A Painter, a Barber, and a Carpenter Walked Into the Bar — That Was All Higher Power Needed – Bill W.
About This Speaker Tape
Bill W., a judge from Dublin, Georgia, tells his story with a mix of sharp courtroom wit and raw honesty about how far alcohol took him down. A Methodist steward's son who became a prosecuting attorney, Bill describes how his drinking escalated alongside his legal career — the meaner he got in the courtroom, the more liquor it took at night to sleep. His wife left him, his clients abandoned him, and he eventually lost everything, spending five years jobless, bumming drinks, and sleeping under railroad trestles and in jury boxes he broke into.
Bill's bottom was severe — 130 arrests for drunkenness in his hometown, weighing 111 pounds at six foot two, going blind from drinking, and having conversations with a glass of liquor that tried to convince him to keep going. He describes the night of April 10, 1949, when three men — a painter, a barber, and a carpenter — walked into the bar and asked if he wanted to do something about his drinking. They took him to a 24-hour club, and he made a simple bargain: if they would stay with him, he would stay with them.
Sobriety rebuilt everything. Bill got a city job, then returned to law practice, married a woman with three children, had two sons of his own, and was eventually elected judge — the same courtroom where he once slept on jury box cushions as a homeless drunk. He was called back to teach Sunday school, where the children of the boys who once carried him home drunk sat waiting for him. Bill credits none of it to himself — he says sobriety got elected, not Bill W. — and closes with a poem about reaching destinations that others said you would never make.
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