He Pulled the Distributor Wire to Stop His Wife from Going to Meetings – Art L.

I'm the guy that gave old Alice, by the way, I'll be speaking about old Alice. Spooky Alice. Say, I might as well let you meet her right now. I'm a guy that give old Alice the full qualifications of being a member of the Elanone family group. My God, you know, sometimes I don't think she'd appreciate it. But the reason I put senior on it is my son's a doctor in Birmingham, and Birmingham's a town of 340,000. They have a whole lot of people. We have a big medical center there, the Baptist Medical Center, and my son was a pathologist in one of the labs. And the nursing society or league or whatever they are, the head nurse at the Baptist medical center had called and wanted to put on an alcohol program. and I got the call through our central office. So I went over to sit down to cooperate with them and help put together a program that they wanted, pick the speakers and all this jazz for a week or so. But after a few weeks, one morning my son called me about 7.30 in the morning and said, Hey Dad, what? He said, The president of the Baptist Medical Center just called me and wanted to know how long I've longed in an outfit of all these phenomena. And how long was I an Elkie? And I said, oh my God. But I'll go over and see him to speak to him. Oh, no you don't. He said, he's just doing his thing and I just let him go. And he said when he got all done, I said to Dad, oh, you're speaking on my father. And he smiled a little harder. Well, I retired from the Detroit News and I can't help but get newspaper clippings as you might see here that says alcoholism is still giving the Russians a big headache. Moscow. on Monday morning, 30 to 40 percent of the Soviet workforce will be too drunk or too hungover to put in a good day's work. No special occasion, just an ordinary Monday morning. Well, I guess a lot of us have spent it that way. We have the disease of alcoholism. And as Bill has it in the book here, and I have to lean over. I just lost an eye in the past six months. Because an illness of this sort involves those about us in a way no other human sickness can. If a person has cancer, all are sorry for him and no one is angry or hurt. But not so with the alcohol illness. For with it there goes annihilation of all things worthwhile in life. It engulfs all lives who touch sufferers. It brings misunderstanding, furious resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children and wives. And that's what happened to my family, my blunt laid upon Alice, and my two children. Buster says the disease is an abnormal condition constituting a deviation from sound state of health. And I was thinking seriously about that in the morning, and I'll start you right off at the depth of my drinking because practically every morning I was on my knees in front of my altar and that was a toilet. My head was stuck in there and I was heaving and I'm puking and I sweat and I mean six. And I was trying to get that morning drink down and I couldn't hold that first one and I could not hold the second one and sometimes I was able to keep the third one but I hit pretty good on the fourth one. And I can remember Allison, my God if I was that sick I don't know what I would do. So I figured I was in a pretty good state of health, but through this constant drinking my house deteriorated. That mentions an area of derangement or impairment of functions in the human body and mind. And I would get home sometime, not knowing when, and wake up in the morning shaking my head and scratching myself and saying to myself, why didn't I go home when the other guys were home? Why didn't i stay down there and drive? I don't know how I got home. I'd have to get up and take a look in the garage to see whether the car was there or not. But I would walk through, coming out of my bedroom on a small hallway into my living room and into the kitchen and away coming into that living room I'd see lamps, coffee tables tipped over on the floor in the living room and I'd say, My God, old Alice sure had a wing-ding last night. My lamps, the subdivision that we lived in, were rather unusual. Some people thought, my God, they're a strange shape. I was falling on these lamps and I would sit there and try to pin them back in the shape. And being a typical alcoholic, I would make a comment something like, I bought them that way. I worked at the Detroit News. My major job was making up page one in the editorial page. But page one was a responsibility. We had some eight dishes a day, and that paper, unbelievably, I put together in blackouts. I would wake up in the morning, sit on a side of my bed. Then I'd get sick. Then I run for the bathroom, stick my head to the toilet bowl. And then I'd start to think, oh my God, I don't remember going back to work since noon and I went to lunch. I never ate lunch. I always drank. But I don' t remember going back to work and I did put out three more editions. I don't remember how I got home, but again I had to go out and look for my car, and this particular day it scared me because my car wasn't in the garage. But as I turned around and walked towards the house and I looked straight across the street, there was my car in my neighbor's drive. So I tiptoed across the streets through the car in neutral and he released the brake and let it slide down his drive and just posted it over to my side. But here I had concerns. I don't remember going back to work and I thought, oh my God, I'll lose my job if I make a mistake. Fears? Unbelievable. I hurriedly got dressed and I dashed down to the office and down in our mailing room as you've seen them in the movies and such these bundles of papers from rolling out. So I laid down all the additions and checked each page. Of course, we had to continue the story from page 1 to page 8 or page 90. They're known as jump pages. So we jumped the story to another page. And I would check these out, and sure enough, everything was all right. But down there, I pounded my fist on a table and I said, I never, never, ever will do this again. I will never put myself in this position. And I will lose my job. I folded those papers up and put them back, and I marched back up to my apartment. And so long as the boss saw me, they would never look for me again because I was on a type of a contract that if I started at 7 o'clock, I had a 10-minute grace. If I wasn't on the floor at 10 minutes after 7, a man would be put in my place in order to command the publishing of the paper. So he would see me, and then he would take off, and I could wander and do what I wanted. And I'm talking to myself that I would never, never drink again like this. Tomorrow or today, it will be different. I won't drink as much as I did yesterday. But I was so shook up that it was five minutes to seven and my boss already saw me and the bar had opened up at seven. And I was all nervous and shaking that I just gave a wink to one of my buddies and that was a signal that I was going out for a drink. We had signals, the five of us together worked in the office. And one day we'd go like this. That meant we'd be going out for a drink and we'd all meet at the bar. So the old man, we called the editor the old men, would know what we were up to. Next day it might be this. But we'd always wind up together drinking. So sure enough, I was so sick that I gave the wink. We marched over there and there was four of my colleagues. And there were four boys or three boys off of Skid Row. and if you ever hear a beautiful sound is when the bartender put the key in that lock and hear that lock click the gates of heaven and we barge in and we drink nice to say to George the bartendor and to my buddy I said Mike God look at these guys what in the world are they drinking at this hour in the morning gee God you'd think they'd put them in jail and throw it to you and it's up with their lives now my sponsor Homer often told me about constructive comparison and destructive. And boy, if there's any destructive comparison, it sure is amazing. But I had mentioned about page one because at this time of years back, they had to carry 18 stories on page one. That's format, frankly, all over the country. Now you've got the wide column and they only carry about four or five stories on page two. All the worry and dread that I went through So, I was thinking about the fellow who won $200,000. And this pertains to fear. Things that I got worried over. Fear that drank that gut-drunk man. This fellow had won $100,000 and his wife had a heart condition and she was sick and he was afraid to tell her for fear she'd fall over dead. And he fretted for two or three weeks to finally come up with the idea of going and seeing the priest to speak to the priest. So he told the priest, he said, I got this $200,000. He said, God, if I tell the wife, she's going to fall over dead and I don't know what to do. He said I'm going crazy. The priest says, well, I'll go over and speak to her. And he did. So he visited her and in a period of time he finally led up to the point of question. And he said Mrs. Murphy, if you want $200K, just what would you do with it? Oh, she said, nothing father. I couldn't answer that. Oh, he said, just give it a little salt. He wanted $200,000. I said, really Father? I don't know. I really don't. He said, give it a little drop. She'd salt it for a second. Finally she said, I know what I'd do with it, Father. Great, what would you do with it? He says, I'd give it to you. And the priests all were dead. And this is true in our life. And by the way, this is a piece of Vincent Peale. I read some of Vincent Peale's works and this is one of the stories he was telling about fear. Fear is a suffering pain before it occurs. And that applies to me tremendously. Always get myself up in the mind worrying about something and when it comes it never happens. I had lost an eyesight and I was about to lose an eyeball. And I feared having an operation and having the eye removed and one thing into another, but I kept praying and I kept tossing this thing back and forth. First God had it and then I had it. Then we both had it and we teased God back and forward and finally the appointed day was set for me to go in and see the doctor and final examination and decision was going to be made. And when I went in there and they examined me and I had figured out now I've got to be here at such and such a time This is 8A. I had to go to different 8A meetings. And I've got to be there on June the 7th, so I'll set the operation this day. So here I am tearing myself apart. When I had things I was going to do in August, I was gonna figure, well, I'll do it in July. I have to be operated in July, so i'm doing that in August. So I sit there, and as I walk in, I have a dad-son relationship. The news, Detroit News always has a good fellow edition, a fellow with a derby, a well-dressed man with a sports kit, news boy carrying him by the hand. and that's the relationship I have with my higher power, who I choose to call Dad. So that morning when I got up, I said, Now Dad, the decision is going to be made, so I'm going to hang on to your hand and you and I are walking into that office together, which we did. And then we sat down and went through the x-rays, looking through the eyes and everything else. He finally said to me, You're in pretty good shape. Come back in six months. I gave him some drops of carrot juice, and here is all that fear and worry that I've gone through just as it says here. I've got to follow the devil. I had a recreation room in my home with a bar, and I had it all finished real nice with back mirrors. I put colored lights in it, and also had a cash register. my mother had given me, for a conversation fee. And I had all this on this bar. And I hadn't made comment to my buddies down in the paper that seemed the size of my bar bill because when I went over to the bar, I would give them my paycheck and George would give me back my weekly allowance out of my check. And notice the sizeof it, I figured that I'm going to stock this bar and I'm going to do my drinking home and that's all. And that's where I decided. I spoke to seven of my buddies that I worked with and they said it was a brilliant idea. Great idea. And may I tell you, all of a sudden my name came up. So they had an alcoholic thinking too. Now, I charged myself 50 cents a drink. And I went into business. And I did it faithfully, because George hadn't cashed my check in a month or more. And I had a fistful of money, and I mean a fist full. I was getting liberal to impress Alice by handing her a couple dollars every now and then. So as time went on, I figured I had so much money that I had to call a meeting. So we met. And we made a decision and we decided to lower the price of booze to 25 cents. Now you may laugh, but at that time it was serious business. It was serious businesses. And again as I say my friends they thought it was great. But like everything else, as time went on, the money was secured and squandered. And then I started watering my own booze. Which I just did trying to lengthen my drink self. But I think in our lives of drinking that every one of us has a skid row. We all have a sked row in a different trunk. My sponsor spent 17 years of his life on skid rows. He laid in the doorway and in the field, but I laid on that basement floor, drunk, crawling on my hands and knees. I had an easy chair to pull myself up in. I puked on that floor, and I laid in that puking. I destroyed every holiday, Christmases, New Year's, Easter, for my children. My children would say to their mother on Christmas Day, Let us go with them, but let's not bring death. And I'd hear that remark and go into a tiger. Tell those kids off who do you think you are. And tell Alice off exactly what I think of her as a wife. And if I could get rid of the three of you, I wouldn't have problems like now. And this went on for years. Many a person. Practically every person. The only thing I did right was on Christmas Eve I would never take a drink. For some unbeknown reason I always had the Christmas tree put up and the gifts were always put around it. That would always be after the children went to bed. I followed the same procedure my family had as my father. They never saw their Christmas tree until Christmas morning. But as soon as that tree was up I was entitled to a drink and again I'd ask myself why did I drink so much I never had the energy if I asked myself that once I asked themselves thousands of times in the mornings when I woke up why did i drink so much why didn't I go home when the other day I never had the so many that I had destroyed unbelievable my son graduated he has an electrical engineer degree, an M.D. degree, and then went to St. Louis, to St Louis Med School, got a med degree there, and from there he went into Minnesota. In Minnesota he went for heart surgery under Dr. Lillie High. Dr. Bernard was there and this other famous doctor. Three of them were there together in surgery, learning surgery. Then from there you went into New York and then went to Columbia University. The boy had done a lot of school. And every graduation that I attended, from high school on, I was great to have a party for him when I got drunk. I went down to St. Louis when he graduated from med school, got the biggest suite in the hotel, put in a good stock of booze, then I locked the door so nobody could come in and drink it. But there I got drunk. To entertain I went to Minnesota. I got drunk. I never had a decent day. I walked in one graduation and he looked at me and said, oh you. Here was the son who told his mother, come and visit me mom, but don't bring dad. Don't bring Dad. I would hear this and I would give him everything I could tell him. I'm the one who supported you. I'm not the one who put you through school. If it wasn't for me, he wouldn't have any. He was a big eye. But still he stayed with us. He told his mother the only time dad can come is when he does not pray. He's welcome if he don't pray. Who are you to put restrictions on your father? Alice ran the house, and I'm grateful for Eleanor, and that's why I mentioned Alice. You see, Alice came to Eleanor for ten years before I come in today. Ten years. And she was the one that managed our family. She made the major decisions. I never lost a job. I never got laid off. I never locked anything. And, in fact, I'd never even been arrested all during my 30-some odd years of training. I should have been, no question. I left my car. I lost it too many times. Good thing I lost this because otherwise I'd be in trouble. Police department find it and call me up. About 3.30 it says we located your car. It's on so-and-so and I go in the bedroom and call out, Alice, go get the car. You know how she wouldn't go and get it? I'd get mad. tell her how I worked for a living and if it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have what you've got. And I'd say, oh, go to hell. She'd say I'll have you know I'm not making any house calls today. But we always ate at five o'clock. She was pumped and it's understandable. But I would come home from work ten minutes to five or so. I'm half in the bank and I'm going down to my bar and she said dinner's on the table we're about to eat. I said that's fine but we're not going to eat right now I'm just going downstairs and have a few drinks then we'll eat. And she looked at me and said well if you go downstairs your dinner will get cold. And then I'd wheel back at her violently and say if that's the way you feel about it take the dinner and put it in the refrigerator and chill it. I'll show you. And then raise the right hand to her and drag out the marriage license and told her and tell her so no one's certain of her obligations to me. And then I'd storm out of the house and away I'd go. And, of course, I wouldn't come home until they threw me out of their box. Now, there's been a couple of times that I had come home and this one particular time I had came home it was five minutes to five and the table wasn't set. So I quickly took her by the arm and we had a clock like that in our kitchen and I marched over to the clock and I pointed at it and I said, Woman, we always have our dinner on the table at five o'clock. Why isn't dinner ready? And then go back into the same procedure of telling her what a lot of you like. Even neglecting the children because the dinner's not on time. And this is the way we live. A constant fight to be living. I would receive tickets for the theater when one of the critics couldn't cover it and said he'd like to go see a show. I'd say, yeah. This could be noontime. In my life, there's no time that I ever intended to get drunk. I had no desire to get drink. I hear a lot of people drink because they wanted to get drinking. I never wanted to. I just got drunk. And I never could understand why. I never can understand why I stayed so long in the rankings. But time will tell. But I would get these tickets And I'd call Alice up at 12.30 and say, Honey, I've got some tickets for the theater. You get yourself all dressed up and I'll be home at 5 o'clock, pick you up and go back downtown and we'll have dinner and pick you to the theater? But, I'm going to stop across the street for a couple of minutes and I've gotta see the boys about. And I'll come back. And I'm gonna be right home. Across the street I go is the Adams Bar right across from the front door of the Newman's. I go across, come 5 o'clock, I'm still there drinking. Come 6 o' clock, I am still drinking and then I start justifying my actions by saying, By God, you know how I haven't lost any work practically? My paychecks have been solid. I worked dang hard on the title of some of these things. A little relaxation and privilege. And I'd holler at the bar, anybody like to go see a show tonight? Give them a ticket to it. I'd leave her, sit home and not even call. That not only happened once, but it happened dozens of times. At one time I did go home and get the family. Not only did I bring the family among them, but I brought my daughter's three little girlfriends and took them to the old Garrick Theater. Took them into this theater. We all sit down. And the intervention come. I said, Dallas, I'm going down to smoke. And right across the street from the last Fiat was a federal bar right by the street front. So I thought I'd dashed over and have a couple of quickies, and then get back to the field. And I dashed across, but from there on I lost all direction. But Alice seems to know my route, because I was sitting in the end of the bar crossing the news and here comes the family with the kid. And there I'm sitting for dinner. Just to take him home. The oddity of it was, too, is I think we drink. We always want to be something that we're not. I do some operations and a few other things like that, but my main thing is I love to be a counselor. God, I love being a counselor! I used to sit in that bar and if anybody had a problem, they'd sit down and go on a council. So one day I got through work, shortly after noon, and I went across the street to discover or discuss how we displayed our stories, whether we should have displayed this story on page 12 or along. So we got in pretty heavy discussion but when I walked in a buddy of mine was sitting in the barn sort of crying in his beard. So I walked up and said what's the world wrong with you? Oh, he said, good golly. He said, I'm in a doghouse. He said last night, he said I went out and had a few beers. You know, I was wrong about it. Now, at a point, my wife met. And I looked at her and I said, my God, man, don't you know you shouldn't do a thing like that? If you have children, if your wife has enough troubles without you adding to it. And I explained a few other things. and we continued to drink. And from noon to about five, he kept telling me his problems. But right around five o'clock, I started to notice that some of the remarks he was making about his wife, I don't think it was just quite cricket. And come nine o' clock, I hated her worse than he did. So I looked at him and I said, buddy, how would you like me to take you home? Speak to your wife. And he says, what do you know? I said, you better move that one. So we jumped in the car and off we went. So we marched into the house through the living room, through the front door right in the living room. And she said, whoa, stop right there. Not another move. Then she pointed at me, you, out. I turned around and I started out and she said, wait a minute. On the way out, don't close the door because he's coming out right after me. And he was. There he was with tears in his cheeks and he says, what are we doing now, buddy? I said, you don't have a worry in the world. My home is yours. You're coming home with me. And I've taken a lot of people home with me when they come to take it in. And I never got much cooperation with Alice either. She embarrassed me in front of my friends. We had his and her friends playing their old drums. So we're out in front. I said, you'll come home with me. We started from my place. It wasn't a usual thing. We made about three pit stops to discuss this problem a little bit more and had a few drinks finally i drove up through the driveway and into the garage we come out of the garage the world moved and my buddy fell in the water i don't know about any of you birds when you're drunk you ever try to reach down pick anybody up i reached out to get him as soon as i give a yank on him i go head over I laid down and I yanked on him I got him over the top so there was only one thing to do I crawled around and I laid downward and we talk about insanity in a program he reached over and he nudged me and he says Art, I'm chilling I said okay buddy I'll take care of that I got up and I walked over and I closed a gate. Unbelievable. When he went down and told the fellas on the paper, they thought I was insane. I've got another story that I haven't said. But, you see, it was in 1969, March the 16th, I came to you people. And I came here people dishonest. Because you see I was in one horrible mess because old spooky Alice got herself a pantry of lawyers. And they had me subpoenaed in a number of other papers I received. And I could envision what few dollars I had. I was a fortunate individual because I could always somehow, some way, when my bar bills were high, I could charge it to the news. But I knew I was facing one horrible problem. I could imagine the house being sold. I could see my car, and I could see my bank account. And I was in great shape. I could keep myself going down the mirror every day. So, I knew that if I would go to AA, that she would let up. And that's exactly what I did. I called the new, the AA office, central office, and And they asked me about a drinking problem. I said, I thought I had a little one. They said, well, send somebody out to your house. I said、Oh, no, you're not sending anybody out to my house. You tell me where it's at and I'll go. So they gave me Westminster and the Hubbell Group. So I had picked the Hubbel Group. But I come home and when I walked in the house, I said to Alice, I'll have you know that I call Alcoholics Anonymous today. She said, so what? That was somewhere around 4 o'clock in the afternoon and 5 o' clock she was on a plane flying to New York. And I'm very grateful to her that she did fly out of town. But I went to Hobble Grove and I met Homer Dunn. A man who took a big part in my life. It was a great, great asset to me. He is leading me in the blind and the wrong. But when I got to not too many meetings, had Ellen been in town, I'd accused her of contacting these people and telling them my story. Telling them all about me so they know what to say. So it's the only thing I can say I'm thinking. She went on to New York and I latched on to home. And Homer had taken me to many a meeting. I like to tell it this way. Father would come home from work, and as soon as you were in the house, little lad six years old would come running up and tuck out his pant leg and say, Daddy, let's play. Let's play today. And Dad would say, Not right now, son. I'm going to have a drink. But the boy would come back and keep cuddling up his pants and say let's pray today. He'd say not right now. They went in the icebox and got out a bottle of beer and went up the cupboard and brought down the bottle of booze and sent it on the table and the kids in the back were chugging on the bed. Let's play, Daddy, let's play. And the father had to look over and saw a map of the world laying on the tables so he grabbed that map and he tore it in pieces and he handed it to the youngster and he said, Son, when you get that map of the word all together you and Daddy will play. And the little boy trotted off down the hall. And his father sat down and he threw this shot down. He had a little sip of beer and he's sitting there smacking his lips. Finally, he pour out another shot for some more beer in a glass and he was about to raise that shot glass when that little boy came running in and said, here it is, daddy. Here it is. Let's play. And he looked at that and he said, my God, son, how in the world could you have ever put that together so fast? That's impossible. How in the word did you do it? why he said daddy it was easy you see in back of that map there was a picture of a man and he said daddy all I did was put that man together and when I got that man all together whole the whole world fell into place and that's when I walked in to the doors of A.K.E. on March the 16th you people took me one piece at a time Through the first day, where I was powerless over alcohol, it rang a ding-dong. I sat on the bed thousands of times holding my head and said, Why did I drink so much? Why? Why?" I asked myself. And there was an answer that I got. And Homer Dunn told me when I come in those doors that if I would come to my meetings I would find the answer to any of my problems and be guaranteed it. And there was one. I never heard of being part of a group. Because of my drunkenness, I was booted out of the Catholic Church because I used to go over and tell the priests how to run their establishments. I didn't think they were running a business. I was one of their best contributors and even made the remark to a couple of priests that if it wasn't for me, you guys would have to go out and get a job and work like me. My children go to the school, you can imagine how embarrassed I was. So they asked me to leave. When I found this fellowship, I had all of this hate. I hated priests and any connected with religion. I hated my two kids in the morning. But I came in just not to drink and then I'd want to go to court and throw the other three out. And I'm going to stay in the house. And that was my intention. Very dishonest. But something happened. As I stayed and started through these steps, as Homer would say, he asked me to say a prayer and I said, I don't want any part of a prayer. No part of it. Because I wouldn't pray. Finally, he took me up to Toronto to a spiritual meeting they had on a Sunday morning and this fellow talked about God as the Interceptor and he said, God stood for a good orderly direction. He owed me. Homer gave me the Elm Hohner empty. How do you like that? I said, I'll buy it. Because I was getting at a point now of a year or so in the program without drinking. But getting nothing out of it. Outside of being with Homer and shaking hands with people in A&E. I admired the people in AA at this point. So then he took me to London. Ontario. On my third year. This guy wound up with a talk and he suggested it would be nice if some of you birds after you've been sober for three years would go back to the church and let the man in the cloth see what you look like so I did it and believe it or not I met all four priests when I walked in that priest house three saw me and they went like that and went down the hallway but Luvius called me in and we sat and talked he only had 15 minutes he said I only got us 15 minutes so I stayed there 3 hours he brought in the other priests and we talked he said how would you like to go back to church if you ever get any thought that I gave a thought fine he said we grant you absolution you're part of this right now that didn't bother me but when I got home I thought of it and made some comments to Homer he said now that you've got a God let's see what you can do that was my starting in searching out a God as I understood him because I if they mention God at a meeting I'm going to be on the same I'm running the fight but something happened things were getting better things were happening to me that never happened before things were getting great and my whole life changed and piece by piece you put me together and when I became whole my whole world fell into place and when my world fell into space everything come in I had trouble with my daughter my daughter didn't have much use for me she'd come and visit Alice every Sunday to have dinner and just say hi dad and that would be it. We'd talk all day with her mother. When she'd leave, I'd hold her coat. She'd leave and that'd be it." After about three years of that and me being sober, I said to Homer, "'It's not worth it. It's not worthy. I'm going to drop out. Don't do it. Don't go. You'll spoil everything. I'll guarantee you it'll level off. You'll be all right. Just don't pick up the drink.'" After four years, same thing. I finally said to Homers. So Homer took me by the hand and he said I want to take you around and introduce you to some people so there's eight couples I've met who had five years or more of sobriety but the five was a magic figure it was in the fifth year that things happened some could never get a good job and what I mean by job is paid any kind of money some got their families back in the sixth year so on everything happened in the first year so Homer says hang on I'm at the fifth gear still the same way then he got mad he says if that's the way you feel about it and you're doing it for the kids, go on out and get drunk. Go on and drink. But he said, I'm pleased with you not to pick up that drink and just sweat it out and keep your mouth shut and don't you say nothing to the children or don't say nothing to them. Just don't drink. And I did. He said, don't even try to make amends. Don't do anything. So somewhere in the fifth year, in the middle of the fifth years, I was holding my daughter's coat instead of walking up and turning around and putting her arms in, she walked straight to me and put her arms around me. And she kissed me and said, I love you. It was the latter part of the fifth year my son had moved down to Alabama in 1970 and they were flying down visiting me. And this particular weekend we were spending with them, I could put four or five days together that I could take off and fly home. So we flew down on a Sunday morning. My boy asked his mother, he said, Do you think Dad would like AA as well in Alabama as he likes it in Michigan? I said, Why don't you ask him? So he said to Dad, Let's go for a walk. We live out on a 30-acre piece of land. So we walked up the front end and we're leaning on the fence and watching the horses and stuff. He looked at me and said, Dad, would you like AA down here in Alabama like you'd like it in Washington? I said son I'd like to be any place in this world any place he come over and he put his arm around me dad why don't you take early retirement I have a home up here it's yours give it come with me my word I became whole I became a father Even Alice started calling me a model husband, and kissing me. I'd become a husband. But it bothered me knowing she kept saying model husband. Though in my business you always research, so I researched. And do you know what a model Husband is? It's a small facsimile of the real thing. Thank God for Alan. Now, I never told Alan because he could never go to Al-Anon meetings. I hated him. I hated the other one because by her going to those meetings was sure putting a finger on me that maybe my neighbors might think I got a problem with alcohol. And I heard this word alcoholic too. They might think I'm an alcoholic. And of all things, We're at this point writing notes. We have no communication. She has her room and I have mine. I'm down in the basement, drunk, living. So we have no communications. I have to be upstairs. We have phones in each room. And the phone rang. The closest one was going into her bedroom. When I went into her bathroom to pick up the phone off the dresser, I looked down there and my God, what I saw. How to live with an alcoholic. Well, I took that book and I threw it, and I heaved it, I kicked it. I waited for her to come home, and then I gave her three months of help. Living with alcohol a few years later. Now she would come home. And when I'd come home I'd raise the hood and lift the wire out of the distributor cat and set it down. She couldn't get the car started. So she went to the stuntman and told the boy about it and said, I don't know if Dad's doing something because every time he comes home, I can never get the car started. So he went out and looked over and sure enough, he spotted it. So he showed her what to do. Now envision this. I come home from work. I raise the hood. I raise a wire up. I put the foot down. And I go in the house. And then the usual argument about things. I go down and drink. Then we get into fights and I say, look, I'll show you and I start him off the door and if I go downstairs this bar, she knows I won't come home until they throw me out. And the other one, I won' t come home until at least 2 o'clock. She'd go out to the garage and raise the hood, push the wire down and go to the element meeting. Come home, raise the hood pull the wire out and put the hood down. What? I get up in the morning, I'd raise the wood push the wires down. What? And driving down to work I'd say, oh goody, goody she didn't make that meeting again. I'm worried about my neighbors. Now, my neighbors see me stone-drunk, puking all over my front lawn or laying in the bushes. That's a neat call to make. It could be 20 degrees below zero. My neighbor would come across it. I'd be on a ladder on top of my house fixing the mantel. My neighbor comes and says, My God, it's 20 degrees above zero. You're up there. How come? I said, Buster, you should... In my bar business down there, she came down one day. because I would serve myself a drink and run around the back of the bar pour out a shot put up a glass of water run over to the cash register ding dong ring it up run around sit in the bar toss it down I've got a flourishing business at the end of the day I'd raise a hut to see how much money if they lit on the cashier to see which money I'd take she had a rosary group and I hated that group she had about three or four organizations she belonged to but that one particular group I hated and she could have these women working on the road. I'm down on the base of ding-dong, ding- dong. He throws a bowl and sits in his chair. She comes down and says, would you mind sort of keeping a little quiet? And I tell her, you run your business and I'll run mine. I won't stick my nose in yours and you just get upstairs. This is my job. And again, we'd argue. She had a cat and she loved it. Now I hate it. That cat would curl up run that old fireplace and the days we got about five degrees we're only got about three or four feet of snow i see that cat there and she wouldn't be around i'd rather buy a nap and they go to the front door okay i'm gonna walk around look out the window there's a candle she'd go out and get it she'd brush it up bring it in the house laid down there. It would curl up. And I'd watch her. I couldn't see her either go upstairs or in the back of the house. I'd grab it by the nap on the neck and nod it over. After a couple of times of this, she walked in with this cat in her arm. Then close enough for me to listen, I guess. She just kept brushing her cat off. Said, oh honey, He says, never you mind, dearie. Never you mind honey. Your day is going to come. Your day will come. When he dies, I'm going to have him cremated. And I'm gonna put his ashes in your sand box. Thank God for Eleanor. The greatness of Valinan, and way at the end of the day, it's hard for me to think of the 10 years that she had put in with the happiness that we have in this college. For her to walk in a meeting like I see other wives today, sad, bent all out of shape, and see all these people laughing and having a great time, and them with their emotions, there's only some way we could convey some type of hope for them to believe in what they're thinking of their person. when I think of that today. And the gift that we've got today, and we mentioned about going out, and we say in the big book, go to any length. Go to any lengths you can. And as I travel in the fellowship and the people I met, especially at the past two conferences, that the impact of this fellowship hit me tremendously. And I'd like to give you a thought of what Bill Wilson and Lois had went through. Because in their life, at the start of this fellowship, and these I had taken out of the 12 and 12, not 12 and how many, they became a base. How many people would go to the length that these two people did for me? to take a lonely person like me and to give me back my life. Give me back the opportunity of being a father to my children. And give me the opportunity that my children turn around and love me. And here are two people who lost their home and booted out of their house, had their furniture thrown out on the street and then had somebody give them a little old camp to go out and live in. They lived there until winter started and it got cold and had to move back into town. They lived in somebody's attic. They call that Siberia. Bill says in the book that they had to go out for $4 and buy a coal stove to keep warm. And they booted around in four or five other attics so eventually they got a club in New York with two small bedrooms in it and they lived in a bedroom there. How many people would go through the length of trying to get something like this off the ground? Not knowing whether this would be successful or not or practically sacrificed their entire life to never have anything. They went through years of this way of living with an income of only about $1,700 for you and me. For you and we. They put everything they had in there. Then the members come in. When we had the Jack Alexander story, members started coming in. Coming in by the thousand. And everybody started to become messiahs running all over the country doing whatever they wanted to do. Bill and Bob sitting in the Bob's living room and saying, My God, we know we can get these alcoholics sober, but how in the world can we get them to live together? How in the World can we lead them to carry the message to the other alcoholics? But the fighting was fighting. As groups began in towns, the first group that got started wouldn't let any other groups be formed because they owned the franchise. People appearing on radio. People sitting up in the court with the judges, as the lineup went through, telling who could go to AA and who should go to jail. That does great for our first tradition of unity. You can see we would never go there. But through these stages, this is where our traditions come. Where they have put together traditions of 15 years of hard work to keep us together. And it's because of this bill of going to any length to save this fellowship and get this fellowship to run that I am here today. It's unbelievable what two people have sacrificed. How little we think when we ask in a group for people to serve their group like they served us with their life, for years and years in poverty, to get us where we are today. And when we asked somebody to serve on a committee, he's either too busy or I can't make coffee because of this or something. It's hard to think that members, when they come in and say that they're grateful for their sobriety, that they fail to show this gratefulness and take a part of the fellowship in service. Being willing to serve the group as a chairman or a coffee maker, or be on a PI committee, or an institution committee. A tenure area seminary, whatever you like. Ten meetings. Become a GSR, become an active one. And take part of it. Because you see, I am deeply grateful today because there is no way in the balance of my life that I would ever be able to put back this fellowship that I got out of. I got back my family. I got black my wife. Two beautiful children and a wonderful wife. My daughter took yellow cancer almost four years back. I spent the last three years here, Alice and I, a good part of it, in the hospital at Mount Connell with our daughter. When she would come out of an operation a little over two years ago, they brought her down into the intensive care and had her all wired up to monitor. And there she laid for a good week. And we'd get in the chance to see her about 20 minutes. We'd have to stay away for an hour or two to let us in for another five or ten minutes. And we see her. And gradually as she recovered, and I walked in that room, and she looked at me and her feet really went like this. And I walked over and I put my head down over her mouth and she said to me, I love you, Dad. But see, when I came here, I had nothing. I had absolutely nothing. I was out of a couple bucks on the job. Nothing at all. But through the effort of Bill and Lois, Lois wanting to contend with her husband going to me, St. Alice's with me, I was in that particular position just a year ago when I had my daughter save me on her deathbed I love you thank you very much