Middle-Aged, Pot-Bellied, and Bald — Baby, You Ain’t Got What They Want 🤦 – Don P.

I'll tell you, I'm privileged to introduce Don Pete. Hi, everybody. My name's Precious. I couldn't resist that, but let's start again. Hi, everybody. My name's Don Pope. I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. By God's grace, sponsorship, and the actions of the 12 Steps, I've been sober since the 21st day of February, 1980, and I'm very grateful for my sobriety. I'm very grateful for this lay, but it itches, so I'm going to take it off a little bit so I don't scratch at it all the time. I'm sharing it with you. I'm sharing it. My home group is the Primary Purpose Group in Marco Island, Florida. Susan explained to you that, contrary to what your program says and the information that Glenn had before he got here, we no longer live in Ulysses, Kansas or Wichita, Kansas, but we're Floridians now. We dodge hurricanes along with our fellow members of our new state. I want to thank the committee and Lois for when she's the one who called and she's the one who called. I want to thank you for your loving invitation to be here at your 17th annual Big Island Bash. I want to thank Bob and Judy for their kind and thoughtful emails over the last several months, helping us make the arrangements to get here and spend a couple extra days on your beautiful island. And I want to thank Jeff and Mary Ann for picking us up at the airport and driving us around last night and serving as our host and hostess, and thank you for your kindness. The book Alcoholics Anonymous tells me that, in a general way, I'm supposed to share with you what I used to be like and what happened and what I am like today. It's always been pretty easy for me to share with you the things I used to do and the trouble I used to get into and stories about how my drinking used to be. It's always been a lot more difficult for me to find work and words to really express to you what I used to be like on the inside. A couple of years ago, we have a little condo on the lake of the Ozarks, actually, in Missouri, and Susan had taken some of her gals, their golfing buddies, down there to play golf, and it must have rained because I came down the next week and they'd put together this jigsaw picture puzzle on a round dining room table we've got there in a little dining room. And it was an interesting puzzle, but when I looked at it, there was a piece missing right in the middle of the puzzle. And I thought, my God, that's what I used to be like. That's what I used to be like. If you'd have tried to make a jigsaw picture puzzle out of the picture of Don, there'd have been this hole right in the middle with the missing piece. That's what I used to be like on the inside. The summer between my sophomore and junior year in high school, I had three hallmark first-time events happen, and each one of those I thought was the missing piece. Early that summer, for the first time, I flew an airplane by myself, and I thought this is the best there can be in life, and this has got to be the thing that I've always been looking for to fill in the missing piece in me. And then about the time school was out, one of the senior girls had invited me to go to the junior-senior prom, and sometime between midnight and sunrise that next morning, I was sure that I had found the missing part of me. Then that summer, that summer, three of my buddies asked me if I could borrow my dad's car and maybe we could all go to the drive-in movie. And I wheeled my dad out of his 54 Ford, and we went to the movie, and we were sitting out there at the drive-in, and one of them said, guess what I got? And he took out a half pint of tequila. Now, the house that I grew up in knew all the heartache, and the heartache and the grief that goes with a home that's afflicted with alcoholism. And I had promised myself at a very early age that I would never drink, and that I would never bring the kind of, shame and guilt and remorse to the people that I loved the way it happened in my home. But you know, those guys in the back seat took a drink, and the guy over on the right-hand side took a drink, and he handed it to me, and I didn't think of any of that. I just picked it up and took a drink, and God, it tasted terrible. It burned. I thought it was going to eat a hole in my throat. And in just a couple of minutes, I knew I had found the missing piece of my life. And when I handed that to the guy in the back, I only had one thought in my mind, and that was, I hope to God there's some of that stuff left by the time it gets back around to me. And before that night was over, I don't know what happened. I woke up the next morning, and my t-shirt was covered with what tequila looks like coming up instead of going down. I looked out to my bedroom window, and the back of Dad's 54 Ford was all caved in like in an accordion, and I didn't know how that had happened. And I had... I had to figure out a quick lie to cover up that whole story. And that started a pattern in my life that was to carry on for the next 24 years. I'd drink, and I'd get in trouble, and I'd have to lie and cover it up. And really not much changed, just the people and the faces and the places changed over the next 24 years of my life. I... I... I used to think... I used to just be bewildered by why I drink. And I couldn't ever figure out any answer to it. One time, must have been 12 or 13 years before I got into Alcoholics Anonymous, Susan had taken our two little kids and gone to Wichita to visit her sister. And a friend of mine, who was a Caterpillar tractor salesman, I was in the road construction business, and he had called and he said, let's go to lunch. And he drove down to Ulysses, and we went out to lunch, and we spent... Instead of having lunch, we started drinking. We drank all through lunch and all afternoon. And sometime about 7 o'clock that evening, we had a moment of alcohol-induced brilliance. And... We thought we ought to take a trip. And maybe some of you used to do that. You drink all day and think you need to take a trip. And we looked at each other and thought we were both too drunk to drive. And we wanted to go over to a nightclub we knew about in a town in Colorado about 100 miles away. But we were afraid we'd get busted if we tried to drive. So we went out to the airport and pushed my little single-engine airplane out of the hangar. And thought it'd be safer to fly. My friend, his name is Jerry. And... Believe it or not, he's still my friend. But he'd fixed a fresh drink, and he got strapped in, and he was holding his drink. And somehow I got it out to the end of the runway, and I got it up and into the air, and got the gear and the flaps up. And I looked over, and old Jerry had passed out. He claims he faded out of sheer fright. But... He never could drink very good, and I know he passed out. So we got about 500 feet in the air, and I thought, I'll wake him up with some... booze-aided aerobatics. And I tried to do an aileron roll from about 500 feet, and it damn near worked. When I came out the bottom, I was just about a foot too low. And the prop hit the dirt. And of course, it quit going around immediately. And I... I kind of pancaked the bottom of the fuselage, just skimmed the ground. I thought it was a pretty slick maneuver, really. And I got up in the air, you know, glided back up about 100 feet, and that old Cessna airplane had a hydraulic landing gear, and you had to pump it down with a hydraulic pump. And I thought, I believe I can get the gear down before we come back down again. And I was half right. As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... As... calls Susan. She thinks I called her, but I don't think I was that drunk. Somebody calls Susan to fill her in on this latest exciting chapter in Don's life. And she chartered a plane in the middle of the night, flew back home with the kids. And the next morning, we used to do this thing. We used to do this thing before I ever got into AA. We used to have these group conscience meetings in my house. And she called my mother. And she and my mom came over and we had a group conscience meeting about what to do about Don. I like your group conscience meetings better because you let me vote. They never did let me vote. But they decided that I was going to vote for Don. And I said, I'm going to vote for Don. And I said that I should go to Denver and see this shrink and figure out why I did these crazy things. And I remember sitting in that guy's office and he looked at me and I looked at him. Finally, he said, why do you drink like this and why do you do things like this when you drink? And for the only time in my life, I answered that question truthfully. I was asked that question a lot. But I answered truthfully to him and I learned why you never want to answer that question truthfully. I said, be the hell out of me. Do you have any idea? And he said, no, be the hell out of me too. And he gave me a he gave me a vial full of dope and told me to go and sin no more. I took that stuff for a couple of days and the world got way too slow for me. I'll tell you. That's my drugging story. You've heard all there is to tell about that. There's a little more, but I probably won't go into it from here. But and I went back to I went back to Jesterini and Brooks Magic Elixir. That's the only stuff that ever worked for me. I tried a lot of goofy things. You know, I didn't know until I got to you that what what my problem was, is that I could not face the reality in my life. And it was absolutely necessary for me. I become irritable and restless and discontented when I don't drink like like Susan talked about her dad. And I just can't accept life on life's terms until I can alter my perception of reality by having a couple of drinks of booze. That's why I drink. You taught me that. You taught me that out of out of your literature and your own experience. But I didn't know any of that in those days. And and I just I would just try. All these goofy kinds of things to alter my perception of reality. I mean, I'm a bar drinker. I didn't drink alone till the end. I like to drink in those little bars where the smoke's so thick you can cut it with a knife and you can hear the ice cubes tinkling in the glasses. And there's a little postage stamp sized dance floor back in the corner of the room, a little country and western band playing heart breaking music back there. You know, the girls get prettier clothes. And. That's my kind of a place. Makes me thirsty to talk about it. Then. And the problem was I had all these fantasies about how closing time was going to work out, but it never worked out. It never worked out. And I couldn't figure out what the problem was. It's simple. They don't like to go home with the guys that are puking on their boots. That's all there is to it. But. I looked at me and I've been about this ball headed since I was 26 years old. And I decided that my problem with closing time was that I was prematurely ball headed. So I heard about a doctor in Wichita and I got in my airplane and I flew down to see him. I made an appointment. His name was Dr. Brown. And I parked in front of a men's barbershop, I remember, on South Seneca Street, walked across the street, climbed the he had an upstairs office and I, Dr. Brown said that for $5,000 he could cut 10 rows of holes in the top of my head. And then he could cut 50 plugs of hair out of the back of my neck and transplant those plugs of hair into those rows on the top of my head. And if we got lucky, grow me 10 corn rows of hair. And he said, What do you think? What do you think of that? And I said, Not much. And he said, Why? And I said, Man, this was 1970. I said, $5,000 is a ridiculous amount of money. And besides that, if this deal works so good, why don't you do it? You're as ball headed as I am. And he said, It doesn't bother me being ball headed. And I said, I guess it doesn't me either. And I paid him my consultation fee and left. And I walked over to get my hair done. And I said, I'm going to get my hair done. And I said, I'm going to get my hair done. And I got in my car, because there was one of these joints that I like, down much further south on Seneca Street. And I looked up, and the easier, softer way just jumped right up and bit me. It was always, I love the easier, softer way. And I was in front of a barbershop, but it was really a specialty barbershop. It was a men's wig store. And they had these styrofoam heads, all lined up in the window. And on each one of these heads, they had a full head of hair. And I said, and I walked in there and gave that guy $500, 10% of what this goofy doctor wanted. Gave him 500 bucks. And an hour and a half later, I walked out looking exactly like one of my heroes, a country and western singer named Glenn Campbell. I had a full head of hair and a pompadour that went from here to here. And I was ready to go down to South Seneca and do the boogaloo. This is a long time ago. And I'm sure they still make hair pieces and I'm sure they figured out a better way. But you see, if you got a shiny ball head and you got a rug, the challenge is how are you going to get the rug to stick onto the shiny ball head? So what they did, they sold me a roll of double-sided adhesive tape. Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter And they, they had me on the road. They had me on the road. They had me on the road. They had me on the road. They had me on the road. They had me cut this tape in little one-inch strips and then I'd pull one side of the backing off and stick that around the inside perimeter of the rug. When I got that all done, then I'd pull the other side of the backing off. Now I got one sticky side stuck down. The other sticky side is standing up. Stick that thing on top of my head, comb it in, and I'm ready to go do the boogaloo. And I think that, they probably do it different now, and I think that system probably worked pretty good for non-alcoholic drinkers. Laughter I don't know about the rest of you ball-headed guys that are sitting in this room, but when I drink J&B Scotch, some real predictable things happen. Laughter I take that first drink and it burns quite a bit, but it just goes down and it starts that soothing, quieting, changing feeling, and I become a different person. I see the world through different eyes. That's my new pair of glasses. I'm suddenly, I'm suddenly, man, I got social skills I couldn't even dreamt about a couple of minutes ago. I can dance like nothing you've ever seen. And in about an hour and a half, that old booze starts coming out the top of my head in the form of sweat. Laughter Now, nature abhors a vacuum. And adhesive tape abhors perspiration. Laughter So what happened, I walked out of that wig store and I went down to the liquor store. Kansas had plenty of liquor laws in those days. You had to carry your own bottle everywhere you went. And I bought my fifth of J&B and I went down to the joint on South Seneca and I started drinking and the band started playing and I started dancing. And sure enough, pretty soon, that old Scotch started coming out the top of my head and the adhesive tape turned loose and the wig turned around sideways on the top of my head. Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter And I'm here to... Well, we're supposed to share our experience with you. I'm here to share with you that it's really tough to be a cool operator Laughter in a swinging 70's country and western singles joint when you're married and when the part on your hair is running from ear to ear. Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Your pompadour is hanging down over your right earlobe. Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter And they weren't impressed, I can tell you that. Laughter Laughter Laughter Closing time was still a disaster. I wore that rug for a year or two. We parted company one time. I was building an airport in Alamosa, Colorado. I'd been out to the joint and I made it back to the room. And it hadn't, it hadn't complete, it used to do this sometimes. One side would turn loose and the other side would stay stuck. So it would kind of flop over in that half scalp look, you know. Laughter And it was, I got back and looked in the mirror and it was just hanging over there. Laughter That didn't seem to impress him either. Laughter And then all of a sudden it was time for me to make my nightly oblations before the throne of American standard. Laughter I went into the bathroom. Laughter And got down on my knees and my head went down and the stuff came up and the other two little pieces of tape turned loose and it fell down in there with the rest of that mess. Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter I might have qualified as a town drunk but I sure wasn't the village idiot. I didn't fish it out. Laughter Laughter Laughter I just hit the silver handle and waved goodbye to the whole mess. Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter I went back to the only thing that really ever worked anyway to make me. Laughter It was like I just felt like I was an alien on a strange planet. Laughter And the only thing that made it so that I felt like I could fit in was booze. The problem was that in this progression of alcoholism in my life I came to adopt a credo of living that kind of went like this. at any means justifies the end. Whatever I perceived that I needed to make me happy, it was okay to get it, no matter what the consequences were going to be or no matter who got hurt in the process. So it worked kind of like this. If I perceived that I needed more love or sex to make me happy, I went about the business of doing that, irregardless of the constraints that were placed upon my life by my marriage vows. And if I perceived that I needed more money to make me happy, I went about the business of getting it, whether it was inside or outside of the boundaries that the law placed upon the way that I was supposed to do business. And that way in every area of my life. By the late 1970s, I'd become a liar and a cheat and a thief in every facet of my life. I'd become a part-time husband and a part-time wife. An absentee father. My dad had died in 1968. I was filled with resentment at him. I blamed him for all my perceived problems in life. I lived a couple of blocks from my mother and we didn't hardly speak because I blamed her for all my dad's problems which caused all my problems. I had a brother by this time who was working in the company. I saw him as a leech and didn't have any relationship with him. The only reason I had a job was I was the boss. If I'd worked for anybody else, I'd have been let go a long time before. And that's the way life was. Just the way it says in the big book. Pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. I don't think alcoholism is a moral issue. I'm sure there are a lot of you that were like me. Alcoholism was just like it put a ring through my nose and just led me wherever the hell it wanted to take me. And it took me to the depths of moral degradation. And this time, it's 1980. One time, Susan and I had come home from a binge and found the clothes on the front yard again. And she said, if you're going to live here, we're going to go see the marriage counselor. She talked to you about that and we were flying down to Wichita once a week to see this marriage counselor. And he had said, there's a drink that can cause trouble at home. And I said, are you the stupidest doctor in the world? She comes in here right before I do every week. You know it causes trouble at home. And I think what he said to me is, then why do you drink? But what I changed it around to hear was then why do you drink at home? And a light bulb went off in my head. So I got involved. I was involved in a business in Denver, Colorado, which was 250 miles away. And I'd run away from home every week to drink. And it was time for me to do it. My life was kind of like this. I'd leave early in the week and go out to Denver. And I'd stay drunk for three or four days. And then I'd try to dry out one day and come home. And I'd come home and I'd be filled with guilt and shame and remorse because I lived a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of life. And I'd take it out on Susan and the kids in mental and verbal abuse. And that was what life was like for me. And I was getting ready to go leave my office to go to the airport to get into my little plane and fly to Denver. And the phone rang. And it was Susan. And she said, Joyce and I want to go to Denver with you. We have business out there. Well, it's obvious why I didn't want Susan to go. And Joyce was the lady that Susan talked about that had joined Alcoholics Anonymous. And she was about the last person I wanted to be with. She used to be fun to hang out with. She got a little screwed up. She tried to kill herself. She didn't get the job done. I didn't see what she was so excited about. And then she joined AA. Quit drinking. I didn't want her along. And normally, I could have come up with a thousand reasons why they couldn't go. I mean, in retrospect, I can tell the inn was almost near because I said, okay, I'll meet you at the airport. So they got in the plane and we flew to Denver and I kept a room rented at a Holiday Inn on South Colorado Boulevard, and we checked into the hotel. And I went to the bar, and I don't know where they went. And that's the last thing I remember about the 20th day of February, 1980. And I came to the next morning. I knew the room because I came to there a lot. And then I looked and realized Susan was there, and I thought, boy, something's wrong. And I got up, and I put on my dirty shirt from the night before, and Susan woke up, and she ordered some coffee. And then I guess she called Joyce and asked her to come down and have coffee because all I remember is I'm sitting there with both hands around this coffee cup, and I'm shaking so bad I can't drink it. And the coffee's spilling out of the cup and running down my shirt. And somebody knocks on the door, and Susan answers the door, and Joyce comes bounding into the room with her bright, clear little AA eyes and says, good morning, Donald. How are you? And this is your speaker's wimpy moment of truth. I just ran out of lies. The world's great liar, and I just ran out of lies. And I said, I'm not worth a damn, Joyce. There used to be a speaker from Texas named Joe Leith. He's been dead some time now. But Joe used to talk about the little magic words of AA. And Joyce looked at me and gave me those five little magic words. She says, I know how you feel. I know how you feel. And I can't believe I did this. I said, Joyce, would you tell me something about this thing you're doing, Alcoholics Anonymous? Some of you are kind of new here tonight. And you probably have heard about our 12th step and about carrying the message to other alcoholics. And you may have gotten the idea that you've got to be sober a long time and have done all the steps, and be Mr. or Miss AA before you can carry the message. But I want to tell you about Joyce. She was six weeks sober. She had done through step five. She knew a little bit about the traditions because she heard them read at her meeting, but she didn't know much about them. She'd never heard of the 12 concepts of service. And she sat there and talked to me all that day and it snowed and we couldn't fly. And she'd been in my home and all that night and all the next day until the weather cleared up about AA. About how she'd found a way up and out of a life that she thought she only could end. Susan said she never got so tired of hearing people sit and talk about drinking and not drinking and all that stuff in her life. And I guess sometime in all that conversation, Joyce had asked me to go to an AA meeting with her and I must have said yes, but I'm sorry. But I'm sorry. But I'm sorry. I was really trying to get Susan off my back. You can understand that. Anyway, the weather cleared up and we flew home and Susan was kind of starting to speak to me again and I thought, heck, it's what you always say. This too will pass. It's going to be all right. But I was trying to be good and that night, it was a cold February night. There was snow all over the ground and I was out in the kitchen helping with the dishes to show you how good I was trying to be. And the doorbell rang and I opened the door and there stood Joyce, a big, tall, strapling Kansas farm girl. And I said, Joyce, what are you doing out on a cold night like this? And she said, you said you'd go to an AA meeting with me. And I said, well, God, I didn't mean tonight. Maybe next year or something, you know. And she grabbed me right by the collar of my shirt and drug me through the door and I said, what are we doing? And she said, get your miserable ass in the car. We're going to Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's how you got me. And I've been coming back ever since. I loved everything about AA until we got to step nine. Step eight, actually. I asked this guy named Louie to be my sponsor. Susan talked about Louie. And he took me through the 12 steps. This process that has just indelibly changed my life. He'd come by and pick me up every night. And he'd say, well, I'm going to go to the store. And I'd say, well, I'm going to go to the store. And we'd go to the meeting or go to another meeting out of town. And we'd do the steps in the car as we went. And then, of course, in about three weeks, he said, it's time to write your inventory. And I said, I'm too busy. I'll have to wait. And one day he showed up in my office about two days after I informed him about my busy schedule. And he showed up in my office with a Big Chief yellow notebook pad and three number two pencils. And he threw them down on my desk. And I said, what are these for? And he said, write until you run out of paper or you run out of pencil, Ed. He said, I'll see you Tuesday night at my house. And I stopped him and I said, Louie, I really don't have time to do this and I don't think I want to do it. Because I'd read ahead. Hmm. In your book. And I mean, it wasn't that I was so bothered about writing that stuff down for Louie and whatever you did in the fifth step, which didn't make any sense to me. In the sixth and seventh, nobody could understand them. But man, when you got to eight and nine, I could tell what you were up to. And I knew I couldn't do that deal. I knew I couldn't do that deal. So I told Louie, I said, I just can't do this. And he said, well, he said, if you don't, you're going to get drunk. And he said, it would break my heart too much to see that happen. So you'll have to ask somebody else to be your sponsor. And man, I was getting thrown out of places. And this guy was coming and picking me up. So I said, well, okay, I'll do it. And I wrote this immoral litany in my life. I didn't do it like... I do it now or like the big book says to do it. But I showed up at his house and I read him this Don's Woes kind of an inventory. And out of that, we sat down and he helped me figure out my defects of character and my grudge list and where fear came into play and the problems with my sex life, which didn't take any genius to figure out from what I'd written. And then we got down on our knees and did the fifth step, and talked about step six, and then did the seventh step prayer on our knees. And then he said, take out another piece of paper. We're going to make the list. And I said, no, I can't do this one, Willie. I can't do this. And what I was really saying is I didn't think I wanted to. See, I didn't come to you because I wanted to get good. Good always kind of just bored the living hell out of me. I came to you because I wanted to get the screws backed off. I wanted to get Susan off my back. I wanted to get the heat turned down a little bit and maybe everything would be okay. I knew I had all kinds of problems, but I really didn't think stopping drinking for the rest of my life was going to be any kind of an answer. And I heard you talk about living a different kind of life and I didn't think I could do that or they didn't even think I wanted to do that. But what happened in that four or five weeks of time is that, uh, I came to want something you had. It didn't have anything to do with your sobriety, I didn't think. What I wanted that you had was the peace that I could see in your eyeballs. Because I didn't know what that was like. And I told Willie that and he said, Don, that starts one day at a time from not drinking. You can't have the peace that we've got unless you have the rest of what we've got. And, and, and, and the light came on a little bit in my head that it all has to start with staying sober. So I said, well, I guess we can try it. So we made the list out of my inventory, my amends list. And, and, uh, the book says, you know, go home and take the book down from the shelf and see if your work's been solid so far. And what I did is I went home and wrote a letter of resignation to Alcoholics Anonymous. That's what I did. Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Willie had asked me and we kind of cajoled Susan to go down to see the canyon to this conference. And, uh, that was the first full weekend in May. And I just knew I couldn't, I couldn't clean this mess up. And that, that maybe I could find a better way to live. But, you know, what Willie told me is he said, Don, you have got to quit doing everything you're doing and start doing things a different way. You've got to, he said, if you keep living your life and breaking your marriage vows and cheating in your business and having, having a sick relationship with your family, he said, you haven't got a snowball's chance of hell staying sober. He said, you've got to stop doing what you're doing and start doing everything a different way. And I said, well, I guess I've got to go say I'm sorry. And he said, no, he said, you're the world's expert at saying you're sorry. You've got to go say I'm wrong. And what can I do to right the wrong? He said, that's what making amends is. What can I do to right the wrong? And I just didn't think I could do it. So I wrote this letter of resignation to Louie and told him how much I appreciated Alcoholics Anonymous and I was going to try not to drink, but I was going to have to resign from your nice outfit. And we got in the Winnebago and went down to see the canyon. And there's this guy in my group named Bernie and after Johnny A. talked that night, that Friday night, Bernie came up to me and said, Don, I've got to talk to you. To make a long story short, he made amends to me for something I didn't know that he'd ever done. And I thought, my God, you guys do the deal. And this is how you do the deal. And maybe if Bernie can do it, maybe I can do it too. See, I never had to do any of this stuff alone since I came to you, February of 1980. And I went into Louie's room and I said, well, Bernie made amends to me. Wasn't any surprise to Louie. Louie was Bernie's father. He was a sponsor too. And he said, well, what do you think? And I said, well, I was going to read you this letter of resignation. And he said, well, just for laughs, let's hear it. So we read it and he laughed and I laughed and we tore it up and he said, are you ready to start? And I said, yeah. And he said, well, we'll talk about everyone before you do them and I'll tell you how I did mine and we'll start at home. And I said, Louie, I've written how bad things are at home behind the closed bedroom door in our house. And he said, Don, it may surprise you to learn that good sex oftentimes begins in the kitchen. And I said, Louie, it may surprise you to learn there isn't a way in hell Susan Polkjoy is ever going to go along with that idea. He let me know that wasn't what he meant. He said, you have no responsibilities. He said, I want you to take responsibility at home. Well, we kind of worked it out. And so what we did, she and I agreed that the laundry would become my responsibility. And before long, Louie was all over my ass because I wouldn't let anybody else in the laundry room. They did it all wrong, you know. And... And... Those early days were such an excitement. He'd tell me, he'd say, you two have to learn to talk to... He said, you've got to quit standing and screaming at each other and start speaking civilly to each other. I mean, we had to be tutored into what a marriage relationship is about. My infidelity killed our old marriage. It was dead when we got to E.P. And we had to... Well, we mattered to the previous generations to provide food and water. We had to give them milk and water and see it on the last benches of theirinatoria. And he had done it. So he didn't give us anything. He never healed our Pat altijd. And he didn't give us anything. We just— We didn't know what we were supposed to do. Because we never recovered. We never returned to it. So he gave his wife the best days of the year. rules and they'd fail. And they'd be condemned. But every once in a while, by some great good fortune, they could make their way to that place. A place of refuge. And they were safe there. And they could be absolved there and given a new chance. A second chance. That's what you did for us. That's what you did for me. That's what you did for Susan. You took us in. You were our place of refuge and gave us a new chance for a new life. And you had to teach us everything that we learned. God, I'm so grateful to you for that. But we'd sit and talk and we learned we could talk. And we'd follow what it says in the family afterward in Two Wives. We'd start to get in an argument. We'd say, this is getting serious. Sorry, I'm getting angry. Let's talk about it later. And Susan forced me to start to have a relationship with those kids. And things began to change little by little and step by step. And I was making my amends to the family. And then I made my amends to my mother and my brother. Went out to the grave and wrote a letter to my dad. It sounded a little wild. But I sat down and read him the letter. And I forgave him for the things that I perceived that he had done for me. But most of all, I asked him to forgive me. Because see, I knew how to play on his guilt and shame and remorse when he'd come home drunk and when he'd sober up again. And I knew how to stick that knife and twist it right in the middle of his belly and get what I wanted. And I asked him to forgive me for that. I got up from that deal and I've never had a resentment of my dad since. It's a lot better if you can do this amends stuff when they're alive. But if someone has died, you can still make it right. You can still make it right. I learned that. You taught me that. And the kids... It's always been so much easier with Linda. Linda, of course, she didn't catch alcoholism. And that makes it easier to have kids that don't have our illness. But our son did. And he died. Steve and I had had a tumultuous relationship. I'd made amends to him on two separate occasions. And really, neither time could he accept my amends. And then when he got sober and got into AA and we were all so excited and so elated. You tell normal people... I don't know what normal people think when their kids come home and say they joined Alcoholics Anonymous. I think they think it's the end of the world. When kids come home and tell us they joined AA, we think it's the best news in all creation. And things were good. And we started to develop a good relationship. They had this baby. They asked us to take care of the baby while they went on a belated honeymoon. And then on the way to Durham, he had a slip and he called and I said, Hey, rooms of AA are filled with people that have had a slip. And he said, just get a new sponsor and shake the dust off your feet and come back in. And he did. He got hooked up in the Dave Cook line of sponsorship. He was well connected in sponsorship in Durham. And I thought everything was right with his world. He called me the week before he died. I was the only one home. And we had the best talk that we'd ever had in 29 years. And that's how old he was. And I said, I'm going to go to Durham. And he said, I'm going to go to Durham. And I said, I'm going to go to Durham. And he talked about making amends. He said, he wanted to know when we could come to Durham so he could do his nine-step amends. And I said, well, I just got elected delegate. I've got the state conference to go to. And then mom and I will fly down. So he was doing the deal. He was doing the deal. And I don't know what happened. You know, all I know is that alcoholism and drug addiction are cunning and baffling and powerful. Because the next weekend he did two shifts back to back and they went into his room and shot himself full of synthetic opiates that he cooked up. And by writing his own prescriptions. And Kate called and said, you better come down. And we got in a plane and flew down. And like Susan said, we held him in our arms when the lines went flat on the monitor. We heard last night. I tell you, the sharing session was just marvelous last night. You just captivated me with your sharing. And what a lot of you shared about it. You know, we get up here and we tell the funny stuff sometimes. And we laugh. And then, God, there's, there's healing in our laughter. And Bobby and I were talking about how it's the best sound we hear is our laughter. But we can't ever ignore the fact that this thing that we suffer from called alcoholism is just damn ugly. It's an ugly, terrible illness. It kills our kids and it kills our spouses and it kills our parents and it takes our loved ones from us and it destroys our lives and it destroys our marriages. And it destroys our relationships. And just getting here doesn't mean that we're going to recover. I don't know why Steve couldn't get recovery. Only God knows. I fought that deal for a long time. That was a hard surrender for me. I didn't know that I'd really surrendered because at first, after Steve died for several years, and this was 1993 that he died, that he OD'd. I'd be around young guys in AA and I'd think, why can you make it and not Steve? Two or three years ago, I got invited to speak at a young man's conference down in Norman, Oklahoma, and Ed M was also speaking there. And the last day we were there, we got up and Ed and I were doing our prayers together and I started crying out of gratitude. And I said, Ed, this is the first time I've been around all these young guys and shared in the joy of their recovery. And I'm sure you've heard it before. I'm sure you've heard it before. I'm sure you've heard it before. I'm sure you've heard it before. I'm sure you've heard it before. I'm sure you've heard it before. Sometimes surrenders just come hard for me. But the good news about this is, it looks like on the surface you score this one, drug addiction, alcoholism one, and AA zero. But that ain't really the case because I know Steve and I somewhere are going to get hooked up again one of these days. And we're not going to have to say, I'm sorry. We were okay. He told me in that last phone call that he accepted. My, my amends. And I told him I knew that he was trying to make amends to us and that I would accept him before he ever made. And we're okay. We're okay because of the housecleaning steps of AA. As Susan mentioned, I used to ask Louie, I'd say, when is she going to start to trust me again in the sex deal? And he'd say, it'll be sometime after you've become trustworthy. And I said, I'm going to do it. And he said, I'm going to do it. And I said, I got into alcoholics anonymous. But Susan sometimes says that a little different than I, she says something. Sometimes I just love. She says, true remembrance, true forgiveness is remembrance without pain. and, and, and by, by trying to practice this principle of fidelity long enough, she was able to, to deal with that to the point that we no longer have any ghosts in our bedroom. And that's an AA victory in our lives. She mentioned that, there was some legal problems early in sobriety. And I wrote about that in that first inventory. When I, when I wrote, it took me about 10 pages to write all that down. So I wanted Louie to really understand why it was necessary that I do these things in my business. And when I, when I got through reading that, I said, now, do you understand? He said, I think I got it. He said, you didn't need to write all that one word covers it all. I said, Oh, what is that? And he says, it's called stealing and you got to quit. I've been involved in a process called bid rigging for a long time. And you're a public contractor and you, you're supposed to submit seal bids, not knowing what the other competitors are bidding. And some guys had figured out if you get your head together first and figure out who's going to win and I'll take turns, you can make a lot more money. I didn't invent it, but when I was given the opportunity to do it, I didn't argue about it because it was easier, softer way. And I'd done that for some years. Um, so, you know, they said, you got to quit. I went to these guys and I said, these contractor guys and said, I can't do this anymore. I'm trying to quit drinking. I'm going to AA. And they said, we think it's a damn good thing. You're doing something about your drinking, but this is kind of serious, you know, but they were cool. They said, do what you got to do. So I didn't ever get involved in bid rigging from the day I did my first, fifth step. So let's say you got to do two things. You got to quit doing what you're doing and you got to write the wrong. So I said, now, how are you going to write the wrong? Well, I read, you know, it's the step says, except when to do so would injure them or others. And so I took refuge in the language of our ninth step. I said, well, Louis, obviously you can't rig a bit by yourself. You know, they wouldn't be bid rigging if you were rigging a bid by yourself and, oh, he'd get man, gray, about that. And he said, what does the book say? And I said, it's not about praying for the willingness until it comes. And he said, then I'd suggest you get on your knees and start praying for willingness, how to clean this up. And, but this time I was doing a little bit of praying. I, I'd sometimes say, God, uh, thank you for, for, for another sober day. When I go to bed tonight at night. And, uh, by the way, if it isn't too much trouble being empty, if you'd show me how to do this bid rigging cleanup deal, amen. And you need to be careful what you pray for. No matter how insincerely you pray, for it. Cause when I was a year sober, uh, God thought I was a little slow in this nine step deal. And he sent the justice department of the United States government to help speed up my amends process a little bit. And I ended up pleading guilty to, uh, to, uh, to a felony conviction and, uh, uh, sentenced to six months in the federal penitentiary. And then learned something else about amends. They want the money back. They really, they do. They expect you to pay the money back. Um, Louis had, uh, Louis had me calculate what I had stolen from him. And, and part of the judge's sentence was, he said, you got to sit down with the, with the, uh, with prosecutors and work out restitution. So we sat down and they did the figuring. And this is fascinating. They came up within a couple hundred dollars of exactly what I'd calculated. I'd stolen from them. And they wanted it back. They really did. And I said, Oh my God. And they said, they will give you five years. And if you don't do that, then, then you're going to have to, we're going to have to revisit your sentence. So, uh, they did in those days, I don't know what they do now. They did this pre-sentence investigation thing. They sent me home and, and, uh, they did, uh, they started doing this investigation of before the sentence. And, uh, Susan and I started staying up. Uh, real late at night watching old movies about life and hard time prisons on TV. And she became convinced that she said they were going to kill me. I developed rather another phobia and I shared it with my sponsor and he had me write inventory about it and it didn't help. But I had something that I think it's really important to have when we're new in the program. I had an AA buddy. I mean, in the first place, if you don't have an AA buddy, how do you know if it's important enough to bother your sponsor about it anyway? You know? So I went over to my buddy's house. He was an ex-dope dealer. He's gone back to college and he was up late studying. And I bang on his door and he opens the door. And I'm standing, they're balling. And he said, what's the matter with you, Don? And I said, Oh hell, I'm going to prison. Can I? You said, you only got sentenced for six months. It's no big deal. They're going to let you out. And I said, yeah, but you don't understand. And he said, what don't I understand? And I said, you don't understand what they're going to do to me. And he said, what do you think they're going to do to you? And I said, Kenneth, they're going to rape me. And he wasn't that polite. He just roared and hollered with laughter. And I'm standing there, standing there balling and he's laughing. And I said, what kind of a buddy are you? I just shared with you biggest fear in my life. And you're laughing at me. And he was literally rolling on the floor laughing. And he got up off the floor and wiped the tears of laughter out of his eyes. And he said, Don, poke joy. Your ego knows no balance. And I didn't get it. I said, what do you mean? And he said, look at yourself. He said, you're middle aged, pot bellied and ball headed. He said, baby, you ain't got what they want. And they did. They did. They did. They did. They did. They did. They did. They did. They did. They did. They did. They did. They did. They did. They did. I didn't. They didn't. I served two months of that prison sentence and I was given a court order parole. And that can't happen anymore. They've changed the laws because people in AA, my sponsor and his sponsor and other people had written that I'd quit Reagan bids before the investigation ever got started. And the government let us go back home and we were essentially bankrupt. And finally, they let us go back to work. And I had all this money to pay back in five years. And I don't really know how this happened, except I do. I did what you told me to do in AA. I suited up every day and showed up. I found out I was pretty good at building highways out of asphalt when I went to work every day. And before five years came, I had the money paid back. I made my amends to the people that I'd stolen from. In 1996, I gave the employees a third of that business out of Grand Canyon. I gave them a third of that business out of Grand Canyon. I gave them a third of that business out of Grand Canyon. They said, well, I'm not going to let you take the company, but I do have a big gratitude for sticking with me through some of those hard years. And in 1996, we sold that company to a family-owned company in Wichita. And there were about 100 of us that walked away with some measure of financial security from that. And I went to work for them. And that's how we got to Wichita until I retired in November. In November, I went to a conference up at the University of Kansas I've been going to since I was a student. So the conference is jointly put on by the state of Kansas. and the asphalt paving industry. For about the last eight or nine years, I had been asked by the Kansas Highway Department and by the Kansas Contractors Group to jointly chair a committee to figure out if we could come up with some better ways of building roads that would last and better serve the people that use them. And it was real good work. I loved that work. We completely rewrote the spec books and the way of doing things building highways in eight years. And I really went up because I knew we were leaving, and I went up to say goodbye. And I'd been involved in getting some awards programs put together. And at the end of handing out the awards to the people who had done extra good work that year, then the Secretary of Transportation asked if I'd come up on the stage. And these are the people that I went to jail for, for stealing from, 23 years earlier. And I got up on the stage, and the Secretary of Transportation from the state of Kansas gave me this plaque that said, in appreciation of Don Popejoy for his countless contributions to building better highways and better serving the people of the state of Kansas, and signed by a governor. Secretary of Transportation, the chief engineer. And they expected me to say something. And all I wanted to say was, you should be giving the award to Alcoholics Anonymous, not to me. Because you can't get from the gates of Montgomery Prison to where I stood that day in November, except by AA. And AA gets the credit, not me. But I couldn't say that, of course, and so I just said thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Place of refuge. Get a second chance. Wow. When I was a few months sober after I'd done my fifth step, we were living in Ulysses, and there wasn't a treatment center there. The closest treatment center was about 150 miles away. So alcoholics, we had to deal with the local hospital. And the hospital would bring them in and the local doctors, and they would dry them out. And if the family would ask us and the alcoholic wanted us to, we would go up during the night and sit from the AA group. We would go up and sit with these guys because it gave us a chance to pitch them. And it was about midnight, and Bernie, the guy that made amends to me, called and said, Don, we've got a guy up in the hospital. His name's Raymond. I'd like you to go up from four to six. And I just... You didn't get to put your name on the list until you did your fifth step. And I just put my name on the list, and I said, God, Bernie, I've got to get up and go to work. And he just went into a tirade. He said, This is Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, You made a commitment. If you put your name on the list, get your ass up to the hospital and take your name off the list. He's a big guy. And I said, Okay, okay. Don't make a federal case out of it. I'll go. So I went up there at four o'clock in the morning with this other guy from the group and sat with Raymond, and he was in bad shape. All we did for two hours was, we helped Raymond chase imaginary green dogs off his bed. And he was strapped to about three IV bottles. They were running a lot of fluid through him, and he wouldn't use a bedpan, so we'd have to, about every 30 minutes, have this parade into the bathroom for Raymond. And he had terrible aim, and my shoes were wet. Pant cuffs were wet. And I'm sitting there thinking, What am I doing? What the hell am I doing? This guy's got nothing I want. Anything he can do for me. He's a miserable dreg of humanity. Can't even pee. Helping him chase green dogs off the bed that aren't there. And six o'clock came, and the nurse came in and told us we could go home. And I went out and opened the door of my car, and I lit a cigarette. And I started bawling. I thought this is so stupid. Because this is the best I ever felt in my life. I just spent two hours doing this ridiculous crap. And I never felt so good in my life. And I thought, you know what? I can't remember when I wanted to take a drink. See, I spent all those years trying to find a way to live my life. But I know I'm not going to be happy. Trying to find the missing piece. Trying to poke experiences and money and power and property and prestige. All that stuff. Trying to make it fit the missing hole inside of me. And that morning in that parking lot of that hospital in Ulysses, Kansas. After spending two hours doing something because AA had asked me to do it. Doing something for somebody with absolutely no expectation of getting anything in return. I knew what the missing piece was. Sandy B. talks about it from Tampa. He said, what if what we were really looking for all along was just God? What if we were just missing the heck out of God? And all that other stuff that I tried to poke in here to make fit won't ever quite fit. But what I found that morning fit perfect. And it talks about in the 12 and 12. These steps make me happily and usefully whole. And I become whole when I do your deal. And you say, it works when you work. And what I, a little different way every morning. I just pray for the willingness to do the deal. To do the deal. Because I know when I do the deal. When I suit up and show up and do what AA asked me to do. The peace gets filled in. And this guy, like the old Hawaiian looking for the place of refuge. Condemned to death by an illness called alcoholism. Becomes happily and usefully whole. By the grace of God. So thank you for having me. It's been a wonderful week. Thank you.