Acceptance as the Thing the Alcoholic Has Been Starving For Long Before He Ever Picks Up a Drink – Charlie L.

Thank you, Wade. My name is J.D., and I'm a grateful recovering alcoholic. Hi, everybody. Just as I said last night, I predicted that I would fill up, you know, and I have. I've got enough of this AA to last me a good six months, I hope, now. And a confederate graveyard in the sky somewhere, where Robert E. Lee has slipped over three times in his graveyard today because I fell in love with three more Yankees. By nature, I am not a leader. That's like saying, as a rule, I didn't drink. As a habit, I did, but not as a rule. I'm a follower, and I don't like to set precedents. But with Wade's permission, as the voice of the convention and trying to keep this thing rolling on time, I would like to change. I would like to change the procedure, if it's all right with you, and read the preamble first. Is that all right? Is that all right with everybody? Sorry about that, Egbert. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. The speaker who I am to introduce today is a man who has been a member of the AA for a long time. The AA was one of the first people I heard on a tape that made me want to go to a convention, which I had never heard of. I had been in AA so long I hadn't even heard that they had conventions. I wanted to hear this man because one of my sponsors told me quite regularly, and this was Mike W., that, for so many years, he had cried. For so many years he had wept. It's time to laugh. And this man made me see the humorous side of my alcoholism, which I can laugh about now. I couldn't then, believe me, and it's really not a laughing matter. This is one of the ways we go about curing ourselves, learning to laugh at ourselves. But I loved the way he presented his story. The sincerity, as well as the humor. And I had to hear him. And I pursued this desire for God knows how long, until finally last year at the Southeastern I ran into him. Eyeball to eyeball, there's Charlie. I want to get all I can get from him, just as I have gotten from the wonderful speakers we have had so far. And I can't say enough for those great people. All of them. But I want to get everything I can get from Charlie. So, well, just before I introduce him, though. From one ding-a-ling, another ding-a-ling. Charlie L. from Castleberry Slot. I'm an alcoholic. My name is Charles Lindenwood. And he let me pick out the bell I wanted. And I took the green one. Because I believe that as long as you're green, you'll grow. And when you're green, you'll grow. And when you're green, you'll grow. And when you get ripe, you get rotten. And I don't want to get rotten. Well, let's see, my wife wrote me a speech here. See, when she lets me alone, lets me go to my own resources, sometimes I say things that she don't approve of. But if she could have heard me while I was still drinking, before I met her, she would see that I have improved. And I want you folks to know that I'm a low-bottom drunk. I'm the kind of drunk that most folks think of when they think of an alcoholic. Because I went all the way down, and then some. Actually, the first time I ever took a drink in my life, I got drunk. But I had my social drinking period. Everybody does. Mine lasted about 30 minutes. See, I come from Arkansas by request. And on this day that I had my first drink, I was about 16 years old, and I'd been out hunting, out in the foolish bottoms, east of Little Rock. And I run across this fellow that is a bootlegger, and he's running. And he's running off a batch. And had that thump keg of going kapoop-a-doop-a-doop-a-doop-a-doop. And that worm just a-running that old warm whiskey down there, drip-drip-drip-drip-drip, into this tin cup, about pint-sized, jailhouse tin cup. And he seen me over there, and he's lonesome. And he wanted some company. He said, hey, fella, come over here. And I went over, looked like I was going to get something free. And sure enough, he handed me this tin, and he said, try that. Well, I never had drank no whiskey. And I just chug-a-lugged it. I thought I'd never get my breath again. And I sat there, I was turning all kinds of different colors, and barking and harking, and my both eyes trying to get in the same socket. And this old boy was worried about me. He kept beating me on the back. And finally, I started breathing. Breathing again. And my color come back to normal. And my eyes quit watering and stopped dancing. He looked at me, and he handed me that cup again. Said, try her now. She's got some age on it. And now, before I left him, 30 minutes after the time he had given me that first drink, I had shot his mule. And stole a dominicka rooster from him. And he was running me out across the swamp with his shotgun, and my social drinking was over. I got home before I passed out. Passed out right in the backyard where we raised chickens. And I don't know if you ever passed out in a chicken lot or not, but you're a mess. We raised them old Rhode Island Reds. And they are squirters. And my mother, my mother come out in the backyard and found me. Never had seen me looking like that before. Like she never had seen anybody looking like that before. She took me in the house and gave me the only therapy she knew, a hot bath and a dose of castor oil and an enema. I was a clean man. I was a clean man. I was the cleanest drunk in Arkansas, inside and out. And if I'd have had any sense at all, I'd have quit drinking right there. That would have been it. But you know, I couldn't remember how sick I got. I couldn't remember that passing out part. I couldn't remember that fellow shooting at me. He was lonesome and shooting at his company. That don't make sense. All I could remember was that I felt seven feet tall, and smart, and plum purdy. And it just seemed like that that is sort of the way that things run for me all the time that I drank up until they captured me and drugged me into AA. I'll get to that, I guess, in a little bit. But right now, I want to tell you folks that my story, after I get through, you won't be no better off than you are now. Because I never did say anything that made any sense, I don't believe. But I'm hoping that I don't say anything that will get you drunk. My story is so long, I haven't heard it all myself. And what I do, I just talk until my time's up and then quit. And you ever see a speaker take a watch off like that? Everything they do in AA means something. And that means something. That means that he's long-winded. And he has to time himself. And that's a fact. I love to talk. I love to associate with folks. And I love to tell my story. I was back over in Arkansas not long ago, and I run into three of my cousins. Bart, Dart, and Fargo. And I was talking to them, and I was telling them about, I had a hard time, and things was rough on me. And old Fargo, he said, you didn't have no rough time. He said, you don't know what it is to have a hard time. He said, we've got a fellow lives over the ridge here we call Hard Luck Clive. Now, he had it bad. He said, he's got 40 acres of the poorest ground in Arkansas, and he's trying to eke out a living on this ground with a right sickly mule and a broke-down plow. And his wife, she's a puny little old thing, got seven wormy kids, and said, now, this fellow went out the other morning, and he harnessed. He harnessed. He harnessed up that mule to the plow, and he put that bit in the ground and started up a furrow, went about 20 feet, and the plow hit a root and jerked the mule. He dropped dead, just graveyard dead, and broke his harness up, and the plow just fell all to pieces. And he looked up at the sky and said, why, Lord? Why? Why me? And the sky just turned plumb black. Just flat black, and a shaft of light shone right down from heaven, right on old hard-luck Clyde. And this booming voice come from heaven, said, Clyde. Somehow or other, it just seems to me like you tee me off. Well, Lord, this upset poor old hard-luck Clyde something wonderful, and he didn't know what to do. He went over to a neighbor of his, and told him, he said, I don't know what to do. The Lord's mad at me. And this fellow said, now, what you've got to do is move to town and get on welfare and straighten up. He did. Moved to town, got on welfare, and then checks started coming in, and everything was looking good. His wife put on weight. He had all them children wormed. And it just looked... It looked like everything was going to be fine. The welcome wagon come, and run over him. Now, there's a fellow that didn't even drink. We had all kinds of folks back home. I was raised a long ways from anything, back in the country there in Garland County. And we moved to Hot Springs first, and they had buses there, running them buses around. And this... This... We had this local drunk. Actually, we didn't have no town drunk. We just took turns. And this one particular slobbered a lot. But he was friendly, and everybody loved him. He was just friendly as he could be, and all the bus drivers knew him, and nobody paid a lot of attention to him, and didn't bother him. And this old boy, they hired a new bus driver, and he got... He got on this bus, and put his coins there in the box, and leaned over this bus driver, and slobbering all over him, telling him howdy and all this, you know. And this bus driver just pushed down on that gas pedal and let that clutch out, and it just tumbled him right on back to the back of the bus. And he wound up sitting in the lap of a fellow with a black hat on, one of them flat-brimmed black hats and a real dark beard. And... And... He's sitting there, and this fellow's laugh, this drunk one, and he looked at him, and he said, What are you? And this fellow said, I'll have you know I'm a dunkard pastor. This drunk said, I believe that's what that truck driver just called me. My uncle, Uncle Ben, I loved Uncle Ben. He was my drinking uncle. And he had about a six-foot stagger, and sang, he loved to sing, and coming home, you could hear him a mile down the road. One night he'd come home, and he just fell right into the pig pen and laid there upside a big sow. He was comfortable. And he got to rubbing her on the stomach. Just rubbed her nice. Finally whispered in her ear. He said, Marcy? How come you're so... Showed all them buttons on your nightgown? But my cousin Penny, my cousin Penny had a baby, and when she had this baby, her husband was in jail. Now, they got a law in Arkansas that the babies have got to be named when they're born. And she had twins. Well, when this old boy got out of jail, he come running up to the hospital, and he said, I wasn't here. He says, Did you name the babies? She said, Why, yes. He said, Well, who named them? He said, Cousin Charlie. He said, Oh, Lord, no. He ain't got good sense. What in the world did he name them? He said, Well, he named the little girl Denise. Oh, I said, That's a nice name. He said, What did he name the little boy? He said, De-nephew. You know, when the NAA, for a while, well, folks let you come to different places and talk, and I'm no exception. I've been all over the country and enjoy it. I enjoy every minute of it. But you meet some people that are different in different parts of the country. They have different accents and different crops they raise, and the weather's different and all this. I was down in Louisiana and met some Coonies, Coonasses. Is there any Coonasses here? Hot dog. Glad to have you. And I was talking to a couple of them fellas down there, and one of them said that he got him a dog, and the other one says, Oh, what did you name him? And he said, Fido. And he says, What did you name him Fido for? He says, Because it's easy to spell. P-H-I-D-E-A-U-X. Now, I thought that was right unusual, but I went up in the Quaker country up north there, and I was standing by a fence there, and this old Quaker was a plowman, and he had one of them old cantankerous Arkansas blue-nosed mules, and he wouldn't gee, and he wouldn't haw, and this poor old Quaker was just, you know how they are, they wouldn't say a bad word if they had a mouthful. And he's trying to control this mule, and he'd take a great wide swath around at the turn row, and he's stepping on the corn and biting off the tassels, and finally, in complete exasperation, this Quaker said, to this mule, Mule, thou knowest I cannot beat thee, and thou knowest I cannot curse thee, but what thou dost not knoweth is that I can sell thou to a Baptist. We'll beat the hell out of thou. But you know how it is. Now, my folks, I was raised during the Depression, and everybody was poor, just everybody was poor, and my folks overdone it. And we were so poor, we didn't have enough cupboard. But we did have dogs. And on cool nights, we'd just pull up a dog. And I remember several times when we'd have a three-dog night. And this was, with this kind of environment and all, you're always trying to uplift yourself and place yourself in a better station in life. And my Aunt Tuzzy was no exception. She had a party and invited all the neighbors to the party, and she was going to show off. And she figured she'd serve some caviar. Well, she went to the store, and they had some caviar. Well, she went to the store, and they had some caviar. And it was, all the price of it was way beyond her means. But they had some buckshot. And she just bought some buckshot and poured a can of oil off of a can of sardines on it. And it shined them up real good. And she set it way over in the middle of the table, figured nobody'd eat it. But there's a great fat woman that attended the party that ate every bit of that buckshot. Well, it just liked to have her on the table. So she said, And they started to go out and they didn't pick up . . . And I was worried my Aunt to death. And the next morning she couldn't stand it no longer, and she called her up. And she said, Honey, I have called you to apologize. She said, Now, it ain't you that needs to apologize. It's me. Last night as I left your party, I was out on your front porch, and I noticed my shoe was untied. And I bent and snuck out. I walked over to the front porch, and I noticed my shoe was untied. And I bent and snuck out. And I bent and snuck out. And I noticed my shoe was untied. And I bent and snuck out. And I went to the front porch and I said, down to tie that shoe and shot your cat. It'll happen. These things will happen. Now, if you'll notice, all these things I've been telling you about so far happened to folks that didn't even drink. So you see, they have problems too, these non-drinkers. And I want to tell you, I want to tell you about a trip I took. I come over to Louisiana. I was on one of my drinking sprees, and I got down to Monroe, Louisiana. And I'd been up north, way up in Minnesota, and I'd been rooming in a coat. Did you ever room in your overcoat? No. You got a... A little sack of salt and a razor and a half a bar of soap you stole at the filling station. Anyway, I got over to Monroe, Louisiana, and I got tangled up with them boys over at a place called the Shamrock, over at Five Corners. And we got to drinking Sweet Lucy, and I overdone it a little. And I was right drunk. Now, this is in July, and I'm walking down the street in this sheep-lined coat. And a policeman just walked up alongside of me and got me by the arm, didn't say nothing. And walked me up to the judge, and he looked at me, and I don't remember him saying anything but 30 days. And they took me over to the jail and opened that door and put me in there, and them fellows was all looking wild, like... And I asked them, I said, What's with y'all? And this one fellow that was a little more lucid than the rest of them, said, We coasting. And I looked around, and they didn't focus their eyes on something, you know, like when you just turn your head around. They just do something like a chicken. And this old boy said, We coasting. I said, On what? He said, Goofballs. I said, Give me some. Well, he handed me one of these goofballs, and he said, Now, come back in about two hours, and if I ain't busy, I'll give you another. I don't know how he's going to be busy. He ain't doing nothing but time. So in two hours, I come back and got me another goofball. And from then on, I was coasting too. But I guess my sled was a little slicker, or my hill was a little steeper. Because them things affected my extremities. And they had me grounded. You see, I didn't know what was going to run out. Like I was going to reach my arm out, my arm wouldn't do nothing. But my leg would run out on a stem, you know. And as a result, I just did thirty days there, grounded, enjoying every minute of it, coasting. And my thirty days was up, and I couldn't go. And two great big policemen come in there and got me, one under each arm. And they took me out and set me on the front porch. And one of them said, Lord, I wish you hadn't have done that. And I'm talking about these policemen. I'm nervous anyhow, you know. And I ain't far from where this happened. But anyway, they set me down out there on the front porch and said, When you're ready, I'll give you another. And I said, Well, I'll give you another. And they said, Well, I'll give you another. And I said, Well, I'll give you another." When Jesus came through, he was speaking to me. Then Jesus came through, seeing how I was married, and he got me married again. And at the end of the very short so vivid message, He said, You'll just be anターá dialogue. And it was when he said that, and that shoulders me up, and his microscopes knew me and they could feel my practical and spiritual pulse. It was really a kind of an itself change in my physical mind. I understood that Christ was real. All the camaGrandes. And I asked my wife, Mar migration men y'all, men, how are you doing? She said, None of you. None my na quoram. She said, None of you. None of you. She died now. None of you. Any way with her mother. No one arrived, but even as we all were hellishly buzzed off,I just remember when I'd never seen her." Oh, I was some kind of far out, and I was waiting for a freight train because I wanted to get out of Louisiana. And there in Louisiana and Monroe, they've got a railroad line that runs like this and one runs like this, and a train comes up here. Before he can cross that line, he's got to come to a dead stop and then take off. And I'm sitting there. I ain't 10 feet from the track. And a freight train with 100 cars had come up and stopped and take off and get gone before I'd noticed it. Finally, I got on one of these freight trains and wound up in Mississippi. And I'm on the levee and sick. Oh, I'm something wonderful sick. My hair hurt. Fingernails hurt. I hurt all the way down the track. And there's a bum come up and looked at me. And he said, you look sick. I said, I am. He said, if you've got 25 cents, I know where we can get a drink. And I let him have 25 cents and held his coat for security. And he went off somewheres and come back, and he wasn't gone hardly any time. And he had this package wrapped up in yellow paper. And he undone that. And he... He loosened that cork and handed me that bottle. And I looked at it. It said, rubbing alcohol. If taken internally, serious gastric disturbances will result. And they did. But, you know, up to this point, I never had drank any rub-a-dub. And I handed him the bottle back. I said, no, no, I'm afraid of that. I don't believe I better drink any of that. That'd make me sick. Well, he took a slug of that and got his eyes brightened. Now, mind you, he about as sick as I was. His eyes brightened up pretty soon. He's prancing around and laughing and scratching and walking, talking, wanting to shake hands. I said, give me the bottle. And I took a great big slug of that and lost it. And he said, that ain't no way to drink rub-a-dub. He said, the way to drink rub-a-dub is take just a little... just a little bit of it and hold it in your mouth until the saliva dilutes it. Then swallow it. I tried it. It worked. It was my first mixed drink. Well, Lord, pretty soon I'm up prancing around and laughing and walking and talking and scratching. And you know how there's nobody in the world who loves one another like two drunks. And me and this old... This old boy took up housekeeping underneath a bridge. Oh, it was nice. We had running water, cross ventilation, and the local citizens were sympathetic to our needs. And the local constabulary took a dim view of our actions and took us up to the Greenville County Jail to do 30 days, which the judge had given... which the judge had given us so graciously. We got up there and sick. Oh, Lord. I found a new low and a new sick and stink. I thought it was him. And he thought it was me. And them other prisoners knew who it was. And they ostracized us. And you talk about having withdrawal symptoms. Lord, I was sick. Oh, I'll never forget that, I hope. And this old boy had been locked up in that county jail before there in Greenville. And he said, Charlie, I know this old jailer here. He's a fine old man. And his name is Carroll. And if you'll tell him that you've got a bad leg, he will saturate a piece of cotton with rubbing alcohol and bring it in. And we will squeeze it in this milk bottle and have a little drink. Mr. Carroll came up and I said, Mr. Carroll, do you think, please, sir, you could find it in your heart to give me a little something for my leg? I've got a bad leg and I'm in pain. He said, Why, certainly, son. He went downstairs and brought up a whole pint of ruby dust. Just handed it in there. We poured it in this milk bottle, filled it up with water, and folded them components together so they wouldn't be bruised. Pretty soon, we're coasting again. Well, we run out. And I said, Mr. Carroll, I have run out of medication. Could you please, sir, let me have another prescription? He said, Why, certainly, son. Went out and brought in another bottle. We mixed that up and drank it. And I said, Mr. Carroll, we've run out of rubbing alcohol. I'll give you another one. When we drank that and ran out, I said, Hey, Mr. Carroll, bring up some more ruby dust. Well, that old man hit the top deck of that cell block and looked at me and said, Boy, you look worse now than you did when they brung you in here. Let me see your leg. And I hadn't even had any water on it. And he cut us off. Had to do the balance of that 30 days on nothing but food and water. Police brutality. That is worse. Now, why is it, why is it that a guy like you and a gal like you and a guy like me and a gal like my wife will go ahead and do things like that? And everything that we do, somebody will be telling us all along the way the right thing to do and the right way to do a thing. And not only that, but we don't even need to be told. Because we already know right from wrong. We already know right from wrong. And yet, when that 30 days was up and this old boy and I got out of that jail, by this time, we were eaten. We'd become lucid. You would think that we would have gone our respective ways back to our families and done what we knew was the right thing to do. No. Our first stop was the dime store and another bottle of ruby-dub. I don't know why it is. I never have found out why it is that you and I did these things when we knew they were wrong for us. Well, naturally, your mother will always take you back. See, I worked my way out. I lost my wife. You ever notice that that every time some man comes to talk to you about his drinking, that they tell you they lost their wife? I'm no exception. I lost three or four wives. And I don't know how many like housekeepers. But I know that the way it worked with me, I lost my job and I went home and I was waiting for them to call because I knew they couldn't run that business without me. And sooner or later, they would call. And I went home and I was patient. I waited for years. And they never did call. They haven't called to this day. And while I was waiting for them to call, I spent what money we had in the bank, $12. And I started negotiations. You know, that's when you take the toaster out under your coat, heading for the bootleggers, and then you take all the little things like waffle irons and all the little stuff you can get out without being noticed. And everybody's noticing you. And finally, you start in with higher negotiations. And that's when you call a secondhand furniture dealer and you say to him, what you giving for nine by 12 rugs today? And do you need any sofas? It was during these higher negotiations that my wife left. Took her dog with her. I missed that dog. I missed that dog. And went right on down. And finally I drank up the house. I drank up the furniture. I drank up my poor old drunk automobile. And then I went home to mother. Her drunken son had come home. You can imagine, she was delighted. Well, your mother don't ever turn you down. And mother put me back in the back part of the house, the little room back there. And things at this stage of the game, you know, I was at this stage in your drinking where they still let you stay home, but they don't let you carry a key to the front door or the back door either. And you have to knock to get in your own house. And that deal goes something like you knock on the door, some member of the family comes to the door, opens it just to know, and the nose comes out. All my folks had big noses. And they say, yeah. And you say, what the hell do you mean, yes, I live here. Yeah, but you're drunk. Certainly, I'm drunk. If I ain't drunk, I wasted a lot of money on whiskey. Hold my door and let me in the house. And go on back and get in your little, your little prison. You get back there in that little back room. And you cry. And you cry. And you cry. And you cry. And you cry. And you cry. And you cry. And you cry. You turn your face to the mattress and cover it up with a pillow so nobody can hear you crying. You're cussing to yourself because you love your family. And you want your family as much as anybody in the world. You want to be able to walk out that door and love your mother and love your brothers and your sisters. And you want your wife back. And you want to tell her that you love her. You want to be a man that is respected. You want to be a man that's responsible and responsive to the love of others. And you're drunk. And you don't know how this happened. You know you're not a bad boy. You know you never intended to do anybody any harm. And you don't know you're an alcoholic. You don't know you've got a disease. And there you are wearing long-handled underwear winter and summer. And in the summertime you drop the flap for ventilation because you're smart. And then company comes. And at this stage of the game when company comes some member of the family opens your door. Don't come out. We've got company. That's just like waving a red flag in front of a bull. You didn't intend to get up. But you struggle around and get up. Flap, flapping. Walk out into the living room and greet the company. Tell them a couple of stories you heard under the bridge. Offer them a drink out of your jug. Flap, flapping. Well, along about this stage in the game my family had a meeting to which I was not invited. Any time your family has a meeting and you ain't invited to it it's about you. And my cousin, Alt, who is big and rough and tough and nobody argued with Cousin Alt. Nobody. Even the mules didn't argue with Cousin Alt. And Cousin Alt called me and said, Come out here, Charlie. And I come out right now. I mean, I didn't hesitate at all. I come out, yeah. He said, We done had a meeting. I said, Did? He said, Yes. And it was about you. I said, What? He said, Yes. And we gonna send you to a psychiatrist. I said, Are? He said, Yes. Cause we think you a nut. Well, you should have seen this psychiatrist that my family sent me to. Weird. Oh, wow. Wow. But it was a nice looking little man. Gentle. Little fella. And the first time I looked at him, I thought, Now, he's a nice little fella. And I won't disturb him with any of my troubles cause he got enough of his own. And sure enough, it turned out he did have. But he asked you the damnedest questions you ever heard. He asked me one day, He said, Did you ever have DTs? I said, I had them when they first come out. He said to me, He said to me one day, he said, Today, I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna ask you some questions. And you just tell me first thing comes into your mind. I said, Go ahead. He said, What would happen if I poke your eyes out? I said, Can't see. He said, That's good thinking. He said, Now, What would happen if I cut your ears off? I said, Can't see. He said, No, no, no. Go back. He said, Now, think. I said, I'm thinking. He said, What would happen if I poke your eyes out? I said, Can't see. He said, Try to retain this trend of thought. He said, Now, What would happen if I cut your ears off? I said, Can't see. He got exasperated. He said, How do you arrive at this conclusion? I said, Well, if you cut my ears off, my hat would fall down over my eyes and couldn't see. You know, little things like that you had to explain to him. And it just looked like I wasn't hardly going to be able to help him at all. But I did like him, and I developed a sort of a paternal interest in him. I thought maybe I could save him. And he said to me one day, he said, Now, today I want you to give me a rundown on your day. I said, Like what? He said, What I want to know is what transpires in your thinking processes and what manifests itself therefrom. I said, Run that by me one more time, because you done missed me altogether. He said, What do you do? I said, When you first get up in the morning. He said, You want to know what do I do when I first get up in the morning? He said, Yes. I told him. That wasn't what he wanted to know. Communications had broken down somewhere. And finally, he said, When you wake up in the morning, you do something, and then you do something next. And after you get through doing that, you do something else. I said, Why don't you say it in the first place? And I think it's over, because I know my day and his day do not parallel. I know that, because this old boy, he never has taken up housekeeping underneath no bridges. So carefully, because I figured that this bird is going to leave the lady wanting to push him off. So he's sitting there, and I'm thinking, and finally I said, Well, first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is open my eyes. And knowing him as I did, I explained why. I said, The reason I do this is to see where I wound up. And damn if I didn't have to explain that. See, he wound up in the same place every morning. And then I said, After I open my eyes and look around the room, if it's a room, and I sit on the side of the bed, if I'm on a bed, and I scratch, and then I belch, and then I light a cigarette and vomit. And his eyes bugged out, and he said, Vomit? I said, Certainly, man. I'm upset, too. I said, Certainly, man. Everybody does this. And he did not know it. He did not know that everybody gets up and throws it. He didn't know that. I kept going to him, and finally one morning he says, Now today we're going to go into your childhood. I said, Go ahead. You've been everywhere else. They do get personal. He said, As a child, did you bite your fingernails? I said, Deed, I don't remember. I don't like them now. He said, I don't remember. He said, Did you pick your nose? I said, When it needed it. He said, The bed. I said, Still do. But, Doctor, I'm telling you, getting the bed is not a cause of drinking. This is a result of drinking. And if you don't believe that, you just get yourself about a half a case of brew and follow that with two, three Skullbusters, and then eat a couple of goofballs, so you will relax. And if you do not wake up in a puddle, there's something wrong with your kidney. Lord have mercy, that's upsetting. And I thought, Sure, he was going to just fold his tent and steal silently into the night. But no, he's all upset, and he's shaking, and he's red in the face, and he's talking. And you know, when somebody is nervous, and they're talking to you, it makes you nervous. It makes you nervous, too. And I'm sitting there trying to be as calm as I can, and I'm rolling this little black ball around on my hand. And he's looking, and I'm rolling. And he's talking and looking, and finally, he can't contain himself no longer. He said, Why are you rolling that little black ball around on your hand? I said, Well, you ain't the easiest man in the world to talk to, and seem like this kind of soothes my nerves. He said, Do you mind if I try it? I said, No, no. I hand him the little black ball, and he rolled it around on his hand. Big grin come on his face. He said, It does soothe your nerves, dude. He said, Where did you get it? I said, Out of my nose. Well, that is just before they sent me to the nuthouse. Me and him both. But I got out. He never made it. Well, by this time, I'm ready for AA. And my first contact with Alcoholics Anonymous was in that nuthouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the State Hospital for Nervous Diseases. And I went up to this 210 or 220 and a half Main Street. And they still got a club there, the 120 and a half club. And those were nice fellows. They talked with me, not at me. And they were older than I. And there was one old fellow there that came and looked at me, and he said, Boy, why don't you go out and drink you some whiskey, coming around here calling yourself alcoholic? Well, I spilled more on my necktie than you ever drank. I thought, Ain't he a nice man? And I left. And intermittently, for the next five years, I would come back into AA. And stay a while. And then go out. Go out and do a little more research. But I kept coming back to AA. And finally, I'm in Washington, D.C. And I'm unemployable. When I say unemployable, I don't mean I was just late for work. I had been fired from washing dishes in a Greek restaurant. And I had been locked up in everything that they had ever built to lock folks up in. And I had been severed from all sediments of society. A moral degenerate. I needed a haircut. And it wasn't popular to need a haircut in them days. And I needed a shave. And I had on relievers for shoes. I had discarded my socks. I had discarded my underwear. For obvious reasons. And I had my shirt on, wrong side out, because that was the cleanest side. And I was rooming in an old overcoat. And I was down to two teeth. And they didn't match. I had one up here and one down here. And I had a honk on my jaw to make them fit. And I love green onions. I don't know if you ever tried to eat a green onion with just two teeth or not. But the way you do that... See, what had happened, I'd gone down and climbed over a fence and I'm picking out onions out of there and eating them with these two teeth. And the way you do that, you take an onion, about as big as your little finger, and you take him and spear him. That splits him right down the middle. And then you give him a quarter turn. And you spear him again. Then you've got four little prongs sticking up there, just like that. Then you know how impatient and impetuous alcoholics are. Then you give him, you grab him, you wind up with a little thing that looks like a broom. And then you gum him, like that. I look out the corner of my mouth and there's a policeman watching me. And I wonder, is he going to arrest me? And I think he's going to arrest me because he gave me that crooked finger movement. You know. And I went over and I got one onion split and one ready. And he looked at me and he said, What are you doing? I said, I'm eating onions. Is it against the law in the nation's capital to eat onions? And he hesitated a long time and finally he said, No, it ain't. But it seemed to me like if you're going to graze, you ain't going out in the country. Well, that shook me up something wonderful. And I needed a drink bad and I knew it. And I went back up to the flop house and I sat down on the side of the cot that wasn't paid for. And I'm wondering and I'm thinking and I knew that I couldn't bomb anything. I couldn't steal anything. And finally it dawned on me that I had a leather jacket that I could hock. A leather jacket that I had gotten at a Thompson's restaurant. I did a lot of my shopping at Thompson's. And I took this old leather jacket down to a hock shop and taught this lady how to give me enough money to buy a fifth of whiskey. I bought the fifth of whiskey and I went up to the flop house and I was so nervous and shaken that while I was trying to open this thing I dropped it, it shattered and I watched my life's blood run right out on the floor. I went back and collapsed on that cot and I said a prayer. I said, Oh Lord, my God, is there no help for the widow's son? And right then a pair of black shoes came up beside me under blue serge pants. And I figured it's a fuzz. And I said, not that kind of help, Lord. And I looked up further and I saw the face of a man I knew. A face of a man that I had drank with on skid row. We had mixed squeezings. We had drank rub-a-dubs. Drank too thin to chew. I looked at this guy's eyes and they were bright and clear and his voice was strong. And I was concerned about him. I figured he's on dope. I said, Bob, what happened to you? He said, Charlie, I found a group of people called themselves Alcoholics Anonymous and they helped me get sober. Do you think you've got an alcohol problem? And I said, yes. And I did have. I had run out of it. And that was a problem. He said, do you want to go to an A.A. meeting with me? And I said, yes. I didn't want to go to any A.A. meeting but he kept rattling that scratch in his pocket and I figured if I go with him he'll spring. So we went to this A.A. meeting up at 1401 Rhode Island Avenue. And they set me right in the front row amongst the incurable. And I'm sitting there right next to the nicest, cleanest little man you ever saw in your life. He had a problem. Me. Because I had a few small lice. Small but active. And I'm sitting there in a warm room. You've got to rearrange them things every once in a while. And I'm chasing one up in under my armpit and he's sitting there just cringing, you know. Nicest little man you'd ever want to meet in your life. And this little man knew that if anybody in God's green earth needed A.A. it was me. And he did not want to say something that would injure my feelings. He knew I was tender like all alcoholics know that all other alcoholics are tender. And this little man didn't say something like why don't you take a bath. This little man did a thing that I hope I shall always be able to look into my rear view mirror and see just as clearly and distinctly as I can see his actions today. This little man reached his hand in his shirt pocket and he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and he said, have one. I took two. Long fingernails. I offered him that extra one back but no, no, it was contaminated. Oh, you keep it. And then after I had stored away my extra prize, my extra cigarette, this wonderful, wonderful little man put his pack back in his pocket. He reached his hand in his pocket and he pulled out his lighter and lit my cigarette. This isn't a big thing to a lot of people but I was a derelict. I couldn't even come in my own mother's living room. Nobody in the world wanted anything to do with me. I was traveling under an alias. He lit my cigarette and then he lit his own cigarette and then he replaced his lighter in his pocket and then he moved over a seat and picked up a lighter and set it down between us. And he said, we'll both use this. What I have just described to you is human compassion at work. And my friends, that's love. That's what this program is all about. These 12 steps, when they're all put together and put into action, it exemplifies the love that one man has for another right away. I remember that I'm hanging around AA and I'm shaking, I'm trembling on that second day and a guy comes up to me. I could have threaded a sewing machine while it was running if I could have got coordinated, you know. And this guy come up to me and he said, Charlie, you're doing a wonderful job. I said, you're crazy. I'm dying. He said, no, no. You've been in AA now for a whole day, 24 hours, and you haven't taken a drink. And this makes you a member of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I said, do you mean that? Do you really mean that I'm a member of AA? Oh, glory. Glory. Thank you. Thank you so much. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. I didn't think of that. All I was thinking of was I was receiving acceptance. I had always, all my life, wanted to be acceptable. And this man was telling me that I now was something, that I now was no longer a nothing. And I had thought of myself as a nothing. And I stayed sober a month. And I was down to just a sort of a jerk. And a guy come over to me and he says, Charlie, you certainly are doing a wonderful job. I said, thank you. I stayed sober a whole year. And they baked me a cake, put a candle on it, and let me lead a meeting. And after the meeting, folks come up shaking hands, pat me on the back. Charlie, you're doing a wonderful job. I said, I know it. I said, I know you're doing a wonderful job. I'm not acceptable. I'm accepting whatever you might want to call it, congratulations or glory. You deserve it. You are defeating a common enemy by walking together, shoulder to shoulder, and fighting a killer enemy that kills 19 out of every 20 of us, you and me. You are the survivors. And this is something to crow about. This is something to congratulate one another for. I know my time is up. I want to tell you a little bit about me. Before ever I came to thinking that I needed AA, I used to get up in the morning, before I was ever fired, and I'd be sitting on the side of the bed with one sock on and one off, wondering whether I was getting up or going to bed. I was a slow learner. A guy told me in AA one day, they had gotten me a job washing dishes, $7 a week, and I was looking down my nose at the unemployed. I had gotten out of the flophouse, and I was living in a $3 a week hall room with a chair painted on the wall. And I was proud. And this guy called me over to the side and he said, Charlie, you're getting uppity. And I said, how can I be getting uppity on $7 a week? He said, you're ignorant. He said, boy, he said, you're double dumb. I said, how can you be double dumb? He said, you're ignorant of the fact that you're ignorant. And I was. Everything that I learned in AA, everything came to me the hard way. People worked with me. People were patient with me. I was one of these type of guys that, you know how they used to say, I guess some folks still do, stay with us for 90 days and if you don't like our program, we'll give you back your misery. Well, they don't do that no more. They let you stay in AA for 90 days and if you don't like it, they make you a counselor. And then you make everybody miserable. But I got to tell you a little story. They brought me up in AA and I went home that night. Home. I went back to the Flophouse. A guy had given me 50 cents and he gave me a car token. He said, this will get you back to Flophouse. And he gave me another car token. He said, I'll get you back here in the morning. I went out that door. He said, I want you to remember you belong here with us. We need you. I went out that door and I was walking straight and I got on that streetcar and I went down to 9th and E and I paid that 50 cents for that flop and I went back in that room and I laid down and I was nervous and I was sick and I couldn't sleep and I was shaking and I kept remembering you wonderful, wonderful people. I kept remembering you wonderful ladies. I kept remembering you wonderful men. I kept remembering your eyes. It was so clear and steady and how your handclasp was so firm and sincere. And I remembered that I wanted to be like you men. I wanted to be able to walk with a sure footstep. And you ladies, you were so gracious. Your lipstick was on your lips. You didn't look like you'd been hit in the mouth with it. And your hair was combed. You didn't look like a bed that hadn't been made up in about a week. And I thought how wonderful it would be. Your dresses were cut so that they hung straight all the way around. And all your cargo was battened down. No slippage. I thought wouldn't it be great if I could introduce my mother to these people. Wouldn't it be great if they really meant it. And after that meeting I remembered you people coming up to me and you would look at me and you didn't faint. You looked at me and you saw the condition I was in and you patted me on the back and you shook my hand and you said two words that may be the most important, two words that I have ever learned in my whole life. You said to me, come back. And I lay there in that old dirty cot in that flop house and I couldn't pray. I didn't know how to pray but I hoped. I hoped that you meant it. You had planted hope in the breast of a hopeless, helpless human being. And I hoped you meant it and I kept remembering what you said. You said, come back, come back, come back. And this kept beating in unison with my heart into my numb brain. Come back, come back, come back. And I hoped you meant it. No, it was dawn and I was still there with this thing beating in my mind like a tune that you can't make leave. Come back, come back, come back, come back. I got up and it took till almost noon to shave. I didn't take a bath. You said, easy does it. I walked up. I didn't use that car token. I walked up to go up to the club. I walked up to the club because I had the horrors and I couldn't get close to a streetcar. I walked up and there was a slushy snow on the ground. I walked up and as I started up that long flight of stairs to rejoin you, my brothers and sisters, and my heart was still pounding and this thing still kept saying, come back, come back. I couldn't make it leave me. And as I got about halfway up those stairs, I looked down at me and I said, come back, come back, come back, come back, come back, come back, come back, come back at me and what I was and I started to turn away from you because I couldn't stretch my imagination far enough to make me believe that a whole room full of nice, clean, intelligent human beings had invited me back. And I started to walk away and then this thing came to me from within or without. It came to me and it seemed said to me in a way that I could understand at my intellectual level as it existed then, that day. This thing said to me, boy, you better damn sight go up to those people, because if anybody's going to lose, it's got to be them. You haven't got anything left to lose. And I went on up those stairs, and you know there's an advantage to just having one top tooth. There's no way in the world that you can grin at anybody with just one tooth, and they don't grin back. No way. And I went upstairs there, and I stuck my head in the door, and I grinned with that top tooth. And there were seven or eight guys there in that room, and they looked out there, and one of these guys recognized me from the night before. And he said, there he is. There's Charlie. This is the guy I was telling you about was in here last night. That son of a bitch was big. He was hitting on me. I'm glad he won. Man, I went in there, and you talk about sponsorship. Whoo! Everybody in there picked up on me. Even them, they come in earlier that day. And nobody gave me any who struck John. Nobody handed me any of this stuff like you see in the missions. I remember out on the West Coast, and when I see your speaker that you're going to have at the banquet tonight, I think of that West Coast. I think of that West Coast. I think of that West Coast. I think of that West Coast. I think of that West Coast. I think of that West Coast. I think of that West Coast. I've been up there a lot of time up in Los Angeles, just north of his town. And I remember going to them missions, and you would walk in one of them missions, and you'd look like the wrath of God and feel like the wrath of God. And you'd walk in there, and one of them wonderful church people that would be on duty that day would come up just planting up there, you know, and they'd take a look at you, and then take a double take. Oh, my God, what will I say to him? I'm not prepared for this. And then they would look at you, and they'd come up with this, brother. Brother? And you'd think, damn, they don't know you're on Kenfo. And then there was such a thing to me that I never did understand. Don't to this day. They would look at you with them little pale blue eyes and say, have you been saved? And you'd think, great, day in the morning, if I've been saved, what do the rejects look like? You folks didn't hand me any of that who struck John. A guy came over to me, and he looked at me, and he said, boy, do you think you can hold a cup of coffee on your stomach? I don't want to have to mop this floor. I could understand that. A guy looked at me, and I had on these old relievers for shoes. He said, my God, boy, your feet must be frozen. Go on over there and take them old wet shoes off and put your feet on that radiator. I did. He regretted it. I don't think they asked anybody to listen. They stayed to warm their feet on the radiator in Washington, D.C. People started bringing me stuff in. A guy brought me some socks. Another guy brought me some underwear. Another fellow gave me a pair of pants, and he said, put these on, and then you won't be embarrassed. I wasn't embarrassed. I was used to it. He was embarrassed. Another guy came and sidled up to me, and he had an overcoat, and he said, here, let me swap you this for yours. I don't know. I never did see that overcoat no more. I didn't even get my razor blade out of it. And there was a guy there who gave me a laxative. I needed that, too. Actually, I think that's what hooked me in AA. I couldn't leave it if I wanted to. I'm drinking this hot coffee and shaking them hands. Excuse me. I've got to go. And I loved it. I loved it, and I was sent over. Thank you. Whatever power there was that had brought me back, whatever power it was that had set me down amongst you, my brothers and sisters, my siblings, I knew something had happened. I had come back. It had been five years since I had first entered AA, and that was the day that the message got through to me. That was the day that was my last drink. That was the time when I joined rank. And I wasn't playing games any more. I hear people say the name of the game, and it sort of hurts me when I think that this is not a game. This is a disease. And you are the people who were patient enough with me during the worst part of my illness that brought me back. A spiritual awakening. I've had many of them, not just one, but many of them. And I'm going to tell you a story that I've told all over this country. And this story exemplifies how I feel about you. You see, I love you, and I love you and you and you. I remember about this love when they used to talk to me about love, and I didn't understand what they meant. And there was a great big rough-looking guy came up to me one day. And he said, boy, I love you. And I said, I'm married. You don't get this all at once. And you don't understand about love all at once. It takes a while. But I want you to know that this story that I'm about to wind up this talk with exemplifies exactly how I feel about you. I wish to God that I could project my personality into your life. Into the hearts of every man and woman in this hall and let you know. Maybe this story will help. It has to do with a ship that was sinking in the North Atlantic Ocean. The night was freezing cold and it was pitch black. And the wind was blowing and howling and the ship had lost its rudder. And the captain had given orders to abandon ship. Pandemonium reigned on board the deck as these people scurried around trying to find their respective lifeboats and get their loved ones in so that they might be saved. Some of the boats had been lowered over the side. And the captain was shining his searchlight down into the waters. And he shone his light on the one lifeboat that was overloaded. And he got his megaphone and shouted down to these people. You people in number 10 lifeboat, you're overloaded. Three of you men are going to have to jump overboard or you'll all drown. My God, what a decision for three men who thought their lives had been spared to make. Finally a man stood up, tall and straight, and he saluted. He said, Viva la France and jumped overboard. And after a long wait, another man stood up. He too saluted and he said, There'll always be an England. And he too disappeared in those dark waters, never to be seen again. And then after what seemed to be an interminable wait, another man, an American, a Texan, stood up, tall and straight. And he said, Remember the Alamo and picked up a Mexican and threw him overboard. Well, that's it. That's how I feel about Alcoholics Anonymous. If ever the time comes when we get overloaded, there ain't no need coming up to me and telling me about it, because I ain't going nowhere. I love you. I refuse to comment on that one. It was wonderful. And thank you, Charlie. We love you, boy. Y'all remember we have a banquet coming up at 7 o'clock? And you may not believe this, but the speaker that is to speak at the closing of the banquet and prior to the dance is in the same category with the speakers you've already heard. It's hard to believe. We are the luckiest people in the world. And I'm talking about the people here in Tupelo or in this third district who found these wonderful members of AA. Let's close the meeting with a Lord's Prayer. Stand and join me, please. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom. The power. And the glory. Forever and ever. Amen.