The Only Man Who Knows How AA Started Because He Was Sober and Bill Was Drunk – Ebby T.

One of the stories that just came out some short time ago, the name Ebby comes out. But always in the first book you'll hear him referred to as my friend. Should you hear a lot of it at different times and in different parts of the country, quoting how Bill came in, how the organization or the fellowship started, started, there's only one man in the world tonight who knows exactly how it started. Because he was sober and Bill was drunk. So I give you my friend and your friend, our founder, Ebbets. Thank you, Dick. As Dick told you, my name is Ebi, and I'm an alcoholic. I don't know just how to start this off. Dick asked me over here. I was very glad to come, because I wanted to meet some of you Memphis people. But I had no idea I was one of two or three speakers, and I didn't know I was going to hold this thing down for 40 or 45 minutes. Back home in Dallas, I've known as it was, the speaker. They used me back there around a different close with a 10-minute and 50-minute spot. So I don't know how I'm going to go about holding down for 45 minutes, but I'll do the best I can. In fact, I haven't been living in Texas for five years now. Well, maybe I've gotten enough of that Texas braggadocio somewhere in my system. Maybe I can throw some of it so I can pull some of that out of the hat. There's a story I heard a year or two after I got in Dallas that I want to take a wife fancy in. I hope you'll indulge me and let me tell it. It was a Texas rancher who drove over to his nearest neighbor. It was about 15 miles. and said, what do you say we go to town and make a deal of it? The guy says, all right. Got his hat, and he got in the car, and they started out. As soon as they got out of sight of the ranch house, they opened up the first of the building and had a good long pull on the bottle and the first thing they said, you know, there's a ship two thousand bulls from Fredworth the day before yesterday. Nothing to say. They drove on a wire and came to a gate and they had to open that, and they hadn't ever poured the bottle in a second, guys. Well, you know, I shipped 2,500 bulls from my side even four or five days ago. So they go along, and just before they got to the main state highway, they stopped for a third good hunker, and the first rancher said again, you know I think we're the two biggest bullshippers in Texas. And I hope I've acquired a little of that so I can spread it out tonight. I know that Dick and Jim Great and some of the other boys wanted me to tell you some of the beginnings of AA as I experienced them. And, you know, I think that I appreciate the things that Dick has said and other people have said about him But I sometimes think that my chief's claim to fame is that I'm Exhibit A in the Antique Division of Alcoholics in Baltimore That's about it Well, I got to go Back to some of my beginnings I started drinking when I was in school school. I come from Hawthorne in New York, it's my native town. I went to a private school there and I started drinking them last year. I seemed to hold it under control pretty well. And I did get off on a wild party one night. It was a military school and we had a competitive drill and after the drill we all went out and many of us went out to get drunk. And And we got in the mess, and the principal of the school heard about it. But nothing was said. But I wasn't very well that spring, and they took me out of school before school was over. And that time the principal wrote to my father, and he always called me Ed. He didn't call me Ed, being an Ed. He said, I don't think we can do anything more for Ed. Which meant that he was just selling me from the school. So that fall, my father said, you're going to work in the foundry. My father happened to be in the iron foundry business. So I went to work that fall. And I confined my drinking to Saturday nights. And actually, I had to get up at 6 o'clock to go down. I worked as a molder's helper, which is fairly rugged work, as you may know. And I did that for a year. and I can find most of my drinking to Saturday nights except around Christmas time when all the dances were going on. Then I really stepped out, and I remember I tried to go to work with the drinking and the dancing and getting down to work at 7 o'clock in the morning when I was young and just shake it off and work it off by night. And I managed to get away with it for a while. But as I look back and remember those times, I wasn't a very successful drinker from the start. There were times, too, when I'd take some of the older guys around Albany home and other times I'd be climbing a chandelier after three or four drinks. I never knew what was going to happen. The fact of the matter is, when i was about 15 years old, I remember putting a lot of thought into this business of drinking because it was in my family. My brothers drank pretty heavily My father did. And I kind of figured that if they drank that way and it wasn't any good for them, then it was no good for me either because I was just about the same complement as they were. But it was that first drink that I ever took on my own when I walked into the bar or the hotel tonight in Albany and ordered a glass of beer over myself and I was a big shot. And I still say that it was a dead buck across the field, all over the place. Sometimes I can almost taste it again. And somehow that just gave me just the same glow and those bears were a lot stronger than those bears and they were real big. That was about 1914, I think. Yes, it was 1914. important. And I know that I said to myself, this is for me. And soon after that, when I started drinking, I kept it down pretty well, two or three drinks. I used to grab of an evening out in the spring. This friend of mine, I went to school, he called me up and asked me if I had molested him. I said, sure. He used to get the soil because the The family was sitting in the room, and I said, Here, Andy, I'll go out and have a chocolate milk with you. I've got time. And we were far from chocolate milk. But I managed to get home by 11 o'clock, so there was nobody knowing about it. But I know the effect and the taste of alcohol is fascinating to me from the beginning. And later on, I read a book called A Common Sense of Drinking, from which a lot of old ways are taken by Dick Peabody. He's now dead, but he was one of the first of the lay therapists that had a tremendous following of alcoholics. A lot of other books have been written by a lot of his pupils. The Glass Crack is one of them by Beth Chambers and I can name my half of those and I cannot think of them right now. But he said in that book that the difference who's the same, an alcoholic and a heavy drinker was that the heavy drinkers might drink just as much on a given night as the alcoholics. But the next day was another day to him when he went to work and his first thing in the awakening in the morning was the office. Well, the first thought that the alcoholic had was that the night before and where could he get the next drink to bring that party back again? And that always appealed to me because that's the way I was. I'd forget business and want to get somewhere where I could get with a gang again. And he said, the effect of alcohol on people of your type is too fascinating. You can't handle it. Yes, sir. The damn thing won't pick up. Won't pickup? No. It's not going to pick up anymore. All right. But I knew that, but I knew then that coupled with the drinking in my family, I figured out that I better leave. It should stay away from me, but it never did once I had that drink. When the time went on, I, of course, got into a lot more trouble. And the family business broke up. It was one of those things to do that's been running since 1852, and it broke up in 1922. And I was more or less on the loose and going from one job to another and getting in more trouble all the time. My drinking was increasing. I didn't get overseas season of World War I when I was in the outfit that was stationed around right in my hometown of Albany. And then the state army there, I got to be a second lieutenant in this outfit and we always had a jug in the officer's quarters because it was the druggist in one of the corners right near the armory. And I somehow managed to get a barrel of whiskey and we could get it because those were the days of prescription. The doctor would issue you a prescription during prohibition, and you go in and get this fine of whiskey. But we got it all we wanted. We got that gallon jug filled repeatedly. And there was a pretty two-fifths of drinking crowd, and they were all older than I was. Well, finally, we got into a jam one night. We had a taxi wreck, and I just got superficial facial cuts on my both lips and face. But I was kind of a bloody mess, it was just bleeding a lot. My father came in, I was sitting on the bed, and he said, you get out of that National Guard tomorrow morning and say that you leave my house. Well, I didn't feel like leaving this house right then, so late that afternoon I walked up and told the captain I was going to resign, request to be put on the reserve. So that ended my National Guard guard career in that phase of the drinking. But things got worse, and my father and mother died in 27, my father in 29, and I was sticking around then pretty bad. I inherited some money from my father. I should have had sense enough to take care of it, but I didn't. I lost half it overnight in a stock market crash, and the rest I just downed the drain over a period of a year, a year and a half. And we used to summer in Vermont, and it was there that I met Bill Wilson, but it was longer ago than 24 years ago. I first knew Bill about 1910. I went to school with him in 1912, which has taken us back quite a few years. And as I To get back there, we went to Summers in Manchester, Vermont. Well, after my father died, the house was vacant up there. We bought a house after all the years that Father had spent money at the hotel for all of us. He bought a home in 1923 and then in 1929 he died and the house is empty. All my other brothers were married. Father died without a will so they just provided up the furnishings and left some for me I had one room furnished in that house, and the rest was bare. And I was living there all alone, drinking heavily all the time. Got a resume. Something now we're going to get up to the summer of 1934, which is 24 years ago. And I'd been in the twelfth of the law twice that summer. I'd gotten drunk or gotten arrested for being drunk and disorderly fined five dollars or something like that and it seems that in Vermont at that time I don't know whether the law is still on the statute but if you got arrested three times anyone giving you for drunkenness meant six months in Windsor State Prison well I was getting drunk that long One time I got drunk, and I still don't know exactly how it happened, but I was in my own house, and apparently somebody got out a wire for me. I fail to see yet what I was doing, as I was on my own property. But one of the boys, a boy that was constable at the time, was a guy that I'd gone to school with in 1912, the same year that I went to school at Bill Wilson. And I forgot to say that I went to a private school in Albany. But this one year, I went up there in Vermont in 1912, in the fall of 1912 to go to that school for one year and then back to my other. And this other boy was John Jackson. He was a constable. And I lost uptown the next day. And I went out and stood on the store, the steps of the hardware store to talk with the owner of it. I spent, John drove up and said, sorry, he says, everybody got a warrant for you. You've got to take me down to Bennington, which is the county seat. And he took me down and saw the judge. And the judge said it would be back Monday. So we'll see what we can do about you. Well, I've gotten ahead of my story because before that, I'd say late in July or the first part of August two men came to see me two fellas that I had drunk with often and one of them happened to be the son of this judge he's now in a seabed grave and he's not living in Paris fine and the other one is Shep Cornell and I don't know just where he is I think he's somewhere in Ohio and I had a hangover of course them. These two guys wandered around. I was out in back somewhere, kitchen, I guess. But I remember they came up the back steps and they started, they didn't know exactly how to begin on me because they remembered me and I had a lot of fun with me drinking. And I saw they had something on their mind, so I said, well, what have you got on your mind? and what's cooking. And they said, well, we kind of come to see you and see if we can get some idea in your head about something. I said, you mean about my drinking? They said, yeah, you're not getting anywhere. You understand you're in wrong all over town. We just started. Well, we just started, we got mixed up with a group called the Oxford Group and we think that you could get help if you joined up with us. And they said, do you ever think of letting God run your life instead of every pastor trying to run it all the time? And I really talked sense the way I figured it and it seemed to me that they were just telling me things that I had been taught in my childhood about the right way of living And I said, well, gee, if these two guys have got something out of this Maybe there's hope for me Because I've just about given up hope And I tell you, I was willing to quit drinking when I didn't know how Excuse me I didn' t know how to do it So I listened to them and they left me a book By one of these men in the Oscar group I don' t recall the name of that book now But in it, I could see myself staring out of those pages. Now, the Oxford group, let me explain, was not concentrated on alcohol, alcoholism. It was a spiritual group that was founded by a minister from Pennsylvania named Frank Bookland, B-U-C-H-M-A-N. It got its name, Oxford Group, because Both of them got a lot of people interested And they in turn went abroad And they went to England and Oxford University And they got a whole bunch of people Of people interested over there And from there They went to South Africa And they had quite a big meeting Down there, I don't know if it was Cape Town Or one of those cities And the reporters referred to them As the group from Oxford And that damn name stuck and it had no more to do with the group or its foundings than anything in the world. But just like those things happen, that's the name that stuck with it. And it was called the Oxford Group. And they were really trying to find something. It was that time in 1929 when the crash had come on Wall Street and the nation was kind of a low point economically. A lot of people were hopping out of windows in New York and that's no joke because there were a lot of them and hit those manholes head-on from the 30th floor. And a lot of people were drinking terribly, and they wanted to find something in this Oxford group. A lot of People came around to it, and, of course, a good many of them happened to be alcoholics. And don't ever let yourself think that nobody but an alcoholic can help an alcoholic, because there are a lot men in this group who were very understanding and had a damn good knowledge of the thinking of an alcoholic's mind. And I sometimes think that our minds are no different than anybody else in this world. We just give in to things that other people do not. Well, anyway, that idea appealed to me. I read the book and I sewed it up for a few days and I started to paint the house but I had a lot of it that was too short and I couldn't get up to all these places And I made a deal with Boss Peter, and he sent around one of his men with some equipment and the two of us finished the house. I didn't touch a drop all that time, but the minute that job was over, sure, I went right back to Bottlewood because they had nothing more to interest me than the lead guy. And it was then, on that means, after the thing in the house that I was picked up and taken to the county judge, There's one thing that sticks in my mind, and it always will. I knew it would at that time. You may not get what I mean by it, but as we drove home that afternoon, this constable, John Jackson, left me off at the house that I was living in. And he said, well, I'll be around to get you Monday. This was Friday. And he said, remember the judge says be sober? I said, yep, I'll be sober. So I went in the house and I remembered that down cellar I had about a half a dozen bottles of ale and I know that they're going to be nice and cool. And there's one thing I like in this world, it's Valentine's Ale and that was it. So I would go in the cellar and I said to myself, yourself. I can't possibly get drunk between now and Monday on six bottles of ale, and I know that nobody in town is going to tell me anymore after they've heard that I... You know what a small Vermont community is? Everybody from ten miles up and down the valley knows all about anything like that. And I knew it was none of any of the bootleggers would tell me anything. And when I got down and I reached one of those bottles, uh-uh. That That ain't cricket. It's all right, the judge said you'd get there sober, but would you be there sober? No, that isn't, that's cheating somehow. And I walked back upstairs and that damn devil got to my shoulder. Get on, go on down there and take it. I couldn't take that damn ale. I said, no, that, that... Well, that-that's not the spirit of the thing. It might be... Technically, I might be all right. I'd get that sober, technically, Well, that's not exactly what he meant. He didn't say don't take a drink, but that's exactly what it meant. So I took them and put them in a basket and carried them over to my next-door neighbor and I said, here, they're yours. And that minute I had a victory. I know that. I had something that was just like a weight being lifted from my shoulders. And I've often thought about it. in later years when I started drinking again why I couldn't recapture that feeling that I had then. But perhaps that's it, it's the pink cloud and later on you you get a more mature, if I may use the word, outlook. But I don't think if you have a slip you can ever go back again. Well, as it turned out I went down there Monday And there had been a third man come to see me too Name was Roland Hazard And he was a pretty slow gent too I never knew him I never met him before These other two guys I had And he were there Monday When I was brought for the judge The judge started to give me a little lecture here, and he says, Hazard, will you take this man? And I said, sure. So I was released and well, no cognizance, and the charges were dropped. And this guy took me in, took me back home, left me there. And a few days later, I closed the house up, went down and stayed with him. He lived about 15 miles below, south of the town. And then we went on down down in New York. And I stayed with Shep Cornell and one of his other chaps was coming to see me. I stayed there about a month, I guess. And during that time, we made trips back to Vermont, Hazard and I, and two weeks after I was connected with this actor group, which is a much looser membership than Alcoholics Anonymous, I really think, I went back up me out speaking. The first weekend that I went out speaking, we went up through Vermont, I spoke in a junior college, two churches, town meeting hall, and someplace else all in two nights. Two afternoons and two nights, and I still don't know what I talked about, but I just felt good about the whole thing and really figured that these guys must have out something, that there must be a higher power because they were the ones that originated the phrase, believe in a higher God or a higher power as you understand them. And it was while I was doing this and going back to New York, I heard about Bill. I hadn't seen Bill, I don't believe, for over a year, although Bill, you see, was born and raised in the town six miles north of this town of Manchester, Vermont, where I used to come. I also spent quite a few winters there. And I heard that Bill was in pretty tough shape, drinking bad, and I had been in downtown and, uh, in Wall Street and seen some of my old friends. One of whom I had built sister-in-law. And he said he was in tough shape and he said, why don't you give him a ring or telephone? And I said, well, I will, but I want to think this thing out a little and get myself a pretty good story, a pretty great picture story. And I can truthfully We say now that I believe that if I went over there, that Bill would either go for it lock, stock and barrel or he would have none of it. He wouldn't just play around with it for a little while. I thought that if he put his teeth into it once, he'd stick to it. But I thought I knew him pretty well. I've been going to school with him and seen him over the years. So I called him up one night. I didn't get Bill, but I got Lois, his wife, and told her what had happened to me that just must have kind of shown me something. Well, I don't even sober myself then about quite possibly six or seven weeks. But I think sometimes the initial effect that we get from a thing is we're more far off the line than we are later on. We get stale. Well, anyway, Lois said, why don't you come over to dinner tonight? And then she mentioned a date. I said, fine. So that night I went over about half past five, I guess, in the evening. And I rang the bell at 182 Clinton Street. The only person home was an old colored man, named Green, who I've known for years. He'd been with the family. And Lois' family, that is. And he said they're both out. Both Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Wilson are out. They'll come on in. So pretty soon Bill appeared and he's been drinking, but he wasn't too bad. And he started low and this, that, and the other thing and he's kind of edging around down. Then he made me excuse. He had to go out and get some ice cream, something else for supper. But I knew what he was going after. I'd done it so many times myself. So then Lois came in. And there was another girl invited. There was a girl invited because she lived upstairs and had made the place an apartment. So we all sat down to dinner. And Bill got it a little garbled in the book about again across the kitchen table, but it don't make any difference. The idea is there. Now we got better and then we all moved upstairs and those houses and back there in the eastmost living rooms on the second floor. So we moved up on the 2nd floor and after a little hammering and hawing, Laura said, well, let's hear care about yourself. So I started in. I guess they got me wound up, and I guess that talk put me at one o'clock in the morning. And I remember Bill says I walked the subway with him. And then I knew that he wasn't going to go for a drink, or that he had a bottle in my house anyway. And on the way over, he put his arms around my shoulder just before I went on the subway and said, I don't know what you got, kid, but you got something, something, and I want to get it. Well, he didn't stop drinking right away any more than I had stopped drinking back there that summer when the Oxford Group boys came to see me, but the idea was in there, and the idea happened to get in Bill's head. And at that time, I had moved to a mission on 1st Avenue and 23rd Street in New York City. It was run by Calvary Episcopal Church and called Calvory Mission. It was run under the auspices of this Oxford group. It wasn't just a typical so-called Bowery Mission. We had 12 men who were running it, and we only had available beds for about 35 men, and they were full every night. So when I was with the man, about two nights after I'd been over to see Bill, he appeared at the mission just as the meeting was about to start. He had a guy in tow and they were both visibly drunk. Well, not too bad. And along about, there was great money there. Those meetings are what's called testimonial meetings. We had a man up on the platform for him, and he would call on various men in the audience. They'd get up, say what they'd found. Of course, most of them were doing it just to get a place to sleep. They called picking another guy for God to get aflop. That's the way they expressed it. Well, in the midst of all these proceedings, Bill gets up and walks up to the platform, and and he's about 6'3", you know, and he leaves his elbow on the piano and he starts to spout it. I'm a super doctor. Get him down. That's your friend. Pull him down out of there. I said, let him go. Let's hear what he's got to say. The guy gave me a dirty look when he let Bill talk. And then two or three days later, this was sometime late in November, as I've been talking to Jim and Dick and some of the other boys, I wish that either Bill or I or somebody kept a diary back there so that we could remember dates and have some continuity to our stories because you go back 24 years and you come out with a life if you recall things accurately. Well, this was sometime late in November in 1934 and it's a few days later that Bill got himself a taxi cab and two or three bottles of beer and went up to Towns Hospital in Central Park West. And when I heard he was up there, I guess it was the next day I went up to see him because I made up my mind that having started this with Bill it was up to me to stick it out which I think is a true thing in every A.A. 12-step case you go on. If you're going to do it don't spread yourself too thin and take on 25 or 30 people I'd rather see her concentrate on one or two I don't know whether I'm my brother's keeper or not but I do think that if you start and put something in a man's mind and possibly in his heart and soul you gotta stick with him through his tough spots as well as his victories because he's either one to stop you and it's up to you to see what he gets on his feet so I followed Bill up up there And we had some talks, and he got out, and he went back down around Wall Street, and they had to make a few little moves in there. And I kept riding herd on him, or I'd say out in Texas, but I rode herd on them. And he came along, and then he began to attend actual group meetings, which, I might add, are exactly the same as AA meetings. There they had a speaker, I mean a leader. That's what they called it. They didn't call it chairman. They called it the leader and three or four speakers. And Bill spoke many times from Calvary House in Gramercy Park North in New York City. And later on, when we split from the Oxford group and became Alcoholics Anonymous, we went back to that place and had our meetings there up until about two years ago. the original Manhattan group and of course Ohio, Cleveland and more of the other cities claim that they are the original AA but I don't know I kind of dispute that a little bit because there was a clear succession right through from the Oxford group meetings until the time we broke off and the meetings went around in both houses and then they went to Stangway Hall on 57th Street and from there the Burt Taylor shop on 5th Avenue and we occupied one of the floors of his tailor shop. And let's see, the men it was a direct succession but I don't care whether Cleveland or anybody else claims the first group. It makes little difference. The thing gets started. So Bill and I were together a great deal that first winter, and then I went back to Albany in 1936, and Bill Joe went on to found AA, and he's really the one. I just had something to do with giving him the idea. He went on with Dr. Bob, found AA. And in 1937, I had a slip. list. I fell off the wagon after two years and seven months, which was slightly different from that DuPont film. The DuPant film had me falling off a month after I talked to Bill, but I wasn't so. I was two years six months later. And I've had to go through the trouble off and on. If I want to go back and count the years, I can count possibly 15 years of a complete sobriety out of the 24, maybe 16 years. But they were longer for 16 months and 8 months and 7 months and so on. And summer of 1953, I was again in New York City drinking and I walked into the intergroup one day and Hazel Wright, one of the secretaries there said, He said, I think I've got a man that can help you who's got something real and something tangible. And she said, I'm going to call him right away. And she called this man and he came down to see me. He says, where do you drink? And I said, on the wrong third avenue. He says come on let's go. And he said, I ran into Steve McGrady there's a man who originally came to see you over in Paris, France. And he says, how's old Eddie doing? This guy said, I don't know Eddie but I hear he's not not to do them at all. So he says, Steve told me that you didn't have a chance here in New York and we don't think you have. I said, I know damn well I haven't been licked. I can't throw it off. Well, he said, how about going to Texas? Well, I said I don't know about that. Well he expounded on the virtues of Texas and those good old American ways of living that were still down in these parts of the country. He gave me $5 and bought me another drink. He said, I'll see you tomorrow night. So he did, and a fee was performed. And, of course, I worked him for another $5, that's for sure, and few more drinks. And that was Thursday night. I said, well, I'm not going to see you anymore, but the office still holds good. Saturday morning, I walked over to his apartment building, and he was outside. He was coming in one door and I was going in the other. I said, Charlie, here I am. His name was Charlie Milton. I mean, he said, here I am, or he says, you ever go to Texas? I don't know about Texas, I said. But I'm ready to quit drinking. I haven't had a drink since last night. So he took me up in his apartment and got me some clean clothes and a shower, which I barely needed. That night he called up Oly Lancaster in Dallas and said, how about taking this guy down there? All right, he says, send me, you son of a bitch, down here. I could hear Oly booming it up. So the next, we got a reservation that night at American Airlines for Sunday evening, and it was the Sunday before Labor Day, September number six. And the dirty so-and-so never even gave me a drink after three months drunk I got on board that plane, and I didn't know whether I was on a plane or a ferry boat or where I was. And I got off the plane, it was a nonstop, and when I would have been off here in hell, it wasn't a stop, but it was. I got of that plane and I was the first person them out of it. They know soon I had that thing rolled up and I was zooming and I was down on the steps. I'd had enough flying for one night. And I got down there and I looked around and I saw two big guys, and of course I was having hallucinations all over the place, and I said they're either a couple of G-men or they're a couple of goons from some gangster squad. And then I heard that booming voice again, there's the achy bastard! There he is, I've seen him in New York. So I They got a hold of me and I poked them in the car and they put me down at the Texas clinic. And I stayed there, I guess I stayed here all together about two or three months, but the first two or four weeks it was pretty rugged because I'm going to tell you right now I had hallucinations all over the place. I didn't believe I was in Texas. I didn' t dare go out of the place One of the girls there that was taking care of the books and sort of running things took me downtown one day and I couldn't get back in that place fast enough. I was scared of the car, the traffic, I was afraid of everything. And it wasn't until I was there two weeks later that the guy said, I'm going out to mail some letters to the airport. Do you want to go out? And I said, I sure do. I want to see this airport and see if I'm really in Dallas. And I got out then. I got Out of the Car and I walked up to this placker who said, Love Field, Dallas, Texas. I put my hand on it and I said All right, I'm in Dallas, I believe it or not. Well, as a fan here, I did not believe I was in Dallas it. Because there's been a pretty rugged drunk and a pretty hot summer, and I haven't had much to eat in those three months. I was drinking everything I could lay on my hands. I meant to be cut short like that. Furthermore, they gave me some few goofballs down there, and I hate those things run away. I hate the effect of them. It just makes me... Well, I'm sorry that I've taken up so much time telling you it's all been of myself, but I didn't know how to bring the history of AAN. You've all seen how it spread, how it worked. I know that if it hadn't been for AA when I got to Texas, I never would have been able to survive. Just coming out here alone, I'd have been lost. It was tough enough as it was because I was among strange people, slightly different ways than ours. It is enough evil to get from the Bowery down here in six hours and change yourself all around. But if it hadn't been for those good Texas people and the people in the suburban club, if I hadn't have been able to go around there and stay there and shake after two weeks before I went in the club, a little over two weeks, I walked by one day and started up the steps last winter and went back to the clinic. it. Almost like a guy going back and hiding under the bed. And I know the trouble times they said, well, I heard him talking. I don't know what we're going to do with this guy. He's gone goofy. And then I had a colored girl at work there. She's quite an old woman and she said, don't you worry about that man. You just leave him alone and he's coming out out of it. He's sick. And that's just what I was. I was sick, mentally and physically. And gradually, I worked out of the nature took over. And then I was able to get around the club and get into the activities. And maybe I got in there too fast. That was the hottest summer that had been on record in a Texas weather bureau. I went down on the a ranch, and I was out working the sheep with this man. He hooked me in as a chute man, and that's kind of rugged work on a 95-degree day. And I got mixed up in an oil deal, and I sold some insurance stock, and every one of them flopped. The insurance company did almost. It's still struggling to get back on its feet. And then I got in another deal When that flopped, October a year and one month after the year was up, I flopped. And that was in October 1954. Now, that's 13 months, and I only had a few days drinking then. And it was over a three-week period, but I got slapped in the county jail for 10 days and butted in Mr. Bill Descher's emporium. And I came out, and some friends took me in their house, and they sobered up. and they haven't had a drink since. In other words, I've had about five years' sobriety in Texas. Out of five years in one month, I have had five years of sobrieting. Total. And I know that I'm grateful to Phoebe Graves over there in Paris and Charlie for following it up, and for the people in Texas and over here, all of you people, who have given me another chance can't. I couldn't have done it by myself. It isn't under my own feline, is it? And I know that my sobriety in these four years, these last four years that I've been sober, it hasn't been my sole effort that's kept me sober, nor do I believe it has been entirely the friendship and the help of people. I think it would have been the help of a higher power. And while I have lost that idea some times along the way of life, thank God I got it back again because I know that I couldn't exist without it. There are times when I am not like the great many people I hear talk that they say there isn't a day They even realize that they don't fight the desire to take a drink. Well, I'm telling you right now, flat out, I'd go get drunk. I couldn't be that much of a hero to fight it every day and every hour. I don't have that. But I do have periods every three or four months when it's maybe two or three days at work and that's all I think about is taking a drink and if I haven't got myself conditioned to the correct way of thinking and knowing that if I take that drink, well, I'm going to end up. And I have no doubt that this time, I know that that last drink that was drunk, that the liquor knocked me so badly physically and mentally too that I'd never survive another one. And I get that in my head, and I keep it there in spite of the fact that I want to go out. I get sick of being in harness every day and going to work. and I'm getting along in years, and I like to have a little rest once in a while, but I've got to go and work. And I often think if I come home at night that if I could take one good plug of whiskey or one bottle of Balanchine's Ale and go eat, it would help me a lot and it probably would help my physically and give me lift. But I know I can't do it. So what is the use of time or the idea? that air. I don't quite get so much the air as I used to, but I'd like to get drunk, although that occurs once in a while because I think in every one of us there's another person who's an alter ego. And that old drunk that does every patch is still in there. He may be dormant, but he's there just like a volcano. He takes his top off and he's going zoom! Only this time he goes zoom, boom, and it'll be all over. And I haven't got anything much more to say except stick to your AAs and stick to God. And I think that you'll find that if you're having any trouble, you'll fine help there. I want to thank Dick, and I wantto thank the other members and all you people who've entertained me, and I sure have enjoyed coming up from effort. Thank you. While we are convincing you that there are no doers of fees in A.A., and Harold and the boys are passing the remittance basket, I want to say again, if you happen to go out Texas way where Evie has been and where Evie has been the last five years the AA out there is no different than the AA that you have here in Memphis, Tennessee because my first visit to Memphis was in 1935 when you first organized and you were getting together then and one of the great pleasures of AA is to walk in and see men and women right in this audience here tonight who are here and active, and 35 that are here and active tonight. Everyone that comes in today just doesn't walk in, bless themselves, and stay sober. You have a disease called alcoholism, and it's a tough one. Some people are lucky. I don't know. I don'T know who I shot, whose mother-in-law or mine that I pushed downstairs that gave me the right. I can never grasp even this today. Why should I stay sober and some other guy didn't? He's an alcoholic just like I am. I don't know what it is, but I'm not going to try to answer. But I do know this as long as you remember yesterday. It's a great help for them all. The quicker you forgive yourself, the quicker you're going to get well. But when you forget where you found your sobriety, how you got sober, and you retire to the country club, and no longer are active in AA, you are no longer taking in your medicine. And if you don't take your medicine someday down the road, oh, you can point to me as Debbie can. I can show you guys that it's over five, six and seven, eight and ten years. It never shows up anymore. But for your information, they're not dead yet. I know a lot of people with different diseases that have arrested them. You can arrest your alcoholism, and maybe you can stay sober if you never come back to AA. And if you'll never come to AA, I am one that will never miss it. Because if you're ungrateful as that for what you found, I don't think, me personally, that I would need you, and And I'm only speaking for myself. Because you found it, I found it. And I think today the greatest thought that we can have in Alcoholics Anonymous, not for you who are so lucky that are here tonight and all over the world in AA, if God in his infinite wisdom gave us the privilege of staying sober such as we are tonight night, and I turn my back on the guy I left behind me, I don't deserve to buy. That's merely my own opinion. I belong to the greatest fellowship in the world, and that fellowship is called Alcoholics Anonymous. Everything I have tonight, everything I will ever get any other night from herein comes from men and women. God bless you just like you. may I always be with you and may someday I really be worthy of you in all meetings all over the country those who wish to join us we close by saying be our father those who care to will you join me our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever amen Thank you.