The Hopelessness of the Last Four Months Before AA – 1970 – Jack B.

Almighty God, creator of the soul of each, continue to bind us in a bond of friendship that shall outlast the swiftly flying years. What is dark in us illumine what is low raise aloft and support. Teach us to recognize those things that can be changed for the good. and to understand those things that cannot, and give us the wisdom, O Lord, to know the difference. We ask this of thee, the fountainhead of all courage and the source of all patience in a spirit of humility. Amen. My name is Tom and I'm an alcoholic First, I want you all to forgive me if I say some words which you might not understand I want to give you the reason why I didn't go very long to school and I remember when I joined the army I left a wife and a kid back home and when it came close to the holidays my mother wanted to know if I had done my Easter duties so I told her no but I would so I decided one day I'd go to church and confess so I went there couldn't speak very much English and the priest he was a Catholic priest so I started speaking in French he told me if I couldn't confess in English I told him I said I'll have a hard time but he says you try and say what you can so I started I said a few sins then I came to one that I had scolded he said you stole so he got on me in that little room boy and I had a hard time making them understand I had scolded, not stole. So I want you all to forget that by making mistakes. Friends, I'm very glad to be out here today, a moment which I never thought in my life that I'd be here in front of a group of people. I started AA, the first night I went, I didn't have my intention of continuing. The reason I went was to get that chance because I had promised never to drink again. When I'd come back from the meeting it was to stop at the club which I usually did go. But what happened to me? My wife followed me every meeting I went. So I was really in a mess, but I finally picked up. I finally knew what AA meant. I followed those footsteps, which till this morning I will follow till Until the day I die. I wish each and every one of you all would feel this very morning how I am feeling. I know many of us, till the time this meeting will be over with, will never think about a drink. But on the way home, when it starts to get dark, you will start seeing those lights waking at you, those signs, but don't forget, let those blondes or brunettes get you before that first drink. I woke up this morning, I was feeling really fine. The wife asked me, how do you feel? Oh, I said, I didn't sleep too good. She said, what's the matter? with all that noise I can't sleep. So it was really funny not using sleeping in the hotel because out there where I come from, all you hear in the morning is those rooster crows and when you get into the rice field you hear those bullfrogs so it's very, friends I'm kind of time limited here they don't want me to speak very much that's why they put me chairman I really did meet a nice guy here. They tell me he's a cartoonist. I have a friend back home, he's an AA member, he is very good. And they tell me I remind him of Priscilla Bob. Does he write that cartoon? So I really like to hear those fellows speak. I'm beginning to get that English. But I hope I'm never called again to be chairman of MEAN, because I don't like to travel, I like to go away from home, but I really do like to sleep in my bed at night. My wife says that I used to come late. In all my life, I remember I came late one time. I got home at four o'clock and she really did make me sleep in the car and I couldn't get no sleep because as most of y'all know we have a lot of mosquitoes out there so I had a hard time so I will present Mr. Jack here on behalf of the city of Baton Rouge we gladly present you with a key to the city as an honorary citizen Mr. Jackson Well, I'm Jack Knox, and I'm an alcoholic. By the grace of God and the help of this program and people like you, I'm here in Sova today. I made quite a few meetings around over the years. I don't believe I've ever had a more delightful chairman, one that I'll remember longer, or introduction. I think it was just great. I'm actually not a speaker. I'm just a sort of a talker and a kind of a rambler. I made a few notes so that I'd try to keep fairly close. But I hate always to make a date so far ahead, you know. I actually do a lot better when, I guess, if I'm going to talk, if I'M just sitting out there and they say, Jack, how about saying something? Of course, sometimes I talk too long. I know here we have a breakfast group that meets about this time on Sunday morning up in Nashville. And so anyway, we went to the breakfast meeting and the person who was supposed to talk didn't show up. And so they looked around the table and called on, said, asked me to say a few words. and my speedy, my wife leaned over to the chairman and says well you better order lunch so I get kind of long winded every once in a while but also I have an awful lot of ups and downs for instance when Ellis called me about this convention I didn't remember that the Republican convention was the same week Now, I'm an editorial cartoonist, political cartoonist. And I naturally get pretty much involved with these things, with politics. And I have a lot of depression, sobriety isn't easy for me. My dry date is August, I think, the 12th, 1947. I came into AA in 46 and stayed sober a year, but I still have terrific depressions and things don't go right. And I just didn't... I felt two or three times that I probably should really not try to come down here and talk. It's one of those things that's kind of been building with me. I know here a couple of months ago, about the 1st of May, I came to a cartoonist convention in New Orleans. And we had a wonderful trip down here. My wife and I came down on a towboat from Nashville, and it was just a wonderful trek for relaxing and fine. But somehow I got that old nervousness there, and when all the rest of the cartoonists made the French Quarter and all, I know Speedy and I hunted up an AA meeting. I really needed one. And I've never attended one that I didn't need. And I feel that I'm real fortunate that they do have groups and meetings almost every night anywhere that I am. And there's always somebody to talk to and to really give me a hand when I need it. I don't have anything new to say. Some of these people that have heard my story and heard me talk before, it hadn't really changed any. I haven't even thought of any new stories or new jokes or haven't even heard any that I can remember. All I have to say or to talk about is my own experience as a drunk and then, of course, my sobriety in AA. You know, I need these meetings. I feel really bad about being on the program of speaker because I feel sure that I actually probably need meetings maybe worse than some others. I know when I left home yesterday, went out and got on the plane to come down here, Well, when old Speedy, as I say, that's my wife, when she kissed me goodbye, she said, well, Jack, I hope you'll make a good talk. She said, I Hope you'll say something to help somebody, and I hope mainly that you'll say something that will help yourself. I need to go over my experience as an alcoholic, because I think that gratitude is one of the most important things in this program so far as I'm concerned. I need to remember where I was, the hopelessness of my situation, and of everything that I found in AA. I've heard some people say, well, they don't know when they became an alcoholic. Well, I'm convinced that I was an alcoholic just waiting for a drink to come along. I took my first drink when I was 16. My father was in the oil business. He was up and down all my life. Long about time I was 15, I think he was up pretty well, and we lived pretty well and I was supposed to have everything. And yet I had a terrific, I guess, inferiority complex. And some of that was mentioned once, and my mother said, Well, that's absolutely ridiculous. Jack couldn't possibly have an inferiority complex. But I did. I was timid. I wouldn't hesitate to ask a girl for a date if I was supposed to take one to a dance. That bothered me. I was self-conscious about dancing, and I was just generally ill at ease. Well, I had an automobile and those things, but that didn't seem to help any. Well, sir, I took that first drink. I remember we were going, a bunch of us were going up on the mountain at Swanee to a house party. I was 16, and we stopped in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and one of the boys knew a bootlegger, and so they... I didn't drink. But they wanted to, and so THEY stopped and they bought a couple of fruit jars of whiskey, and then because I didn' t drink, they bought jug of wine. Now they said, This wine, Jack, that's not really drinking, you see. They drink that just like water over in France. Little kids drink it. That's just, you know, they have communion in church and all that sort of thing. You're not really drinking on that. So that sounded all right, and we drove out the road and pulled outside, and they took a couple of shots out of those fruit jars, and I uncorked the jug and took a few big shooters out of that. I stood around about two or three minutes, and it began to warm me up a little, and I reached for that fruit jar. And that was it. That was just exactly what I was looking for. Boy, my timidity left, absolutely. Like I've heard others say, and I was just exactamente the same. Boy, I turned into, give me a few drinks, I turned into Casanova, Fred Astaire, Jack Dempsey, John D. Rockefeller. And that was the way I operated. That was just exactly what I was looking for. And so I got drunk the first time, and I guess I'm sure that for the next 20 years, years, and I can't say honestly that I ever went as long as 30 days without pitching one. I was 16 then. I could have, if I'd known anything about alcoholism, anybody would have known I was an alcoholic. By the time I was 19, I'm sure I could've qualified for this outfit right, for this AA. I mean, done pretty well. I'd been in all kinds of wrecks, all kinds of fights and in jails and I couldn't handle my liquor that infuriated me. Did anybody tell me I couldn'T? I thought that drinking was one of the manly arts and so I drank. I got mad at my family and left home. I came down here to New Orleans and went to work out at Norco right down the river here. I worked there seven or eight months, got fired for being a drunk down there. There I was, I think I was 19. And as I say, when you just get down to qualifying as an alcoholic in those three years, I could have qualified. I went back to Nashville. Of course, we were right in the middle of the Depression. and Speedy and I ran off and married. And then I became or got interested in being a cartoonist. There wasn't anything else to do. I mean, I had plenty of time to practice because there wasn't any jobs. You know, it's real funny in thinking about that. It doesn't have much to do with AA, but I was practically a socialist in those days. And I guess, well, Barry Goldwater's considerably to the left of me now, so I guess I'm one of those sort of extremists either one way or another, either with whiskey or sobriety or whatever it is. I'm a whole hog on none. And so I went on, I learned to draw. I think that I probably just used my work, my effort as a sort of an escape, just like I did drinking up to a point when I was just completely absorbed with it. I didn't bother too much about bills. I didn' t bother really about anything except what I was going to draw. I suppose I was about as fortunate as anybody that ever came into this business, and there are not too many political editorial cartoonists. But I had the breaks all the way. I did my first work for the Democratic National Committee in 1932. I had a real good connection that got me there. I went to work on a small newspaper right after the political campaign then, And within a year, I went to the Commercial Appeal in Memphis. And that time was the largest newspaper in the South. And it was J.P. Alley who was the cartoonist there. He drew Hambone's Meditations. He was one of the really great cartoonists, I thought, of our time. And everything was made to order for me when I went into Memphis. Jim recommended me for the job. He was ill, and I moved into Memphis. Of course, we had a child then, a son, Jack. And there was not any job in the world that I would rather have had than the commercial field. anyhow the first saturday night that i was there speedy and jack hadn't moved over there then but the first Saturday night she came over and we looked for an apartment and we went to the peabody and i got drunk i didn't remember how we got home or we were staying with some, Speedy was staying with some friends and I spent the night out there too. And I didn't remember how I got home. I didn' t know who had seen me. She told me that I had acted disgracefully which she always said and I always argued with her but I didn''t know. And then I stayed in Memphis for almost 12 years after that but I never knew after that first Saturday night whether I really had a job or not. I didn't drink during the week at first. I drank on Saturday nights. I tried to keep it under control, but I was very real young for the, it seems to me now, I thought I was older then, but I Was 23 or 24, and I got to the point where I could ride myself with a real tight rein and go to cocktail parties where people were drinking and managed to control myself to some extent. I always pointed out times that, well, we went to such-and-such a place and everything was all right, you know. Speedy was always a little bit, oh, well, she was doubtful. She never knew what I was going to do and actually I never knew either. everything in memphis was made to order jim alley's friends and he'd been there a long time they wanted to be friends of mine the job had a lot of prestige attached to it because of his work everything was perfect for success except my drinking and over the years it got progressively worse. I guess either fortunately or maybe unfortunately, I got involved in the political situation over there, and they had a political boss there at that time, Mr. Crump. And I drew cartoons about Mr. Krump, and Mr. Krupp didn't like cartoons. Mr.Krump tried to get my job, which was the only thing that saved it. I mean, I should have been fired any number of times, but there was too much pressure on from the man. He had set himself up just perfectly for a cartoon. I remember he went up into the Northwest and saw a totem pole and he said Memphis ought to have one, so they bought one. So when they stuck it up in Confederate Park there, naturally. I drew Mr. Crump as a Thunderbird and, you know, the Mayor Chandler and Willie Gerber and the whole bunch down the line. And I drew about totem pole taxes and votum poles and all that sort of thing. And they got real angry about it. As a matter of fact, they really worked me over one night. I walked into it. I was drinking. I stayed in the hospital 10 days. and I was at a private party at the Peabody but anyhow that was sort of the way it was I know one of course the thing is I'd get in jail in Memphis for being drunk people would say well Jack Mr. Crump just doesn't like Jack why man listen I could go to New Orleans or New York or Chicago or Dallas or anywhere Well, they never heard of Mr. Crump, never heard of me either when I got in jail. And because I was just a 24-carat boozehead, a damned obnoxious smart aleck drunk. And you can get in jail pretty easy. As a matter of fact, I didn't set any records, but I've counted up and I think I've made 42, 42 different jails. And I made several workhouses. I made some, I think, in Bob last night. I've been a guest in Big Ed Donnell's hotel down there and over in Pecos at Buck Jackson. As a matter of fact, almost everywhere I went and was drunk. Well, of course, a lot of the drinking was weekend, but it moved into a daily thing. I can tell you, I've had to get up. I had blackouts. And there are just plenty of times there in Memphis that I would have to get off and look at the commercial appeal to see if I'd even been to the office. I didn't know. I honest to God didn't. And I'd see a cartoon and I'd have a vague recollection of drawing it, but I couldn't think of which door I went in. I couldn' t think who okayed it or if anybody came in my office while I was drawing. And I would sometimes then go to editorial conferences and I'd be so shaky I couldn''t walk across the room. And I've been so shaky that for some reason or other I managed to draw a cartoon and yet I would get my paycheck and go to the bank and couldn't endorse it. And I'd have to just walk around the block, get a beer, do something before I could ever endorse my check. Of course, at home, I was a rowdy drunk. I was a big taxi cab rider and I'd come home and bring people with me. You know, some of the nice people you meet in jail and plop houses and that sort of thing. I'd ride up out in front of the house in a cab. Of course, I'd be broke. And I'd holler, Speedy! And if she didn't come right away, I'd just, you know, take a rock or something, throw it through the front door just to kind of, you know, hurry her up. And then sometimes she'd cross me up. You know, I used to think that anybody, that Speedy would drive anybody to drink. And she'd cross me up, and I'd get mad and throw the furniture out the window, the out-opening window, you know, and all that sort of thing. The kids would run and get under the beds. Jack was growing up then. I just can't tell you the humiliation that I brought on that family. I think about one time Jack was playing football with Snowden Junior High. He must have been about, I guess, 12 years old. He was big for his age, but he was young. Snowden that year, they were playing sort of a playoff in the junior high league, and they had a couple thousand people out at the fairground stadium. And Jackie was playing, and I was sitting up there drunk. And I kept watching that thing. The game was covered by newspapers. And I keep watching it, and I didn't like the way the referee was calling these things. And I didn' t like the play they were playing against that kid of mine. And so I took another shooter, and when I went down, the field was fenced in, And I leaned over and called the referee over, and I told him. And I knew him, and he knew me. We'd seen him around in the sports department. So he just said, Just take it easy, Jack. Everything's going to be all right. I went back and sat down, andI saw the same thing happen again. I just couldn't stand it. I jumped over the fence and took out after the referee. Well, now, just through the goodness of his heart, I couldn't have whipped Tom's thumb, let alone that guy. But he took off and just got away from me, you know, to keep from having a fight out there on the middle of the field. The press, the wire services carried a little story about the irate father and that sort of thing. But I can think now of the humiliation of that boy. I don't know how in the world he ever finished. I don' t know how he ever played another game out there. I don''t know how you could face anybody, but he did. And there were other things. There were so many other things that they never knew when I was coming in, drunk or sober. Well, actually, the thing that made us, that broke up our home, and it's a real, of course, the drinking, I was way in debt, way over my head. I made a good salary, but I drank it all up. The family just really didn't have any. We had a nice home and four children, but Speedy just couldn't go on. The climax, I suppose, really came. We knew that the end was coming. I'd been to psychiatrists. So had Speedy. She had talked with them. So had Frank Algren, the editor. And the psychiatrist told him, said, Jack is a hopeless alcoholic. There's not anything that I or anyone else can do. that he's told my wife, said you might as well just try to find some way to take care of yourself because Jack is not going to be around. Now I went to these psychiatrists but I didn't have to go to a psychiatrist to find that out while the janitor there at the commercial appeal could have told them that I couldn't go on. Everybody knew it. I knew it I knew that the end of the road was on the way, but I couldn't do anything about it. I promised that I'd quit drinking. I got fired down there once and they didn't make it stick. I stayed off for, I was on vacation and had been called back and they, then they took me back to work. I'll never know exactly why all that. I think possibly that the editor was a real humanitarian. I think he thought a lot of my wife and my children, and I blamed him a whole lot for my drinking, and yet he was probably as good to me as anybody. I used to say, well, Speedy would drive anybody to drink, And the editor, man, working for that guy is like being bitten to death by a duck. He's just after me all the time. And yet he did everything in the world, everything, to try to help me. He talked to me. Everybody did. But there wasn't anything anybody could do. And so one day several of the neighbors got together. You know, I was a rowdy, loud, hell-raising drunk. These neighbors got Together and they went down to the office. The editor wasn't there, but the general manager was. And they went in and talked to him and said, We wish that you would ask Jack Knox to move. He said, It's a nice neighborhood. Well, it's a good neighborhood. and we just would rather he wasn't there. Well, of course I gave him the boss or the general manager those usual alibis and everything, but that was the thing. A few years before, my wife's father had died and had left home in Nashville. When they read that will, it infuriated me. You know, he left that home so that my wife, Speedy, would always have a home. You can't sell it, you can't do anything with it. But the idea of that old man leaving any such thing as that in the first place, it's not so much of a house, of course we still live there. But I said then, I said, well, the idea, he was the FBI. I said that old goat thinking I can't take care of his daughter, well I just blew my stack. I said well I'll make more money in two months than he makes all year and he comes throwing off on me like that. Take another drink, I don't know why Speedy didn't leave in. Boy, I'll tell you that I gave that old man the dead blameless cussing on his grave. You ever heard leaving that house that way? But Speedy needed it. Pretty soon she needed it, so she took the children and went back to Nashville. She didn't have any choice. It wasn't a matter of love or anything else. I couldn't do anything about my drinking, and they couldn't possibly go on the way it was operating. I think she had maybe about $100. I stayed on the commercial appeal for a few months after that. As I say, I made a good salary. I never got around to sending them anything. I intended to every week, but I never get around to it. They got this, moved into the house in Nashville. I stayed on in Memphis. I tried living in the hotels and around. I couldn't sober up. Nobody could do anything for me. And then one day I just couldn't answer the bell for the next round. That's all there was to it. I couldn'T make it. And I can say this, it didn't take me 30 days to go from that job on the Commercial Appeal right straight down to Skid Row. I put my full time into drinking. Speedy and the children had one hell of a time. That oldest boy of mine went to work. He was talking to one of the men on the Tennessee Inn the other day. He said, that boy's the doggonest one I ever saw. The editor of the Tennessee inn gave him a job. He was actually too young, but he gave him a job at his office, boy, and Jack worked from 3.30 in the afternoon to 11.30 at night. And then he got up at 4 o'clock in the morning and threw a morning paper out. And then his little brother carried that around in the afternoon, and then he went to school. And one of the boys on the copy desk said, boy, Jackie, he's the only bad boy ever, so I'll just stand up and go to sleep. But he never quit, and if it was without him, I don't think Speedy could ever have made it, because everything, he just moved right into the clutch. And I went right straight down to the bottom. I've banged around, like I say, 42 jails across the country. I've gone for two or three weeks without shaving or taking a bath. I've had convulsions and DTs. Absolutely hopeless. We were talking about suicide. I think possibly that the fact that I couldn't do anything, I mean that I just couldn't bring myself to it, I think probably that was the low point because I thought all along that that's the only way out, that the family, that everybody would be better off. And I bought two guns to shoot myself, and I sold them both to buy another drink. And I just couldn't make it. I went out to, I finally wound up out in Midland, Texas. They didn't have any AA group or anything else by 1944. boy, I've cleaned the cuspid doors in that Texan club around there on Main Street so that they'd let me in. You know, they got to the point they wouldn't let me because Howard didn't have any money and I was looking for a live one. But if I helped them clean up, they'd, uh, they let me stay in there. Of course, I finally got so dirty and all to the part that I, that they wouldn' t even do that. Now, you talk about how dirty it gets. There's a fellow out there named Bob Gray. Bob had a couple of cattle trucks, and he needed a swamp on the cattle truck. And so he looked me over, and it was during the war, and you couldn't get any help. And so Bob said he'd hire me, and He looked me Over, and said, Here's $10. Go get cleaned up. Now, you know, I figured that anybody that had to get cleaned up to go to work on a cattle truck was just a shade on the dirty side. Well, I finally, well, I was telling them last night, I was reared to some extent out in Texas. My father was an oil business, and I knew how to ride a horse and fix a windmill and tie up a fence. And like I say, everybody was shorthanded back then. And I went to work for a fellow that had a ranch north of town and they did a little nipping along, but I didn't have any money and any whiskey. But they had a redheaded cowboy there that sunburned every day. He just was peeling all the time. Now his remedy for this, he had a case of Bay Rum on the chuck wagon. And he'd take that bay rum and shake it on his hands and rub it on his face and all. That is, he did until I found his bay rum. And then they took me back to town, and they got him another case of bay rum, and that wound up that job. I banged around there, two or three different places. Like I say, they're shorthanded. I did a little work around for the city of Odessa, I think, and two or other places there. But it was just a hopeless situation. I couldn't live with it. I could not live without it. And finally, just in desperation, I got myself cleaned up as well as possible, and I went to see these people who didn't allow any drinking on the range. They've got a great big outfit out west of Midland, and they were shorthanded, and I asked them for a job, and he gave me one, and I stayed out there and sweated it out. That was the only time that I could stay sober, But whenever I came to town, I got drunk. So I stayed out there a while. Finally, I couldn't make it any longer, and I got on another big tooth. And I went into convulsions, and they looked me over, the doctor did, in Midland and said I ought to go back to Nashville and see if I had a brain tumor. So I had a little money and they put me on the train And I went back to Nashville and went to Vanderbilt Hospital As a charity patient Went into the charity ward And they ran an encephalogram on me That's what, I think that's what they call it And they take all the fluid out of your brain Out of your spine And then they blow it up with air and take a picture of it or something, see if you've got a tumor. That was what was giving me these whiskey fits, see? So anyhow, they ran these tests on me, and I was lying up there, and they wanted to wait until Ms. Knox got there, and then the doctors came in and said, Ms. Knocks and Ms. Knocks said we're just so happy to tell you that we didn't find any tumor. Well, do you know how spirits fail? You know a brain tumor would have been some excuse for my conduct. Maybe people might have felt sorry for me or something, but I didn't have any tumor. They told me, they said, now any heavy drinking you could die. But said occasional beer, a highball will be all right. So I walked out of the hospital and I took a few drinks and that was it. I bought a, had a little money and I bought ticket back to Midland, Texas. I got on the train, and I wound up in Houston. Nobody had ever even punched my ticket. I don't know whether I was under a seat or what. They divide that train off down there around Palestine, and I was in the wrong end of it, and I stayed in Houston a while and in jail and picked a few peas for them down there. And then I don' t know how it happened. I didn't have any money, but some way or other, I got back and was taken off of a bus in Parsons, Tennessee. That's about, I guess, 100 miles from Nashville. I didn' t even remember being on the bus. I didn''t know where I was. The next morning, a deputy came in there and asked me my name, and I couldn't even think of Jack Knox. I couldn't think of it. Oh, I did eventually. It's kind of like seeing something you all haven't seen for four or five years and can't remember your name. I couldn'T remember my name. They took me over to Decaturville, Tennessee, to lay out a fine. I can say this, out of 42 jails, I believe I was one of the sorriest, unless the one up at Jail New Mexico at the time I was out there. But anyhow, then for some reason And I never knew why exactly I hadn't been in jail very long And the sheriff came over and got me And took me over and put me on the bus For Nashville I hadn' t had a bath for a month I'd bet I hadn''t shaved I was in terrible shape I didn' t have any hat Socks Underwear Nothing but a pair of pants And a shave and I was just in the worst shape I could possibly be in. They set me back there with the colored folks. They all moved on farther back. When I got to Nashville, I got off at the edge of town and I didn't know where to go. Broke completely fogged up But I didn't know anywhere to go except to Speedy's. I would rather have died than to have walked in there, but I just, there wasn't anything else to do. So I went back to Speady's home through the alleys and around. And they looked me over. They weren't glad to see me. But I don't think they'd turn away anybody. and so they took me in and de-loused me and put me to bed and in about ten days I was dried out a little They said, well, go back to Texas Maybe you can get your health back And I didn't have any money Jackie had saved some money He had some war bonds that he had had from Memphis that he hadn't cashed. They got together and they got enough money to buy me a suit of clothes, buy me the ticket to Midland, and give me a little money in my pocket. I told them when they were talking about it, I said, you're wasting your time, your money. There's just not a chance. There's not anything. I can't make it. But they said, oh, well, all Daddy needs is to get back out there. and they made a great sacrifice, really great. And when I left Nashville, I would have sworn that I would never take another drink. New suit everywhere. I don't know where, honest to God, I don' t know where I took my first drink. But about three weeks later, I came to in Kermit, Texas. I guess I'd sold my clothes. A cab driver, it was about 3 o'clock in the morning, a cab driver pulled up beside me and said, Where are you going? And I said, Oh, I don't know. I said where am I? He said, You're in Kermit. And he said, Do you ever work around here? He said you better come get in so they'll pick you up. I know Ellis Summers, the sheriff up there at the time I'd had a few and I knew him he was a friend also of the people that I worked for but this cab driver told me that they picked me up and then he asked me where I'd work and I told him and he said well do you think they'd take you back I said I don't know he said if you think there's a chance I'll take you out there I said, well, I guess there's a chance. So he said, okay, well now that's not just taking you down the street here somewhere. I think probably it's about 16 miles from where I was to the ranch headquarters. And I went in out there and I told Tom Lineberry, I said now Tom, I didn't tell you what my problem was when I first came to work here. But in its drinking. And if in two weeks or two months or six months, if I say I want to go to town, don't let me go. I can't make it." Well, I guess Tommy is also too much of a humanitarian and he said, All right, Jack, go get you some clean clothes and you can go out with us tomorrow. So that was in, I believe, the last of August in 1945. And I stayed on there then until Christmas Eve. I got thrown into a wink, got drunk, rode in horseback. I was camped out in Leaven County by myself, batching. Got drunk, but that was just one night. along in March, a horse fell with me and hurt my knee and I couldn't ride. And so I had a bunch of drawings and I decided I'd take them into Fort Worth and Dallas and see if I could sell them, and a bunchof ideas too. So I said to myself, I'm not going to drink anything until after I see these editors. But I got on the train and some of the boys were passing the bottle, and I passed it a couple of times and then took one, and that was all she wrote. I lost the big end of my drawing. About a week later, I got to see some of these people. Well, it's kind of a long story, but that was the hopelessness of my situation. I turned down a job out there because I couldn't stay sober. One of the editors told me, said, Well, Jack, see if you can get your family back. He financed me, sent me to Nashville to see my family. And they offered me a job in Nashville. Now, you can go all over the country looking for an editorial cartooning job, and you never find one. I had two offered me. In Nashville, I looked pretty good. I mean, I'd been working pretty hard. I was just tough as I've been, the best physical shape I'd ever been in. and just sunburned and looked pretty good. So anyhow, they hired me on. I agreed to go to work in Nashville for four months. Well, there's one little thing about that. I hesitated on that. Of course, I had some friends on the newspaper, and that's the way they knew I was in town. And anyhow, I talked to the editor, and it was one Saturday morning. And Saturday afternoon, he called me back at Speedy's and said, I've just talked to the publisher and here's what we'll do and can you go to work through this campaign this four months, the Senate race and I said, well Mr. Moss I'll let you know in the morning or Monday morning I'll get it done I'll tell you what I'll say I'll show you what you know in the moment well, let me think it over and Speedy was standing right there by the telephone saying, Jack, for God's sake take it you've got to go to war take it take it please, Jack So finally, before the conversation was over, I told him, I said, well, okay, I'll take it. Well, my youngest boy was about five, six years old then. When I said I'd take it, he jumped up, ran through the house and said, boys, we're rich. Daddy's gone to work. That's, I would have sworn then, getting another chance. that I'd never take another drink. I sat down and drew a cartoon, took it into the office, did another one Monday. I didn't have a car or anything, and one of the photographers, when I finished, he said, well, I'll take you home going out that way. So we started out that day, and he said how about a beer? I said that sounds pretty good, so we went in and it all started all over again. And I believe honest to God that that four months was the worst experience that I've ever been in. I've laid in the gutter and slept under bridges and been in and out of jails and been strapped down and been humiliated and humiliated my family, but the hopelessness of that last four months was just almost too much. I took enough morphine in that time to hook the average person because people felt sorry for me. They felt sorry from my family there they were and I the editor would call and Jack just can't let us down now and we had three or four doctors and an uncle that's a doctor and he'd come by and I couldn't do anything and they'd give me that joy jolt you know and that would settle me down enough to do a little work and it was the worst period that I've ever been through And then, how I ever got into AAI, I don't know. I came on the faith of others. I didn't come in because I wanted to, because I had any hope. I came because of the faith somebody else. I came for cause of the Faith of Speedy. She believed that if she ever got me there it might help and my sponsor believed that it would work for me if I would let it. Now, I didn't believe in God. I was an agnostic, if not an atheist. I read in a Christian home. I went to Sunday school and church all my life, but I didn' t believe anything. I mean, I got into AA, and I said, If this is a program of honesty, there' s no point in me even telling you I believe because I don' t. I I said, I don't believe anymore, and I believe walking under that ladder is going to be bad luck or a black cat running in front of me or throwing your hat on the bed or something like that. It was just a bunch of superstition, and then I didn't believe anything. And I was hostile. I'm not a joiner. I don' t join anything. And how they ever got me there, I d' n't know. Well, as a matter of fact, you know, up in Nashville, we read a purpose of the meeting that we read before they adopted it at a general service. And in our meeting, in the purpose of our meeting it says, there's one line there that says, this is not the place for the curious or anyone presently under the influence of alcohol. And Speedy said, we violated two rules the first night. I was drunk and she was curious. And that was the way that I came into AA, on the faith of somebody else. I don't know how it ever caught on with me. But I had to do something, boy. Every rat hole was stopped up. I couldn't even commit suicide. And there was not anything else to do. And so my sponsor took me over. He took me to meetings, and we didn't have a car then, like I say. I went to the office, but I couldn't trust myself out on the street. I just couldn't, didn't think I could make it. I had to, and yet I couldn'T walk down the street and pass a beer joint or a whiskey store. and I'd call Speedy and she'd get on the bus and come down to the office and I could get my hat and we'd walk out and get on a bus and ride home I couldn't make it by myself but the meetings made me nervous and the driving of my sponsor boy, I just didn't think I could ever you know, he'd drive and look back in the back seat And he just didn't know how to drive, and I was all to pieces, and I didn't see how I could make it. And I'd tell Speedy, I'd say, tell him anything when he called. Tell him I can't go. Tell him if I'm dead, anything. But I can go. But they didn't take any excuses, and they hauled me into meetings. Now, I wouldn't take an inventory. The only way in the world I ever took an inventory was by sitting down there and listening to people tell their stories. And some of them would say things that made me remember my experience as an alcoholic, as a practicing alcoholic, and made me think. I took my inventory with the help of those. I've been to psychiatrists and doctors and preachers and everybody else, and I'd never be honest with any of them. But somewhere these people helped me with their stories to take my inventory, to face my problem honestly. Now, I've told you what some of my experience was as a drunk. and yet up until the day I came into AA I was minimizing it I was blaming it on other people I was claiming it on circumstances and I just wouldn't face it honestly and then the light began to come through and I began to by listening to these stories just like I've told here today I began to take my inventory And first thing you know, I was beginning to stay sober. When I stayed sober 30 days, I were setting a record. I remember when I went into AA and they told me, and they said, well, Jack, when you've been sober 30 days, we'll give you a key to this club room. It was a pretty ratty place, but they'd give you a key today. And they said 30 days. They might as well have said 30 years. I had no idea I'd ever make it 30 days, but somehow I did. And then I began to realize that I was getting some help from somewhere, that I Was doing something that I had never been able to do before. And of course, as time went on, I realized that I came to believe in a power greater than myself. I realized the group, that in groups we can do something that not any one of us can do on our own. And yet it finally came to dawn on me that that was the power of God working, that that Was just the way. And so I came to, although I was an agnostic, I came to believe. I felt the miracle, absolute miracle, that had taken place in my life. I couldn't figure out why everybody couldn't just see me and run out and join the church. They wanted a proof here at once. But I don't think anybody joined the church I had a lot of... I couldn' t even really all the way myself. But anyway, I came to believe, and as I said when I started out, I know that it's just by the grace of God that I'm here and sober today. Of course, there have been a lot of things. I've been in AA for, I don't know how long, 1945, 1947. them. And you hear a lot of people telling the same thing. We were talking about it last night. You go to meetings, you hear the same old stories over and over. Why are no guys in the group that I can tell this story possibly as well as they can? I know everything about it. I've heard everything they've had to say. And I used to say that just boils the hell out of me. I just can't make it. And then I found out the answer to that, and it was in the twelfth step. I take a new man to a meeting or a new person, and I sit down there and old Joe gets up here and I've heard his story and yawned and gone to sleep. But I got a new man there with me tonight, and he gets up there to talk, and I want to hear just exactly that story. I don't want him leaving out any part of it. And if he leaves out any point of it, he really knocks me off. And so I know when I'm getting bored that the problem is that I'm not taking enough interest probably in some of these new people that are here. I don't have anything new to say. I say the same thing. I say this same thing now a natural triple time a week if they call on me. Maybe not this long, but that's pretty much the way it works. You know, there have been a lot of other things and I've got to chop this off here in a minute, but I think back about it about the real miracles and things that have happened in my life since I've been in A.A. You know, those four kids of mine, in 1946 it didn't look like they'd even get through high school. The thing was absolutely hopeless. And yet, they've all gone through college. I had one boy graduate from Princeton, and I say that's pretty high cotton for a guy sleeping on the bridge. Yes, sir. I think about my daughter. They were all red in AA. Not any one of them ever was the least bit ashamed. Not the least. Why, Phoebe, when she was a little girl, they've had people call, and she'd kind of detect something in the voice and said, they want to talk to me and she would say kind of around maybe are you making an AA call do you want some help or just give me your number and I'll have somebody call you right away she knew everybody in the group when she got to Vanderbilt she wrote a paper on the thing one of her papers it didn't bother well I remember Joe when Joe was up at Princeton And he had a Nashville girl, a pretty high-flying society girl, to up one weekend, football game and things. They were riding back and forth about what she should wear and what was going to happen, be it a football game or dance and so forth, cocktail party. And she wrote back about what you should wear and said, What should I wear to the cocktail party? And Joe wrote back and said, well, I'm going to wear my son of an AA pin. He said, you can wear anything you want to wear. Of course, that was just his way of telling he didn't think he'd take a drink. But the funny thing about it was, there was another father. Gee, he was laughing about it and thought it was just great. She thought it wasn't. There wasn't any hiding of the thing. they hadn't ever been, and it's been real good. I don't know what I would have done if my kids had been ashamed or had been skeptical or anything else. They've helped me an awful lot with their attitude about the thing, and I'm grateful for it, and I am grateful for the way that their mother kind of brought them along on that line. Well, you know, we were talking about these talks here, and you never know what's going to hit anybody. You just don't ever know. I had a call from one of our silk stocking boys once. I mean, he never had been to AA, but he's an investment banker, and he's a pretty big wheel, you And he called me, and he's a Vanderbilt man and all that sort of thing. So he's having trouble and wanted to talk about this thing, and he agreed to go to a meeting. And he's one of these highly articulate gentlemen. I think that's what they call them now or something. So anyway, he agreed to go the meeting. He was about half. He'd had a few drinks before he went. But when we got down there, boy, we were really, I thought, boy the Lord really answers a prayer. Here was a visiting AA from Virginia somewhere, makes one of the finest talks anybody ever heard, any man. He's a graduate of Princeton also. He's in book business. Just highly intelligent And here I had my silk stocking man right there So we sat there and this old boy got up and he talked And made a wonderful talk But the trouble was that he only talked 45 minutes And I just sat there And listened and looked at this guy And I thought, boy, this is just it Well, sir, they had about 15 minutes left And the chairman looked around, and he called on an old boy down there that, well, he's one of the best AAs in the business. But, you know, for my real highbrow guy, I just didn't know. You know, he was, I don't know what he was. He was some kind of a laborer or something. And he sort of butchered up the king's English. And I just cringed, and I thought, well boy, the Lord's just been asleep on this one. There's no doubt about that. After all the advice I had given him, you know, about who they ought to call on. So anyway, this other guy got up and he said, I don't know, he told some kind of rub. But if he'd said it once, he said it a hundred times. He said, I came to AA, he says it was the onlyest place I could go. He said it's the onlyst place. And every time he said that, boy, I just cringed. And when he sat down, I thought, boy, this is it. And so anyhow, we went on home and I took him home and he hit the bottle again, went to the sanitarium, stayed two weeks. When he got out, he called me again and he said he wanted to go to another meeting. So I went to him. I'm glad to pick him up. So I wind by and picked him up and we went to meet and he says, you know, Jack, I was drinking on that last meeting. But he said, I'm sure glad I went. He said, you know, I've been sitting out there at City View and it's just been running through my mind ever since I've been out there. He says, that's the only place I could go. So I don't try to plan any programs for anybody. I realized, of course, that it just don't work. You know, I was talking to one of those doctors here not too long ago that had gone over me at Vanderbilt. Oh, that was quite a while back, really. And he was saying, well, Jack, you seem to be doing fine now, but says, do you think you're going to have to go to those meetings for the rest of your life? And I told him, I said, well now, doctor, it's not exactly like have to-go. I said, you know, I kind of like to go to those meetings. I look forward to them. I like the people. And I said it's kind of like a breakfast table. I said I have to look at old Speedy across the breakfast table every morning. Probably will for the rest of my life but I said I don't dread it. I sort of look forward to it. And that's the truth. I feel that way I enjoy these meetings. There are a lot of times that I have to crank myself up, make myself go, but I always get something out of it, something tremendous out of me. I don't think it makes much difference who talks. I think if a Chinaman got up here and talked in Chinese and sort of felt like he was an alcoholic, I'd get something else out of him because it's like we said, we are gathered together for the purpose of renewing our strength. And I always get a big boost out of any AA meeting I've ever attended. I know that sobriety is the most important thing in my life. There's not any getting around it. I couldn't understand that at first. It's more important than my job. It's much more important actually than my family or anything else. It has to be, because without sobriety, I don't have anything. And everything that we have, everything, we don't have a whole lot of, but I mean whatever we have. The four children through college, the fact that we've got a home and a car and some of the other things, the money I've got in my pocket, all of it is directly responsible. I mean, AA's. Because without it, I just couldn't make it. Now there are other ways, I'm sure, that people stay sober. And there are some who come to meetings for a while and they get sober and then they don't come and they stay sobered. But I need to take my own inventory. I know that I can't follow that path. I have to stay with it. It's a 24-hour program and that's the way I have to work it. It's not always hard for me to stay sober, and I know that my worst day is sober, and I have some bad ones. On the other hand, they're a thousand percent better than my best day is drunk because I've had just a hopelessness of drinking. I don't know whether I could have another drink or not. I hope I never want one, but I'll take it just one day at a time. It's, like I say, it's a 24-hour program. I've been dry a good while, but I subscribe to the theory that, well, the idea that the guy, it'S a 24 hour program, so therefore the one that gets up earliest in the morning has been sober longest. And that's not any seniority. I'm just one more ex-drunk and I'll make it again today but everything that I've ever wanted in my life I'm sure I've found in AA I think about this thing and seeing all you all out here and some of these older ones I think, and I think about a story that I don't even know whether I could repeat it or not from my childhood it. And that's the, you may have heard it and you may have connected it with AA. I don't know, but I just thought about it this morning. I hope I can tell it. But it seems that it's the story of the happy prince. And it seems that there was a prince that every time he went out into the realm that everybody showered him with love and affection and applause, and the crowds gathered and they begged him to stay when he got there and to return when he got ready to leave. And they called him the Happy Prince. And there was another one who was considerably less popular. As a matter of fact, he may have been unpopular. Then he was jealous of the happy prince and the crowd and the applause and the appreciation and all that he seemed to get when he got out. And so he decided that he wanted that, and so he had a mask made that looked like the happy Prince. And And so he went out into the realm. But no crowds gathered, nobody applauded, nobody gave, you know, showered him with love and affection. And he couldn't understand it, he was perplexed and he wondered about it. And so, he decided he must have missed something, and so he would see what it was that this happy prince had that he didn't have. And so he followed him and watched him. And he saw that when this happy prince went to a place, he went out of his way to comfort the sorrowing and the downcast and to help those who needed help, to give a helping hand and to try to cheer people. and so they, the crowds gathered and they showered him with this affection and they wanted him to stay. And so this other one said to himself, he said if that's what it takes then I too shall try. So he put on his mask and he went out into the realm and he tried to comfort the sorrowing, cheer the downcast, help, give a helping hand to those who need it. And sure enough, the crowds began to gather. The people began to shower him with love and affection. And they didn't want him to leave. They begged him to return. And then he went out and thought, well, this is the greatest thing in the world. This is the real thing. And then his conscience smote him, and he said to himself, he says, I'm just a faker wearing a mask. And he reached up to pull it off, but it wouldn't come off because he was the happy prince. And I think about Bill and Dr. Bob and the older members in AA and the ones that are here today who showed us, the rest of us, the way and have set an example for us all to follow. It seems to me that they're happy princes, every one of them, and may God keep it so. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Jack. He just said in his talk that he didn't know how he got into AA.