Curiosity Got Him Sober Because Fear Couldn’t and Willpower Wouldn’t – Jerry G.

I have a dream every time I start to talk, and it's kind of a reoccurring dream.
It happens to me every time I talk.
Me and my buddy Mike and James are out driving our car, and we have an accident,
and we end up going to heaven.
See, because we're in the program.
And we get to St. Peter at the Pearly Gates,
and St. Peter issues transportation about how faithful you'd been to your wife.
Well, seeing as Mike's wife's here tonight, St. Peter asked Mike,
have you ever cheated on your wife?
And Mike said, absolutely not.
St. Peter gave Mike a real nice Cadillac.
James was asked by St. Peter, have you ever cheated on your wife?
And old James says, yeah, about three or four times.
They gave James a little Chevy Nova.
Of course, me being a braggadocious alcoholic that I am, they say,
have you ever cheated on your wife?
I say, three, four thousand times.
They gave me a bicycle.
A couple days later, I'm sitting on the side of the road,
and Mike comes driving up, and I'm sitting there crying,
and he looks at me and says, Jerry, what is the problem?
And I said, you don't understand.
And he says, come on, we were in the program of AA,
and we share, and we don't keep any secrets.
What was your problem?
I can't tell you.
And he says, come on, come on, tell me.
I said, well, my wife died two days ago,
and I'd just seen her go by on a pair of roller skates.
Hi, I'm Jerry Gilbertson.
I'm a grateful alcoholic.
Hi, Jerry.
It's been through the grace of God and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous
I have found necessary to drink since March the 7th of 1983.
And that's truly a miracle.
It's a miracle in my life.
And somebody said it earlier, you know, that's what I do.
I drink.
I did well at it.
I was good at it.
They ask us to share in a general way what it used to be like,
what happened, and what it's like today.
And I can say I got drunk, I sobered up,
and it's the greatest thing going in the world.
And I did the 12 steps in about 30 minutes,
and my life has just been a complete bed of roses.
And we can all close with the Lord's Prayer.
But that ain't really how it happened.
So I'm going to have to dig a little deeper than that.
I was born in Watertown, South Dakota, and that's a good reason to drink.
If any of you ever want to visit Watertown, you'll understand.
I didn't live there but about three weeks.
See, I was an alcoholic from the beginning.
We moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, Omaha, Nebraska, Kansas City, Kansas.
When I was about 11 years old, I got to Dallas.
My dad was in the airline business with Braniff Airlines
from the time it started until the time it quit.
I'd like to tell you when I remember my first drink,
but I drank when I was that high.
My dad would be having a party, and I'd take a sip out of his booze,
you know, a little drink of beer or what have you.
And so, you know, alcohol was never really a problem.
It bothered me.
I knew I had an inside hate towards alcohol in a certain way
because when dad would have a party, they'd get real loud.
You know how people get when they have parties.
They say things, and they're real loud, and I'd be laying in bed,
and it kind of bugged me.
So at about 16, 15, 16 years old, when I really tried it for the first time,
I can recall this, and I'll kind of share this with you because it's kind of fun.
I had a little old chopped down, chopped and channeled Mercury a buddy of mine had.
No door handles, and this was back in the 50s.
Now you've got to realize I'm over 21.
And had them little old squinchy windows about this big and no door handles.
Cops couldn't have got in if they wanted to without a can opener.
And we went and bought some booze.
There was four of us, and we bought four cases.
This is a beer.
We bought two-fifths of vodka, two-fifths of scotch, and two-fifths of whiskey.
That was for four of us for the evening to do a little cruising.
And so naturally, we're cruising along.
We figured we better impress the girls.
They knew we'd have booze, so they might go with us, you know,
because I had a hard time getting girls.
So we lifted the trunk of the car up and reached in, and each got us a cold beer.
And about that time, about five squad cars pulled in around us.
And they...
Field stripped the car, and they thought we had drugs.
Now, back in the 50s, drugs was marijuana.
I mean, there was heroin and other stuff, too, but you never heard about it,
but marijuana and that stuff.
So they field stripped our car, had us there for about three hours,
loaded all of our booze into their car,
told us they were going to call our parents and tell them.
They didn't take us to jail.
And so I went home that night, and if you've ever gone,
if you've ever had that feeling that every time the phone rang,
it was those people calling your dad.
Well, every time that phone rang for about the next four or five days,
I was in terror.
And finally, I said, I've got to fess up.
So I told Dad, I said, Dad, you ain't going to believe what happened last Saturday night.
He said, What?
I said, Well, we're driving along, and my buddy's got a bunch of booze in the trunk.
And I don't know what the heck he's doing with booze in the trunk,
but the police stopped us, and they took all our booze,
and they're going to call you and tell you that we were fixing to drink it.
And I'd certainly...
It ain't mine.
I wasn't going to drink it.
And he grounded me for a couple weeks.
I'm 63 years old.
The Dallas cops have never called my dad to today.
Resentment.
All of a sudden, I'm developing resentments.
I'm resenting the police.
They lie.
They didn't call my dad.
They took the booze.
They went home that night.
The next day, they partied down.
They had a good time with it.
Excuse me.
And that was my first attempt at really organized drinking.
I had a bad problem when I started drinking.
I have a physical allergy.
The book tells me that.
My physical allergy is that I couldn't drink.
I could drink two beers, and they'd stop right here.
The third beer would...
Have you ever drank a beer or two or three,
and all of a sudden, you feel it start coming back the other way,
the way it's not supposed to be?
See some heads nodding, yeah.
Well, I was an Olympic sprayer.
For those of you that don't know what an Olympic sprayer is,
I'd drink a couple beers,
and then that third one would start coming back up.
And then I wouldn't want to be embarrassed in front of my friends,
so I'd put my hand over my mouth and kind of turn them like this.
And what came out of there was spray between my fingers.
Long-distance spray.
At 11 years old, my dad fed me beets.
Now, some of you in here like beets, some of you, I can't stand them.
I see some heads going this-a-way.
I was fed beets, and I'd been eating mashed potatoes
and all the good stuff that goes with it,
but dad says, you're going to eat your beets.
And I says, okay.
So I crunched into it, and I threw it in my mouth,
and I chewed it and swallowed it.
About the second half a beet I put in my mouth,
I could feel it doing what the beer did,
deciding to come back.
So I did the only thing I knew to do,
put my hand over my mouth, turned my head,
and sprayed beets in my mouth.
And I got the juice and all that stuff out on the table.
The reason I tell you this story is I am 63 years old.
I have never put another beet in my mouth.
That beet made me sick.
But I'm standing in front of a group of Alcoholics Anonymous tonight.
What does that tell you?
From the get-go, I had to do it again and again and again,
expecting it to be different.
And it never was.
I did learn not to spray.
A new phenomenon happened called blackouts.
They're fun sometimes, and sometimes they're not.
You know, when you wake up in the morning,
you run outside to see how many fenders you have on your car,
not a good thing.
I've done a lot of that.
I got up one Sunday morning.
I can remember leaving the golf course on Saturday afternoon
where a cold front had come through,
and we had bottles of whiskey in our bag.
Everybody carried whiskey in their bags, you know.
In fact, you leave a couple of clubs at a house
to have room for your fist of whiskey.
And we decided to play 36 holes that day,
and the second 18, a cold front comes through,
and it just got blistering cold.
But we just sucked in that old scotch and whiskey, whatever we had,
and we just got wasted.
And I left the golf course,
and the last thing I remember going home was leaving the golf course,
and that was at Plano Municipal.
And I came down Jupiter to get back home.
Saturday, Sunday morning, I woke up in stark, graven terror
because the last thing I remember was a man in his car
holding his hands up like this in the middle of the intersection
and dust coming over the top of my car,
and the brakes are squealing.
And that's the last thing I remembered.
I got up in terror.
I ran to the back door, and I looked out to see if my car was there,
and it was there, and there was no damage on it.
But the next thing I thought, I'd probably run over somebody.
So I go out to get in my car, and my wife says,
Where are you going?
I said, Well, I'm going to the golf course.
I said, Well, I'm going to get a paper.
And I drove all the way back up to the golf course
to see if anything had happened,
maybe a wanted sign or something that said, you know,
this Camaro had ran a red light and killed three people,
and we need to find them.
You know, that was what was going through my mind.
My whole life of alcohol, of drinking alcohol, was exactly like that.
It was show and tell.
Most of the guys that I ran with, you know, they'd go home,
and I'd still be drinking with the last guy that wanted to drink,
and they'd go home with their family or whatever, and I'd go to jail.
I got a bunch of that going.
I got thrown in jail an awful lot.
I spent three years in California, and the three years I was out there,
I managed to muster up about 25 arrests, two DWIs.
I have no problem with alcohol.
I want you to know that.
And I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I had no problem with alcohol.
I came to visit y'all.
I lost my license in California, moved back to Dallas,
married a lady that I'd fallen in love with.
I'd fallen in love just about.
We was talking about that before the meeting.
I just went through another divorce.
Last Tuesday was my finale of my fourth marriage.
It lasted 11 months.
Of course, the one before that was seven days, so I've come a long way, baby.
But I think it's a heredity.
You reckon that might be what the deal is.
It may be the hair.
But, you know, I fell in love with this lady, and we decided to get married.
And then I got cold feet, and I went to pull into Keller's over there
in Harry Hines to break up with her because I really didn't want to get married.
And she looked in my eyes and said, Jerry, I'm pregnant.
And I said, oh, my gosh, let's get married.
You know, that was how much thought I'd put in that marriage, just let's get married.
Because my dad had always said, if you're going to play, you've got to pay.
I got married, stayed married to her for 17 years.
I used to think they were wonderful, glorious years.
And if you'd have asked me before I came to this program, I'd have told you I was the best husband.
I was the best father.
I was probably the very best employee that Stakely Chevrolet ever had.
And in reality, I was in all of them.
I was a bad dad.
Out of the 18 or 17 years my son was around the house, I went to two of his ballgames, I think.
That's ridiculous.
That's ridiculous.
That's ridiculous.
Something to be proud of.
I was busy.
I had to play golf or do something else.
My wife, in the 17 years we were married, all she wanted was me to go a couple times a year to family reunions,
once to her dad's side and once to her mother's side.
In the 17 years we were married, I went to two family reunions.
Selfishness, self-centeredness.
That is a root of our problem.
I can tell you a whole bunch of other drunk stories.
I do want to tell you the last one because I like to talk about how it's like today because it's wonderful.
March, in 1983, 82, December of 82, I got my fourth and final DWI.
And it's a two-phase deal.
It was a couple weeks apart.
I was going through a divorce with my second wife.
And my used car manager says, why don't you all come over to Stewart Anderson tonight, Cattle Company.
It was a restaurant on Greenville Avenue.
And they had twofers on Wednesday nights.
You buy one, you get one free.
What a deal for a drunk.
So I took a little nudge out of my scotch bottle at work because I drank a little at work, you know, from about 4 o'clock on.
I sometimes do it at 3, but mostly 4 or 5 o'clock.
And I was getting up this courage because I have a hard time asking ladies to dance.
I'm just a real shy person, you know what I'm saying?
And so I built up a little courage and I went over to Stewart Anderson,
walked through the door and kind of danced with the waitress a little bit and feeling good.
Went over to my buddies.
Looked around to see if there was anybody in there, you know, a victim that would be willing to dance with me.
Ordered me a scotch.
And I says, let me have a couple scotches.
And she says, okay, you get two.
And I says, well, you better bring me, I want to buy two because I know it's twofers.
But, you know, you look real busy.
And there was probably, you know, six people in the whole damn joint.
And 38 waitresses.
She brought me over my four scotches and I put them on this little old round table by the dance floor.
And I found me a lady that said she'd dance.
And we started dancing.
And we danced and I sipped and bought her drinks and I'd go by the table and I'd suck another one down.
And it got to be 1.32 o'clock.
I was whispering in her ear, you know.
I have another problem.
My tongue gets real big when I drink.
It gets four times the size of my mouth.
It's full of, you know, almost have to use sign language.
So anyway, I convinced her she needs to go home with me.
So we go out to the car and as I walk out the door, the phenomenon of blackout occurs.
And when I come to, I'm laying in a parking lot of an apartment complex in Irving, Texas, I thought.
Oh, you were there?
I hope you ain't the lady.
I hope you're not her.
I've been, the last 20 years it's been bugging me.
I hope it ain't her.
But I'm laying in this parking lot on the ground and I got a flat tire on my 1982 Camaro Demo.
Left rear tire's flat.
And I hate to admit it, but I couldn't find my spare.
I'm a service manager of a big dealership at the time.
And I couldn't find my little old spare.
And so I figured I'll go get some help.
So I started knocking on doors of these apartments and feeling the door handle.
And when I found the door handle unlocked, I just walked into people's apartment.
And I hollered, hey, can I use your phone?
And nobody answered but by the grace of God.
I shouldn't be here tonight.
I did that in two different ways.
Two different ways.
One, I was driving in apartments.
Finally, I went back out to my car.
Started it up and backed up.
You know how, yeah, you've driven on a flat tire, huh?
And I got out on what I thought was MacArthur Boulevard.
And I says, if I go 50 miles an hour, the air will come right back in this tire.
So I gas it a little bit.
And rubber comes flying by the window.
And I pulled over in this Denny's.
And I says, man, I can't go any further.
Went in.
Got on the telephone.
Got my big, thick tongue.
Said, I'm in Irving.
I'll be home in a little bit.
OK, Dad.
And he hung up.
I got back in my car and started to drive a little further.
And I just couldn't.
You never had that feeling.
You've just gone as far as you can go.
I'm done.
I'm just wore out.
I got to pull over.
I pulled over, laid my head back, and passed out.
When I came to, which was probably just an hour, hour and a half, there was some people
walking by.
Says, how are you this morning?
Well, I'm just fine.
You know, I got out of my car.
And I found my spare.
They'd hid it in the side, you know, in the back underneath the car.
Put it on the back underneath the carpet and all that stuff.
And I got that little dinky thing out.
And I got it put on.
And I go down what I thought was McArthur Boulevard.
And I turned underneath this underpass.
And then I made a right hand turn under the underpass.
And all of these cars were coming at me.
And they were blowing their horn and giving me that third finger and screaming at me.
And if y'all are familiar with this part of town, Central Expressway, north of LBJ, there's
a street called LBJ.
It's called Midpark.
Well, the TI traffic goes there in the morning coming north.
And I was going south.
And I went underneath that underpass at Midpark.
And when I got to the other side, I turned back to the right, which is oncoming traffic.
And they were coming fast.
And I spun around.
I got up on the road.
And I'm driving along.
And I see Beltline and Main Street.
And I says, by gosh, I didn't know Beltline and Main Street went clear out here in Irving.
Well, hell, I was about eight blocks from home.
I got home.
And I did what normal people do.
I shaved.
I showered.
And I went to work.
And I'm drunk.
And for the first time in my life, I said, maybe I got a problem with alcohol.
I don't think I'll drink tomorrow.
Next day, I didn't drink.
Next day, I think I had a couple beers.
You know, I felt like I ought to just kind of have a beer or two.
Hell, I'm not even ever once thinking of alcoholism, not even thinking of it at all.
My mother used to say, Gerald, you have such bad luck.
Boy, when she said that, I said, you're right, Mom.
You know, hell, right on.
You know, my mama knows her stuff.
And that Saturday, we went to play golf.
I drank a little out of that bogey bottle.
Sunday, I had a little more nudge.
You know, Monday and Tuesday went along.
Wednesday, my used car manager called me and said, you going over to Stewart & Anderson tonight?
Oh, I wouldn't miss it.
One week.
One week.
I'm doing the same thing again, expecting a different result.
I drank a little out of my nudge bottle in the office.
I went back to Stewart & Anderson Cattle Company.
I danced with that same little old waitress.
I walked over there and met my guys, and we ordered some twofers.
That same gal was there, wasn't you?
I know.
She was sitting there, lonesome, just like she was last week.
I asked her to dance.
She says, let's go.
Got up and we started dancing.
She fit good.
You know what I mean?
Some of them just fit better than others.
And she was fitting good, and we were dancing, and I was talking to her,
and pretty soon I decided we'd go home.
So this time we walked out the door.
The phenomenon of blackout hit me again.
It's got to be the air over there, I think, really.
You know, the sudden change of atmosphere from inside to outside.
I think that's what did it.
This time I woke up.
I was in the arms of a man with a blue suit on.
.
. . . . . . .
I really assumed it was my cab company, because they picked me up a lot.
It was a Dallas police officer.
His name was Mr. Garcia.
Mr. Garcia had me like this, holding me up, and he says,
You're going to kill yourself.
And I had not a clue what he was talking about.
I said, What are you talking about?
You don't know?
I said, Well, I know what you're talking about.
He put me in the car and wrote me up my fourth DWI.
They took me to jail.
And a couple weeks later, I see this was all still the first DWI before in 1982, my last DWI.
January the 7th, my dad fell through a plate glass window, and he couldn't sober up, and he couldn't get drunk.
He had acute alcoholism.
My dad's never been in a jailhouse.
He's never been arrested.
He's had the same wife for, oh, my God, until he died, 55 years.
He had the same job all of his life.
And dad was an alcoholic, and they put him in Brookhaven Hospital.
And it was a sad thing for me to hear my dad got alcoholism.
They asked me to go to an Al-Anon meeting.
And I said, What?
And they said, Al-Anon.
And I said, It's a family disease.
And I says, I didn't cause my dad to drink.
He says, Yeah, but you were affected by it.
Well, I'll go to the meeting.
So I went to this Al-Anon meeting.
It was in a church.
I didn't understand much about it.
And then we had to go to a family meeting at Brookhaven.
And we sit around there, and there was a guy sitting next to me.
He had this big old belly.
He was yellow.
He had cirrhosis.
He died before he got out of the hospital.
My father came in, and he was doing the Thorazine shuffle.
And he was taking little old bitty steps like this.
And he could hardly walk, and he couldn't hardly talk.
He nearly died.
He did celebrate almost 15 years of sobriety before.
In fact, his 15th year was in January, and he died in December of 99.
And, you know, they say curiosity killed the cat.
And curiosity sobered up Jerry Gilbertson.
I used to have, there was a guy at our dealership named Mo Johnson.
And Mo used to see me come in in the morning.
He'd give me a little wink.
He'd say, I'm saving you a seat.
That's what happened tonight, you know.
That's the seat Mo saved me.
Where are you going to save me a seat at, Mo?
It's a little place where I go where I don't drink one day at a time.
I said, oh, you have a problem with drinking?
He says, well, yeah, I do.
And he shared a little bit about his problem.
I don't have a problem drinking, Mo.
And he says, well, I noticed that.
Was that your demo they pulled in this morning behind the wrecker?
I said, yeah, yeah.
What was the fender doing in the trunk?
Oh, you know, Mo, it was slick last night, snow and everything.
He says, Jerry, it's July.
I always had an excuse for everything, you know.
Well, somebody threw banana peels out there, you know.
Well, I'm saving you a seat.
So I went to an AA meeting.
This was in February.
I went to an AA meeting, and Jim Williams was doing a step.
No, it wasn't either.
Mo was finishing up the steps.
He was on step 10, 11, and 12.
And he introduced me to his friends.
And, God, what a neat deal.
I walked in, and I felt there was something funny about it.
It was just, it felt different.
I mean, everybody was so friendly, and they're just sparkling people's eyes.
And they were saying hi to Mo when he was introducing me.
This is Ray Kay and all those guys, Bob Carper and all them guys.
Wow, what a deal this was.
And I sat down.
I had no clue what was going to happen.
Looked at those steps on the wall, and I said, oh, I see that God deal there.
And I said, I know what this deal is.
I guarantee you it's one of them cult things.
So Mo got me off into a deal.
And he got behind the podium, and he started talking about himself.
And he started talking about a God.
And he started talking about Alcoholics Anonymous.
He started sharing from the heart.
I'd never heard anybody do that before.
And I was, wow.
After the meeting, I said, man, this is something else.
They'd offered one of these silly little chips.
Would you like to try one of those?
Would you like to try our way of life one day at a time?
And my little old butt wanted to get off that stool and go get one.
But I said, whoa, wait a minute.
He said one day at a time.
That's a commitment.
I've had a hard time committing to marriages.
I've had a hard time committing to anything but a job.
I don't think I'll take one of them.
So I didn't.
I went home that night, and I poured me some scotch, you know, about half full.
God dang.
It didn't taste good.
It didn't taste good.
Something happened.
One meeting, something happened.
I think the spirit gods did something to my scotch.
They made it flat or something.
I poured it down the sink.
I didn't drink that night.
Went back to Moe the next day.
I said, hey, that's pretty cool.
You know, I kind of like that, Moe.
He says, well, you want to go to another one?
I said, oh, yeah, I'll go to one.
He said, we've got one tonight.
I can't go tonight.
I'm busy.
All of a sudden, you know, you know how we change.
It don't take us long.
So I don't think I'll take one.
So I don't think I can make it tonight.
He said, well, okay, how about next week?
When?
I said, Monday.
Oh, okay, I'll go.
So I went back next Monday, and Jim Williams did the steps.
And for those of you that have got any sobriety, you probably know that Jim Williams is no
longer with us.
He's at that big meeting in the sky.
He was probably one of the goofiest speakers I've ever heard.
He did the steps.
He talked for an hour four weeks in a row.
He talked for an hour.
You don't know what the heck he said.
You don't know why he said it, but you knew you needed to hear it, if you can understand that.
And he says, you don't know until you know you're going to know.
Then you'll know you don't know.
Stuff like that.
And I said, oh, yeah, and just laughed, just a belly laugh.
He was a great, great, great, great guy.
He really delivered a message.
They offered that little chip.
And I jumped right up and grabbed it.
And I turned around, and Aquarius at the time, that's where I sobered up, was full, packed.
Full.
Jim used to pack them in.
And I'm back to my seat.
People were patting me on the back.
Keep coming back.
Man, we're glad to see you.
We love you, man.
And I had no clue what they were talking about, none whatsoever.
And, you know, for the next two years, I sat around in these rooms, and I tried to become a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous by osmosis.
And I'm here to report to you tonight it don't work.
It will not work.
James said he's had 10 years trying to stay sober.
Thank God I had Mo Johnson at the dealership where I was working.
Because let me tell you something.
Without alcohol in my system to calm down those restless, irritable, and discontent feelings, I was unbelievable.
I was quick.
I always like to say behind every cloud there's a silver lining.
I've heard that all my life in churches, the Lutheran Church.
I've only been in the Catholic Church a couple times when they were doing that thing with the water.
I was going like this.
But, you know, where was I?
I took a shower there a minute ago.
I got off the track.
Then my train ran off the track.
What was I thinking?
What?
Come on, James.
Silver lining.
Silver lining.
That's it.
Mo reports to me that he's got, he's been having these blackout spells.
And he's got terminal cancer.
He's got 11 tumors on the base of his brain and half of his lung is gone.
And he's going to die.
Here's a man that I, and I don't recommend this, I had put this man on a pedestal.
This man was my higher power.
This man had everything I wanted.
He was a gentle man.
He was a nurturing man.
He wanted me to be happy.
He didn't tell me, you've got to do this.
He said, Jerry, I suggest you do that.
Oh, but I don't want to.
Well, don't then.
You suffer the consequences.
I used to go to, Monday night football was my favorite deal.
One night I walked into Mo and she's going to a meeting tonight.
I said, oh, can't go tonight, Mo.
Green Bay and Dallas are playing.
And I'm going to be there watching on television.
He says, really?
I said, no sir.
Green Bay and Dallas are playing.
He says, let me share something with you, son.
If you get drunk, you go talk to Tom Landry.
Guess where I was that night?
I went to a meeting.
And I got to see the second half of the game.
And that was good enough for me.
And that's the way I do it now.
If I've got an AA commitment on Monday night, I go do my commitment.
You know, Mike and I were talking about it before the meeting.
The third step is to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.
That's my will is my actions, my life, and my thoughts and my actions.
That's my will and my life.
And if I do that, I don't have a life.
I do have a life, but it ain't mine.
You know, and tonight I'm at my job.
My job is to be of maximum service to God and my fellows.
All else is secondary.
If I put me ahead of that, I have big troubles.
I'd like to report to you that in the last 20 years,
I've never put me ahead of that, but it'd be a lie.
I've put me ahead of it a lot.
And every time I've done it, something's happened until I get back in that right order.
And when I get back in that right order, down that line, good things happen,
even when bad things happen.
You know, that silver lining we're talking about.
Moe's dying of cancer.
People are coming to visit him in the hospital.
I was there every day.
I go over to his house and sit with him.
He comes to me and says,
Man, I can't believe it.
It's been so over 16 years, and now they're making a drug addict out of me.
Give me another shot.
He was making a transition, and what a way to make it.
It was a beautiful thing to watch, as morbid as that sounds.
But I watched Moe die.
Moe showed me how to live, and Moe also showed me how to die with dignity.
And, you know,
he made that transition, and before he did,
he got well enough to where he could come back to work,
and I'd pick him up because I lived over close to him,
and I'd go by his house.
I had an old red Corvette that said Dry 3 on it at the time.
I had no ego in that at all, you know.
People would pull up like,
What does that mean?
I'd say,
Do you have three dry old wells?
I'd say,
Not really.
His girlfriend would say,
I told you, he's a drunk, ain't he?
Aren't you a drunk?
So, but anyway,
I'd pick Moe up.
I'd pick Moe up in my Corvette,
and it didn't ride too good.
It didn't bounce like this no more,
you know, not in good shape.
I'd drive real slow,
and we'd go to meetings,
go to work,
and we'd go have lunch up at North Park.
And, you know,
I was able to get busy on that fourth step that I was telling him I was working on.
You know,
if you're in here tonight,
and you're sitting around on that fourth step,
and you just don't want to do it,
just do it.
Take a little Nike's advice and just do it.
It's so simple.
We lived all this stuff.
All we got to do now is put it down on some paper,
get with a person and a God in a little room,
and let's talk about it.
So simple.
So simple.
I kind of left you hanging on my drunk deal.
I'll go back and finish that up.
I went six months into my sobriety.
I went to court on this DWI at Greenville Avenue I had,
and I still got the rap sheet
on my wall at home.
I got it framed with my temporary driver's license
and some other beautiful things.
And it's a scenario of what happened that very fateful night.
I was going east and west on Greenville Avenue.
Mike knows.
Greenville goes north and south.
At that time,
it was two lane fixing to be four lane.
It was not done yet.
I was that-a-way right out of Stewart Anderson Cattle Company.
I was slumped over the steering wheel,
had another one in black outfits.
I had the car in drive.
The radio was on full blast,
and the doors were locked,
and the engine was running.
And it was January,
or it was December,
the latter part of December.
And they pecked on the window with their nightstick,
and I didn't respond.
And the second time they pecked on the window,
I didn't respond.
They thought I was dead.
And about the time he was fixing to bust the glass out,
I came to,
hit the gas,
and two!
Nearly went off the embankment on the other side.
I got it stopped.
When I came to,
he was holding me,
saying,
you're going to kill yourself.
I know what he was talking about after I read that.
That was six months after it happened.
I sat around.
I tried to become a sober member of AA.
It didn't work.
I got willing to do the steps.
You know, step two talks about willingness.
All you have to do is be willing,
just a little bit.
The key is just open that door ever so slightly,
ever so slightly,
and be just a little willing to move forward.
I did my fourth and fifth step.
I went over to Moe's house,
and one more time,
it's the old drunkenness.
We're just this way.
When I say we,
I'm talking about me.
Maybe you can or maybe you can't relate to it.
For me,
I had finally done my fourth step.
I'm so dadgum proud of that thing.
I knew that Cecil B. DeMille
was going to probably make a movie out of it.
It was going to be a smash hit
in the whole nine yards.
They'll probably do a Broadway show on it too.
I called Moe on a Thursday,
and I said,
Moe,
I got my fourth step done.
I want to do my fifth step tonight.
He said,
Jerry,
I can't do it tonight.
I said,
How come?
He said,
Well,
Bernice and I are getting ready to go to the lake.
We're going to go out tonight,
and then we're going to the lake tomorrow night.
I said,
You can't do it tomorrow night?
He said,
Nope.
I said,
How about Saturday?
He said,
No,
I'm going to be out of town.
I'm going to the lake over the weekend.
He said,
Come over Tuesday night.
Oh,
okay.
You know how we get.
You know,
I worked real hard on this.
Two damn years I've worked on this,
and now you want me to wait.
You know.
Comes Monday.
You know,
I'm like a lot of people.
I just really wasn't too excited about going over there Monday.
I'd done the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat had set in,
you know,
and it just didn't seem like a real cool deal.
Tuesday,
I says,
Well,
I got home.
I says,
I guess I better go.
So,
I get in the car,
and I drive over to Monday.
I said,
Well,
you know,
I'm going to the lake tomorrow night.
I said,
Well,
I got home.
I said,
I got home.
I get in the car,
and I drive over to Moe's.
Knock on the door.
Bernice came to the door.
Hi,
Jerry.
I walked in.
The coffee pot was going.
It smelled so good.
You know,
coffee smells so good and tastes so bad.
Don't know what it is about that.
She went back in the little sewing room,
and Moe says,
You ready?
I said,
Sure am.
I walked around his little room.
He's got a little room off to the side,
and a little AA room.
Got the steps on the wall,
and got a picture of Bob,
and Bill on the wall,
and just an AA room,
and that's what I got in my bedroom.
That's the way it's done up.
So,
he says,
I'd like to pray before I start.
And I said,
Okay.
And we got on our knees,
and he put three pillows in front of our couch,
of his couch.
And he says,
I'm going to kneel here,
and you kneel over there.
And I said,
Well,
who's this in the middle?
He said,
That's where we're going to let God kneel.
You know,
and when you read how it works,
are you willing to go to any length?
You know,
I don't think it's written anywhere in that first 164 pages of big book that we get on our
knees.
But,
I mean,
I don't think it's written anywhere in that first 164 pages of big book that we get on
our knees.
But,
I mean,
I don't think it's written anywhere in that first 164 pages of big book that we get on
our knees and hold hands with another guy,
and put God in the middle.
I don't think it says that anywhere.
But I have to follow what my mentors before me have done,
because it had worked for Moe for 16 years,
so it surely will work for me if I do what he says and what he's done.
And that's what I did.
We held hands.
I don't normally go anywhere with a guy and say,
Let's kneel and hold hands.
You know,
I just don't do that.
And I might try that.
It sounds like it might be a pretty good deal.
But,
you know,
I don't think it's written anywhere in that first 164 pages of big book that we get on our
knees.
You know,
I don't normally go anywhere with a guy and say,
Let's kneel and hold hands.
You know,
I just don't do that.
And,
I might try that.
It sounds like it might be a pretty good deal.
But,
I have bad luck with women.
But anyway,
we're holding hands,
and he says some things,
and he slides his book in front of me,
and he says,
I want you to read that third step prayer.
And the thing is,
those goose livers who said goose livers tonight or goose skin yeah old goose skin over there yeah
i got i'm getting them right now every time i tell this i get them because it just it was just
it was just amazing to me uh i did i felt a commitment a total surrender to something other
than myself it was a feeling i can't describe it and i've had it since but it's not been at near
the magnitude it was that night and it was just an utter feeling all over me that wow
i'm doing something different i'm trying to be different i went ahead and got done and you know
we take and we we got this old go to grave stuff everybody's got something that they just know if
they tell another human being the guy's gonna say you gotta get out of my house you know so i knew
it and and when i did my fourth step i'd written down in t90 little old letters up in the corner
this bad thing that i'd done it was real bad i mean it was bad
and i wrote it down so i'd done my searching and fearless moral inventory but it was there
in the corner in real little bitty letters and uh when we let when we got back and moe leaned back
put his old glasses up on his head and he said let's go with it i hand it to him he said no you
do it and i took it back the first thing out of my mouth the very first words i uttered out of my
mouth was that go to grave thing that i wasn't going to tell a soul i told moe about it he went
i've done that two or three times and boy that really made me mad i thought i was so unique you
know i'd done this bad old thing and it was just awful he saw i've done that two or three times
all of a sudden the power had gone out of this bad deep secret the things i told him the power
is gone i'm a firm believer that when we stuff it when we hold it within us and somebody else said
it from behind this podium tonight it kills us i've got to get it out i've got to talk to somebody
that's what sponsorship is
about if you ain't got a sponsor get one it's vital you know i can read that book and i can
i can read stuff into that book ain't even there but if i'll tell another person about he looks
at where'd you read that at oh it's on page 399 or you know i'm just that way so get a sponsor
get involved become a part of because i tried it without being a part of and it don't work
it's bad bad road just woke up if i felt like i did that first two years i wouldn't be standing
on the podium tonight i guarantee you i'd be out there drinking me some scott i'll probably be in
the graveyard pushing daisies up for you all to watch when you go by you know but uh this ain't
my deal when i got here because i didn't want what you had and i wasn't willing to go to any
length to get it but thank god i stayed around to get the miracle it's here i went home did step
six and seven like the book says got the book down no i'm lying again i got the book out of the trunk
and i looked at the first five proposals to see if i've made a solid foundation
you know know any of those and all i remember is i just looked at the next one and feelяни
nobody broke w yeah i saw those steps four and those sts and those o's they took me up
spanish did they refuse or i didn't they stood up and i tried to stop a Tagineauyeon and
i remember with people really saying well you know you did this too much acl acuerdo
at the mouth it was nothing like and said thing i don't really care what people say
because they knew it was one of the number one and then failed with that problem one
That's controversy.
That's what AA is all about.
We have a little controversy.
I made another list, and I went down that list,
and I highly suggest doing this with a sponsor.
I suggest doing all 12 of these with a sponsor.
And I handed that list to Moe, and he started scratching names off of it.
Oh, that's an ego deal when I tell him what it was about.
And he says, where's your name on here?
I says, well, it ain't on there.
Don't you owe yourself an amends?
Well, I probably do.
Maybe, do I?
I'll bet you tonight if I poll everybody in here,
your own worst critic is going to be yourself.
I know I am.
If I make a mistake at work, nobody beats me up.
My boss don't beat me up.
He tells me what I've done and goes on about his business.
I get over in the corner and go, bing, bing, bing,
with his little hammer and beat me to death, you know.
Think about it for two, three days.
I move under a bridge.
I buy me a Sears refrigerator box to live in.
I do all that stuff.
And it's just.
It's the way I am.
I made my list.
He condensed it out.
He told me to get on with this deal.
I got on with the program.
Step nine, made direct amends to such people wherever possible,
except when to do so would injure them or others.
And he was very explicit on that.
He said, Jerry, you are not others.
And I said, oh, okay.
So that alleviated that.
I made my amends.
I made a lot of amends.
I'm making amends today.
You know, like I said, I'm just going through it.
I just went through a divorce.
And I made amends to her every day.
You know, because I say things.
I've learned a lot about me.
One more time.
One more time.
When I started this deal, I said, I had nothing to do with this divorce.
I did not have nothing to do with this divorce.
And I sit there and I can crucify her.
But you know what I had to do?
I had to get that old pencil and paper out.
And I had to write down some things.
I had to do some talking to some people and find out what my part in it was.
And I had a big part in it.
First thing, I shouldn't have probably been there to begin with.
You know?
Just what?
She had been bugging me for two and a half years to marry her.
And I wouldn't do it.
I said, I'm not going to live with you.
I'm not going to marry you.
I'll be your boyfriend until the day I die.
And then somehow, somewhere, I weakened.
And we got married.
And then she gets a divorce.
She's trying to catch up with me, I think.
I sponsor her first husband.
I sponsored him since 1986.
I've known, I was her best man at her first wedding.
Who'd have thunk it?
You know?
But it went just like it's supposed to.
And guess what?
I didn't take a drink.
You know, I went through that marriage without taking a drink, without even wanting a drink.
But I guarantee you what I have done, I've got close to y'all.
It's amazing how all of a sudden when a little adversity comes along,
and somebody said that behind the podium tonight.
I grasp alcoholics.
I've got alcoholics anonymous with both hands.
Help me.
Help me.
Because I don't know what to do.
I'm not a very good coper at times.
And all I do is come and listen.
I talk to somebody who's got a good marriage going.
What do you do?
He says, well, what did you do?
And I said, well, I went home tonight and I said this.
And then she said something and then I said this.
He says, you said what?
And I said, well, I told her this.
He says, good God, no wonder she's divorcing you.
You know?
And so I said, well, what's wrong with that?
And then he explains it.
And then she says, well, I'm trying to get it to me.
See?
My coping skills ain't real well.
But I'm trying.
Step ten, continue to take personal inventory.
And when we're wrong, promptly admitted it.
I bet you if I go through here, there's 20 different promptlys.
There aren't many people here tonight.
You know, your promptly may be an hour.
Mine may be two months.
It's when that old gut feeling starts eating on me and it just wrenches me to death.
I've got to do something about it.
And that's just program working one more time.
Step eleven, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God
as we understood Him.
Praying only, only for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
You took the power away in step one.
I'm powerless over alcohol.
Step eleven, you gave me power.
It says it right up there.
But there's a secret to that power.
The power is not derived from me.
God is the power.
If I work the eleven steps like I'm supposed to do it, the power has returned.
It's in a different form.
God is either everything or He's nothing.
Today He's everything for me.
I had a motorcycle wreck in 99.
Dropped a Harley at 95 miles an hour in the middle of Wyoming.
Sled 580 feet down the center of the highway.
I'm a miracle tonight.
Stand here talking to you.
I ought to be dead.
Every day I've got is a gift from God.
And I believe it from the bottom of my heart.
He picked me up and dusted me off March the 7th of 1983 and says,
Get back in there, boy.
And be a verb.
Get involved. Be a part of.
In 99 I went down again and He picked me up and dusted me off.
Put me in the hospital for about four months.
Told me settle down.
You know, you're trying to hurt yourself and I'm tired of fixing you, you know.
And I'm here tonight.
You know, it was, I could tell you a 15-hour story about my six months off of the work
and the things that went on in my life and the way AA worked.
I'm laying in the hospital two days in there and all of a sudden I got AAs bringing me meetings from Cheyenne, Wyoming.
I got a guy calling me from Denver, Colorado who knew me in 1984.
Said, I heard you're in the hospital.
I'm coming down.
I'm bringing a meeting with some of my sponsorees.
Come down to my room.
I got tubes hanging out of me and got things plugged in every orifice I got.
We're having an A&A meeting, you know.
What a deal.
You know, Alcoholics Anonymous is alive and well.
It's here for all of us if we're willing.
And boy, I'm telling you, if you ain't willing, it's a tough road to hoe.
If you're debating it, don't.
Give up. Surrender.
John Wayne, I ain't him.
I had to give up to win.
And I'm a big winner.
I'm a giant winner, you know.
If I got what I deserve, I'd be out there pushing them daisies up right now.
But thank God, God gave me the grace to do it one day at a time.
And I'm going to do it.
And then there's old step 12.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps,
we tried to carry this message to alcoholics
and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Threefold step.
We tried to carry this message to alcoholics.
It doesn't say that they're still sober.
It's just anybody.
I'm an alcoholic.
James, Mike, we're all alcoholics.
I'll guarantee you a bunch of alcoholics have carried the message to me the last six, seven months.
It ain't been a fun deal for me.
You know, but I guarantee you I'm sober.
And they were able to sit around and talk and we laugh and joke.
Ho, ho, ho.
You know, I hadn't even really cried.
I think I'm getting cold or something because I just hadn't cried.
It's been okay not to cry.
Usually I want to put a show on, you know, when she's around.
You know, and do all that stuff.
Maybe she feels sorry for me.
You know what I'm saying?
You ever done that?
I used to do that all the time.
Boy, I could put them tears on the heartbeat.
But I didn't let her do it this time.
I didn't do it.
I'm just me and I'm going to do the best I can.
And I love her.
Still love her.
I love her today.
And whatever her will is in life, I hope God does it.
I had to pray for her.
You know, that's another thing you got to do.
You get a resentment against somebody.
And I really have.
I've had a resentment against her because I don't understand her.
But that's okay.
And then I got to pray for her.
I want her to have everything that I got except I want her to win the lottery after I won it.
I don't want to split it.
You know what I mean?
A few things I got to qualify there.
But, you know, this program really works.
If you work it.
This program is a way of life, a design for living.
It's not a design for dying.
And I guarantee you if you hang around here, your life will get so good you can't stand it.
You even may lose your hair.
And then when you can't have no bad hair today.
Yeah, I like that.
I guess we're done at 930, ain't we?
God dog, I'm right on time, brother.
.
.
I've mentioned my sponsor Moe.
Oh, Moe.
Bless his heart.
He was a giant as far as I'm concerned.
But he was just a human being, you know.
And we can't put a sponsor on a pedestal.
He did some things that were not according to what I think a sponsor should do.
And it pissed me off for a few minutes.
But I got over it because somebody clearly explained to me that he's a human being.
He does human things.
And the only up there is where the real one's at.
And this is just a channel.
And I depend on God.
God's my source today.
Moe used to say, let's have a meeting.
And, you know, when he was going through his transition, he'd say, go get the big book.
And he'd get the big book.
And we'd read page 164.
And I'm going to finish it with 164, the last two paragraphs.
Our book is meant to be suggestive only.
We realize we know only a little.
God will disclose more to us, constantly disclose more to you and to us.
Ask him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick.
The answers will come if your own house is in order.
But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't got.
See to it that your relationship with him is right and great events will come to pass for you and countless others.
This is a great fact for us.
Abandon yourself to God as you understand God.
Admit your faults to him and to your fellows.
Clear away the wreckage of your faith.
Clear away the wreckage of your past.
Give freely of what you find and join us.
We shall be with you in the fellowship of the Spirit.
And you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny.
May God bless you and keep you until then.
Those two paragraphs surmise the total program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
All 12 steps are there.
It's a great journey.
Don't miss it.
When the bus comes by, grab it and hang on.
And the bus is here.
Nobody's told you today, love you, I love you, each and every one of you.
Thank you very much.