An Insidious Illness of Mind, Body, and Soul — Willpower Alone Never Conquered Any Disease – Gil L.

About This Speaker Tape

Gil L. of Muleshoe, Texas opens with a long stretch of West Texas humor — KMUL radio gags, the football coach named George Washington trying to phone John Paul Jones, the Frigidaire whiskey story his late wife wanted him to tell — before turning hard into the heart of his message: alcoholism is an insidious sickness of mind, body, and soul, and the only thing that arrested it for him was Alcoholics Anonymous and people willing to walk alongside him.

The spine of the talk is the Stephen Foster story. One hundred years ago this January, the songwriter who gave the world My Old Kentucky Home and Beautiful Dreamer died alone in the poor ward at Bellevue Hospital with 38 cents and a slip of paper reading 'Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts.' Gil uses Foster to explain the ignorance 'born of tradition and environment' that surrounded alcoholism in his own life — his mother dying of tuberculosis when he was a boy, never allowed to kiss her on the mouth; his own first drink at 15 in a band car; the glass crutch he leaned on for a squawky high note in a high school auditorium duet that later crumbled and cut him to pieces.

He traces the progression through repertoire shows where he was fired and rehired three times, a California radio audition he drank himself out of, a dynamite shoot-blaster's helper job in Climax, Colorado where the whiskey down in Leadville was more dangerous than the powder, Judge Tom in West Texas saying 'Gilbert, I just can't understand a fellow like you,' and finally being sent to the Austin state hospital as a hopeless habitual drunkard. His wife wrote the New York box number from a Reader's Digest article. A man named Ed walked into that locked ward, looked him in the eye, and said 'I understand' — the kindest words Gil ever heard.

The last quarter is recovery: seven more years of flophouses and jails before a stranger named John Parker outside a Joplin, Missouri jail made the phone call to Carl in Lubbock that lit the flame again. Gil closes with the Muleshoe Chamber of Commerce naming him Citizen of the Year, the trip to New York as an AA delegate to see the office that answered his wife's letter, and a closing plea: Higher Power has provided no substitute for you — somebody is dying because the one person who could reach them stayed home from the meeting.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Paul introduces Gil Lamb of Muleshoe, Texas with Okie/Arizonan jokes
• 2:30 Gil opens — 'a sign of damn good judgment' to seek help; the Frigidaire whiskey story his late wife wanted him to tell
• 6:00 KMUL radio bits — George Washington the coach trying to phone John Paul Jones at Martin, Texas; 'get ready, because they're bringing it in'
• 14:00 Stephen Foster dies in the poor ward at Bellevue with 38 cents and a slip reading 'Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts' — ignorance born of tradition and environment
• 23:00 First drink at 15 in the band car — four boys, one died of DTs, one couldn't drink, one married and quit, Gil was the only one who got drunk
• 32:00 California radio audition — got the part, took 'a little drink that never hurt anybody,' set up a compulsion no angels in heaven could stop
• 40:00 Climax, Colorado dynamite work — the whiskey down in Leadville more dangerous than the powder smoke
• 46:00 Judge Tom: 'Gilbert, I just can't understand a fellow like you' — sent to Austin state hospital as a hopeless habitual drunkard
• 52:00 Ed walks into the locked ward, looks him in the eye, and says 'I understand' — the kindest words Gil ever heard
• 65:00 Closing — Muleshoe Chamber of Commerce names him Citizen of the Year; 'God has provided no substitute for you'