The Difference Between Sharing Experiences and Imposing Opinions – 1968 – Lew F.

Hi there, welcome to the Sober Circle channel. Enjoy this speaker tape. stimulants of November the 16th of 1963. Yes, I do have a copy of this book here. I believe one day it'll catch on in our fellowship. They're for sale in the firewall and it contains a lot of vital information that we are totally unfamiliar with and it's called reality. I was an impulsive, compulsive repulsive drunken look up them words and they'll explain a great deal and if you ever look up the meaning of the word grace in the grace of god it says an unearned favor so i never earned what i got today i think one of the things that sometimes we don't realize is you don't have to wish anything bad on the drunk he can get more goddamn trouble in 20 minutes and you can get them out of it in 20 years. And it says that we were maladjusted to life, and I want to tell you they were talking about me. There's some things in here that's important, I think, in this book. But when we talk about how maladjusting to life the drunk was, I like to think of a story. It's not mine, it's an old friend of mine, and it tells about how much trouble a drunk can get himself into. And the story goes that in the Depression days in the Deep South there used to be this opera company, and they toured the South. And today I love the theater, but I was born on the East Coast where Don Messer and his Sounders and Hank Snow was the only two entertainers we knew. The Bible says the wise men come from the east, and I've been wise enough not to go to hell back. That's about the extent of my wisdom. But as the story goes, this opera company used to tour the deep south, and all these little towns where they went into a lot of black areas and that, in any areas of their play where it was a silent part, they'd hire locals in the town to fill in these spots where there was no talking and they were doing the play tosca now i don't know who here has ever seen tosca but the finale of this play when the fellow comes out on the stage and he spins around about three times and his shoves the sword through his lover and she falls over dead and his next lines was oh my love oh my life what have i done oh my lab oh my live what have I done? And some drunk in the back of the room jumped up and he said, I'll tell you what you've done. You just killed the only whore in Tuscaloosa. So, you know, false pride has killed more drunks than bad liquor. Lots of times we don't know what the hell's going on, and we ain't going to let on that we feel that way. So this is a program that deals totally with what's going on, more so than what has gone on. And to tell you a little bit about me, I was born at a very young age. And I was not too familiar with a lot of happenings at that time, and I've taken the liberty of checking into it, nor was I drinking at that time. And John last night said so much that I identified with, and of course Cherry really rang my bell this morning about childhood. After this deal last night, John really inspired Jeanette. She's been absolutely berserk ever since he talked. We went down to see Tommy, who I owe so much to, Tom B., from years ago. And after Tommy left, I was just dying to get in here and go dancing. And I swung to come down here, and Jeanette said, Oh, no, you don't love her, boy. Get in here. And that started it. And going back to the little town that I was born in, in New Brunswick, my real dad hung himself drunk in a greenery. And my real mother was what that drunken Tuscaloosa referred to. She owned a hotel in the little railroad town, and she supplied the men who stayed in that hotel with everything—food, lodging, and lovin'. And I was taken away from her when I was nine months of age and turned over to the two people who raised me. Now I never knew much about my parents, and when I was eleven years of age, I guess the Finnamore name got tossed around some tables. And what my real mother was, and some kids started teasing me. And I started fighting, physically fighting. And I didn't fight because I wanted to fight. I fought because of the fear of what you were going to say if I backed down. And this is what's killing more drunks than anything else, I find within our own fellowship, is fear. And if you look at the letters in the word fear, it's false evidence appearing real. And there's nothing wrong with fighting if you can fight. I'd never seen too many drunks that could fight. I get some of these guys, there's Newfoundlanders and Maritimers come into my shop today, my office, and they've got scars going in 17 directions, and they say, Now he's a good fighter, too, Lou. And I said, You know, you've been looking at yourself through a telescope instead of a mirror. Good fighters have got no marks. They claim Sugar Ray Leonard is a hell of a scrapper, and he don't have a scratch on him. And this is what this thing is all about, this program. We become aware of what we're good at and we become aware of what were bad at. And you see, I was not a good fighter. It took a good man to beat me. It didn't take him long, but it took a good one. And I think of the story of the two boxers, a little Jewish boy and a little Italian boy. They got in the ring and the referee called them to the center of the ring. he gave them their instructions. And they went back to their neutral corner, and sitting down at the edge of the apron was a priest and a rabbi. And the rabbi never took his eyes off this little Italian kid. And he's seen him go back to the corner, and he's seeing him cross himself. And He poked this priest in the ribs, and he said, What does that mean? He said, Not a goddamn thing if he can't fight. I think this is what happens today if we try to get through life like that and all of a sudden when we weren't looking we got sucker punched and I'd like to tell you right now and I'm talking from experiences because I've done it if you're coming into this fellowship to lie, steal cheat deceive screw around or whatever else go to it, you're dealing with the best in the business. And I'd like to make one more observation. This weekend in this hotel they had a convention of the Class of 37 Royal Canadian Air Force. And they had an event called the Royal Canadian Army. They had a conference sponsored by Labatt Breweries. and they had a convention of Alcoholics Anonymous and I'd like to make an observation right now we are not second class citizens all my life I was a second class citizen wherever I went and I was taken out of high school at the age of 15 and a half years of age and put in jail for 30 days in that little town in New Brunswick for drinking. And we got a lot of men that want to be macho and want to do it. They want to talk to me tough and I'm going to talk to you about being tough. I've never met too many tough drunks. When I got out of that jail in December, in April, I was 16 and a halft years of old my mom said something to me and I hauled off and smashed her in the face in front of the sink and down she went and I grabbed my clothes and I ran and I went to Halifax I'll tell you how tough I really am and I'm the only child two years ago last Father's Day mom phoned and asked me to come back home and see her. And when Jeanette and I went back to see her, she's 72 years old. That's how tough I am. I just cried in her lap for five days. See, 38 years had passed, and all little tramping that this tough guy had done. And all the years I missed my mom. And when Daddy died, she made sure he was buried eleven days before I was notified that he died eight years ago. When I phoned her and told her that I was in Alcoholics Anonymous and had been sober 13 months, she said, Thank God, Lewis, my prayers have been answered because you was a wild little bastard back here. This is the example of faith of a mother. She never quit praying. And I think sometimes we can get so carried away with self-importance that we really forget what reality is all about. everyone that ever comes near me paid dearly i'll tell you that there was no free rides in my car no free ride in my card i talked to mom every week now i love her and she loves me i didn't have to dwindle a whole great bunch of details with mom to explain to her what had happened. You see, society never did understand how we operated. They never did understand the way we lived. It's like the story of the psychiatrist. He was out at this mental hospital where he had a lot of drunk patients recovering, and about 10 o'clock in the morning he walked out on his coffee break onto the grounds and here was this bird with a wheelbarrow full of cement and some bricks and he was building the wall and he watched this guy for a while and he had never seen work like this in his life and he walked over to this man he said pray tell me why you're in here he said my parents resented me so they had me committed well he said i've never seen work like that in my life he said we could use you in society he said that that work you're doing is a piece of symmetrical beauty. He said, I'm on the board of this institution. He said come Thursday when this board meets he said I'm going to stand and speak on your behalf and he said, i'll have you out of here on Friday. And he turned to walk away and this jackass picked a brick up and threw it and hit him right in the back of the head and down he went. And when he finally came unglued from this clout he got up and he turned to this guy and he says now why did you do that? He said I just didn't want you to forget Thursday. This is the way we've spent our whole life, getting a message through to society and wondering why they reacted the way they reacted. You know, there's something in this book that's very interesting that Bill talked about. And that was the need for confession of the wrongs done, the need an inventory being done, The need for confession of people's harm, and the need for the belief and dependence upon a God of your understanding. This is in the very, very beginning of this book. I hear people say that there are no rules in Alcoholics Anonymous. Isn't that amazing that in the fifth page of the doctor's opinion it says all we must do is follow a few simple set of rules and it's felt exactly that way i hear people say today as i interpret this program where did you ever see anything printed at a general service office that says as you interpret this problem i don't have a great deal of education in fact very little So I had to get a dictionary. And if you look up the meaning of the word interpretation, it says avoidance of truth. And if want a screwed-up description of something, ask a drunk for his interpretation of it. That is why they printed this book precisely the way it's printed, so that we would not have to interpret things. And I think another thing that I am finding today in the area with which I live, in our movement—and I cannot speak on behalf of Winnipeg but I can speak of my own experiences—is that I see in the book it says resentment is our number one offender. Am I right? And then I hear the next person come along and say, The only thing you need is two members or resentment, a big book and a coffee pot to start a meeting with. And this really confuses me. In Vancouver or in B.C. today, I just checked statistics, 597 meetings in Alcoholics Anonymous and 93 of them contributed to central office. Because we've got probably 480 meetings that have started on a resentment, two members and a big book, and that's still all there is in the meeting is two members, a resentment and a Big Book, and they can't pay the rent, let alone send money to central office. So maybe when we get down to looking at what it says, we find out that this is a program that has built on what was talked about all weekend here when John walked up before the meeting and said, I love you. I wonder sometimes if we ever realize the significance of those two words. love in the dictionary says genuine concern for your fellow human being under all conditions do you know what you're saying when you say i love somebody that's not a conditional thing that's the thing you was raised under as a boy clean up your room and i'll give you a quarter be a good boy and you can go to a movie that's a conditional thing this is an unconditional thing I've sung in most of the better skid roads across Canada, and I've been in all the decent jails. And I've lectured in every beer parlor on every given subject known except what I worked at. And when I went to Vancouver, I went for the place that I was most comfortable, which was the Sally Ann Mission. And I sung every night for two glazed donuts, and if I accepted Christ as my personal Savior, they'd throw in another one. And if I was hungry, I did, and if I didn't, I didn'—and that's the way it was. And when I come to Alcoholics Anonymous, it was the same thing. Every meeting I went to, they had a plate of them goddamn glazed doughnuts. I ate enough glazed doughnuts that I'll tell you, with no handkerchiefs, I could lick the inside of my pocket I can tell you which meeting I was to last. But I don't care too much to talk about all my drinking. I hear people talk about the troubles they had and what they drank. I have yet to have my first drink of Scotch whiskey. I think that's the worst trash they ever bottled. I've drank gallons of rubbing alcohol. That was my drink. I loved it. It was like that good old premium. I could get two provinces per quart. And I think sometimes we get into this competitive storytelling business, and that's what got me in all my trouble when I came to AA was that very thing, was that very thing. And I met a lady in the city of Vancouver who many people here know. Julie May knows her well, Winnie, just a sweetheart. Tommy knows her. And she had four children and I was introduced to her by a friend and she was on welfare And she had a bunch of old furniture that had been given to her by St. Vincent de Paul. It wasn't much, but there was a little bit in every room. And I got working at Johnson Terminals and I surveyed the situation, and I thought if I'm going to live with this family they've got to have better stuff than that. And I traded her all in, and this woman had never ever before been introduced to bailiffs or sheriffs, as you call them. But she sure as hell got to know them after she met me. We never kept anything very long, and they repossessed it. And I'd get it all in new again, then repossess again. They used to reposses those electric ranges before we even got the paper sticker, the seal off of the door. And I went on a drunk, which I hope was the drunk of all drunks. And I think that it's the one that has meant so much to me because on November the 16th I got thrown out of the Rainier Hotel at Carolyn Cordova on the skid row to Vancouver for what I pray was my last drunk. And on the Sunday morning, I said to Winnie, I asked her, What's the number of Alcoholics Anonymous? She said, If you want the goddamn number, look it up. And that's the most she'd said in weeks. I was thinking maybe we'd get back together again with that type of language. I've never seen an Al-Anon or not, you can talk what you want, that was that compassionate with a drunk. They have a quality of torture, these lies, that is indescribable. I remember old Joe one time, he said, Al-Anon in spiritual terms are sisters of perpetual torture. But anyway I think of the story of a fella and out in Vancouver he passed away 36 years sober he was in a beer potter and Courtney drunk he hadn't been home for about five six days a guy was sent beside him he said you know about a year ago I went to this outfit and he said they never helped me but he said you know they might be able to do something for you so he took Oh Ross he took him to a meeting and he never drank again ross didn't but he went home after that meeting and he walked in and there was dead silence and you had to know his wife maude and he said i took this as long as i could and he says finally i looked at her and i said sweetheart i found a group of people downtown who are happy and sober and she said well stay away from them you son of a bitch or they won't be happy and sober very goddamn long. And you know, we don't like that, but that's the type of understanding we required at that given time. But I looked up the number and I phoned Alcoholics Anonymous, and in those days Lucy answered the phone, and her sister Virginia used to be on the phones in Edmonton. And Lucy said, you know the thing I like about it was that it was an unconditional help that was given to me. They never asked me a whole lot of questions. How many kids you got? Are you black? Are you white? Do you believe? Do you don't believe? Do you belong to a church? Are you a member of any organization? Who do you work for? She just said, where do you live? And I told her. She said, I'll have two men come to see you. Two men came to see me, but you know, I went to take a drink out of the fridge that morning before I ever phoned AA. I had a half a bottle of wine and a voice as clear as anything could be said, Lou, your drinking days are all over. And the minute I put the phone down, I took my liquor to the guy next door and I gave it to him until this very moment. Never once has liquor ever gone through my mind. Never. but something that i think is important these two fellas come to see me now i'll tell you the condition i was in our lights were shut off our phone was disconnected every stick of furniture we had owned had been repossessed except the mattresses and the law in in canada in those days was they could not take the mattress out onto the kids they had to leave the mattress winnie at those days was cooking on a two burner camp stove for whatever she had to feed the kids I owed $7,300 at fifty-one different places. I dealt with a lot of people. I see people that deal like in the same goddamn store their whole life. They never get to know nobody. And it took me three hours to tell these two guys that come to see me what I had to say. you're in that situation, you shouldn't have a hell of a lot to say. What does it say in the book about working with the new guy? It says, say what you've got to say, then let him steer the conversation in any direction he wants. You see, I was just the opposite. I steered it that way before they said anything. And a number of things that are important, when they were leaving about 3 34 o'clock they said we'd be back to get you tonight to take you to a meeting and when they left i ran right across the street to the guy i was drunk with the day before and i ran up his back stairs across this patio into his kitchen and he had a glass of whiskey and went to take a drink i said put that down i'll kill you he said what the hell happened to you i said i quit drinking and he said when i mean really this man was surprised and he's a business agent for the electrical workers union i mean he wasn't no high-class banker he was a worker and i said oh must be six eight hours now i laugh about it today but you know he's never uttered a bloody word to me from that day to this he thought whatever in the hell got a hold of him is not coming in this house now we laugh about it but let's get down to the book in the book what's it say here it says but the ex-problem drinker who has found this solution who is properly armed with facts about himself not aa A. They asked me to carry the message of my recovery. That's all I know, is what God and you people have given me. If I'd have known the message of AA, they'd have asked me to write this book. And I have done that, and I don't like the copy that I wrote. If he is properly armed with facts about himself, can generally win the entire confidence of another alcoholic in a few hours. Until such an understanding is reached, little or nothing can be accomplished. And so this is why, as I say, when I came to this fellowship twenty-four years ago they told me that there was a half a million members in ninety-two countries in the world. Today they tell me twenty- four years later there's a million four hundred thousand and one hundred and fifteen countries in world. of Jehovah's Witnesses round up that many in a long weekend, they really got going. So we've got a long way to go in carrying this message of love. And I think that this is where the wisdom of the whole program came in, and I'd never seen it, was when they said we share our experiences, strength, and hope with each other, and there's lot of difference between sharing experiences than imposing opinions a great deal of difference and you see they took me to my first meeting and i think that's why it is so important to be honest with with the new guy i went to my 1st meeting that night as i said owing all this money light shut off unemployed on welfare and i had a black shoe on and a brown one now you still can't get shoes like that today i have a pair of black ones brown ones on down i have a pair black ones and i have pair of white ones i've got shoes of all cars but you can't get a black and a round one they don't make them and there was a fellow at the front door and he said welcome you're in the right place i thought now he has spotted something that nobody else has detected and I couldn't wait to get home and tell Winnie what this guy had said and she said go look in the mirror it's the most obvious bloody thing anybody could have come up with that you're in the right place but I'll tell you what happened at that very first meeting maybe none of you people have experienced this but I walked into my first meeting and I sat down and I swore they gave every bloody speaker about thirty dollars worth of change they're all dressed up and the members that were sober many years in their days were the only people i ever seen that could lean right over backwards and touch their head on the floor and her feet never leave the floor and they'd spring back up and they say material things don't mean nothing you know no teeth and i was thinking no goddamn wonder they don't need nothing to you And I'd watch them. I kept my eye on these birds, and they'd leave in Lincolns, and they're leaving Cadillacs in nice clothes, and I thought, I missed something in their bloody talk. You know, it's amazing how things change. I can tell you today, material things mean absolutely nothing to me because I have them. But there is something that's printed in this book that maybe a lot of people have never noticed. It's the Eight Basic Human Problems of the Alcoholic. It says we were having trouble with personal relationships. I wrote that line, I just put it in there. It says, We couldn't control our emotions. We were a prey to misery and depression. We couldn't make a living. We had a feeling of uselessness. We were full of fear. We were unhappy, and we couldn't seem to be of real use to other people. This is in the book. You don't need to ask people what's wrong with you. Read this book. It will tell you. There's only 164 pages. There's not a lot of big words in it. It's printed in large letters. I read this book every day of the year, 365 days a year. I never miss a day I don't read my book. Three pages, ten times over is what I was told. Not much of a plot to it. It's not like The Carpetbaggers or Brigadoon or something. But a lotof vital information is in here if we can read it. The second meeting I went to, the third meeting I went to up on 4th Avenue, you know those pointing fingers where a guy said, Hey there you would you like to speak? And I spoke for 20 minutes telling the new people what I thought they should do to stay sober. And a fellow who just phoned me a few weeks ago and asked me to speak at another roundup got up right behind me and he said remember something lou you called us we didn't call you and i had some people in this fellowship who were older members who was very honest with me because after six weeks sober i borrowed two hundred dollars and started the trucking business and there's people here that can bust a gut laughing about this here's a guy of brains and made elastic, I wouldn't have enough to make a jockstrap or mosquito, and I'm in business. I got a $200 truck to make of living with, and eight weeks later I got a white Cadillac to chase women with. Because I didn't take inventory, I took stock. Well, maybe a couple of other people here have done that. Anyway, that's beside the point. It says if you want what we got and are willing to go to any lengths to get it, and I looked around at some of the guys' wives, and I looked at their cars and their jobs and their jewelry. And I wanted all of that. And I'd just run them concurrent. I'd change them around weekly. And this trucking business was the joke of Vancouver. Honest to God Almighty. $200 for a truck that burnt five gallons of re-refined oil a day. And I started out picking up garbage. and there's quite a story to it. I was in small debts court 41 times my first two years sober over bills, and I used to talk about all the money I owed. An old Gordy Jans has passed on today. He got up at a meeting one night and he said, You know, Lou, you've been talking about all that money you owe. Have you ever considered paying it? And I thought, Now, that's a different approach. i uh i really hadn't got that serious about it but it says in here the exact nature it says you are about to taste the first accurate self-appraisal and do you know only for a group like us would they put the word accurate in in these 12 steps there's three of these that i find that are written totally the opposite for us than they would be for any other person in any walk of life. To minister your church, they'd probably say to him, Admit to God and another human being the nature of your wrongs. And he would, but for us they had to say exact. And for him they'd probably say, Make a list of the people you've harmed and become willing to make amends to them, and he would. But for us, they had to say, all. And for him, they'd probably say, continue to take an inventory, and when you're wrong, admit it. And he would, but for us, they had to say promptly. Yeah. This program was designed by drunks for drunks. I hear people say, this program is good for everybody. I suppose it is, but it was designed for us and we better keep it that way or we'll lose it. I see today they've got AA and GA and EA and PA and ACOA, and the biggest thing today, you'd better know your goddamned alphabet. When you come here, you won't know where to go." It says that Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other, unquote. There ain't no way you can change that. they may solve their common problems and help others to recover from alcoholism. I've got a lot of obsessions, and if you look up the meaning of the word obsession it says you are obsessed with an idea excluding all other ideas. Money became an obsession, work is my number one obsession today, I'm a workaholic. Women was an obsession. I don't know why, because I was like a bloody dog chasing a car when I caught her. I didn't know what the hell to do with her. Like I say to Jeanette now, I said, I'm a lot like a rabbit. This won't take long, did it? I'm the one that has to live with it, what the hell does it matter with you? But I had enough people come into my life who made me see conditions as they really are. You see, when I was a young man and people came along and said, you know Lou, you're phony, I was ready to fight. thought that was bad and it isn't look it up it says phoniness is refusing to see conditions as they really are that doesn't mean it's bad i just don't see them the way they are old bird bingham said right in my front room with 16 people sitting there including my wife and he said you know louis you're the funniest bastard i ever seen an alcoholic synonymous and I was all ready to belt him. And you see, he made that statement as the result of an assessment he had done and he was quite accurate. He was sharing experiences. And one of the things about putting it that way, I didn't have to turn to Tommy and say, well now what did he mean by that? When you're talking to a drunk, don't try and impress him how bloody well educated you are. Talk in a language that he understands, if you love him. You see, I think sometimes that I get so carried away that Tommy mentioned today, I can rise above these people. And you know, you forget them. And I don't ever want to be an old-timer that they talk about. I'd like to be a long-timer. And I think of the story and think about it when you leave this convention this weekend, I think of the story of the couple who had a farm. They raised wheat and grain and produce and all that. And one night in the fall it was cool, the frost had set in, and they walked out in the fields to look over their farm, and had their little boy with them and he wandered off as kids do and they hollered and yelled and screamed and they couldn't find him and so they ran back home and they phoned the reserve army and told them what had happened and they said we'll send an officer in a troop of men out in the morning and we'll look for your son and in the mourning they did and the officer took this group of men up to the edge of this field and he said, now I want you to hold hands and walk through this field. And they did. And they found this little boy and he was dead. He had perished. And his daddy reached down and picked him up and held him in his arms. And he looked at his wife and he asked her, he said you see if we'd have held hands last night we wouldn't have lost him. This is what happens today. we quit holding hands. We got well before we get better. And thank God I still require you to hold my hand today. I always admired people who grew up in life. I just got older. I think it's a fabulous thing to grow up. We have, though, three stages in Alcoholics synonymous. We sober up, we smarten up, and we grow up. Smartening up is a tough thing. Growing up is very difficult. And yet in my third year in Alcoholics Anonymous, I ran into a fellow from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Cease, who was speaking. And after he's done, And I said, and I had these big tears in my eyes, and I said I'd love to talk to you. And he was invited as the guest speaker. And he took three hours out of the day just for me. And what I'm trying to say is the only thing we've got on our side is time. And yet we don't have any of it. I'm too busy. can you call me later he might not call later he took three hours out of his time and told me about the 12 steps of this fellowship and i started one of the step meetings like to have in prince albert in vancouver and it's different than any other meetings in that city in as much as it's the first meeting in that city that was ever closed with the lord's prayer and that bloody near-ended, Alcoholics Anonymous in Vancouver. We had people who came there, and the minute we started to say it, they'd get up and start a conversation just to try and break it up. But we've got a lot of meetings that are closed at the Lord's Prayer now. I have never missed a step meeting except when I'm out of town or on holidays, and we just started a new series for 18 weeks, which I chair. And I'm starting through them now for the 57th time, which goes back 21 steady years I've never missed the step meeting. See, the fact that I don't have a lot of knowledge and I'm not an intellectual—because an intellectual is a person who's educated beyond his capacity to understand. All it says here are the steps we took, and I've never been told how long you took them. I just keep going over and over and I find today that once I get my arrogance under control my ego flares up if I get that under control something else follows jealousy envy greed are three biggest killers that tell them now you people I know have never done the things that I've done in AA I'm past my drink you have never pointed to a guy across the room say oh that phony son of a bitch i'll tell you you've never done that i know and don't go to that like they said don't go to god damn group over there for this now why why are you jealous of this person has he been successful are you envious of this lady because she's popular i have a fella that i sponsor he phoned me just a few weeks back he said you know lou he said i'm coming up to my 11th birthday in november and he said said, I never get any phone calls. I said, they can't all be wrong. If you're 11 years in this fellowship and you give your numbers out and you ain't getting no calls back, I'd suggest you look at something. Don't try to justify and say, well, maybe I gave them the wrong number. No, you gave them a right one. This fellowship is based on attraction rather than promotion. And I was not a very attractive individual for the first 10, 11 years in this fellowship I was sober and that's why sobriety is to me it's just the beginning of this fellowship I realized today that you could get a guy come out in front of this hotel out here and urinate out there and the first guy come along and say well what do you expect he's an alcoholic and the second one would say well at least he's sober on talked about that the other day when we were together no I remember something that Chuck see told me many many years ago back 1970 in Shreveport Louisiana at the tri-state convention he said when you walk out of your home every morning you're representing the largest company in the world do a good job and I don't really believe until that time I really realized that I had that type of a responsibility I looked upon myself as a drunk that came off of the skid row skid road is not people it's a place we have people in Vancouver from all walks of life down there millionaires it's it's the place it isn't people and I began to see these steps as they was printed and they started to look at them as they're printed and in this book in the vision for you people saying i've read this book above and beyond over below the sermon on the mound and think and grow rich in the one minute manager and i mean go on and on i got a library full of and in the vision for you it says though you be but one man with this book in your hand we believe it contains all the answers you will need and it says cling to the thought that in god's hands your dark past is your greatest possession you see i think a lot of people feel that because they have faith and that they believe that they're both the same thing and i found that they are totally the opposite i look at the cable car was up and down gross mountain in vancouver and i believe that the cable that thing rides on very strong but i don't have enough faith to get in that bucket okay they're two totally different things they are two totally different things and you know when i was sober four years they found their way clear to give me three new trucks and they have a very unique thing in in canada and i'm in business world today so i have them they have what they call a conditional sales agreement now this truck one trucking business i had one truck and i was too busy looking for the first one they repossessed the second one or i was so busy looking at the second when they reposessed the first ones about six months later they repose us the cadillac and i am sober and i got an ad in yellow pages, and the phone was disconnected. And you know, I'm bid here in a one-iron paper hanger with the crabs going to AA meetings, running around. And all of a sudden I realized something that on this conditional sales agreement, which they talk about being out of touch with reality, it said, now, Mr. Finnamore, you give us $244.81 a month and you keep this car, and you don't, we take it back. And it was just my luck to deal with the guy who kept his end of the deal. He told me to get back. And I ran all through AA saying, whatever you do, don't deal with that bloody Avco Delta. And, you know, I find they're fine business people. They have high interest rates, but they're fine businesspeople. See, we're not used to them to dealing with people who keep their end of the deals. We speak in a fine spray of generalities, but nothing concrete that you can put your finger on. And I have found all through life that anything that I didn't do maintenance on, I lost. Whether it's home, a relationship, business, AA, or whatever, you lose it. After thirteen years, a fellow who I had something to do with came along to me and he said, He said, I don't know how I could ever repay what you've done for me and my family, but he said, How would you like to manage my main jewelry store? And he had four of the largest custom-designed jewelry stores in Vancouver. He's a Danish fellow. And I said, Ego answered it. I sold a trucking business when in this store I didn't know an emerald was green or a ruby was red. The first morning on the job, a lady come in. She dumped some gemstones out in the pad and said, What can you do with these? And I felt like saying, Puke. once again boy i'm in a spot i shouldn't be in and i'll tell you that night when i went home ragnar said to me he said i want you to sit down and list every possible reason as to why a lady or a man would not want to buy a piece of jewelry in this store and what he was telling me nicely was handling objections and this is what this program is all about is handling objections learning to live in life i never have a an aa sticker on my card it's not because i'm against them it's because i haven't totally learned how to handle objections you don't now you people don't go down the street eh and some guy in front of you is driving 20 miles an hour and you go by give it a finger where'd you get your bloody license eaton's you stupid and and when you drive by it says live and let live easy does it one day at a time and thinking, who the hell is that? Until I can practice these principles in all my affairs, I don't put no stickers on nothing. I don' t put no stickers on nothing. And I started to look at these steps as they're printed. And in our step meeting we have a first-step inventory. And it is far more in-depth than 4 and 5 or anything else when you look at how many times you've moved how many schools you've attended how many deaths was in your family and how did they affect you how many relationships you have who left you or her how many jobs have you had why did you leave when did you live how long did you work on each one we talked about an unmanageable life and if we look at the at the step of this printed it says that my life had become unmanageable it doesn't say you was born with one and you're going to die with one it says as the result of the excessive use of alcohol my life has become un manageable and I think that this is so important is that I see this as it's laid out I think it's so important that I feed the one word in the second step the word restore because two of my great loves in in life today is that i'm a collector of records i I have probably the fifth largest record collection in North America, and vintage cars. Now look up the meaning of the word restore, and it says to return to original form. It doesn't say you was born with negative thinking, nor do you have to die with it. You can be returned to original forms. We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to positive thinking. I look at this third step where it says we made a decision I know just before I come up here today I had to go to the bathroom and I turned it over to God and he has made the wrong decision but it says we made the decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God we don't turn nothing over to god I see people, I turn a lot of things over to him he turned them right over to a bailiff and they'd repossess them I see People turning everything over to God they get up every morning and turn it over to god I find there's a lot of things you just can't depend on him at all not at all it says I turn my will and my life which is my thinking and my actions I've looked at that's all I turn over to go is my thinking and my action I see people today say, well, I've got to fly here, or I've got to do this. I'm going to pray to God he'll look after me. Did he tell you to do it? Did he instruct you to go there? You see, we instruct God most times. We don't ask for help nor do we pray. We give instruction. Please protect me, I'm goin' here. And I find today that you can talk about any portion of a man's anatomy—he'll even brag about some of them, but don't discuss his head. It's out of bounds. And my thinking and my actions is what gets me in all my troubles. And these are the things today that I must turn over to God. And you see, we come into this fellowship and we really and truly believe that we can tell people anything at all, and they believe us. Many people are just kind. They just don't say nothing. And when I look at what I've done my first years in AA, I come in here and I told some of the goddamnedest lies you ever heard just to be accepted, to create a story. I told about being over in Korea, over in the Army. Hell, I couldn't even get in the Salvation Army. I said my dad was 6'9", 312 pounds. He was a big man, but he wasn't quite that big. I never could tell anything exactly as it was. I just had to make it a little bit dramatic and you know I found through the result of these steps that it's okay for me to be just the way I am to have done just what I've done no more no less accurate self-inventory I don't have to be in any more towns than I've been in and any more cities that I've been in. But you know, it's amazing that with no qualifications whatsoever, every dream I've ever had as a little boy has been fulfilled in 24 years of fellowship. Every place I've wanted to go, I've missed. Everybody I've even wanted to meet, I met. And I've had some of the greatest things happen to me and these are the things I like to share Because, you know, I think sometimes a new person, they look back at somebody who's been sober a while and say, It's okay for you to talk. You don't know how I feel. I'd like to tell you right now, I belong to a group in Vancouver. And I was so pleased when I heard this ladies' meeting yesterday morning. By God, I take my hat off for that one. At our meeting neither. We never discussed drinking. In the book it says, We were the makers of our own problems. Bottles were only symbols. i lied i cheated i stolen everything before i ever had a drink we don't discuss drinking we talk about feelings jealousy envy greed fear frustrations emotions anxieties self-centeredness rationalization procrastination our whole meeting is conducted on that we have that format and we state that at the beginning of our meetings and it worked out really well it's amazing that you can hold a meeting for an hour and i'm not saying people don't identify that they're an alcoholic but we don't talk for an hours on who peed the bed the most or smashed up the most cars because it really doesn't matter i remember one time old joe from texas he said i get here these competitive storytellers and he said hell i can win that goddamn one hands down he said one time mary and i moved into an area in sacramento and i got run over next day by the the welcome wagon. You know, and I think sometimes maybe this is what happens, is that we get into this competition and it doesn't work. People have loved me well. I got six kiddies today that call me Dad. I've got nine grandchildren that call my Grandpa. Another one on the way. I got a little boy—Hans was talking about him earlier. When he was two years of age, he got into a can of Drano and ate it. We were at the B.C. Yukon Convention, Winnie and I, and a fellow from Australia who was staying at our home—and you talk about a power greater than yourself, I'll share some experiences with you now. He happened to go home to change his clothes because he'd been sweating all day at the hotel, and he got deported from Canada a month later for making a false statement on the declaration he went home and found Daryl and this little boy spent the next seven months in the hospital we've had a whole new face ingrafted on him eyelids lips and it's pretty hard to notice that today other than one eye don't close all the way but his eyesight is good he gave me a baby boy a grandson in But do you know, when he came back from California, I phoned this plastic surgeon that had done the work on his face, Dr. Kordimash. We were on welfare. When it happened, we had nothing. They had seven specialists work on him for seven months—eye specialists, ear, nose, and throat, plastic surgeons. When it was all done, we got a bill for 125 bucks. don't remember them things doing when he come back to California I told the doctor and I mentioned that Darryl would we'd like to come up and see him and he said I remember that boy he said I still have the pictures of his face I took him up to this doctor's office they met in a foyer a big medical building and they threw it around arms around each other now let's just surgeon and the tears just flowing down his face. And he said, you know, you don't hear too much about the good jobs, you just hear about the bad ones. And do you know isn't it amazing? Sometimes in our fellowships you can do a hundred things that's right and nothing will be said but make one mistake and it'll be front page headlines, and yet we love each and every on her thoughts. Do we? I'm so grateful for so many things. I'm so grateful that my oldest daughter, she wouldn't eat at the same meal table I sat at my first six months sober. I was not a pleasant person to be around. When I left that jewelry business, I got a job selling Electrolux vacuum cleaners to learn a little bit more about handling objections and i would like to tell you right now it's the best there is and i will never forget the morning in deep cove i rang a lady's doorbell and she opened that door and i gave her my card and i said good morning i'm mr finnamore i'm your electrolux representative for this area now she slammed that goddamn door and I thought the side fell right out of the house what possessed me to do it I have no idea I wouldn't blame it on god but i ran around the back of the house and i rang another doorbell and she come there and said god i hope you're not as unhappy as the lady that was just at the front door and she called me inside and we sit down and had a coffee and we communicated and you know one thing i have found out that there's a whole lot of difference between talking you can communicate it. I think sometimes we like to talk to someone for four hours, because that's four hours we don't have to do anything about our difficulties. And then we walk right out and find someone else to talk for four horas. And them we can run around and say, well John told me to do this, and Tommy G told me do that. No they didn't. I've never seen too many people tell us. They share experiences. And we interpret them that they have told me what to do. We have a lot of spot readers in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I hear people say there are 12 promises on page 83. And actually there is, but prior to that it says if we are painstaking about this phase of our progress, we will be amazed before we were halfway through. If not, we won't. But actually in this big book or the one I have. Now maybe, I don't know, maybe there's no more like it around. But this one I have has 49 promises in it. I'm going to read you eight more. It says, There you will find release from care, boredom, and worry. Your imagination will expire. Life Life will mean something at last. The most satisfactory years of your existence lie ahead. You will be bound to them with new and wonderful ties. You will escape disaster together, and you will commence shoulder-to-shoulder your common journey. Then you will know what it means to give of yourself that others may survive and rediscover and you will learn the full meaning of love thy neighbor as thyself and that's eight more of the 49 that's in there there's 12 threats in this book too there's five exclamation marks in this book and if you look up in the English language anytime an exclamation mark is used it says it's an order what an order I can't go through with it there's a lot of things in this books that printed and they say it's suggested, but man are they strong suggestions. AA has been so good to me. Two and a half years ago or three years ago I got a phone call and I was asked if I'd like to speak at a convention in the Republic of South Africa at their national convention in Pretoria and I'm thinking And here's a little boy that twenty-five years ago was a leading tenor in the Beulah Mission on the skid road of Vancouver, and all of a sudden he gets on an airplane and Jeanette couldn't go. She didn't have her holidays at that time. I'm in the city of London. I've never been in a city like that before in my life, I don't know nobody. On to South Africa. I think what I'm trying to share with you is that AA is a travel agency that has got a ticket waiting for you for any country in the world i've done a lot of traveling to all four corners and i've never walked through the doors of a travel agency in my life up to this time i've ever been in one i don't need to i don t need anyone to tell me where to go they told me that before i came here before i come to this fellowship i had them subjected to every two word cliche in the book shut up drop dead get lost take off go home and when i went to my first meeting they said a new one that i had never heard before and i'll be eternally grateful for some guys said come back if you walked into this meeting today with the feeling that i had at my first meeting that you was unwanted unloved hated and despised and sometime during this weekend you received that little glimmer of hope that you're wanted that you needed and that you belong hang on to it it may only come once And if you think that Alcoholics Anonymous is the same all over the world, you're wrong. The program is the thing all over world, but if you say it's the same, you go to Africa, where black is black and white is white. And it's not because all the people want it that way, this is law. I had the privilege of living in Soweto for two and a half days. Probably one of the greatest feelings I've ever had in my life, that I could stand and hug and kiss a black man in a country where it says you don't do it. If you could see the work that is to be done there, if you could see the way they treated me and Jeanette, the gifts that colored people gave her, if you could see the letters I've received out of Soweto since I came back—something like 181. And the good Lord willing will know in two weeks. I think Tommy's going to go next year as their I'm just going to get a hold of Bill Manning, and I think Tommy will go down and he'll love it. And they'll love him. And I was able to travel for two-and-a-half months throughout Africa and speak at 26 places. And the whole lot of privileges that AA gives you—I want to tell you, it's pretty nice when you can go into Zululand, and President Kennedy was refused admission there five years ago because Budalisi will not allow any outstatement of any other country in there. Yet all of us can go in because his wife had 18 months sobriety two years ago, July. This is a whole lot more than a program to quit drinking. This is not a philosophy to learn how to quit drinking. If you read the book, it says this is a philosophy need to learn how to live sober. A sober state of mind and body. I say, I'm a recovered alcoholic. Old Joe the wino said to me, he's 15 years sober. He said, have you ever read that book? I said, yeah. What's it saying? I says, well, I don't know all of it. He says, read it until you do. It says, this is how 150,000 alcoholics have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body to show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered not quit drinking is the main purpose of this book we hope these pages will prove so convincing that no further authentication will be necessary and in the back of this booklet says i will be given peace of mind in exact proportions of the peace of mine i bring into the lives of other people and we're all sitting there saying they love me better why don't you love first he's as scared of you as you are of in. I'm the luckiest guy in the world. You know, I have a bunch of cards I give out. I've got a hundred or so of them here. It says you don't have to tell how you live each day. You don't Have to say if you work or you play. A tried-through barometer serves in its place however you live it'll show in your face the false the deceit that you bear in your heart will not stay inside where it first got to start for seeing you in blood or a thin veil of lace what you wear in your heart you wear your face if your life is unselfish if for others you live for not what you get but how much you can give if you live close to god and his infinite grace you don't have to tell him it'll showing your face that's what life's all about if there's any new people here I'd like to tell you right now there's nothing so bad that it cannot be worse there's something nothing that time cannot man and troubles no matter how many you have must surely come to an end you have stumbled well so have I in my time don't think of the past and regret and your story God knows so leave it at that let the past be the past and forget don't despair don't give up and just be yourself the self that is highest and best and forgive all my faults and i'll forgive yours and we leave up to god all the rest that's what alcoholics anonymous is all about i'm scared to pray for anything today for fear of getting i think sometimes at these conventions people come here thinking that boy a week of this i'm good for a year we are given a daily reprieve which is contingent upon our spiritual growth the only thing that i do just for today is not drink i think sometimes that borderline between humility and senility is very thin we get to the point where we got everything on a daily basis. They will not sell you a house today on a daily basis, they want a month's rent in advance when you rent a place. Sooner or later we have to face reality. I don't make a car payment every morning. You go in and buy two dozen eggs. Who the hell eats two dozen eggs in a day if you're living one day at a time? We have to learn how society operate. This whole life is computerized. I got charge cards, phone bills, and that. They send me a bill, and it's as neat as can be. I walk into Safeway. I pick up a whole bunch of groceries, and they'll say, well, Mr. Fenimore, give us $88.40. You take them home. You don't leave them here. Nothing complicated about that. They send me my phone bill. My phone bill in particular is $300-$400 a month. You keep talking. If you don't, we pull the plug. Now, you can't beat anything like that. I don't even have to keep track of it. It's a privilege for me to drive a car. My friend Al in the back corner, Al M., was talking about it. I'm probably one of the fastest drivers in Canada. My record proves it. God, it's just that they don't make cars fast enough for me. And you know, they had a meeting one night in Vancouver and the chairman said, he said, the topic tonight is fear and cinnamor brought the speakers but there's a lot of people in this city that has really touched me over the years i was in this very hotel at your 25th anniversary connie b was the guest speaker that night dr pincock was alive then who was a great friend of ours, Tom was here, old Hap. These people become like dads to me, see, because I never knew a dad. I never was a friend. And so I come here today and I'm speaking at another meeting tonight. And I owe you people so much. And I'm going to tell you a story about trying to get this all in one time. It's like the story of a preacher that went to this little western town and he was sitting up behind the pulpit and he looked down at the audience and there was one cowboy sitting there. And he went down to them, and he said, Well, hell, do you think we should hold a service? Well, he said I don't know, Reverend. He said, I don' t know a hell of a lot about preaching. I know quite a bit about cattle, and if I pulled up to a crowd and there was a cow there, I'd feed it. So he got the message, and gave this bird everything he had in scripture, verse, and song. And when he was done, he went on down, and said, What do you say? Well, he said, Reverend, I don't know a hell of a lot about preaching, but I know quite a bit about cattle. He said, if I pulled up to a crowd with a load of hay and there was a cow there, I wouldn't give it the whole load. And do you know that I think that when we look back on all the things that control our life and the thing that caused troubles for us, suspicion is one? and I'll tell you one more little joke and then I'll sit down because I have a very full life today I have somebody who loves me today who cares for me today I was here last May just Jeanette and I to see her dad and he died two weeks ago here I've been to four funerals in the last 13 days The little 18-year-old girl I took to Alateen was killed. A guy I sponsor, his mom found him a little Dutch boy. She found him hanging in his apartment a week ago last Monday. He committed suicide at 30 years old and done urology at his funeral. Memorial for Jeanette's dad. Yesterday morning I was at the Winnipeg General Hospital Cancer Clinic. Her dad, who just died three weeks ago, his brother is in there he has spent most of his life in skid row to winnipeg and i don't know if he'll last today or not it's hard to say i hope not i pray that he goes quick he's got throat cancer they removed his voice box he's standing there so frustrated trying to say something to you and he can't get it out he can hear what you say and he's a drunk and jeanette's stepmother her dad married was in a very bad space when we were here May and I told her just what I thought of her she was very rude yet day before yesterday I was able to go to the on first Friday to the psychiatric hospital in son Boniface and put my arms around her and crying her lap didn't say I was sorry because she's in bad shape we got a lot of work to do we have a a lot of men to me. I have things to say every day, something that's an unnecessary jive that maybe can hurt somebody. So don't be suspicious of other people. Don't be envious and jealous of what they've done. And I want to tell you a little story. It's about this husband and wife, and their one thing they really enjoyed every year was this Halloween mask race and she had this idea that he was messing around on her but she couldn't prove it so she let him go and they usually rented these real fancy costumes and he went and rented his and she's rented hers and they haven't seen each other's costumes so he come home this night at the party and he said okay let's get rain going she said no honey she said i really don't feel like going tonight she said i just feel rotten i've been sick all day but she said i know how much this means to you so anyway he got in his costume and he got all dressed up and as he went out she's seen his costume of which one it was what he looked like the way he went and about three hours later she put hers on which he had never seen and away she headed for this masquerade and she walked in and kept looking through the crowd and finally she spotted him and she went over and made a little play for him and by god sure enough they had a dancer too and he said would you like to have a drink so they went out in the back seat of the car and had a drink or two and all hell broke loose well it was all over she got out of the car and slammed the door and got to her car went home and he come home later on that night went to bed next morning get up there set the table she said how's your evening he's fabulous had a hell of a time she said really yeah you really enjoyed yourself yeah he said what'd you do well he said none he said i left here headed for masquerade he said oh he said one thing he said on the way he said, you know old Henry the barber? He said, yeah. He said I stopped there and him and I exchanged costumes. So I've enjoyed being here this weekend. You people have given me so much. I want to take this chance of thanking the committee for asking me to come. I was never asked to go anywhere before. I want thank my friend for picking us up at the airport and his wife. They took us to a beautiful feed of Ukrainian food on Friday night. See, we know what that feels like and we know how much it means to us. The average guy takes it for granted. I don't take nothing for granted today. Everything in life is a gift from me. One drink and I lose it all. I have approximately 40 people a day go through my business. I have a home instead of a house. I don't own a great deal today, I don' t need to. Very rich and don't have a lot of money. I make an excellent living. I'm with a little gal who drives a bus in the city of Vancouver, a bus driver. And I think back, you know, when you start throwing bouquets around at two years ago at their national rodeo for the men that think they're the best at everything. And I'm talking about a big bus, not a little one. Out of 64 drivers on the safety run of 52 obstacles, she was the only one to come in with a perfect score, 50 out of 50. The only thing I've always said to a lady, I don't like to hear the word broad used. It just drives me crazy. I think the one thing that's important is to learn to walk with dignity, to have a justifiable pride and to become a member of the community that you live in. I only pray that I can be the type of friend you've been to me. Thank you, and God bless you.