eventually we had about a dozen fellas running, going down to Akron. Some of them had wives, yes, and some of them didn't. But what did took the wives was into these meetings on Wednesday nights. Well, here's how we split from the Oxford Movement. You'll hear all kinds of funny tales, but here's the straight truth. Of these men who were going down to Akron and Cleveland, it happened that the first seven or eight men that I happened to become associated with in that were Roman Catholics. They didn't have any Roman Catholics in Acton, only one. And he was a fallen away Catholic and he was all screwed up with the styrofoam. And he could never get on the program. He died drunk called Phil Smith. So they didn't had any problem with the church deal there. A Catholic could not belong to the Oxford movement by the dictates of his church. They wouldn't stand still for this open confession and getting guidance from other people and all this kind of thing. Some of the foreign ceremonies they had in the Osprey group, Roman Catholic Church reserved for their own use, and they would not stand for their members doing it. So Catholics couldn't belong to Christians. And here, the majority of our members going down there were Irishmen. So I was told all these fellows had nothing to do with religion, It's a spiritual thing. And they sit there in that meeting and see the guy open the meeting by reading out of it Scripture out of the King James Version of the Bible and Right away, you know? They look at this guy, they look at each other, and they look me. I'm in trouble. I lied to these guys. So I have to explain this and why it is they can't take it. so i finally had to go to my sponsor about this i went to john it's the only thing i can do just watch well there's nothing we can do about that but sure there is i said we've written a book with books out we can take the 12 steps in the four absolute that's all we need for programming i'm going to go through all these other calls or all the obstacles goes through there's all the rummage needs is that what's in that book says oh you can't do that you can do that we uh we owe the opposite group too much we are alive and that's very true but we also some of these other people there's a lot of people here who who deserve it can't have it and by a little changing around they can come in too He said, oh, we can't do that. I said, well, we're going to. And he says, oh no you're not, this is who you're watching. About that time that mother Irishman was in the hospital at the time and had a big heart. We had no money and no debt. Remember that this was depression time and most of us had no job. And we had a lot of advantages that way that these guys don't have today. We had little competition for our time and attention. We only had each other. And one of those days there's no car or no job, no money, no nothing. We couldn't buy tickets to ballgames and football games, we couldn't go out on things like this. We had no competition for our entire days or our whole life. It was a real big advantage there. I wonder sometimes what's ever going to happen if we ever have another depression. A lot of people never even heard about this thing. Well, anyway, this Irishman was in the hospital at the time, the same time that Raleigh Hensley was in The Ball Clare. He had a big home. He was losing it to be out of home. He was a patent lawyer up in Cleveland. I worked on this guy a whole winter long. And finally Joe Wilson came to town one time to visit me. And I said, I just went out to see this Abby that night. I said to Bill, I said I've got to go out and come with me and we could talk on the way. He said, no, I don't want to go out. I said, come on, you don't know if you can see me if you don' t because I'm busy. I've got a lot of places to go. So he rode with me, went out with me and Bill had something off with this guy that wasn't a month and I couldn't move the guy but Bill pushed him over somehow a different voice, a different approach and Bill kept the guy committed to go to the hospital the next day and don't worry now to Akron and this fellow's in the hospital and this went on and I talked to Grace's wife while she was in her house for a meeting. We couldn't afford meeting halls, we met at home. So she said sure. So I went down to Akro and the next Wednesday night and I announced on thursday night next week we are starting a group in cleveland ohio it is not going to be an oxford group this is an alcoholic anonymous group that only alcoholics and their families are welcome. Please imagine what happened.