Raised an Atheist, Saved by a Butterfly — Higher Power Lives in the Seeking, Not the Catching – Bob C.

Thank you, Pee Wee. Hi, my name is Bob Corwin, and I'm an alcoholic. Now, I am from out of state, and I know you would like me to feel at home, and you certainly have done wonders. I wonder what this is for. You certainly have done wonders to make me feel at home here. So I thought, well, it seems you've been so good, maybe I can impose on you to do one more thing for me. At my group in Pasadena, we still say, hi, my name is Bob, and I'm an alcoholic. And they still say, hi, Bob. But we also have scattered amongst our group a few guys, myself as one of them, who instead of saying, hi, Bob, or hi, Joe, or hi, Mary, when they say, hi, my name is Mary, I'm an alcoholic, we say, sure you are. So that makes me feel at home when they do that. Now, it's never been done, as far as I know, anywhere except in Pasadena at my home group. But wouldn't it be fun just for once to be in on the ground floor of a history-making event in A.A.? And this thing may catch on, and you can all say, I remember when it started in Waterloo, see? So now I'm going to sit down, and Pee Wee's going to introduce me again. It was so good, I like to hear all that anyway. And then when I get up and say, hi, my name is Bob Corwin, and I'm an alcoholic, I want to hear all of you say, sure you are. And you just watch, we're going to revolutionize A.A. Now, okay, we'll try it all over again. Well, this is just about like when I came on the program. I had to go out and come back a few times just to learn how to do it. Now, from Los Angeles, California, Bob C. My name is Bob Corwin, and I'm an alcoholic. Remember, you heard it here first. And it's on the tape, and we can prove it. And here in Waterloo, Iowa, I don't care what anybody else says, that's going to be, that was fun. I enjoyed that. Oh, we're crazy. Also, I had a suit when I left Los Angeles. I still have a suit, but it doesn't fit me anymore. If you folks fatten your hogs as fast as you fatten your guests, I don't want to hear the hog capital of the world. I'm not kidding. I'm doing pee-wee lounge work. Last night, I put on, this is the coat to the suit, so if it looks like it just came from the Goodwill and this doesn't match, that's the reason. Excuse me, I was quite surprised last night when I put these pants on. They're not the kind with the belt, and unfortunately, they were not the kind with the stretch band attached to the suit. And I just barely could get that baby button. And then he took me out and served me a jumbo-sized prime rib, about two board feet of it, a great big thing, you know. And then I couldn't breathe. And I told him, I said, I'm going to have gangrene from the waist down if you don't get me back to the hotel and change pants. And so I've got a perfectly good pair of pants that aren't going to be doing anything for a long time. You really have treated me wonderfully. I have just been, well, like I said, this is not my first week away from home. I've been around a bit, but I don't know when I have been treated so fine ever, ever in my life. And I doubt if I ever have. I love you people. And you water loonies are something else. I swear to God, you really are. I think that right now, when I got off the airplane, for example, I, because I am honored and have the privilege of doing this occasionally in AA, I carry a little attache case with me that has a Easy Does It bumper sticker on it. So that when I get off the plane, the people know who I am. I just hold up my easy does it bumper sticker on it so that when I get off the plane, the people know who I am. I just hold up my easy does it bumper sticker on it so that when I get off the plane, the people know who I am. It doesn't attach a case, and they know it's me. So when I got there, now, Debbie had called me back in October. And Debbie said that, you know what, I come to Waterloo. And I said, sure, where is it? I didn't, honestly, I'm sorry, I didn't know where Waterloo was. And I don't know why everybody in the world doesn't know where Waterloo is, because, by God, I'm not saying this for you to keep applauding. This is the finest bunch of people I have ever met. They're just remarkable people. So Debbie was there at the airport, and because she had said she would meet me, I didn't know there were going to be a couple of guys meet me, too. And as I got off the plane, I'm holding up this briefcase, and I see these two guys waving at me. And so I started looking behind me, because I'm thinking, they're not waving at me. They're waiting for a girl. I mean, because I'm waiting for a girl to meet me. Well, anyway. It was Joe and Dean, and they brought me over here and showed me this place and said they were going to have a big free meal here, in fact. And I said, who's your caterer? And he said, I am. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, he and his buddies are going to put on this meal, and I couldn't believe it. And they did. And this is also one of the finest banquets I've ever had in an AA shindig. You guys did a magnificent job. Just, I mean. Now let's give them a hand for that. That was just. And I understand that they have about 10 or 12 steaks back there. And, Dean, do you give doggy bags? I've got a little room left in my suitcase. I can just take those back to Los Angeles. I have to mention a couple more things that I just want to so bad. Now, Charlie M., you've got an old timer around here. He's been sober longer than Christ. His name is Charlie M. 35 years. That ought to scare you newcomers to death. And I wish I could be here next week to help celebrate Charlie's 35th year of continuous sobriety without so much as an eyedropper full of whiskey. I wish I could be here, but I'm not going to be here. And so, again, as a special favor to an out-of-towner, would you help me celebrate Charlie's birthday now by doing it the way we do in my home group? Uh, we sing happy birthday. It's lousy singing, but it's loud. We sing happy birthday to the new guy, and we end with keep coming back. And I'm sure some of you are familiar with the way we do it. So, Charlie M., stand up wherever you are, and we're going to sing happy birthday to you right now. I think we can trust you for one week. I, uh, used to be the, I used to sing in the choir at San Quentin. Therefore, I will do that. All right, stand up again, Charlie. You stay up until this is over with. All right, all right. Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Louder. Happy birthday, dear Charlie. Happy birthday to you. Keep coming back. Okay, now. Well, that's pretty good. I made about 25 bucks on that. All right. All right, now. May, well, the members of the, Press, Radio, Film, and TV, please hold up their hands. Good. Okay. My name is Bob Corwin, and I'm an alcoholic. I, uh, I didn't mean for you to go through that again. Uh, the reason I said that is I always keep wanting to meet the members of the Press, Radio, Film, and TV that they keep talking about, and they never show up. You know, uh, one of these days, you know, we're all going to be famous if they ever, if they ever, if they ever make it to one of our meetings. Uh, when I first came to AA, though, I, um, wasn't the happy, delightful fellow you see before you now. I, uh, I didn't even like AA at all, of course. I, I came here in, uh, my God, now these pants are getting tight. Uh, I came here, uh, to Alcoholics Anonymous in August of 1949, and I, uh, I was 27 years old. I can see all of you adding and subtracting. Now, uh, and, uh, I went to AA, it was in a little place in California called Downey. It's just on the outskirts of Los Angeles, actually part of Los Angeles. Everything's a part of Los Angeles out there. But, uh, I was in Downey, and, uh, I went into this room about the size of, well, where you folks are sitting over there, about that size, and there was about that many of you. The only difference was they were all, uh, all old men. Very old, decrepit men. And I'm 27 years old. And I looked this group over, see, and that was not too inspiring. They had a bald head, they were bald headed, and they had gray hair, and didn't come up and had puffed teeth, you know. And they weren't glad. And they had a beard, and they had little asses. And a couple of those guys were sitting on little round donut shaped cushions. And then they said, if you want what we have, Well, I... Well, you're all right. You'll keep me here all day. You'll keep doing that. And I said, No, no, I really don't want what you have. Well, in those days you didn't have a, I don't know if you have here, but out there now we're getting... You see, starting a new movement in Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm going to have bumper stickers made that say help stamp out ritual in AA, because we're getting so ritualistic sometimes that, how many of you have ever seen this little routine? I don't know why I'm digressing, but what the heck, I don't have a written talk. I love AA, and the thing that has kept me in AA is the free and easy way it is run, the utter lack of dogma, the utter lack of ritual. Because while I do admit that in society and in the world and in the civilized cultures, there is a place for ritual, but I find very little place for ritual in AA. Now, I've seen this happen in Los Angeles. We have rather large groups. I'm sure a lot of you know that we have some rather large groups. And sometimes, it can be a frightening experience if it's your first chance to talk at the meeting. And unfortunately, they'll probably tell the newcomer, now, we're going to have you talk next Friday night at this meeting. And so, have the little 10-minute talk ready. Well, the poor newcomer is scared to death. All week, doesn't sleep all week. Now, he's worrying about it. And so, finally, it comes the night for the newcomer to give the 10-minute talk, answer the 10-minute talk. She gets up here, he or she, and we always have a microphone. We have a microphone system because we do have big meetings. And so, she'll get up here, and he, and they'll say, well, you know, a funny thing happened to me on the way to the meeting, and some clown in the back row will say, what's your name? And blow their brain right out. They don't know what they were going to say then, as though this hi, I'm Bob was a requirement of membership. I'm not mocking it. I love it. I think it's a wonderful thing, you understand. I think it's great. It's fun. It's appropriate. It's charming. It's delightful. But if it becomes ritual, it is something that you have to do. And so, I think it's a wonderful thing. And so, before you can start talking about your problem, we're kind of getting things all mixed up. So, I'm going to start, I'm going to get rich. I'm going to make bumpers, stickers that say stamp out ritual in AA and see if it works. Because the reason I'm bringing this up is that at my first meeting, nobody said anything about it even being an AA meeting. They went too far the other way. There was no, nowadays, usually a meeting starts out and says, hi, my name is so-and-so, and this is the regular Sunday afternoon meeting at the United Automobile Workers' Hall in Waterloo, Iowa. That's usually the way they start a meeting out nowadays, with some kind of announcement. But in those days, they didn't do that. They didn't have any way of starting. They didn't know how to start the meeting. They just, the first words they ever heard in an AA meeting were like this. Tonight is Joe's birthday. And I thought, well, who cares? It was the first thing I ever heard with this bunch of old men. Oh, I got to impress you on this old men thing. And so, now, they told me that Joe was one year old. And he looked like he was about 60 to me. And so, now, they didn't have a cake or anything, but they got a cupcake. And they put one candle in this cupcake. They didn't tell me why he was one year old or what that had to do with it. And they never mentioned the word AA. I'll call it a minute. And so, out from over here, one of these old arthritic men, in his little gnarled hand, with this cupcake in it, is walking across the room. And they start singing, Happy Birthday. And I'm watching this pageant go by until they get to old Joe. And they're singing Happy Birthday. And when he blew out that candle, this bunch of old men went ape. And I thought, oh, my God. Is this what they do on a Saturday night for a good time? So, now, nobody has said anything about alcoholism yet. So, it's Joe's birthday. Joe got to talk. And Joe got up and said something to the effect that he had at some time in the past, beat up his old gray-haired mother, took 10 bucks out of a purse to get drunk on, and then they gave him a hand for this, you know. And I thought, what kind of an outfit is this? They applaud the man for doing that sort of thing. Then, finally, I heard things like they came up to me and they said, well, we're so glad that a young man like you has come to Alcoholics Anonymous before you. Had to go as far as we have gone. Well, now, I had just got out of San Quentin and Folsom at the time, and I wondered how far these old toothless wonders had gone. Now, I'm going to pull away from that old place to a little. May I ask a question that we ask out there? And it's probably asked here, too. And it'll make us all feel good and probably make you feel lousy. Uh, is there any, anybody in this room today who has been sober in Alcoholics Anonymous for less than 30 days? And if so, would you do us a favor by holding up your hand? If there's anyone here that is sober for less than 30 days, nobody here. There, there you go. There's one. My God. That a girl. Good for you. There's another one right here, right here in front row. Thank you. Good. I counted two, but then I haven't got my glasses on. See, now, of course, I have glasses, too. And I have a few teeth that are false. My proctologist and I are on a first-name basis. And so you stick around this too. You too can have what I have, also. But I am glad to see the newcomers. I don't know how many. So I want to, I want to congratulate those of you who held up your hand. And all, it's been my experience for every one that holds up his hand as a new person, there's an equal. number of people who didn't hold up their hand. So I want to welcome those of you who didn't hold up your hand, too, to Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, here's what happens, I think, with newcomers. Being a newcomer all the time, always will be, and if anybody ever calls me an old-timer, I think I'll get my wife to poke them in the nose because, oh, hey, you want to talk about old-timers. My wife is an old-timer. My wife has been sober in Alcoholics Anonymous 41 years. How would you like to have to live with that? Wow. Don't do that. They're going to give me the tape, and then she's going to hear that thing, and she's hard enough to live with as it is. But anyway, I always like to... I think of myself as a newcomer, and so does my wife, and we always remember our first AA meetings, and so do you, and so will everybody else. But if you're new, you may be experiencing the same thing that I experienced, and a lot of people did. Now, not everyone, but nowadays, because younger people come to AA, they often come to AA and wonder if they're alcoholics. Now, this is a very natural thing to do. You sit in an AA meeting, and you wonder if you're an alcoholic. This is... Okay. Of course, I know you're an alcoholic, but that's beside the point. You don't know you're an alcoholic. You're wondering if you're an alcoholic. You see, here you are, and you may be sitting here today wondering if you're an alcoholic, and all I can do is wonder, why are you wondering? Why are you here? You see, I can't imagine that this morning you got up and looked through the TV guide, for example, and said, oh, gee, that looks like a bunch of reruns on television today. I think I'll drop in at the local AA meeting. I think I'll drop in at the local AA meeting and see what's going on. I got a feeling you're here because you're an alcoholic, but I still think you're probably wondering whether or not you're an alcoholic, because it's very normal to do. And what I have discovered over the years with those people who wonder, just as I did, who wonder if they're an alcoholic, I've discovered something that may be of help to you. And so I'd be remiss in what I'm thinking here today, the thing I'm doing here today, if I didn't pass that on to you. Also, I just set this out here for you to think about, and that's this. Did you know, newcomers, you newcomers who are wondering whether or not you're an alcoholic, did you know that only alcoholics wonder if they're alcoholics? So by the power vested in me by absolutely no one, I now pronounce you alcoholic. It won't do any good for me to pronounce you alcoholic, but by George, it's a fact. Now, I never heard the word social drinker, really, to my knowledge, in the sense that it's used in AA until I got to AA. And when I got to AA and I heard them talking about social drinkers, I honestly, I'm not trying to be cute, I'm not trying to be funny, I honestly thought they meant people who drank with people. That's what I thought, because I was certainly a social drinker if that was what they meant. That isn't what they mean, though, because I never drank alone. I was not a lone drinker. I drank with people. I was the kind of guy who had a drink in a bar. I always drank in a bar. I drank with people. I drank with people. I drank in a bar. And so it took me a little time to get the hang of a social drinker, what a social drinker is. Now, so if there's anybody here who is not too clear on what a social drinker is, the best way that I know of to differentiate, so that you'll know whether you are or whether you're not, is think of somebody in your family, or somebody you know, who drinks like my father or like my brother. And you'll know someone who does. For example, now, my father today is 82 years old. He's a social drinker. He's a social drinker. He's old. He's still alive. And my father's a very healthy specimen of a guy. He can whip me and my brother. And my brother's a great big guy. And he's a, my dad is a very healthy man. Now, my father, on his 70th A.A. birthday, A.A., what am I talking about? My father has only had about three short beers in his life. On his 70th birthday, I was watching my father drink some beer. And I watched him. He drank a can and a half of beer. And he said to me, Bob, get me a cup of coffee. I'm beginning to feel it. And I thought, well, what the hell? What's he going to drink beer for if he doesn't want to feel it? And I told him, I said, you embarrassed me. Now, my brother, for example, during the Second World War, I was in the Marine Corps. My brother was in the Navy. And we had the pleasure of meeting. I'm going to take my coat off. We had the pleasure of meeting in San Diego. And, you know, it was a big war. And there was a lot of people. What did I do? What did I do? I blew it again. All right. I don't know. I'm so fat, I'll probably never get to wear that thing again anyway. Oh, I really am. I mean, it's hard to walk around, you know, holding in your stomach. You can just keep that up so long. God. That's one nice thing about being A.A. You don't have to suck in your stomach anymore. You can just be yourself. Bill and I met down in San Diego. And it was a wonderful experience. Like I said, Bill's a great big guy. And so we hugged and kissed. And we really didn't know if we were going to see one another again. And we went ashore to some gin mill somewhere. And now, as I recall this event, the sun hadn't set yet when my brother said, let's go. I said, let's go where? And he said, let's go to San Diego. And I said, let's go to San Diego. And he said, back to the base. And I said, why should we go back to the base? And he said, these incomprehensible words, because we've had enough. I said, what do you mean we've had enough? I still have money. I mean, now, as long as you've got money, you haven't had enough. Now, my brother got mad at me. And Bill said something to the effect of, Bob, why don't you drink like I do? And I got just as mad at Bill. And I said, why don't you drink like I do? And he said, I don't know why my brother or my father even bother to drink. See the people nodding their heads out there? See, we know something that they don't know. We know what booze is for. I'm serious. We know what booze is for. They don't know what booze is for. When you begin to feel it, you don't say, give me a cup of coffee. I don't want to feel it anymore. That's why we drink. Drink it. Don't tell me about the bottled in Bond and the full flavored aroma and that kind of stuff. I don't care about that. We'll get the job done. And if you get the job done, that's why I drink it. I don't care how bad it tastes. You know how sometimes we've had to struggle to get it down. That terrible feeling in the morning, especially when I would try to get one down and you'd feel it. I could tell if it was going to be a good day or not. It stayed down. When it would sit there, and you don't bear bad an eye, you know it'll come up. And then finally it stays down. And then it does what it's supposed to do. So, but I don't understand my father and my brother. I don't know why they don't drink cocoa if they don't want to feel the stuff. This is what an alcoholic does. I don't have any fancy definitions for alcoholism, but that's good enough for me. We drink booze for what it does to us. And that's all there is to it. That's what we do. Now, I got some bad news for you, newcomer, if you're still wondering whether you're an alcoholic or not. This laughter that you hear in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is called identification. So, if you were laughing at my definition of my father and my brother, that means you were identifying with me as an alcoholic. And that means you're an alcoholic. So, here, it's just... Oh, you're just getting double whammies right and left here. Now, the reason I'm saying this is because if I was to... suppose I was talking to, oh, I don't know, the women's club or... I don't know, the women's auxiliary on rug weaving or something, and I told them about my father and my brother, they wouldn't laugh. They'd just think, yes, that's right, you should drink coffee when you begin to feel it. And they're not alcoholic. But you laugh because you identify with me. And I saw the heads out there nodding. And those head nodders you know understand. Sure. Okay, let's see. Now, newcomer, I know you, this is probably not your first AA meeting. Maybe it is. I'm not going to put you on that much of a spot today here in this big crowd and ask you if it's your very first AA meeting. But just on the off chance that it may be your very first AA meeting, I'll explain a little bit about what we do here. Besides eat all these wonderful meals, there's more to it than that. We do a thing called sharing. What it amounts to is I tell you my story, you tell me your story, and we stay sober together. Now, you may say, well, Bob, that doesn't make any sense. Well, okay, I agree with you. It doesn't make an awful lot of sense, but it sure as hell works. That's what we do. So in real, just so to stay within the keeping of the regular format. When I'm out of a meeting and a regular AA pitch, as we call them on the coast, I'll tell you a little bit about what I used to be like. I resigned my commission as a major in the Marine Corps, and I went back to Cornell University and finished my master's degree there. Then I came out on the West Coast, and between UCLA and Berkeley and Caltech, I matriculated for my Ph.D., and I worked under grants from the Carnegie Institute and the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. I don't want to go into too much of that. When the completion of the Mount Palomar 200-inch, I was dedicated on Mount Palomar. The founder of both the Mount Wilson and the Mount Palomar complex died just prior to the dedication of the big instrument, and I had the honor of being appointed administrator pro tem. Until they could find a permanent director of Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar, and then I joined Alcoholics Anonymous, and my sponsor told me I'd have to quit telling those lies. But that is what I used to be like. When I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, if my mouth was moving, I was lying. Now, just so there'd be no misunderstanding, I went all the way through the Second World War in the Marine Corps. I went in as private, and I came out as a member of the Marine Corps. I was a member of the Marine Corps. I was a member of the Marine Corps. I was a member of the Marine Corps. That makes for a very dull story. My story was always so dull. You know, I felt that if you really knew me, you wouldn't want to because I had nothing to say. I mean, what did you do in a war? Nothing, you know. So I'd make up stories. Oh, God, could I tell war stories? You know, I never got out of San Diego. Who wants to meet a war hero that never got out of San Diego? San Diego. And so I, now, there was always everything, everybody else, no matter who they were, had a better deal going for them than me. I don't care who they were. So I would make up stories. Now, I know none of you guys ever did that, but especially in bars. You didn't want to meet a Marine that went through the whole war in San Diego and never got above the rank of private. You just didn't want to talk to that slob. You knew there had to be something wrong with him. And so, but if he resigned his commission as a major, you know, and won the war single-handedly, that, you know, you might want to talk to him. Now, I, thanks, Joe. I've got lots of it now. I used to play medical doctor a lot in the bars. Did any of you ever play medical doctor in the bar? People would start telling you their symptoms. They would squeeze. They would squeeze this for me, you know, or whatever it was. And, now, that would be okay until I ran into a real medical doctor. And then I'd have to play something else. And there's all kinds of being tripped up. But once I latched on to being an astrophysicist, the rest of my dreamy career, I never ran into another astrophysicist, ever. And I got a lot of mileage out of being an astrophysicist, and I didn't hurt them. It did me a lot of good. But that's because I... I just thought of a comparison here. I don't know much about farming, that's for sure. But I do, I eat corn. So I've seen an ear of corn in my life, you know. I know what they look like. And I notice that every once in a while, you know, when you take the husks, I guess they're called, off the corn, you know, sometimes you find a nice, beautiful ear of corn. It's got all the little kernels in pretty little rows where they belong. But sometimes you rip those husks off. You'll find on your corn, it's got a whole bunch of little kernels missing. And something happened, a little bead didn't pollinate, and stuff didn't go down, or whatever. I don't want to get too sexy. But, so when this thing gets born, and you take the husks off of it, it's got all these little holes, little defects of character, you know. Well, that's the way I was. I had all these, these, these unfinished spots all over me. See? These flaws in my makeup. Now, when I took booze into my system, like this, all of a sudden, all those little spots filled up. And I was a whole ear of corn again. And I felt just as good as I suppose a perfect ear of corn feels. I didn't have anything to apologize for. I didn't, none of my kernels were missing. Now, nothing changed in the world, really, except the way I felt about myself. And that's what booze did for me, and always did for me, and always will do for me, if things ever get to where I start drinking again. Now, if you're new, you might say, what a terrible thing to say in an AA meeting, because those people in AA, they stay sober forever. Well, we'd like to believe that. But sometimes that isn't the way it goes. Sometimes that isn't the way it goes. I'm going to quote somebody else now, whom you have probably heard, and I haven't heard this mentioned for a long time. But I find it to be a beautiful illustration that describes precisely how I feel about myself and felt about myself in my drinking days. And the story has to do with the King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Tables. Now, here's this big round table, and all these guys are sitting there. There's Sir Lancelot and Sir Galahad and a bunch of other characters, and Sir Bob Corwin sitting there. Now, they've all got on this gorgeous suit of armor, every one of them. And they are things of beauty to behold. They have this gold breastplate with an embossed dragon on it, maybe. And the other guy's got a snarling lion on this thing. And then they've got the helmet, of course, with the purple plumes and all kinds of things. It's just a gorgeous thing. And their visors are down, see? Now, they all look good. And the king comes in in the morning, and he says, Good morning, Sir Lancelot. How are you? And from outside, from inside of this gorgeous exterior comes this resilient voice that says, I'm fine. Why? Now, I'm sitting there, and I've got my suit just as good as theirs. Maybe better. I might even have diamonds on the shoulders. Gorgeous uniform, see? So he goes to... But inside of my uniform is a skinny, scared, frightened, sweaty, clammy, shaking, nervous little man. And that's me. But I look just as good at that table as the rest of them. And I'm sitting there. I look just as good at that table as the rest of them. So he goes to Sir Galahad and says, How are you, Sir Galahad? And there's that, I'm fine, comes that marvelous, powerful voice. Now he gets to Bob Corwin. He says, How are you, Sir Bob Corwin? And I say, I'm fine. Sounds just as good as them. But now in AA, what we do is we say, You want to take a peek? He-he-he-he. And we let you take a look at us. And you see what we're really like. And I do not believe that at any time in our life, for as long as we live, will we ever be able to take off all of our armor. This I don't believe we can ever do. We're going to do what we can do, and we will remove an awful lot of it. Pretty soon, we will be able to walk amongst our fellow human beings as we are, and be very comfortable about it. Now, when I told you this big, long story of baloney, baloney about the master's degree and whatnot, I had a very definite reason for telling you that, not just to pass a moment of laughter with you. I often feel that in Alcoholics Anonymous, there's a great misunderstanding about the term anonymity. Quite often, I hear people get confused about anonymity, at least in my opinion, they're confused. The General Service Office in New York seems to agree with me, because they keep handing out circulars and pamphlets and all kinds of memos to the groups to say, when we talk about anonymity, we do not mean don't give your last name in an AA meeting. Now this is okay for you newcomers to be assured that if you don't want to give your last name in an AA meeting, you do not have to give your name in an AA meeting. You'd be very sure of that, you're under no compulsion to do that. But on the other hand, if we don't know who we're talking to at an AA meeting, and we need help some night, and we ask the operator, I want to talk to Bob, and the operator's going to say, Bob who? And you're going to say, well, I don't know, I sure would like to talk to Bob though, because I'm a member of AA, he's a member of AA too. Well yes, but I'm sorry, we need more information than that to who is Bob. We have to know who we're trying to get a hold of. It's important that our anonymity has got to do, I think, with our last name. It also has to do with who we're talking to. We have to know who we're trying to get a hold of. It's important that our anonymity has got to do, I think, with our last name. It also has to do with who we're trying to get a hold of. It also has to do with who we're trying to get a hold of. What I think anonymity has to do with is that when, and don't misunderstand me again, when we come to AA, when we first come to AA at least, we leave our uniforms, our titles, and our degrees, or lack of them, our diplomas, and those things, outside the door, so that we meet here on a common ground, on a common bond, so that you don't start judging me right off the bat. And I don't start judging you, whether you're somebody I ought to know or not. You're just another drunk, and I'm just another drunk. And I'm not going to try to impress you with, or... Because see, I'd have to. If I have to compete with you, if I have to compete with the PhDs, or the whatever, or the carpenters, or the lumberjacks, or whatever is in vogue at the time, then I'm dead, because I can't compete anymore. And fortunately, in AA, we don't. We don't. We don't have to compete. We have this wonderful common bond of alcoholism, because no matter what it is that I was or did, regardless of the degrees or lack of degrees that I have behind my name, and they may be fine things, they just may be, but that's not the point. They didn't... They in no way, in no way prevented me from contracting alcoholism, and in no way did they ever help me to get over it. Only in rooms like this. But I think this is one of the primary spiritual ideas behind anonymity, is that we of ourselves are incapable of doing anything about our alcoholism. And what we've been in the past has had nothing to do with it. We got it. That's all there is to it. Now, I'm going to tell you about why I went to San Quentin. The reason I'm going to tell you why I went to San Quentin is because I know you want to know why I went to San Quentin. Even in San Quentin, we want to know why you're in San Quentin. Because if I don't tell you why I went to San Quentin, you may conjure up something very nasty, and I don't want you to do that. I want you to know. We didn't used to. I didn't used to tell why I went to San Quentin. I used to. We'd just say, you know, some time in the joint, and let it go at that, until one night I was talking to Pastor Dieter, and there's a gal named Georgiana, and she was sitting next to Sybil, my wife, and I said something about Pastor Dieter. I don't know. I don't know about San Quentin. And she nudged my wife, and I could hear her clear across the room. She said, What do you do? What do you do? So I'll tell you what I did. Now, when I attended my first meeting back there in those covered wagon days, the only thing I really agreed with, that I heard, and you don't hear too much about it anymore, is a term called the keen alcoholic mind. Now, you don't hear too much about that anymore. We used to talk about the keen alcoholic mind. I'll let Charlie M. remember this. We used to talk about the keen alcoholic mind a lot, because they'd talk like this. The alcoholic is a better worker than anybody else. When the alcoholic works, you'll notice the word when, when the alcoholic works, he works better than the guy next to him. Damn right, he's been gone from the job three days before. He comes back and works like hell. And they used to tell us we were smarter than they'd talk about Edgar Allan Poe and people like that, you know? Who did these marvelous, who wrote wonderful things while under the influence of booze, and that we all were all sort of kind of semi-geniuses. And I got the impression that God kind of skimmed the top 10% of the cream of humanity off and made alcoholics out of them listening to this kind of stuff. So I really thought that we all had keen minds. Now, we may have, but that's not relevant. That's totally irrelevant. Whether you're smart or dumb, tall or short, fat or skinny, male or female, you've got to have a keen mind. Now, black or white, these things are totally irrelevant and have nothing to do with the fact that you're an alcoholic. The only requirement to be an alcoholic that I know of is to be a human being. That's all. Does nothing else count? But having talked about the keen alcoholic mind, I would like to tell you that I went to prison for a good reason. I think if you're going to go, you should go for a good reason. I would like to impress you with a good reason. I think if you're going to go, you should go for a good reason. I would like to impress you with the fact that I was a safe cracker, for example. You know, that's a pretty keen profession. You know the story of Jimmy Valentine, how he used to sandpaper his fingers and then the raw nerves would be there. So his hands would bleed. It was so sensitive because he had the nerve and he's right up there. His hands would tremble. It was just horrible before he'd turn that dial. And every time those tumblers would fall off, like, click, it would hurt clear to his eyeballs, you know. And then he'd get all that money and he and the girl would sail off into the sunset together and they lived happily ever after. I wish I could tell you that's the kind of a crook I was. I held up the hotel that I lived in. It was so much for the keen alcoholic mind. Now, I know, I know, I know you would have rather heard something better than that, but that's all I got. Oh, my God. A lot of times I meet guys in AA who, the only thing they got going for them was that they were in prison. And, man, they talk about that and their story gets better and better. And they probably went up for feeling and fumbling, but by the time they get out, they're safe crackers and, I mean, they're gunslingers and, you know, they really make the good story better and better. But I, that's F and F and the other was lewd and lascivious conduct. But I, you know, I'm not going to go into too much detail. I'm not going to go into too much detail. I'm not going to go into too much detail. I'm not going to go into too much detail. But I held up the hotel. Well, I lived in a place called the Lafayette Hotel in Los Angeles, and pretty nice hotel. It was not a sloth house. And I had just got out of the Marine Corps in 1945, private, as you know. And that was at 45. And Memorial Day of 1946, I had been waiting. I think for Memorial Day of 1946, I think all my life, because that was going to be a big night and I knew it. And it was. So I'm in the Lafayette Hotel. I've been living there all this time, paying rent on a weekly basis to the same desk clerk week after week. And right out of the lobby, say, this is the lobby, right in over there, that's a bar called the Zimba Room. Now, in the Zimba Room was a piano bar with zebra-covered booths with zebra hide-off. Boy, you talk about fancy. And everything was going great. And it was a great place. It was. And it was one of those good times. You know, we had good times for our grief. And that's what kept us going back 25 years after we lost the battle. But we did have good times. And so I'm sitting in there, and 8 o'clock at night, I ran out of money. It was always my trouble. I was always running out of money. And I got an idea that went right through my head, just like that. It said, why don't you go hold up the desk clerk? So I got up from my stool in there, and I walked out here to the lobby. I didn't have a great idea. I didn't have a great idea. I didn't have a gun. I put my hand in my coat pocket, and I made as many faces as I knew how to make. And I said, give me all your money. And he said, oh, Bob. He said, you can't do that. And I said, to hell I can. And so he opened his drawer here, and I just reached across. And I got what I thought was a sufficient amount to last through the night. And you know, if he had a gun, he could have shot me because I turned my back on him. I walked right back in there into the Zimba Room. Sat down, ordered drinks for the house. And in seven minutes, I was on my way to St. Quentin. And I hope you're impressed. That's it. Period. Now, nowadays, you'd say, well, heck, I heard about a guy who shot somebody in the onion patch, and he's already out. Well, yeah. But that wasn't the way it used to be. I copped the plea. That means I admitted, yes, I did it. I didn't go for jury trial or anything. I didn't know. I always felt that I was always going to get away with it. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I always felt that I was always going to get out. Any little jam they ever got into, I never thought they were really going to be mean to me. And so when the judge said, how do you plead, I said guilty. And the public defender jumped up and said, oh my God, Your Honor. And I said, sit down, I'm going to get it over with. And so the judge said, well, here is the law prescribed. I said, oh, what is the law prescribed? He says, life in prison. I said, oh my God. I didn't expect that, you know. Well, anyway, I didn't stay up there very long as time is measured in places like that by the caper that I pulled. It wasn't all bad, I must tell you that. I got my start in the show business there. It ended there, too, come to think of it. But we had a radio program. Now, I just know Bill being the Clarence Darrow of Wyoming. I know that Bill heard that radio program in the old days. I'm sure you did. It came out on Los Angeles radio station KFI over the 11 western states up in the British Columbia and Alberta. And it was called San Quentin on the Air. And I got to be the radio announcer. And we'd open it up like this. I'd say, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is inmate number 4127. This program is emanating to you from within the walls of one of Northern California's most exclusive resorts, San Quentin by the Sea. And then the choir would play. Hi. I'm on my hand. And it was a really, I wish we had tapes of that because that was before the days of tape recorders. But, God, I wish I could hear some of those. I mean, they weren't exactly showstoppers, but the night we sang Bless This House. And we did. I'm not making this up. I haven't run through my file of song titles just to come up with that one. We actually sang a song in San Quentin called Bless This House with words that went like this. Bless these walls so firm and stout, keeping want and hunger out. Bless the folks who dwell within and keep them free and pure from sin. But a head-shaven ex-convict singing a song like that. They weren't ex-convicts. They were all cons. But, and then one night we sang Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam. Well, it's after I got out that I first came to AA. Now, in the time that I have left, and I don't have any idea how much time I have left. They say you have an hour and a half. The reason you have an hour and a half is because that's because I've got 90 minutes worth of tape over there. And anything beyond that is sacrilegious. And besides, I have no intention of talking that long anyway. Have you turned it over yet? No, I meant to God. I wasn't talking about the tape. Okay. Just checking. That's Wally. And like I say, I charge 25 cents apiece to mention your name. And if you want your name mentioned, you just put a quarter up here. I'll mention your name and it'll be on the tape. Wally can sell a lot of tapes that way. And you can tell your friends that you got mentioned at the Waterloo Convention. And I am going to mention somebody's name. And he didn't give me a quarter. He bought me a dinner, so it's just as good. This guy's name is Jim. And his last name is Kelly. Now, Jim, will you stand up just for a second so they can see where you are, please? Hi, Jim. Now, for you newcomers, that's what you're going to look like if you wait too long. Now, Jim is an old friend of mine. He's been a friend of mine, I guess, all my life. And I just met him the day before yesterday. And it's quite a story, the way I met Jim. These tapes are... I don't know how they get started. I don't know where they go. I don't know anything about it. And also, if you're wondering how you get to be a guest speaker at a Waterloo anniversary, I don't know that either. I don't know how this comes about. There's no such thing that I know of. There's a list where you sign... I don't know how this is done. All I know is that every once in a while, somebody calls me up and asks me if I want to speak somewhere. And naturally, I say yes. If you're going to pay my airfare from here to there, wherever it is, and you're going to put me up at a nice hotel, and you're going to pay my meals, you bet your life I'll go. I am not in the habit of turning down free meals at all. So I just always come. I'm under no illusions. I have no idea that I have any great messages to lay on you or anything like that. But I do hope I can reciprocate in some way this morning. For the... For the way I have been treated. For the wonderful way I have been treated. But I'm under no illusions as to who I am or what I am in Alcoholics Anonymous. But I just wanted to tell you about Jim and his wife Kelly coming up here from Missouri. I had never laid eyes on them before. But Jim was somewhere one day between a rock and a hard place. And some time, somehow, I don't know how it was, somebody gave him a tape of a talk that I made somewhere. And I don't know where that was. And for some reason, I mentioned my name, my phone number, on the tape. Which is something I usually don't do. But there was some occasion. I don't know why I did it. And I mentioned my telephone number. Which I'm going to do again, just for that, by God. The area code is 213. And the phone number is 222-9907. The reason I'm doing it now is because of what happened as a result of this. So he called me up and he was not feeling too good. Life was not going too well for him at the moment. He said, I just heard your tape. And I'm here in... I keep thinking it was from Chicago. But he said he called from St. Louis. Because I know he goes back and forth between Chicago and St. Louis. And he said, I just heard your tape. And I'm here in... I keep thinking it was from Chicago. But he said he called from St. Louis. And he said, I just heard your tape. And I'm here in... I keep thinking it was from Chicago. And he said, I just heard your tape. And I'm here in... I keep thinking it was from Chicago. And he said, I just heard your tape. And I'm here in... I keep thinking it was from Chicago. And he said, I just heard your tape. And I'm here in... I keep thinking it was from Chicago. And he said, I just heard your tape. And I'm here in... I keep thinking it was from Chicago. And he said, I just heard your tape. And I'm here in... I keep thinking it was from Chicago. And he said, I just heard your tape. And I'm here in... I keep thinking it was from Chicago. And he said, I just heard your tape. And I'm here in... I keep thinking it was from Chicago. that i was going to be in waterloo i said how far is that from st louis and he said well not very far and so he drove up here and and he and his wife are here now and that just that just moves me beyond anything i can tell you to have these wonderful things happen if you are bored oh god listen i don't want to start dropping names but i'm not going to start dropping names but where i live i know a lot of people that you know in the sense that you've seen them on television or in films i you or read about them i know a lot of people that you know and i know a lot of them that have committed suicide and i often think oh if they if they had only told me if i only knew uh and i won't i refuse to mention the name but this one guy he left a note and he said do not think that any of you have offended me or anything i'm just bored god i'm just bored i i wish i had known i wish i could could have said, come with me, Mr. X, come with me, and I'll show you a way of life where you will never be bored. I have been a lot of things in AA. I have been angry. I have been resentful. I have been, you name it, I've been every gamut of emotion there is in AA, but I've never been bored. This is the most exciting adventure in the world. I don't know, have I talked much about my drinking? I don't know. I just don't know what I'm doing. I'll tell you about the time. I don't want to go on a big drunk-a-log, but it's very important. Don't ever think it isn't important. I hear some old-timers, especially because they've been around, they've heard this stuff for long, and they keep saying that all the guy did was talk about when he was drunk, and then he took another drink, and then he took another drink. And sometimes we begin to think that drunk-a-logs are not a good thing. The hell they're not. Do you know that those of you who are sitting around wondering whether or not you're an alcoholic, the way you're going to find out whether you're an alcoholic or not is by coming to AA. Like this, and every other night of the week, going to meetings and listening to other people tell you what they did while they drank. Because if you're the kind of drunk that I was, you never paid any attention to your last drunks. You never remembered your last drunks. All you can remember maybe was the last car that you smashed up, or the last wife you beat up, or the last jail you were in, or the last job you got fired from, or the last time you threw up on the minister, or whatever. Because you've never learned to think about your drinking. You come to these places like this, and every time some guy or gal tells you, what they did, not how they got sober, what they did while they were drinking, or what they thought about before they got drunk, and then they'll say something that you did that you had forgotten, or buried so deep that you refused to remember. Until you sit in a room like this, and then you'll say, hey, I did that. Hmm. So what you used to be like suddenly takes on a slightly little different aspect. And then the next night somebody says something, and you say, hey, I did that, and you had forgotten about it. And this keeps happening to me. It keeps happening to Charlie Emmer. It keeps happening to my wife. It happens to every member of AA. As long as you attend AA meetings, what you used to be like is a constantly changing story by virtue of the fact that people are continually reminding you and me of things that we had totally forgotten. And that's how you get to know what kind of an alcoholic you are. And pretty soon, when you get here thinking maybe you're just a little bit alcoholic, you'll grow up someday, and you see, my God, I'm a full-blown alcoholic. The worst there ever was. And when I got here, if anybody had even called me an alcoholic, I would have said, I'm a full-blown alcoholic. I'm a full-blown alcoholic. I'm a full-blown alcoholic. I'd want to poke him in the nose. Now, isn't it funny how we change? Isn't it funny how we change? Now, if you've been around some while, and somebody says, especially with me, I'm bringing my wife a lot, they say, how nice of you are. You went out on a night to bring your wife to these meetings. I want to poke him right in the nose. Because they're accusing me of not being an alcoholic. Total change. Total change. Everything's a total change. The idea of not drinking, for example, when I first came to AA was terrifying. The idea of not drinking. What am I going to do? How am I going to have any fun? How can I talk to people? How can I enjoy good music? How can I, what can I do in the evening? How can I make love? Oh, what a boring, horrible, dull, terrifying life it's going to be to not drink. In AA, we do this complete flip-flop. You'll come up with this 180 degrees turn. Now, it's the other way. What a terrifying thought it is to drink. A complete change in our personality. And how does that come about? It comes about through these 12 steps of this program that we have. My biggest hang-up. Oh, hey, before this goes any further, let me correct an impression I know I've already created, and I didn't mean to let it run this long. I have not been sober since 1949. I've been sober 19 years. I'm pushing 20 years, but I haven't been sober since 1949. Now, why? I was never far away from AA. I was never away from AA more than two weeks at a time. I have five one-year birthday cakes. I have two two-year birthday cakes, and I have one three-year birthday cake. There used to be a gal named Lola Neal down at the hole in the ground, and that was in the days when you made your cake from scratch, and you didn't have these ready-mixed things, and Lola made a cake, and you didn't have any of that. And I said, well, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do it. I don't know how it used to be. I can remember my mother saying, don't slam the door, the cake will fall. Well, Lola's cake fell, and she was making it for somebody else. By then, I had established such a reputation. She brought me this slippery cake, as she called it, and it was all cockeyed and lopsided, and that was the only cake I had, you know. So anyway, I have to, if I have anything to tell you, I have to tell you the horror, the horror of walking around the cities of Los Angeles with a head full of cake. I have to tell you the horror of walking around the cities of Los Angeles with a head full of cake. I have to tell you the horror of walking around the cities of Los Angeles with a head full of cake. I have to tell you the horror of walking around the cities of Los Angeles with a head full of cake. people cringe. So I know it was rough. I met the most charming couple I ever met in my life yesterday, the most charming, delightful people I ever met, and I fell in love with them instantly. Joe and Marcia are. Talk about a horror story. That man and that wife, that wonderful couple, they took me around this beautiful farm, and I was impressed. And, God, it was marvelous. There's no denying that. I was impressed with that farm, and my eyes just popped out like this. I was just like a kid in a china car. I was just in a candy shop. It was beautiful, wonderful. But the most exciting moment of all was after we went on this marvelous tour of this wonderful farm, which I have never been on a farm before in my life. And we went back to their house, and we sat at their round table, and we had coffee, and he began to tell me his story, and it all started all over again. The same thing that happened. It was Bill Wilson and Ebby, and for you people, Bill Wilson was the man who invented A.A. And Ebby Fatcher is the man who gave him the idea. And Ebby Fatcher came to Bill one night, and he was an old drinking buddy of Bill's. Somehow he wasn't drinking anymore. And he said, Have a drink, Ebby. And Ebby said, No, thanks. And Bill said, Oh, good. All the more for me. And he's looking at this old drinking buddy of his, who was just about to be locked up the society was about to put him away and he's got a smile on his face and he's healthy and he looks good and he says my god eddie what happened to you and he said well i don't drink anymore he said yeah sure that's obvious but how come and uh abby said well you ain't gonna like the answer listen i don't care tell me anyway because i've tried everything in those days well he did he had he said i got religion and he didn't get religion he joined an outfit called the oxford group but the point is bill says i used to have these terrible agnostic and ambivalent feelings about religion but the regardless of the past sitting across from the table that night in my kitchen was a miracle this man who didn't drink anymore and that's how i felt yesterday in joe's house sitting across the table from me yesterday in his house at his kitchen table was a miracle the story he told i said you he told me how much did you drink he said how many days out there in a year and now he doesn't drink and and knew people the beautiful thing about this he likes it that way i was sober several years in san quentin but i didn't like it that way in aa we like it that way but the thing that that makes the this i have to tell you i thought about it i've thought about it about my my difficulties in aa in and out in and out oh my god i've thought about why what what am i having a technical problem here you got the but i hope you did i hope we got it in I swear was I wrong, and I think it boils down to there's nothing Freudian about it. There's nothing heavy about it. But I'll tell you one thing I used to get awful damn mad about here. People say, well, you're just not ready. That used to make me sick. And I'm sure there's somebody in this room that I'm talking to. I don't know who he is or where he is, and for God's sakes, don't raise your hand. But there's somebody in this room who knows what I'm talking about, who has been in and out, and in and out. And you don't keep coming back unless you want this thing, and you don't keep coming back unless you're ready. So you are ready. But my problem now as I see it, the only simple explanation I can give you for not really making it was that I was not willing to go to any length. I was willing to go to almost any length. But I wasn't willing to go to any length. And yet, that any length was not a profound, heavy, difficult thing like climbing Mount Everest. The any length that I never went to in those 13 years. And I was busy in AA. I mean, hell, I was the secretary of the group, and I was the hot shot, and I was put on the dances, and I did the whole ball of wax. And then I'd get drunk, and you talk about cunning, baffling, and powerful. When at 8 o'clock at night I'd be sitting in some gin mill, all of our meetings on the West Coast started about 8.30, almost all of them, and I'd be getting to get a little glow, a little something would be getting to work for me, and I'd be getting to work for me, and I'd be getting to work for me, and I'd take a drink, and I'd look up at that clock, and it would be 8.30 at night. And I knew what was going on all over town, and I wasn't there. And that's a hell of a feeling, I'll tell you, that's a hell of a feeling. So then the booze wouldn't work, and I'd go back to AA. But what I never did, what I never did, as far as anything is concerned, when this feeling would sweep across me, and it would come fast sometimes, and I took inventories, you're all sitting there probably wondering, well, he probably never took an inventory, oh, yes, I did. I took inventories out the ears. I did everything I can think of. I did all these things, but the one thing I never did, there were two, but the one thing that even was to me more critical, I never telephoned anybody, and when you asked me how I was, I was still in that suit of armor, and I said, I'm fine. And I never said, would you really like to take a peek? And I'd feel that craving coming on, and I never once said, hey, Charlie, hey, Joe, hey, Mary, I think I'm going to take a drink for God's sakes, what are we going to do? I never did. And as far as I know, that's the big difference. And the other difference was, although I don't think it's quite as profound, I was, past tense, get this signal, past tense, I was an atheist. I was an atheist. My father to this day is an atheist. My father raised me as an atheist. People used to say, what's your religion? And I'd say, I was baptized atheist, get off my back. And boy, they'd scoot. So I came to AA, and I heard that word God. I said, well, okay. Well, okay. Well, okay. I got by without, you know, I was pretty good for a year or so, then I got drunk. I wouldn't accept this God thing at all. Now, finally, when I come back, and I know I'm running out of time, I was what you call sweetly reasonable. Sweetly reasonable. I was willing now to go to any length. Willing to do whatever you folks do. I didn't sing happy birthday when a guy had an AA birthday party. And if the guy, as I say, beat up his old mother and took 10 bucks, I didn't applaud. I didn't do any of the simple little things. This is not as profound and heavy and complicated a program as I had thought it was. It is the simple little things that I didn't do. I did the complicated and profound things, but they didn't keep me sober. All right. Now, I looked around, and I had my heroes. One of them I'm married to now. But I had a lot of heroes in AA, and I think that's all right for us all to have our heroes, because they say this is a program. It's a program of attraction rather than promotion. Well, what's attractive about it? The people. It's the people. And so I wanted to be like these people, so many of these people that I wanted to be like. And all of these people that I admired and that I wanted to emulate, without exception, said they had a power greater than themselves that they called God. And I began to know then, back in 1962, I began to know that if I did not find God, I was going to die. Okay. And so I became a seeker. I began to seek God and listen any time anybody talked about anything spiritual. And things began to change one night when a man was talking, and I've never seen the man since, don't know who he is, and someday, I hope to God, I run into him if he's still alive. He was talking about our pursuit of God. He said that when we're seeking God, like a lot of us do, in our pursuit of God, we're like little children chasing butterflies. And I thought, I wonder what he means. Now, here I am. The exorcist. The ex-convict. The ex-marine. And my life is about to be saved by a man talking about butterflies. And I didn't know it at the time, though. He said, you see, in our pursuit of God, we're like kids chasing butterflies, because, you see, we see this pretty butterfly here on this flower, and we admire it, and we want to examine it more closely. So he says we creep up on it, and we catch the little butterfly in our hand to examine it more closely. But he says, And in so doing, the butterfly loses its glitter, and it dies. Now, that is the way it is with butterflies. You know that yourself. You hold a butterfly in your hand long enough, it can't fly anymore. And it'll just fall to the ground and flutter there and die. Now, that's the way it was with me in my pursuit of God. I felt I had to analyze this thing, know this thing so intimately before I could utilize it. And I thought, oh, you did. I thought all of you knew these things. Now, what he said, in essence, was, look at it work. Look at this room right here in Waterloo, Iowa. Look at it, and then multiply this room thousands of times over. Today, there are meetings constantly as this sun moves across this continent and around the world as the time zones change. One meeting is ending, and another meeting is starting. Not one. But thousands. In places like this, countless thousands of people. Look at this room. Look at the butterfly flitting around, figuratively speaking. Look at it. You don't have to know all there is to know about God, Bob. All you've got to know is that in this room, this room is a power greater than yourself, and something is working in their lives that does not work in our lives individually, by ourselves, on our own hook with our so-called little power. Easy does it. That's what the butterfly story meant to me. So after I had been... And I never forgot this, so I share that butterfly with you. Now, after I had been sober ten years, my wife bought me, and I'm never without it, bought me a butterfly. And I always carry my little butterfly with me. I don't know if you can see it or not, but I always carry it to remind me about easy does it, see? It's got a little whistle on there. She bought it in a woman's store. It was intended for something else. I keep hoping. I have a... I have a... I have a... This whistle, by the way, this whistle, by the way, is a... what I call the short version of the serenity prayer. I found out, and I know, I knew I had to have some kind of a personality change, and I didn't have any idea how to go about it, even though I majored in psychology once upon a time. They don't know how to change personality either, believe me. I knew I was going to have to have a personality change, and so I remember writing to work on a Hollywood freeway, and some guy would cut me out on the way to work. Now, that guy's trying to kill me, right? So I'd chase him in my Volkswagen, and I don't know what I'd do if I got him, but, I mean, by the time I got to work, the vessels in my neck were all starting out in my veins. I'm about to have a, you know, a stroke, and I'm all... I'm in bad shape before I get to work in the morning. So I realize, hey, I'm going to do something about this. So I swear, I cuss. You're going to lie on the... The upholstery would peel off the walls, and so I said, I've got to stop this. And I think this profanity is fueling my temper, and so I'll stop swearing. So finally I got it down to obscene sign language, you know, like that, and that didn't work so well either. So finally now what I do is, if I'm riding on the freeway or something, and some guy cuts me out, I go, geez, he doesn't go to hell. And... I have a plan to catch, damn it. I wish I could stay here forever. I've got to tell you about my locomotive, Val. I've got to tell you about my locomotive, Val. I have a friend who is a member of Alphard Synonymous in Canada, and he drives a passenger train, and he used to always drive it drunk, of course, and he drove it from Jasper, Alberta, Canada, if you know where that is, which is in the top of the Canadian Rockies, and he would drive it downhill full speed into the Valley of British Columbia drunk. Now, when we talk about making amends in AA, don't get... Don't let that worry you. Just sober up. You make a lot of amends just by sobering up. Can you imagine how much better off those passengers are on that train now that he's sober? And all the people here in Waterloo as you're driving around straight down the road instead of up on the fire hydrants? So anyway, in memory of him, I have in my patio a locomotive, Val. And now, in our fifth step where it says, when we're wrong, we promptly admit it, I'm often wrong, and most of the time am I wrong, with one human on this planet, and her name is Sybil, my wife. The reason I'm mostly wrong with her is because she's the person I'm in contact with more than anyone else. We're married. Married people have arguments and fights. Nobody, nobody ever lived happily ever after. That's a bunch of baloney. That's a fairy tale. And if you think anybody ever lived happily ever after, that'll cause more divorces than anything else there is. Nobody ever lived happily ever after. Nobody's got it all together. That's psychobabble. There's no such thing as anybody having it all together, although we look at somebody and say, oh, isn't he great? The hell he is. He's just a human being like anybody else, and we have trouble. Well, Sybil and I have our arguments and our fights. Now, when we do, though, because of AA, we know how to get out of these things. So I walk out, and I'll forget what it is. I'll, you know, she burnt the toast or something, what I know. And I had some argument with her, so I'll go outside on the patio, and I'll kick a few rocks around, you know. And then I look over there, and underneath the locomotive bell is a bronze plaque of the serenity prayer. And I, as soon as I see that serenity prayer, of course, that brings me back to what I was talking about. That brings me back to where I am right now. That brings me back right now. So I get awful tired of saying, Sybil, I'm sorry. You know. So I walk over to the lanyard on this, and this, you know, you ever seen a locomotive bell? By God, they're big. And so I pull ahold of this lanyard, and the serenity prayer has three sentences in it, see? And so I clang this bell three times, once for each sentence of the serenity prayer. When I sit in the kitchen, she hears that bell ringing, and she knows that's old, and she knows that's Bob making his amends, you know? I put a bell in the kitchen for her to ring back, and so far I haven't heard a clang yet. But I go through, and I blow on my whistle, and ring on the bell, and stay in sober. And now I know that's kind of weird, you know, I know that. But so are you. So are you, and thank God. Can you imagine me at the Los Angeles, or especially at the University Club, where I have lunch every Friday morning, can you imagine me telling them about, um, blowing my whistle and ringing my bell? Can you imagine that? Of course not. You know, mm-hmm. But you don't care. You really don't care. You say, right on, man, if that's what does it for you, you're okay. You know, you're... Now, if... I wish we could go on until sunup tomorrow morning. I am bubbling over with love for A.A. I have a love affair with A.A. that really, without getting too poetic, I mean, pass us all understanding i think that this is the way a love affair should be and if there's anything wrong with your love affair if your love affair isn't getting better every day and i mean whether in aa or in your private life with your spouse then look to it because love affairs have to get better and aa gets better all the time one night i was at a meeting in north hollywood and i'm going to probably sit down after this because i know we're all out of taste when uh this woman was talking and i was at peace pretty well with the world i wasn't too mad at anybody but i wasn't listening to what she was saying at that particular moment any more than i'm under any illusion that you've been hanging breathlessly on every word that i've been uttering our stint our attention fans in the first place aren't aren't that good we can't do that if i mention loka modi's bell you start thinking about future trains for a while and i'm going on down the road talking about something else you haven't heard that i understand that so that's the way it was that night and this gal's name is ellen salazar and the funny thing about i was so impressed this morning when jim the fellow from saint louis mentioned ellen salazar's name he had heard me say this on that tape and ellen has been dead for many years ellen salazar was talking and ellen this is the north hollywood clubhouse which is almost as big as this and they put you up on the podium like this and they turn the lights off they used to and put a spotlight on you which i think is a dumb thing to do but it's their meaning i think i can't tell them how to run it and uh while she was talking though ellen got stuck in her talk and she couldn't remember what she was going to say next and it was a long pause about 45 seconds as a matter of fact now everybody's listening she ain't saying nothing but everybody's listening and she's squeezing this thing and her knuckles get white the leader went and got her a drink of water came back and she's got this terrified look on her and this has never happened to me probably be a good idea if it did but i sure felt sorry for her as you would too my heart ached for this lovely lady up here doing the best to share with us how she stays sober and all of a sudden she's scared to death in a room where no one should ever have any fear and i i'm sitting there you know right about where you are and i look up at her and i said not out loud i said come on baby start talking god's sakes start talking i'd be happy to share my glib tongue with you uh for your serenity for your understanding of this program but please stop start talking because we're all hurting too much to watch this well she started to talk and i'm glad that little i had occurred in her talk because had it not occurred i would have missed this next sentence she was about to utter because i had told you i wasn't listening but here's what she said and it saved my life and never again from that day to this and probably as long as i live will i ever have any difficulty with the life i'm going to live i'm going to have any difficulty with the life i'm going to have any difficulty with the life i'm going to live word god here's what she said and so i must put this up here for you to at least examine and accept or reject do whatever you want with with she said that in all probability in all probability the closest that you or i or anybody else whatever come to finding god will be in the seeking the sense of love and gratitude i want to thank all of you you are the bearers you you have shared with me my life up here today in this magnificent and unending adventure known as alcoholics anonymous thank you very much