Jim M. on the Blackstone Retreat, the Big Book, and Simple Sobriety

Now for this surge, guys. There's a friend from up in Lexington, Kentucky that felt like he should have an award. It feels like it's an award for, to help him to control his pride. And it's award from the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital, Lexington, Kentucky, and It's money, vocation, youth, all of it. I'd say first, thank you. That is the hardest nickel you'll ever earn. It takes six to eight months to get that one. It's not a very apt thought. But I think that maybe I speak for Ben, certainly in a saying that Jim Musick has meant more to me than any other man alive. Jim, through his introduction of myself to AA and through his personal interest in me, my family, and his correspondence and his guidance, even his taking me to Blackstone. I think Ben and I were the first patients out of the hospital to go to Blackestone, and I think that was the turning point as far as I was concerned. the medical authorities today i will certainly agree that aaa has more cures uh higher percentage of cures than any other form of treatment psychiatry and so on and they admit that they don't know why i know we used to have the psychiatrists come in and try to find out what it was that made it tick why it worked but it is a continued way of treatment uh something you can follow the rest of your life that's a good way of living and we are certainly indebted to aa and jim music i don't think that's me he's talking about but i am jim musick and i am an alcoholic a very grateful one. And to one of the many great people I have met in my time, and I've met many in my few years of this program, is no other than Dr. Alfonso John Mooney. That was one thing that I found out on this trip that made it worthwhile. Dr. Alfonso, would you come back up here? You know people, there's a love between us drunks that runs a lot deeper. and I couldn't pass up Dr. John. Dr. Johnson comes direct from the governor's office, state of Kentucky, Bert Combs. Now, I'm sure that a lot of you people just don't approve of things Bert's been doing lately, But I caught him in Miami, and I went over and got Wilson White, the lieutenant governor, to fix this up. I had tried for three months to get him through my good Democrat friends, and they'd tell me, well, now, you see so-and-so and so-an-so, and that didn't make any headway. Tuesday was the deadline. I had to do something if I was going to get them. I didn't do anything but walk over there and walk up to the governor's secretary and tell her what I wanted and told her why. And I came out with four. Usually people are lucky if they come out with one. And now all you other good friends of mine don't feel too bad because I didn't bring you one because they didn't even offer me one. Honestly, I've been wanting one of these ever since I've become sober. Now, Dr. Alfonso, will you read to the people just what you are now? Because I know. Commonwealth of Kentucky, Burke Combs, Governor, to all to whom these presents shall come greeting, know you that Honorable John Mooney, M.D., States Borough of Georgia, is commissioned a Kentucky Colonel. I hereby confer this honor with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities there unto appertaining. In testimony wherewith I have called these letters to be made patent and the seat of the commonwealth to be adhered to a fix in Frankfort, 22nd day of July. Signed by the Governor, Acting, Nelson, who is that? Wilson White, Henry Carter, and Martha Land Child. Thank you, Jim. How are we going to be a successful general? Now, where did Dr. Ben Turner Franklin go? He's got a little job to do up here. He's a great fellow. You know, usually I go to these places and I don't have any trouble, but this morning I got up and I had kind of ants crawling around down in here. But mid-afternoon there were butterflies. And honestly, folks, it's blackbirds now. tried to drown them with two cups of iced tea but they're still flying around down in there. Thank you Jim. This is one, the only way I got that uh Kentucky colonel was by two men And they said to me, Kentucky, I didn't have sense enough to go myself. Excuse me, my name is Ben Turner Parkland and I'm an alcoholic. And he, Jody, who's become a dear friend and also known as the official T-Bird pilot from Kentucky, we didn't want to leave him out. So, Jory, you are now an official. Thank you. How about that? Jim, you knew this all the time when I was in there begging you the other day to talk to the Governor about giving me one of these things when you got back to Kentucky. Well, this really leaves me speechless and that's kind of unusual for me. for me, but I'm indeed grateful to Dr. Ben, to Jim Music, and to Governor Cohen for making me one of the conductor's chums. Thank you. Now what comes next? Rufus, you're supposed to be up here carrying on. I was hoping you all would take it and go ahead. This time, I'm going to ask Dr. Ben to come back up here and introduce the speaker into us. I'm gonna say it again because I need to say it often and remember it. My name is Ben Turner Franklin, and I'm an alcoholic. I want to thank every one of you for coming here tonight, Mr. Rhett, Jody and Clyde and my birthday. There's a lot of years of sobriety represented here tonight but I know none of them can be more grateful than I am for my one year because it's truly been the best year of my life. I didn't know life could be this wonderful. I can truthfully say that everything, everything that's happened to me since I first talked to a sincerely member, and that man was Dr. John Mooney, the best that I can remember because I was real confused back in those days. Everything good has happened to him, but everything that has happened to me has been good. Even the bad things that have happened were good. You showed me that, but those were necessary for me to find myself, find this way of life and my God. Every one of you is a special friend, more than a friend. And these two men that came a long way to be the party, Jim Music and Pete Lilley, But I wish I could tell you how much they meant to me, because it kind of makes me feel like if you've ever been in a real dark room and you couldn't find a light and you were looking for one. And that was a dark room when I was up in Lexington. Jim and Pete came into my life, and it was just like turning on a light. And you people in AA have been turning on lights ever since. I learned on this trip from Jim that the U.S. Health Service Hospital at Lexington was founded and opened in 1935. That's the same year that AA was founded. and that makes me realize that God was looking after me and taking care of me and preparing this program and that hospital for me when I needed it. I didn't know that he was looking after me then. I didn' t know it until a few short months ago but I know it now. And all the good things that have come to me have come from God but that channel was through you, you people in AA and all the good people everywhere. And I am deeply grateful. I don't know how to thank you. Anything that we might say would be too little. It gives me great pleasure to introduce tonight a man that, as Pete said, but I thank me more than anyone alive for me. And in saying that, he's just a representative of everyone and everyone that tried to help me. Jim Music from Lexington, Kentucky. I don't believe it's me here, but I'll say it again, I am Jim Music and if any of you don't get the way we're pronouncing it, it's M-U-S-I-C, Plain Old Mountain Music. And the reason that they have let me stay around this program is to show people that it don't take a smart man or a person with a lot of education to make. I have been very fortunate from my first meeting. I made the program up until today. And with the help of you people, I think I will make some more days. It won't be your fault. You have all let me lean on you when I needed to. Now, I don't know just which story would be the best. You know, I have known that I was coming down here since the first of May. And on the way back from Blackstone, I made plans to make me some notes so that I would have something to talk about and not have to stammer and stutter. And I kept planning each and every day to make the notes. You know I got around to it today at about eleven o'clock I made a few notes. But I don't believe that story. You would like it, so I'll tell this one. Now the story that I wish that I had told when I get through, that would be an awful good story. Now people, I could stand here like some of the many, many authorities we've got on this program. Some of them are getting it so complicated that us simple people can't hardly handle it. I don't know why I'm an alcoholic, why I got to where that I couldn't handle it, I could say this, that my grandmother music. She lived way down in the deep bloody third district in the mountains of Tennessee. I used to go down there during the summer, and any other time I could get there because it was always groceries there. There wasn't much around my place. It seemed like they were too busy teaching school and going to school. See, all my family's school teachers in fifth grade—well, I think that I figured, well, I'd better just stay a little shy at school because at that time you would get an eighth-grade diploma and you could become a schoolteacher, and I didn't want any part of schoolteaching. So on the count of being sick of a morning from drinking and thinking maybe about turning out to be a school teacher, God bless them, I sympathize with them, I left school so that the teachers could catch up with me. And I would go to my grandmother's, and it seems as though she was kind of the outlet for the moonshine that they made in that section of the county. And people who had the distilleries, you know, around behind the rocks and down in the hollab of the spring, they would bring their whiskey in there and she would peddle it out, not a drink at the time or pint. It was in big cans and jugs, them old stone jugs. There used to be a lot of them around there. Well I reckon that she knew that she had to keep a good quality of whiskey on hand, and in order to know about it for certain, she done a lot sampling. I remember that her daughter Aunt Sally every morning would bring her hot toddy to the bed. Grandma would have the hot toddies, she'd get out of bed and she would go down to the milk gap and she'd hammer around and look around to see if the cattle was all up and then she'd go out and look about the whiskey in the barn covered up with cut fodder and hay and wheat and whatever they could drag in there. They didn't do much farming. Then she'd go back in and have another hot toddy, and she'd sit down and eat enough breakfast to feed three men. And she'd go into the fireplace winter and summer, and the fire would always be smoking or burning anyway. There'd be some fire there. And she'd set there and smoke a clay pipe. Sally'd bring her another toddy or two and then sally finally would pick her up bodily now this was every day it wasn't just now and then every day and lay her over in her little bed and then she had this big stick with a big knot on the top of it and she'd lay there and pounded on the floor and she would sing a while and she'd cuss a while, pray a while preach. Finally she'd pass out. And this went on right on and on. It done like it does all over so it finally caught up with her when she was 96. It killed her. I could say like Tom Lovern said about his little friend and says, my name is So-So, and I'm an alcoholic. I think maybe whiskey caused it. So that's what happened. And all of you that are here ain't ever going to be a full-fledged alcoholic because it's a big job. You've got to work at it pretty steady. And I wouldn't worry too much about it. It's like I told some friends here yesterday, I said, pour them one once in a while. We've got to have material to work on. We can't run out of drunks to sober up. And they'll hash this thing around and the scientists will get a hold of it, and a few of the doctors that never did drink anything, and they'll figure this thing out, just what causes a man to step over that invisible barrier that they do from social drinking to problem drinking. Well, now me, from the very beginning, you know, most people start on pretty good whiskey. I started on rubbed alcohol and Virginia Dare. You know, you used to buy a big bottle of that Virginia Dare for about a dollar in the drugstores. I'd see the boys doing that, and finally I got around where I could get with them and put in my little change, and we bought a pint of rubbed alcohol and this bottle of Virginia Dare, and mixed it up in a half-gallon fruit jar. And from the very start, I got sick. I had eaten a little bowl of chili sometime earlier in the evening, and I was in the back end, back seat of this new Model T Ford. Nobody in here remembers Model Ts, but they were painted pretty black, just real shiny. And I couldn't get the door open or the curtain loose, but I did get it open about an inch and a half, and let it go down the door and off the running board onto the ground. took all the paint off. I was in trouble. That man, he hunted for me for weeks. You know, back then when you got a scratch or a bend on the car, you didn't get them fixed. They wasn't any such thing as a spray job. You just had it the rest of the time. And, you know, thinking back, I took one shoe of tobacco one time, and it made me sick. That is the only one I ever took. The first drinking I'd done, it made my sick. But it took a little over 30 years to convince me that I couldn't handle it. I went right on to trying. Now, I am not proud of the people I hurt and many of the things I've done. If I could have been shut up somewhere and just drunk all the whiskey and anything else that was too thin to chew, which I did, and not hurt anybody but myself, I wouldn't begrudge being here at all. But, folks, I hurt lots of people in my time of drinking. And I am having a lot of that come back to me now. I can see it. People that are close and dear to me are doing the same things today that I've done back then. Now, I can't stand here and worry about what has happened to me in the past, because there's nothing I can do about it, not one thing. But I have always got to remember the miseries that I have been through, the misery that I have caused the people around me. Now, I was from a family, there was three of us young'uns, two sisters, they're older than I am. They have all the alcoholic thinking that I ever had, but neither one of them has ever taking a drop of anything with alcohol in it other than medicine that I know about. Well, I thought a lot of these two sisters because early in life they started telling me when I was trying to quit school, you'll never amount to anything, you're no good. Well, I wanted to show them that they were right. I didn't want to disappoint them and I worked worked at it pretty hard to help them be right. And I kept thinking a lot of them, and now I don't say this proudly, but I gave those two sisters, since they only had one little baby brother, I gave them four sister-in-laws. And you know, in a life of that kind I have hurt many, many people. And I can look back today and I could look back years ago, I hurt those girls and there wasn't any of them that wasn't nice girls. You see, I was raised and born and jerked up in a little town up in Tennessee. And about the only good thing that anybody would say about me, well, he'll work. The only reason that I worked, I wanted to buy that shine on the weekend. And I had finally used up everybody around there, and I was washing cars on the street. wasn't living at home. My people lived in town, but they had long since told me that I couldn't stay around them. And they were picking me up, but it turned me loose who I was. See, I had two sisters, a schoolteacher and the mother that was a school teacher, and my father was a hardworking man. They had turned me to loose, but the people kept putting the pressure on the city judge. And one Monday morning I'd been in a, oh, I'd been a ripping on Sunday all day and they hadn't got me stopped. And he whistled out of the bank window upstairs told me come across street and come up there. I thought he wanted me to wash his car and I knew that was a coke bottle full of whiskey because you get a coke bottled full of moonshine there in 50 cents. He says, �Sit down, Jim.� As unusual, I stood there and he chewed me out. He says everybody�s complaining about you. He says there�s never a day passed somebody don�t come up here and meet me on the street and tell me that there�ve got to be something done about you.� He says I believe that you would be a lot better off if you would leave town. I didn't like that very much, but I just stood there and took it because I didn' t want to say too much because I had been in that jail there in town a couple of times. And he says, I don't know but what the town won't be better off. And I can think back now, and I was through there last November. I don' t get back there often because I don't have too much love for those folks. No resentment now, don't misunderstand me. But after I got away and got my ribs filled out and a couple of bucks in my pocket, well, they thought I was a pretty good fellow. But the town has done all right, and by drinking all the whiskey and anything else that I thought had anything in it that would give me a buzz of any kind, I'm here tonight by the grace of God so I'm not mad at that judge just a few years after he asked me to leave town they asked him to step down out of the recorder's office and judge's office and I hope that someday I will meet him in this program because he needed right when when he run me out of town. But while I was there in that town, I had built up such a filthy, nasty name with everybody that nobody wanted me to associate with their daughters. It got around—the saying was pretty much a regular thing with people. Now, don't get out with Jim Music. He drinks and he drives fast and he does this and he does that. Well, what they were doing, them young gals, they wanted to find out what Jim Music was that their people didn't want them to know about. There was a girl there, she was from a little higher class family than I was maybe, had more money. Well we didn't have any but they lived pretty good livers and it wasn't anything unusual for their family to have whiskey in the house and that was back before there was any legal whiskey in my day see and she could not drink she couldn't hold it down it would come right back up as soon as it hit and I had been around some little bit and she finally got around to me and I took her out to a place where they sold moonshine and I showed her how to take a shot in the bucket. Now, in case any of you have never learned that shot-in-the-bucket way and some of you may want to start drinking again and for a lot of us it's awful hard to get that morning drink to stay down. This shot-in-the-bucket recipe is like this. You take a big water glass, you take a dram glass and set down in the middle of the water glass and then you can pour moonshine or champagne, gasoline or anything in that dram glass and then fill the big glass up to almost the top of the dram glass with spring water you could get seven up now or most anything and you couldn't take that and you never taste the whiskey or whatever's in the dram glass and you know i went for two and a half years having trouble with that morning drink and i never thought about that and my lord you talk about that morning drank if that wasn't wasn't awful my wife always says when she goes anywhere with me. Now, Daddy, don't tell them about the morning drink because maybe they haven't eaten yet or maybe they've just eaten and it's not nice. That morning drink got so rough and I wasn't like the fellow that had a cheap grade of whiskey and a good grade, one to throw up and one to drink. I just had a cheat grade. And I would keep me a stew pan. It hold about three or four pints. I'd keep it hanging in my bathroom, and my wife always thought that I used it to throw water over in the commode or something of that sort. But what I would do, I'd stand there and I'd get a big drink in my mouth, and it'd go down, and I knew it was coming back up. But the third or fourth time, there would be enough of it to tell you, it'd get thick enough then and a little warm. And then pretty soon I could take a drink like a man. But that's a rough way to take it. If I ever start again, I'm going to do that shot in the bucket route. Well, getting back to where the judge had told me that the town them would be so much better off without me. Well, I heard of a bus driving job about 75 miles from my home and this cab driver there in town, he had never give up on me. He always thought that I was pretty good fella. And I went and asked him about it. He knew this man that owned this little bus line. And he says, Jim, if you will go over there and work, I'll call Mr. Evans. And he called him out of his pocket. I wouldn't have spent no money for that if I'd had any. I'd bought me some shine with it. Mr. Evans told him to send me over the next day. And Porter turned around and he says, now, Jim you get your suitcase packed and you get over there because he he wants you over there tomorrow." So the next morning, bright and early, I got up and I had everything I had right with me and no suitcase because one or two boarding houses before that had my suitcase. And I started to Smithville, 75 miles away, and about noon I was beginning to wonder if maybe I hadn't better hunt somebody that had a little shine that I could buy. I had maybe a dollar, a dollar and a quarter in my pocket. And I was hitchhiking, and there I stood on the side of the road, and this car passed going the other way. And it was at that time an elderly woman. Anybody 50 years old now is not elderly, and I'll tell you that I don't think they are. But she turned around and she came back, and she says, Where are you going? And I told her, and then she said, Well, get in and I'll take you. We'd gone about a mile or two, and in her conversation she was turning her head toward me. I smelt this wonderful aroma of this moonshine. And the subject came up quick then about drinking whiskey. And she says, �Do you drink?� I say, �Occasionally.� And she pulled off the side of the road under this big tree and we went around and opened up the back end of this new 36 model Ford. And there was a case of half-a-gallon self-sealer fruit jars, all of them full but one that she had taken just a few little drinks out of. Now I was due for this job, but I had used up all the jobs in my hometown. And this looked like even when I was not much past twenty years old was the last thing. But I forgot about this job. But I showed up for the job, I think it was a week later to the day. And being a silver-tongued drunk, I talked the man in to hire me. And there wasn't much money to be made at that time in a small bus line and he didn't pay very much and you couldn't get by on it, not when buying a little whiskey every day. So I went back to the rub alcohol, Coca-Cola. And I didn't stay there too long until I got a chance—I silver-tongued this deal, too. I got the chance to go to work for Greyhound out of Louisville, Kentucky. The first check I drawed, I knew that there was something the matter that wouldn't last as the most money I had ever seen or heard of in my life for two weeks' work. And that is when I got down to steady and solid drinking. That was just as much of my budget as my dry cleaning and shirts or anything else. At that time I had used up three, four gals, and I went to Louisville and I wanted to work for Greyhound, the driving. Shortly after that I met this young gal who was out of high school. She was up in Cincinnati taking a business course. And she should have known better, because she had had a drinking father and she at that time had a drunken stepfather. But she loved to listen to my lies, and she thought that there might be something she could do about it. I heard her tell one of our daughters not too long ago, says, yeah, I thought I would marry your daddy," and he quit drinking because that was all he needed was somebody that would watch out about him. But for more than eighteen years then, she had me when I was drinking. And all the other suffering that I had put people through was nothing to what I put this wife that has stayed with me and I have today, thanks to Dr. John Mooney's psychiatry and Ralph and Corneal's advice. They've helped me a lot. I don't know what they've done for her. I don' t know why a woman would have to send all the way to Georgia to get a psychiatrist and a lawyer but my wife she uses corneal and ralph for handling her legal work advice about me and she uses john moon dr john mooney as her psychiatrist and between the three of them they've got me pretty well fixed but i was always one to say well you you've got a house to live in and she raised two daughters in four rooms. And we had more stuff under the beds than we had anywhere else because we had to have beds, wasn't any closets in the house. And many, many times I would go away and stay a week at a time, and they didn't know where I was. But it was always smart enough to call a dispatcher and lay off. And you can imagine A lot of you have been through it, sitting there for a week, sometimes over a week not knowing whether I was at the bottom of the lake or where I was or if I'd ever be back. And one particular time I came back home and I'd been gone about a week. And I thought that she would be more than glad to see me. The girls were gone to school and it was about 830 in the morning and she would never fail So when she cooked meals, she would leave mine on the table until the next meal because she never knew when I was coming in. And this particular morning she was standing at the kitchen sink washing the dishes from the girls' breakfast and she just picked up a stewpan full of spaghetti and tomato sauce. And I walked up behind her and put my arms around her, and she reached back with that and she was going to clobber me with it. And there was a streak of spaghetti a foot wide went completely around that kitchen about six foot from the floor. And I run and jumped in the bed, clothes and all because I knew Ty was just tall as a lift. It's kind of funny now, it wasn't funny then because she had to work all day. a rented house and that old woman that we were rented from would check that house every time she'd come after the rain well the girls they uh they went along and they'd be after television come in they'd all be up watching television and uh they'd hear me come up on the porch they'd turn out the light and turn off the television and jump into bed because they knew that daddy was going to raise a stink about something. That was a part of me. It's like a lawyer used to be down home there. He'd get drunk every four or five months, and he would always run the town marshal plumb over the hill, plumb—the town marshel goes squirrel hunting or something every time that Stitzel got drunk. And by the way, he was a lawyer too, corny and uh and a good one when he was sober and then he would go back home and he he had the town marshal out out of his way and he would whip his wife and kids and break up all the furniture and throw it out the windows and he never bothered to open the windows well i some way or another i always wanted to be like Stitzel. Well I never did run any marshals out of town, but there come a time when I did break up a whole lot of the furniture and threw it through the windows and she still has a throw rug that occasionally with this long split in it that she sewed up she puts alongside my bed to keep reminding me as to where I was and what I was doing and how no good i was i think she does that that's what i tell her but uh with success and a little more money along i i got pretty pretty nasty i began to every time i would get out i'd get in jail but being a silver tongue drunk now i would talk them out of it one time they got me though two and a half years before i threw in the towel, and they locked me up. And I finally asked this jailer, I said, well, would you let me call my wife? He says, yeah. So he let me out to call my wife and I says, you know where I am? And she says, well, a while ago you were headed for Central America. I said well, I'm in Garrard County Jail that was 35 miles south of Lexington. She says, Well, tell them to keep you till you get in shape to come home and hung the phone up. And the next morning, the jailer was nice. He got the judge out of the bed, and that judge, it's a wonder he hadn't lowered the boom on him because he was suffering something awful with a hangover. And I had to get back to my job. I was due out at 11 o'clock that morning, and it was in July, just about as hot as it is now. And my boss already knew about it, And he met me at the bus station, and he said, well, what happened? And I said, it's a long story. He said, we want to hear it, so I told him. And he said,"Well, that's all right. I'm glad to get it first-handed." So, of course, I had swore off that morning I never was going to take another drink after I got this half pint down to keep me from flying away. Our scenic cruiser coaches had just come out at that time, and nobody knew how to work on them and not too many knew how to drive them and they'd break down and drop the hat. That is all it saved me the last two and a half years I was drinking because when the going got too rough I could always break one down and they would come out and they didn't know what was the matter with it and they get in it and it's dark and that was natural though. But it came in loaded right before the 4th of July and it was, like I say, hot. He said, well we'll give you that It's loaded for Chattanooga and south. We'll let you take that. You need an easy day. So I stepped up in this big scenic cruiser, and it was just as cool. That air conditioning was really doing a job. And in backing out, I stepped on something that turned the heat on. I was flipping switches and kicking this and that, and all day long that heat was on full force. That Jack Daniel's black label, I'd still go in first class there. It run down in my shoes. And I was still sore after I got eighty miles north of Chattanooga and I couldn't make it any further, and I stole a pint of Mr. Davis' whiskey there at the Davis diner. I knew where he kept it. And then I took me a couple drinks and I made it pretty well. Now, you may wonder how I got by driving a Greyhound bus and drinking. If you were an officer checking drivers on the highway, chances are a GreyHound bus driver would be the last man you would suspect of violating anything other than the speed laws. We do drive over a little over 45 sometimes. But the people, as long as you treat them nice, and I had to treat them nice, you can do anything you want to and get by with it. And it wasn't easy. See, I wasn't drinking then to have fun. I had a cell so that I could work and make money to buy some more whiskey with. It wasn't a bit easy. You've got to stay about so-so. You get too drunk, you fall out of the seat, and if you get too sober, you fly out of it. And it got to where that I was having trouble with the passengers. I had long since quit having anything to do with any of the drivers that didn't drink because I didn't want nothing to do mit anybody that didn' t drink. And I was havin' too much trouble with passengers. I was nice to them until they crossed me in the least bit, and then I might slap them or run them or cuss them. It didn't make any difference. So finally, Greyhound got tired of that, and they knew there was something wrong with me, but they couldn't put their finger on it. And we went along there, in and out of the office, fired and put back, pulled out of service for investigation. And my boss, that is my boss today, he was my boss back then. He'd say, if you will have an accident or if I can catch you a stealing, says I can fire you and get rid of you. And I wasn't fighting it because the union wouldn't fight my cases. They'd give up on the first one. They said, no, we ain't going to fight it because I told so many people what I thought of them. And the time came, though, when one morning they were fueling the coach en route at one of our rest stops. And the man that was doing the fueling, he said that I drove off with a hose inside of the bus and I might have because that spring that's in there, in a ten-foot hose it will over 100 yards. And when I got in, they didn't say anything about it and I went back on one more trip. And uh, when I came in on that trip, they told me to take this senior cruiser to the garage and I hadn't had a drink for over 50 miles and I knew that I had one in my car over on the parking lot. And now, if any of you ever worked for Greyhound and they tell you something to do with a scenic cruiser, now if you don't want to do it, you just keep your mouth shut. You be careful where you tell them to stick it because they will fire you. And they did, and I stayed fired. Finally the boss got sorry for me and he says, I can put you back to work with sixty days lost time." And I went home to do my sixty days, lost time. And as you know, I was pretty smart drunk besides being silver-tongued. I had got my wife taken in to Washington several years before this, and she still is. That's the reason I can afford to make these trips. But I went home and then I sat down. We had built a new home, and I sat there and looked out the window at them building all these other homes. And it was taking from nine to thirteen half-pints of whiskey a day for me. That was around the clock. I can't believe that I ever sobered up at one time. That's when I came to AA. And I would go to town, I'd go to a store three and four or five times a day and get two, three, or four half pints. I don't know why I didn't get enough to last me 24 hours, and I'd gulp. And I was doing the cooking because my wife didn't give in until about seven. and business was good then at the laundry, and 7, 7.30, and sometimes 8 o'clock, and the girls would not come home without their mother because they knew that I was going to get after them. I'd find something to fuss about, fight with them about. And the least I could do, see, was do the cooking. And you know a drunk, when he gets to cooking, you see this little thing that you want to cook, and then you look around and you see something else. And our stove only had four eyes, and I've had as many as six or seven things at a time I was trying to cook in different pots. I got to where I'd just add them and then wouldn't have but just four pots. And a few times I just put them all in one pot. And I remember one time that I I cooked green beans and sweet potatoes together. If you've never tried it, don't. It ain't good. But the girls would always come in and they'd come through the kitchen and my wife would go the other route because she had long since quit even wanting to look at me let alone be close enough to smell me. But this particular night they switched on me. My wife came through the kitchens and the girls went the other route and I'm sure that they went in the room and locked the door closed it because they knew that I was going to raise a racket but my wife crossed the kitchen and she squared herself away at the far side of the kitchen and picked up my half pound on the drain board and she said now you may get mad but I'm going to talk to you. She says, the girls and me have been talking. And by the way, she had this speech, I think, written out and been practicing on because she stood there and she never stammered for a word for 15 minutes. She said, we've been talking, discussing this thing, and we've decided that you would rather have your whiskey as to have us, and we're going to go our way and you can go yours. And, you know, most people when they are separating, they divide up their wealth. One will take this farm or a piece of property and the other one will take another piece of property. One will get some money and the others will get money. But this was a little different. She says, now I'm not going to leave you with all these bank notes. And she stood there and told me how we would divide up the bank notes and pay them off. she says now we want you to know that we still love you but says and we think you're a good cook but says you use too much of this haven hill i wasn't going to first class then i didn't go down that haven hill and i thought sister if you think i'm wasting in this whiskey and this cooking you're crazy but she talked on and i knew she meant business and i says go in there and call dave ben and ari had the pleasure of meeting dave and his wife when they were up visiting me two or three weeks ago and she called dave from the living room and i of course had to sneak and listen there in the kitchen. And she told Abe a lot of things that she shouldn't have been told. It is the truth, but there's some nasty things and bad things. And he says, let me talk to that joker. I said, I'm on the phone. What do you want to talk about? And I don't remember just how the conversation went, but I do remember one thing. He says, how much are you drinking i says all about a half pound every two or three days yeah i know he says do you want to do anything about your drinking i said yeah i guess so he says do you he didn't carry nobody around on a white glove he says dude i said yep he said well i'll come in and talk to you directly i said no i've done had my little drink before my evening meal don't come in tonight because i still had a half a pint and and part of another half-pint and i didn't want any whiskey around if i was going to quit but we talked about it and he said well i'll take you to a meeting tomorrow night i said all right i knew that i didn t know anything about aa but i knew he had been awful bad and he hadn't drank them 10 12 years So we arranged the time and the place that we'd meet. He was a little late, and I started to run, but they got there. And he had asked me not to take a drink that day, and I didn't. I made it pretty good, and that's the first time in months and months that I got up and didn't have to have a drink. And on the way to the meeting, he and his wife talked to me. and what they said I don't know it didn't make any sense to me only this one thing they said now it is up to you and now this place up here where we're going it's open seven days a week many of you people have been to that Duncan Park AA clubhouse and says you spend a lot of your time up here says you uh make yourself right prominent around this place every day and says you believe everything that everybody tells you until you find out it's different and i still pack a little bit of resentment for dave because he didn't tell me that i had more than that trip i didn't know what you just keep going and coming this thing i thought that was it and before i had left the laundry that evening i had put a blank check in my pocket i was going whatever it was, and I knew there'd be charges to it. But got up there. Dave took me in. His wife was right along with us, and everybody knew Dave. He was a great big fellow. He's outstanding. Everybody was glad to see him. He introduced me to everybody, and they had reach out to shake hands with me they didn't have to shake that old clammy hand i'd shake it for them because i i get in pretty foul shape and uh i thought well now he doesn't run me in on a bunch of people ain't able to drink any whiskey because they don't they just don't look like people that ever drank and see i didn't believe that anybody had uh that there's anybody that didn't drink whiskey i figured he's kind of like undertakers you know i never have figured yet that undertaker ain't afraid of their work and i i figured that everybody drank a little whiskey some of them keep it hid better than i did and then the meeting got underway and i don't know what just did go on but about halfway through this gal's talk I'd begin I had been thinking that he had found out a bunch of stuff about me from my wife and he had told this gal and she was telling it on me acting like like it was her and I was wondering why she didn't shut up so I could get out of that place and get me a drink because I done found out they wasn't going to give me any pills or tell me if they'd cut me in two or anything if I didn't quit drinking And, oh, I figured I'd start it a little later. But about halfway through her talk, I thought, well, now she may be lying, but I am going to try this. And when the meeting was, when she was through and they were passing out the chips, he punched me and says, hold up your hand. And that chip system was very impressive to me that night. I can remember every word that man said. And I think that the chip system is beautiful in any group if it's hound right. And I said, It ain't been 24 hours since I had a drink. He says, You're on your way. Hold up your hand. And I couldn't because I was sitting on my hands. He held up his hand and they brought me a white chip. And the meeting was over and I went over the hill that night by the whiskey store and I thought nothing about a drink I went home. I went in my wife's bedroom, and I shook her. She was possum. She turned over, andI said, Honey, I think I have found something. And I went to tell her about it, and she wasn't interested. She just said, Well, I hope you haven't. She turned back over. And I sat there the next day thinking, and then about the middle of the day, people began to come out that I'd met the night before. and that's the way it's been in AA there's always been somebody for me to lean on and I was afraid to go back to work when my 60 days was up I took another 40 and just lived up at that club for near day and night I was scared to go Chattanooga because that had been where some of my roughest drinking was and finally I could see that I had to go back to work because I was getting pretty unpopular around the house. And I went back to work and I didn't have any trouble. I have had some days, there's been a time or two that I bought some whiskey. I bought a pint of whiskey in Chattanooga about three years ago but I didn' t drink it. Now they was an authority on A.A. told me why I didn't, about the sugar in my blood coming back up and all that crap. I know why I didn't drink it, that higher power that's always been there. And I began to find out a little bit about the program. And my wife and daughters, they were respecting me. And they have tried to love me. And I want to say this with all sincerity, that my wife and me are closer today than we were because I tore down an awful lot in those over 18 years that she had me when I was drinking. And cold love is like trying to build a fire out of wet leaves. It's hard to get started again. But today I feel like we are back where we should be. But my daughters, the damage was done there and since they are not home now, they will always respect me and they will love me but they will never be the closeness that I would like to have between them and me. But they have tried everything under the sun they have tried even harder than i have i've tried to buy their love you can't buy it i had the pleasure of walking both of them down the aisle when they got married and uh it's like ben me were talking this afternoon he said we don't want any slip-ups now tonight got to get it all down pat i said we didn't want to go go right And I know when the baby girl got married, we went out to the rehearsal the night before and they walked us, me and another child down the aisle. And we had it all figured out just how everything went. Next night at the wedding, baby girl and me were standing back there and we kept waiting and waiting. And I says, is it time to go? And she says, I don't know. We waited a while longer. And I said, Let's go. So we run down the aisle. Just as we got down there and got squared away in front of the preacher, the organist started playing Here Comes the Bride. It didn't bother me a bit because you people in AA have taught me to accept those things as fun, and you've taught me a lot of tolerance. uh some time some years ago the daughter that's the nurse she had been doing some some of her student training in louisville and she came home and she brought her mother a lamp and we've got a pretty good eating table we never have eat off of it but she brought this lamp in and we eat off up at once we had about 10 12 years She brought this lamp in and it had a bub in the bottom of it, supposed to have a little seven-and-a-half watt marble bub, and a bup in the top. And they had put a big bup on the bottom, and she set it down on the table and laid it up for her mother. And her mother admired it, and they went on down to the cellar to see what else they had for Christmas. It was just a day or two before Christmas. We had had to stop by the narcotic hospital for the Christmas party. running late on the count of snow and ice. Mr. and Mrs. Sewell couldn't come that night. That don't mean much to most of you people, but there's four or five here that it does. And I picked up three big cakes that they sent over for the Christmas party for the AA group there. But directly we smelled something down in the basement where we were, and we began to look and went back upstairs and that bulb had burned a place in that table. It was too deep to refinish out. Jim Marie and her mother they were just about ready to throw the lamp out and they were carrying on something awful. I says, be glad that you had a table to get burned. A lot of people ain't even got a table to be burned. And so many things that happened that way. It's like the other morning when I started down here, I was two hours later than I planned to be leaving Lexington and I got mixed up with a gravel truck running so fast I couldn't pass him and I got aggravated and went a piece further than something else aggravated me. And I said, well, if I'm going to act like this, I'll turn around and go back. I said the surrender prayer a few times and began to look around and first thing you know there wasn't any traffic my way and when it did get in the way I'd just stop and look around a while and I really had a pleasant trip to be with myself. You people have taught me those things. and i had to find that this world turned around other people besides me i found that after i got an a.a that's the reason that so many little things mean so much to me uh you know A few times in my life I've been called on to turn thanks at a meal. And I never knew what to say, but since being an AA, I have one. I say, thank you, God, so much for so much that we give so little. That's all I can say when it comes to turning thanks. And so many times I see people wondering why bad things happen to them. They say, well, why did this have to happen to me? Why can't they accept it like Ben does? But you know none of us, including me, we never, when we're having good things happen to us, we never think to say, well, why is this good happening to me? Now, for a long time, my wife and I, we had quite a difference in whether I should spend all my time in AA or go to church or what we should do. And I don't hold anything against her for it, but not too long ago she came in on a Sunday from church. She holds one corner of Grace Baptist Church up there in Lexington. God bless her, and she brought the girls up in it too. She came in and she sat down. I was reading the paper. I hadn't been up long. I'd come in that morning, and she says, I feel so much better. You know, going to church always makes you feel better. I said, yeah, I guess it does. I said now why don't you go out and visit somebody this afternoon that couldn't go to church this morning, and they'll feel good too. Well, that brought it. She went on upstairs. See, we never fussed. She'd give me that deep freeze treatment. She'd clam up for days and days. And so many times I wonder. Our churches are full of people on Sunday morning. Now, I love the church. You know, for us drunks and people that forgot about church and God for so many, many years. That was our only communication line kept open between us and God was the churches. And I love more today than I did day before yesterday because after hearing Brother Jody yesterday morning done me an awful lot of good. Of course now when my wife hears it she's going to appreciate it too. But she'll say well naturally you think It's good because he mentioned your name up there in the pulpit. But so many times I go out there to the hospital and people are lonesome. You know, there's a lot of lonesOME people out there, even though there's hundreds of them there. And I'm just one. I can only visit with one or two or three maybe an afternoon. And if so many of our people that go to church on Sunday morning, now I know that everybody tries to do the most they can and the best they can. They go to Church on Sunday mornings, they got on good clothes, they drop a nice donation in the plate, and they go home and they feel good. and all during the week they read the Bible wonder if they ever think about the person that is plum forgotten nobody thinks of I've often thought all the thousands of people there in Lexington go to church every Sunday morning why couldn't a dozen or two of them go to Narco with me on Sunday afternoon and visit with some of them launching people and show them people that there's somebody to lean on well i don't know why and i'm not going to ask them none of my business again maybe they don't see people like i see him i read in tom lovin's book where he said that god made man and he had a lifeless pile of blubber laying there and he didn't know what to do with it so he reached down and he breathed breath into this lifeless pile of blood and then it was alive that was man so to me everybody has a little bit of god in them now there's some of us that there was a time that they wasn't no good in us but we still had a little guardians and that's the reason that every morning when i get up and many times during the day i have got to say thank you god for a new day and whatever you have for me today is all right your will god and not mine and i have to thank god for yesterday because yesterday was good And I have got to thank him for AA, and I've got to thank AA for him. And I've also got to tell him how much I appreciate him for granting me the privilege to choose him as my high power because he is, to me, he's the master of everything. And I got to thank him running my cup over with blessings because ever since that I came to this program I'm like Ben Franklin. Everything has been good. My cup has run over with blessings every day. There's been nothing but good happen to me either, Ben. There's ben some things happen that I couldn't understand, but it turned out they were for the best. And I've got to thank him for the many, many luxuries that he gives us to use and to enjoy. and i've got to thank him for letting me share being willing to share see i have no money and i found out three about three and a half years ago that i'd never be able to get that million dollars worked out that i was after so i decided that i wasn't happy that way and i would be willing to care what little bit i had with my fellow man less fortunate than i and not only what little money you've got sharing that don't get it all together either you have got to be willing to share your time you know a lot of times you think well i walk over and give that poor devil a dollar a couple bucks he would rather just have a hidey and a smile as to have your couple of bucks even though he's hungry. I noticed that out there at the hospital so many times. You meet people in the halls and see them in the rooms, and you stop for a second and wave at them. I've never seen them. And now they look forward to that do-gooder coming out there. And I ain't trying to do nothing for nobody but myself, I just want to keep Jim sober today. And in my prayer I've got to ask God if it is his will to let me do something for him today, for my family and for my fellow man, and have the respect of all three. And I've Got to ask him along with this to let me do something for him this day without reservation you know that's a pretty hard thing to do most of us when we're doing something we're shooting an angle in a way even in the best of people and it's awful hard to do something without shooting angle and that's the reason that I ask him every day to let me do something for him without reservation. And one of the greatest things that I have ever found since I've been in this program is every morning when I say my prayer, God, everyone that I come in contact with today think about or they think about me. Whether they like me or not, God, let me like them. If they don't like me, it is not their fault. And help me today, God to correct a little bit of some of the many defects of character I have. People, I want to tell you again how much I appreciate being here and this has meant an awful lot to me because there's a love developed and we have cultivated between Ben and Pete and John and, of course, you other people. But the more I go to Narco, the more i love those fellows and i don't have the vocabulary because these one and two syllable words that i have You don't have any trouble understanding part of them. But I just can't tell you how much I appreciate being here. And to you people who may be digging a little deep in AA, I want to close with this. Be careful. You remember the first hundred, all they did was sit around in little groups and talk about the measures they had been through. It kept them sober. They didn't have to wonder why they had busted their strainer and couldn't drink any more, and they didn't Have to worry about it. And keep this thing simple. It's like the old colored mammy. She told a young boy that had just come out of school to enter the ministry, she says you want me to tell you how to be a good preacher he says yes Mandy I do she says just always keep the cookies on the bottom shelf so the little folks can read them and for me people and a lot of other people like me keep this thing simple and thank you for listening Thank you, Jim, for a wonderful message. And I can see now, after listening to that, why Ben warned him to come here and talk to us tonight. I wish I had the words to express how much I've enjoyed it, but I can't, so I have to say thank you again, Jim. We here in this group, like most other groups, have what is known as ship system. When you come in here, we do not have any rolls, rostrums or anything. We just ask you to take a chip which will remind you of what you are. when you first come in we give you a white chip which carries 30 days we ask you during that time if you feel like you have to have a drink to call one hour or as many hours as you think.