The Unity of Thinking That Built the Mansion – 1957 – Jim B.

This recording is a part of the Northern California Tape Library about alcoholism. The principal speaker is Jim Burwell, one of the original founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. The recording was made in Sacramento June the 15th, 1957, and the original recording was made by Dwayne Rolofson. This copy has been made by Bill Mitchell, 2103 Miller Avenue, Modesto, California. Please observe the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous and do not play this recording for commercial or entertainment purposes nor break the anonymity of any of the speakers at any public level. Now we come to the Teacher, speaker of the evening. I just met this man a couple of hours ago, and I wish I hadn't met him a long time ago. But I hope to know him much better before even this night is over. However, this man has some distinctions, let us say, which not very many people enjoy. He is the third oldest living member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He is celebrating his 19th birthday today. He was one of the people who helped write the Twelve Steps and the book Alcoholics Anonymous. He has credited throughout the AA world with insisting that those four little words, as we understand them, be added after the word God. And how much that has helped a lot of us who could not accept the dogma, let us say, of religion because we thought that God had deserted us in our drinking days. We thought everybody had deserted. Jim has come up here from San Diego doesn't get any money for this. No AA speaker to my knowledge ever got paid. They do these things because they want to. They hope they're going to help somebody and they know they're gonna help themselves. It's quite a a little bit of history to look back on in Jim's case that he's one of the originators of this movement and now we have hundreds of thousands of members nobody knows exactly how many scattered throughout the world new groups being formed every day the book Alcoholics Anonymous has been transcribed into several foreign languages. And Jim can look back on all this and say, I started all this. I was a part of it from the beginning. So Eric will know Jim a little better after he gives us his message. Jim? That's quite a build-up. Well, I don't know what I've done. But that's the wonderful thing about AA because none of us, we won't allow each other to be built up very much. I don'T think I'VE ever heard a buildup like that on me in all the time I'Ve been in AA. So it ONLY comes in places they DON'T know you. I DON'T want to hear a thing from my damn alumnus over here from Alcorn either. Mr. Vick. We went to the same jailhouse together. But I am Jim Burlow. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Jim. Thank you all. And I do have one little story to tell that is a little different probably than anybody else in AA in this area is a lot about a little bit about what AA used to be what happened and what we are like now. And I like to do it in areas because I feel it's a one-shot job. And once you do it, I don't have to come back in and do it again. The next time my talk will be my personal history, which takes about 25 minutes. This will take a little longer. But damn it,I think you deserve it. But I do think it's good to see the trials and errors we went through. I was saying tonight at lunch, at dinner that the most important thing that happened in AA of course was the writing of the book do you know it took four years to get the book started and at the time the book was finished there was only eight people dry over six months I'll try to point that out that was in April 1939 nine. One year after that, with a unity of thinking, a unity of action, a Unity program, I think this whole talk should be along the lines of Unity, not the church. One year after that book came out, instead of two groups, we had 110 groups. Instead of possibly, we said 100 people. A hundred people were involved in the book coming and going. Most of them were going. But the actual meetings in Akron and New York, the two meetings that were being held at that time, they didn't average over 10 or 12. But from the, well, say we had 40 people fairly actively coming to meetings in two cities. One year later with the book, damn few sold to as you will hear later, but with a unity of thinking, taking out the personalities and bringing out principles, We had 110 groups, as I said, and instead of about 40, we had about 1,500 AA's. Now that's the first point of unity. Now tonight, I come up here, I was here about four years ago. I was asked, I knew, by one of the factions up here to come up and give a talk. I think it might have been on an anniversary up here. It might have Been on this anniversary. There was a hundred there that night. It was a pretty sour crowd. And it was a very unhappy meeting for me. I mean, I didn't get anything. There wasn't any kickback to me personally. Some of the people were here that night, I guess. I don't mean it personally. But there was a feeling. When I got in town, there was criticism. There was no feeling of coming together. Well, tonight, it's completely different. It's sort of a feeling at home that we're all here together for the same thing. To get back to this unity, I'd like to say a few words before I go into this talk because, for instance, I dare say that 90% or 95% of the people in this room tonight got the original AA some other spot. And you can say that in every group, wherever you might go. So that is why it's so important that us groups stay together, that we stand together behind New York, that we stay together internationally because we're the greatest floating members in the world. We're here today and gone tomorrow. And trunks are always that way. So we have to have a unified effort together so no matter where we go, we'll feel at home. So we'll go to Oshkosh. Well, they don't do it like they do in Sacramento. The hell with them here. Don't let's have the man have that chance. Let's make it like AA all over and stick to the simple principles of the book. Now, those are my personal opinions, and that's why it's so grand to see this central office. I think it's going to be the real stepping stones of bringing together, because I do know throughout California you have a reputation of being up here of factions. Of course, we have factions every place, but they're not as clearly lined as they seem to have been thought of up here. I know I'm talking as an outsider and it's none of my damn business, but I can feel a difference of talking with people. I've met both people. I don't know who's on what side. I know there's factions that have been. I don' t know who' s on them. It don' l make a hell of a lot of difference. But I think you're over that now. And I think You'll be surprised to see the older people come back. You'll see the better attendance more used. You'll se the more interest being taken. It's been that way all throughout AA. So, so much for unity. First, I'd like to qualify myself as a little bit of a historian on this thing. I came in in January 38th in Washington, D.C. I was pushed in by circumstances. I didn't ask AA. That's another story. But anyway, I ended up, by going to New York, and I met two people there, Bill Wilson and Hank Parkers, who were the two people that actually did the physical writing and promoting of the book. I was with them closely for the next two years. I think I saw Bill and Hank at least once a day during those two years, or at least when I was in town, I was doing a little traveling towards the end. So a good deal of this stuff I saw on the ground floor or heard from them when it was fresh. I wrote it down seven or eight years ago, and I tried to keep it as simple and quick as I can And to give you a digest of how come we is what we is today and how this thing was formed so much against the will of all of us, against any idea. I always say in AA that AA today is nothing like where it's going to be 10 years from now. I haven't the slightest idea what it'll be. I don't think anybody knows. But it'll better AA. It'll be improved AA. It'll better for the new person. And that's the person we want. After once we've had inoculation and AA, our responsibility is a new person, the person that don't know. So he has an opportunity to get well like we're trying to do. So that is my being around in those early days is my reason for saying a little bit about the historian thing. But to go back from the hearsay, that was in January 38th. I had my last drink six months later in June the 15th, 1938. So you don't get mixed up on these dates on my birthday. But to give you a quick digest of the happening things, try to look at this AA thing as sort of a fellowship mansion or center being built from the ground up. The excavation and so forth. And to see how this thing has been growing, how we're pulling it together and with the final thing of the third legacy of putting the roof on so we're self-contained so nothing can upset us and break up this unity of thinking. Just think what the churches would like to have done and be able to do to hold themselves together what we're trying to do. We, the most rugged people in the world are the ruthless that cut through life and think of nobody and together we're unified. God. It's a wonderful feeling to think we can get along with each other and work together. God, one thing is lucky we have to or else we die. But to get back at the starting of this thing, a little bit of the excavation, take you back to 182 Clinton Street, Brooklyn, in New York, November 34. Bill was on his last binge. He'd been in Towns' hospital three times that year and Towns had told him the last time that it wasn't much chance of him that he'd had a wet brain and no recovery. He gets a telephone call from an old school friend of his that he drank with many times and got in much trouble with, Abby Thatcher. Bill invited him over. Ebby came over sober. He'd never seen Ebby sober before. Ebby had been in one nut house after another. He seemed to be happy. He seemed contented. Bill asked him what happened. He wasn't. Bill was broke. Been a millionaire broker and was down flat. About to lose his house. Ebby said, I have got religion. The way Bill tells it, it's like the guy hit him in the face with a cold fish. Well, he's gone wacky on religion now. That's even worse than his booze he was in. But anyway, he was a good old friend and the bottles will last a little longer. So he continued to drink. Asked Eddie what they did in the Oxford group. Very simple. We try to help other people share our troubles, talk ourselves out and be useful. and Bill, of course, gave me the old balani. Well, that's the old religions. They've been doing that for years, same old routine, the hell with it, and continued his drinking. A week or so later, he ended up in Towns, in D.T.'s, Towns Hospital. This is an interesting point that came up at this time. Bill was in this room, these delusions, the wheels going around, as we all know. heard Dr. Silkworth talking to Loyce outside the door Silkworth said well I don't think he'll ever leave this hospital again I think he's gone his brain's gone liver everything is shut he hasn't got a chance Bill heard that and something hit him like a flash of light that's screwball Thatcher maybe he's got something and he said that he went through a terrific delusion a build up a wind floating through him we always call his Bill's hot flash called Silkworth in he said Doc I don't know whether I'm going crazy again or whether I'm growing crazy or what he says I don' t want to drink again I got something I don''t know what it is but I got something Dr. Silkworth says I don't know what you've got Bill but you better hold on to it you haven't got anything else that was the beginning Bill didn't get out of bed for weeks there stayed in the hospital talked to the other drunks there he tried to start there of course the drunks in towns are not very affable type they're all millionaire drunks then he met Eddie afterwards and got out of the hospital and started going down to the Oxford Group mission called Calvary Mission where they had a lot of poor, broken-down drunks that they were using from in Nazarene. And the solar amount do good as you know that they're doing in a lot of these missions in those days or still do. So Bill would go down to Calvory Mission come back and talk to the drunks in Towns Hospital stayed in there for three months afraid to walk out of place. Finally he goes home Deloitte, continues his business weekly, daily practically. And he's staying sober. And he has a chance to go back into the market. And He's on a big deal, goes to Akron. The deal falls through in Akron and always thought back in New York as a last resort. If I can Talk to another drunk, I'll feel better. So he was in the Portage Hotel in Akron, Ohio, pacing the corridor, deciding whether to go into the bar. He saw the church directory there. Decided he would call the preacher's honors directory and try to find out if anybody belonged to the Oxford group there. That's the only thing he knew is the drunks that were in the Oxford Group in New York. So he finally got a hold of a gal named Henrietta Seibling, the rubber seibling people. And Henrietta said, I hold it, Mr. Wilson, and says, I think I have just the man for you to talk to. I will come down and pick you up. Came down, picked Bill up, took him out to where Ann Smith, Dr. Smith's wife, This was on Mother's Day, 1935. Bill was on this bench at that time. I mean, Bob Smith, Dr. Smith, who was a co-founder of AA, was on this bench and didn't get in until quite late. Bill waited for him. He finally came in, as the old expression says, potted with a potty plant on Mother's Day and fell flat on the porch. Bill picked him up, and Annie took him up to his room. Annie said to Bob, he said, Bob, here's a man who is an alcoholic who hasn't had a drink for six months. He's got an angle. He've got an idea. He wants to talk to you. Bob brushed him off. He says, nuts, I've talked to these drunks, reformers. I've read everything there is in medicine. Nothing's doing any good, but I will talk to him for 15 minutes. He did talk all that night practically. They started comparing notes and Bob started catching fire. So he stayed there at Bob's house for two or three days and then Dr. Smith had to go to Atlantic City for a convention a medical convention and the good doctor gets back around the middle of June tore him off the train drunk again that was Bob Smith's last drink June the 15th tonight they're having the 22nd anniversary in Akron that's when he got off the train and Bill took him in and nursed him back. And Bill stayed in Akron for six months, and they started visiting hospitals in Akran to talk him to drugs, take them to the Oxford Group meetings. And two months later, a number three man came into AA. We had no creed. We have the four absolutes. It was a very mixed-up deal. Nobody knew who was doing what. All we knew was that as long as we were holding on to each other, we were staying sober. One of us got away and we were gone. So the number three man was Bill Dodson. That was a couple of months later. Bill Dodsen died about two years ago. Never had another drink from that night. He had been in straps when Bill and Bob saw him in the hospital. Well-known lawyer in that town. For six months nothing else happened. They brought talk to a lot of people. A lot of people got some angles that came back years later or months later, but nothing happened. So Bill had to get back to work. He goes to New York. Goes back to New York. Starts visiting Towns Hospital, the mission, the Oxford mission, backwards and forwards. Finally picked up the number two boy, Hank Parkers, in New York. Well, Hank is a different breed. As you all know in AA, we're all promoters. But this guy promotes the promoters! He was a fireball. I've seen a lot of men in my life, but I've never seen a pressure man like Mr. Parkers. Mr. Parker was sales manager for Standard Oil in New Jersey, one of these high-pressure boys who had been in the Mexican oil situation when they were strong-arming down there, so he really knew his way around. He was a rough man. This is quite an interesting story of how Hank happened to get in town and lost him, but it's another story. Anyway, so that was the end of the 35. They had exactly four people, five people, no, four people. Two in Akron, two in New York. Bill would run over every few weeks to Akron. Bob would run over every two weeks to New York, sort of recharge their batteries. And, of course, everybody that came in those early days were the babies of either one of the two, Bill or Bob. So then comes 36. And in the whole of 36, nobody really stayed sober and followed through it all. No recoveries at all. We'd have them come up for two or three months. But we weren't getting anywhere. We were mixing up these rugged individuals with these damn classed Oxford groupers, and they didn't seem to mix too well together. And in this time, Bill was taking people into his home. In a year and a half, Bill took 75 drugs into his home to sober up, to taper off. And in the whole time, another one of them stayed sober. He got personally involved with it. He was going to personally fix these people up. Well, of course, we've learned now that the last person in the world you can help is a person you get personally involved with. You have to be impersonal in AA, it seems. It's a tough point. The ones you want to get well the most are the ones you can do the least for. They have to do it for themselves. The guy you tell can't make it is the guy that makes it. So they tell you he took 75 people into his home, wet nursing, driving them out, taking them to hospitals, giving them a little front money or anything he could do. Two of them committed suicide in his home. One stole all their clothes at one time and nobody was done any good. And Bob Smith almost did as bad in Hackford. So then, in 1936, there we were going. In 1937, finally one person more came into the New York group that seemed to hold water. That was Fitz Mayer, the southern gentleman in the book, who did an awful lot to encourage Bill. And all the time Hank was pushing Bill, let's get out of this damn Oxford group. Let's get into our own. Let us be our own and Bill felt very loyal because of what the Oxford group had done for him in New York to break away. So finally in 1937, in New York City only, they finally sent a written note to the Oxford Group that they were resigning from the Oxford group. That was never done in Akron or Cleveland. That's why they were a little slower to grab AA on a broad basic basis, I think as we seem to have it most everywhere else in the country. They got a little mixed up with the Oxford group. Bob didn't want to break away too fast. So that's the way it was in the end of 37. We had broken away. We had about ten people that were going to meetings, and only three of them dry over six months. And that was after nearly two years. It's pretty frustrating. In those days, we knew we had something, at least. Of course, I came in in 37. I've done my save. We knew because I haven't gotten to me yet. Well, I came in in 1938. The picture I saw at that time was a sort of a floating cramp game. You got a new guy in. He was your baby until you got drunk and then somebody else got him. And you had no chance in the world of getting out from under you. And if he asked for guidance from somebody else, well, that was cricket. He had to come to you with all his problems, and you had to tell him all the things to do, even if it was to give you a couple of bucks if you needed. You see, you've got to remember that us original people, we were quite a select crowd. We didn't figure anybody was an alcoholic that had not been in a state hospital. Anybody that had to mean that, unless you'd been in Bellevue or Gallinger or some of those places up on the East Coast, you couldn't possibly be an alcoholic. Santa Turns, oh, that wasn't alcoholism, that was just bad drinking. But an alcoholic was a guy on the street who rolled a bomb. That's because we were, and that's what we had to have. Incidentally, of all those original people that were coming in at this time, the age of all of them was less than 40, with the exception of Bob Smith. But none of them were under 35, or under 36. It was between those four or five years there. Nearly all of us had had nice families and were black sheep of that family, thrown out. We were unemployable. We had washed up everything. A lot of us have never really done an honest day's work in our life. Of course, me, I was different. I had work. So we weren't getting any place. When I came in January 38th, which was nearly four years, No, three and a half years. And just these four or five people, the same people over and over again, coming and going, wet nursing them. And nothing was happening. And Hank started pushing the pressure on Bill. Bill, we've got to do something. Let's get some sort of a program. Every group, every fellowship has some sort of a problem. Just something simple, maybe a page or two that we are trying to do. We can cooperate the absolutes, but let's change the wording around a little bit. Make it simpler. And let's work together and have closed meetings. Well, when they did break away from the Oxford group in New York, we held a Tuesday night meeting at Bill's home. They were sort of about seven or eight men seated around a circle and Bill Wilson in the center with a little three-legged stool, one of these old antique sewing stools and Bill would get there and he would do all the talking we would do the listening and answering the questions because he had all the book sense if any and I'll never forget how Bill used to guide that thing around this thing while he was talking we thought he was going to pull that thing apart but the thing still stuck together afterwards that little three-legged stool started to become a symbol and you'll find that that's how one of the reasons that the book came along a little later it was a symbol that AA stands on three legs it does it stands on religion on medicine and on this understanding fellowship we need all three legs without either one of those three we are gone I mean the thing locks us so it's a balance So that was one of the things we were using as a symbol when they started to get this idea of getting the book together. So they finally decided they would write some sort of a pamphlet or something. So the only thing they could think of was that Bill and Bob Smith would write stories of how they had recovered. And that would be the pamphet that we would distribute to the new people and show them how these two had recovered At that time, in 1938, they'd both had a pretty near three-year sobriety. And that was a hell of a lot of sobriete in those days. I mean, six months was real sobrieto. Three months was damn good. And so these two chapters were written. And those are the same chapters that are in the AA book today with practically no change. and Hank, the promoter said well these chapters are so wonderful let's get this printed we'll take it up to Harper's they'll do a magazine article on this thing and that will bring us a lot more drunks and we'll probably get a couple bucks for this thing and then maybe we can get somewhere we're not getting any place now Bill unless we do something so they go up to Harpers, unknown and throw these couple chapters in. And Hopper's talked to Bill and Hank. Said, Mr. Wilson, if you will write this into a book form with a program of recovery and some stories of some of these boys that are getting well to go along with us to make it a broad story, we will give you $3,000. dollars. Well, an unknown author going into a publishing company and getting a guarantee of $3,000 to write a book that had never been written with only a couple chapters, Hank said, boy, those fellows really smell something. They smell a million bucks. That's why they invest in $3 thousand. If it's worth $3 hundred to Harper's, just think what it is work to us. They're just trying to get us to pick up this hot dough. So we decided then and there, then the wheels started moving. We were in business. We was going to be taken off the hook. We all were going to back in business again. All our automobiles, there wasn't an automobile in the New York group for four years. This was it, this book. So the real idea, I'll tell you frankly now, we weren't a damned difference. As a matter of fact, we're much goonier, all the original people, than you all that are coming in today. But the real ideal of writing this book started before me. We would write this book. We'd sell a million copies. We had it all figured out, what we'd make on it and everything. and then we would take this and put it in the fund. So immediately, now we're going to write our own book. Now the first thing we've got to do, we've Got to have a foundation. Rockefeller's got a foundation, Ford's got an alcoholic foundation. So the alcoholic foundation was put in business after the writing of two chapters, Bill and Bob. The alcoholic foundation could take money from any place, could open hospitals, drug farms, do anything they wanted to do, with no strings. And that was the beginning of General Service Conference. Then they decided, Hank and Bill, Hank in particular, now Bill we've got to get this thing separated a little bit, you know you have these corporations at Interlink and so on and so forth. We've gotto have a book company, book company, the Alcoholic Foundation. The dough goes into there finally, which is where the Alcoholics Foundation was controlled by Hank, Bill and Bob. Those three were the three owners of the Alcoholical Foundation. Now I said, well we've got to get the small boys in here and we've gotta make them feel useful. So we want to start a book company. And that will be the book company who will write this book. and with the profits from that we'll throw them into the alcoholic foundation for tax purposes we'll get all way up in there so they decided well we have to have a book company we never went into court to do these things we just formed them and that was it so then we decided we'd have the works publishing company well the interesting part where we get the name works well Hank's great old expression used to be was, it works. So it became the Works Publishing Company. So now we have a publishing company. We have an alcoholic foundation, a non-profit alcoholic foundation where you could do anything, go out and solicit, publish, print, or do anything. And all we had was two chapters. So then we started writing the book. The way the book was written was Bill would write a chapter a week. It was made up in three copies, double-spaced for changes. One copy would go to Akron, one copy would go to the New York meetings, and one copy would stay in the office. They, see Bill and Bob had automobile polish, which I was general sales manager of and worker, and mixer of polish and whatnot and they were in that corporation so that's where Ruth Hawk was that would write these chapters. Bill would write them walking up and down, double-spaced. They would be taken to the Tuesday meeting in New York. Bill would read them to us. We'd all take shots at it. Well, this thing ought to be changed. That thing oughtto be changed So every word in that wordage of the book there was combed, double combed by alcoholic lawyers. Every loophole. We were taking out anything so you can find nothing in the book that says anybody has to do anything. It's the most remarkable. That's why we all agreed with it. It didn't say anybody had to do any of that. But Bill was wise enough to put in the background, but it seems like more people do better if they do it this way than if they did it that way. So they could take it either way, but this way looked a little better than the other way. So that's the way these chapters were done. We'd call them over. Bill would take them back, bring them back the final week, the following week. The copy would come in from Akron, the changes would be made there, and each copy would be brought down that way. A lot of the people want to know where a lot of these ideas came from that are in the book, where we stole it. As everybody knows, the whole of AA has been trial and error and we've taken from everybody we could think of and tried to use anything that we thought would be useful to help the new drug. The four main books that Bill wrote, in case anybody's interested, they'd write these down, where you'll find that nearly everything that's in the A.A. book and traditions came more or less from these four books. Number one, where we got the psychological approach on alcoholics, came from The Common Sense of Drinking by Richard Peabody. Richard PeABody had stayed sober by working on other drugs for 11 years he died just before AA started and he died of alcoholism and in every chapter he said once an alcoholic always an alcoholic and he had stayed sober for 11 year but Dick Peabody had missed two things in his book working with other drunks telling the new drunk and the spiritual there was no spiritual it was get hobbies get away from yourself so on and so forth the second book was James' variety of religious experiences. The third book was Emmett Fox's Sermon on the Mount and the traditions and the third legacy. Most of that stuff was combed from This Believing World by Lewis Brown. Lewis Brown wrote this book Breaking Down All Religions as he saw them he's considered quite an authority at doing it you all are in the book deal I don't know anything about it he was a Jew and he showed the rise and fall of all spiritual groups major spiritual groups throughout history and the fall of those that had failed the fall of those who had failed He showed and traced back to three things. And those are the three things you'll see in traditions and third legacy, if you look very clearly at them. What I always call the three Ps. The three things that seem to break up spiritual groups is personalities, property, and politics. and those are the things that we're trying to keep our personalities principles always above personalities now it wasn't always that way the original AA was all personalities it had to be we were emotionally saving people today it's more of a practical thing we know we can't take none of us can go to see a drunk individually for the first time it's best to have two of us, two angles on the person. It's best to bring them immediately and introduce them to as many AAs as you can so they can see so many different sides so they won't say well I'm not like that guy or this guy so therefore I'm like one of these things but he can't say that when you bring him into a room like this or into a lodge of me. So that's why this personality principle is why it's stressed so much in the traditions and in anonymity So we finally got the book pretty well together. The original idea of how we financed the book, it was a stock-selling proposition. You buy a share of stock for $25. You'd get a book if and when it was printed. You could buy on time payment plan. The brochure with this stock certificate was that Colgate, if you'd have bought it at a dollar in 1902, had been worth $10,000 a share now. They brought up General Electric and a few others all these weeks. And this was your idea to get in here. A book cost about 35 cents to make. We were selling for 35, 3,000. I had to look at the big profit. And the book company was made up three ways. one-third owned by Bill, one-thirds owned by Hank Parkers, one- third owned by 29 of us that contributed $2,800. Neither Bill or Hank contributed a damn cent. All they did was some poison. But out of 29 of those, we got $2.800. $1,700 came from one guy selling an audible bill. So then the original idea was to call this book 100 Men. And that was the thing we were working on through 38 while the book was being put up. That would be the name of the book. Then all of a sudden one of these goddamn women got into the picture. Florence Rankin got sober and by the time the book was getting near to completion she'd been sober damn near a year. She says, hey, 100 men, what do you mean 100 men? 100 men and one woman Well, that's a hell of a long thing to put on our marquee. So we decided maybe we'd better change that over. So then there was heckling of what are we going to name this thing? As you will notice, the AA book, there's no mention in the original Red Book, for I to remember, the word Alcoholics Anonymous in that whole book. There's no mentioned of groups in that old book. That whole original book. All those things were coming after, I mean, the name came after the book was finished. So that's why there wasn't any name in the book. We talked about the alcoholics in the books, but we didn't say anything about Alcoholics Anonymous in the works, maybe in the foreword and on the cover, which were after, as of. So then an interesting thing happened, like everything does in AA. These things come from the damnedest particular spots. We were figuring on using exit for the name of the book, or the way this way out, or the way out. Well, the way up was winning by a long run when we sent somebody down to the Congress to Washington to check up and see how many titles were on hand. There was 12 of them. We thought maybe it would not be 13 this way outs. It wouldn't be good. So we threw that down. And we just pulled a guy out of a state hospital up there named Joe Worden, who had been the founder of the New Yorker magazine. Joe Wordan had a wet brain. The hospital didn't think he'd stay out very long. So he got into one of these meetings at a very lucid moment. He says, hey, let's call this anonymous alcoholics. And nobody said anything for a moment. Alcoholics Anonymous and before you know it that's where the word came from and before you say Jack Robinson Joe Worden went back to the nuthouse and he's been in there ever since so you never know where these things come from it came out just long enough to give us a word and you'll find a little later when I'll show you the Hank Bill would have never done a damn thing as a matter of fact this history he's got coming up now. That originally was going to be his 10 years in AA. Now he's go about 22 years in AAA, and he's going to come out with this AA is now of age. So you can see how long it takes him to do anything. But Hank is the guy that pushed this and made this thing because here was money in the bank. We've got to get this stuff, get it out. So the idea was at this time we had the label on the book, and we were going to sell these million books the first year, a million dollars. And then what we were going to do, the original idea was that a person would read this book, go up to the back room, get down on their knees, pray, and they wouldn't drink anymore. Just that simple. And if they had any troubles or felt a little itchy, they'd go and read the book again and that would pray and everything would happen as well. Because it happened to Bill and Bob, so it has to happen with everybody. That was proof. We had two of them. Oh, you know. And then the poor unfortunate, these psychopaths like you folks around here couldn't get well on the book alone. Well, then we would open a string of drug farms across the country. And we even had the plans, the blueprints for those drug farms. We'd have this institutional building over here with a fence around it. And on the inside, we'd have our own little cottage. and at the end of the day we'd go to our old cottage and during the day we'd give therapy to these poor drunks that couldn't get well on the book alone provided they paid a certain sum for their therapy there. Well, that was the original idea of the book. We were going to make dough out of it, period. We did want to save drunks but here we were unemployable and you all know the first thing in the world you want to do is get dough in the pocket And that's the first thing a guy says, yeah, sober up, but how do I get well financially? And we say, oh, that's tough. But we didn't think so at that time. So then the book was finally finished in 1938. But we did not have any money. We were broke again. The $2,800, we had gone out and bought the plates to print the book. But we hadn't got a printer to print them, but we bought the copper plain plates but had still no money. And then Bill and Bob had to use this up to get by on and pay my salary in the automobile polish business which we weren't selling so hot at that time. So finally, we got a monolith copy. I have one downstairs in the car. It's a monographed copy of the book. We got this finally finished and published and there was no name on that when it came out. We were still going to call it Alcoholics Among Us, but we hadn't quite decided. There are 20 stories in there. There's only about four of those people living today of the original stories, and six out of those 20 committed suicide. That's terrific. Florence Rankin, the first gal, committed suicide, so we could have used 100 men there if I had the book here. But then a remarkable thing happened. We started passing out these mimeograph or motherless graphs of the books. We brought out 50 of them. The idea was we would promote the book with this. You could buy this motherless copy for three and a half, and you got a nice, spiky, clean new book if and when printed for three and a halve. So we weren't selling the stock certificates. They were all gone. Nobody was buying those. Nobody seemed to give it to them. And we were in a mess. so we tried to sell these books. And at the same time, we tried shoving them out to a few doctors or places we thought would get interest. Then here's another stroke that came along that saved us. Almost killed Bill. Dr. Howard got a hold of one of these. Chief psychiatrist of the Trenton State Hospital. And he came rushing up to Bill and said, Mr. Wilson, you've written a very fine book, you boys. I think you've got something here. and he did this on his own without any coaching from anybody Bill thought it was a very lousy trick, here his baby this beautiful thing put together and everything, and this man coming up the screwball, the psychiatrist, not even a drunk telling him it was all wrong Dr. Howard said I know what you've been doing up here I've heard a good deal about it he says all you've got there is the Oxford group because what we've done in that model is what they've done I talk about what I was doing. Well, I was one of those boys that was on the outskirts at that time, the most least likely to succeed. And there was a few prayer meetings hoping there that I wouldn't succeed. The bets were down on me. But I was around there a good deal, and I did shoot my mouth off a little bit, and sometimes it did a little better than good. But Dr. Howard came up there and said, Bill, you can't print it this way. It's nothing but the Oxford Group. The hospital group's going down. You cannot tell drugs they have to do anything. You've got to suggest. You've Got to say, well, we found we had to do so-and-so. Or we suggest you try it this way. Or you do it that way. But make no general demands. Bill locked himself up in his room for five days. He didn't come out of that room. We just couldn't get food into him. Here is his baby all being chopped up. Well, Hank Fitzmayer and myself did work on him to accept it. And overnight the changes were made from this book that I have down in the car to the original red book which we found we had to or is suggested or of recovery and so on and so forth. So the whole thing was changed overnight. If that hadn't happened, the book would have flopped. I'm pretty positive. A lot of us can see that picture very now. and then God was God cold turkey and it wasn't as you see him or as you can find him. It was right on the line and you had to get down on your knees. Even one part of the book there, if you don't like this book, throw it away. But that shows you some of the struggles and the growing pains that we went through and that us original people were no different than the drunks today As a matter of fact, we're probably a little wackier than those are today. But this divine power seemed to be coming in and doing something about it. Here was this excavating going on. Here was the floor going on on this AA mansion as we see it now. It was all those things we had to go through. So the book finally came out. in April 1939 we got a whole of a printer to do it on a consignment basis he put them in a bonded warehouse and the only way we could get them out was to pay two and a half on them and then we could go ahead and sell them for $3.50 and come back and buy another so we took books out that first year never more than a dozen at a time and we would go ahead and sell those to YMCA's or anybody we could click on in any way shape performed. Then I have first publicity. An interesting thing that happened, that came up. If you all have the red copy of the book, which is the first copy of the book. They have a piece in the back. They had a last chapter in there. It was The Lone Endeavor. Well this is quite a cute one. This is a proof that this thing works. There were safe drops all over the world. Well one of these muddled up copies of the AA book, got out here to California at the end of 38. We were distributing, I'd say, about 50 or 60 of them. We don't know where they all went to. One of them got to an attendant working in a state hospital out here who apparently was an alcoholic. His name was Pat Cooper. And Pat writes us this wonderful letter and says, I've read your muddled-up copy. It's the greatest thing that ever happened. And I think it's wonderful. I've had a spiritual release and I'm seeing God and I're talking and Bill thought, well here it is, a hot flash 3,000 miles away with just a few words. This is proof, positive that A.A.'s this thing will succeed just with the book alone. So the wires start flashing back. We pass the head. We decide we have Pat Cooper come in and show himself to the New York group what A.I. had done for him 3,500 miles away. We would show him off as a good example. so this letter he wrote us about how he was straightened out and everything was in the original book it didn't make the second edition Pat Cooper on Elphidep we sent him the dough to make a bus ride we went down to the Greyhound bus station to see him everybody got off, it was Hank Bill Fitzmayor and myself all down there to wish this new guy coming 3,000 miles across the country cure of alkalism in a sober three or four months. Everybody got off the bus, there wasn't any bus, all left on the bus. And we asked the guy, is that all you've got? Well he said I've got one guy in the back there, he's under the seat and I'm going to call the police. That was Pat Cooper. So now we got a chance to show Pat Cooper off to the other boy. He died of alcoholism very quickly. Then we have Dr. Fishbein, who was going to give us a big build-up in the AMA. At that time he was Mr. AMA, American Medical Society, about how wonderful this thing was. And he was going to give us this publicity as soon as the book was off the press. So we gave him five copies of the book, two and a half a piece, hemmed and hawed how we got it, we don't know. Two or three months Later, an article comes out in the American Medical Journal. I meant to bring that with me tonight, and I'm sorry. But it's the only adverse criticism I've ever seen of AA in any magazine, any place at all. It called us a bunch of crackpots. And it was terrific. So that was another bloom. The Leaders' Digest was going to review us, and they were going to do this and that for us, and nothing ever happened. And we were broke and flat, books in their wares, couldn't get them out. And then we started selling the book on a same-day trial, I think on the original call. Then about this time, Marty Mann came in. You all just come back from Watsonville. Well, Marty did an awful lot for us. She came in in the middle of 39. and in the meantime Florence Rankin had died of alcoholism and she was the only gal coming at that time she was very antagonistic towards us in the first few meetings but she gradually came in and she did an awful lot in those early days of getting the public to help us and the medical profession around New York and the eastern section I'm taking too long on this build up or this basic stuff but some of it's quite interesting one of the interesting things was we had one fellow Morgan Ram who was going to get us on We the People and he'd been sober for three months and We the people at that time was the best program on radio but we were worried about Morgan we knew three weeks in advance so we had to live, sleep and every day eat with Morgan to see that he didn't get drunk to get him there to talk on We the Peoples that was our first radio program He spoke five minutes on how he'd recover from alcoholism as Alcoholics Anonymous gave address to where they could buy the book, but nobody seemed to be interested. You see, there's never been... There weren't hardly any books written on alcohol before AA. They were only two types of drinkers. They weren't alcoholics. They were dipsomaniacs if they had a couple of butts, and if they were broke, they were just bums. They weren'T in two different types at all. Alcoholics was not considered. nobody even as a matter of fact in the book we stress that once a drunk always a drunk oh we didn't have any idea that was true we were shooting fine and the U.S. Health didn't even know it it was never known until A.A. Book came out that once an alcoholic always an alcoholic now I can prove that very simply that we went to Johns Hopkins we went to Menninger we went to U.K. we went to U-S. Health we went to Belvedere when we first talked to them oh, yes, we've got some recoverers that are back now drinking normally. But every one of them that investigated, there wasn't a one found. So it wasn't until the Yale group discovered that through our coercion and Marty's that did a tremendous amount of help. And nobody will know what Marty did in those early days. then the third group came into existence we had Akron and New York the third group was Cleveland Clarence Snyder who had been gotten his A.A. in Akron through Bob Smith decided there were a few drunks in Cleveland something ought to be done about it So they got a guy named Larry Jewell with one lung. And he'd been dry three weeks. And he wrote the first AA pamphlet. Do you know what that first AA Pamphlet, do you remember the one, Floyd, we had with the big AA on the white cover? We call that can opener. The first pamphet came from seven articles that were written for the Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland. This drug had only been dried three weeks. Wrote these articles about Alcoholics Anonymous with three weeks' experience, and of the 20 people that were in Cleveland at that time, those articles brought in 500 alcoholics inside of 3 months. That group ran from 20 to 500. So then we... The article's so good, so we incorporated them as our first panel. Do you remember that, Floyd? We didn't change that pamphlet until six, seven years ago. So that was our third group, and then immediately overnight it became our largest group. Then Bill, through a case of circumstances, had gotten friendly with Dr. Richardson. Dr. Richardson was the spiritual advisor of John D. Rockefeller Sr., who got him into the Baptist Church just before he died, and has been the guy that has run the religious contributions that have been worked out through Rockefeller. This was way back in 1939. And Bill was going up talking to Richardson all this time, trying to get Rockefellers to get interested in this bunch of drunks. And Bill and Hank would go along, and the old conversation would end up, I could hear them, I never went to these meetings, but I heard tell them, Hank would say, well, all we need is a few bucks. And Phil says, allwe need is the spiritual backing of Rockefeller. And that back was a four. It was more close so they both had the dough but Bill was trying to be a little more diplomatic. But they took an awful interest in us. So at the end of 1939, after a lot of these meetings, together and backwards and forwards, they decided they'd have a dinner at the Union League in New York. This was around February 1st, 1940. Rockefeller invited 200 of the most powerful men in the country to come to this meeting. Amongst them was Wilkie Young of GE, I think. Well, they had all the biggest men, Saracen of Ford, all the greatest men inthe country there, people that he'd worked with on big deals in previous years. Sixty of them showed up. And Ivy Lee, the publicity man that set up this deal, had estimated there was a $3 billion worth of money in that reading that night. There were 60 of these men there. They didn't know what they were coming for. All Rockefeller had done was to say, this is John D. Jr., I have to meet some friends of mine. And they came to dinner and the 60 of them met eight of us AAs. There was Bill, Bob, Morgan Ryan, myself. I think Marty Mann was there, I'm not quite sure. And they had each one of us at one of these tables and a book was placed in the middle face down with a label so it couldn't be seen without the cover on. And then Nelson Rockwell got up because John Dee was sick that night He couldn't show up. And he said, gentlemen, we want you to meet an interesting group that we think is well worthwhile that you know. It's called Alcoholics Anonymous, and I want you here to hear the founder and the co-founder tell what they're trying to do. So Bill and Bob got up and told their story. Then Dr. Foster Kennedy, the psychiatrist at that time, he was president of the Psychiatric Society of America and also Rockefeller's personal physician and psychiatrist, got up и said what he'd seen. As a matter of fact, he's the one that brought Marty Mann into AA. And then Dr. Fostick, Riverside Church, got up and said what he'd seen. And it was terrific meeting. And at the end, Nelson Rockefeller got up and said, now gentlemen, this is a different situation than we've ever asked you all to meet before. All these times that you've come together here, it's always been to finance or do something. But this is one group that needs no money. And the bill said afterwards, and we saw the $3 billion start walking out, we thought we were fixed with the rock fellas behind us. But he said, John D. has just told me my father, Nelson, was saying that he will give $1,000 a year for the next five years to help these boys run their central office here. But we think money is the worst thing in the world for this group. Well, of course, the rest of them were tapped at that meeting if John D. could give $1,000, but Owen Young could give a hundred. So the whole thing was sliced down. We got $2,500 from that group, which Bill and Bob lived on for the next five years. Incidentally, that was all paid back to the Rockfellas and we are the only group that have ever gotten money from the Rockfellas any spiritual group that have paid back every solitary cent but it was something we needed and he allowed his name to go out on press wires that night that Ron D. Rockfella says that Alcoholics Anonymous is honest it's right it's good come in and buy some and that was a hell of a lot greater than anything they could have given us that night I often wonder what that one piece of publicity, some of you all saw this, that article that came out in Time magazine on it was terrific. Because the rock fellas have never, I don't think you've ever seen them put themselves as a group on a spot like that. But they have. So then things started happening in the first part of 40. We had this okay of the rock fellows. Well, then we all start shooting from all of the corners. Larry Jewell, who had written these articles for The Plane Dealer, he goes to Houston, Texas. He started the Houston group. He started all the Texas groups, as a matter of fact. Fitzmayle, he starts migrating to Washington, D.C., immediately a group there. I left New York, first part of 40, I go to Philadelphia. We got the Philadelphia group started. then they quite an interesting fellow went out of out of the Cleveland division a Jewish fellow named Meyerson big heavy set greasy type of Jewish boy saw Venetian blinds in bars all through the south he started all the southern groups, got these southern gentlemen together and carried the message from one town like Johnny Appleseed and got these groups flooded All this happened in about six months. And that's why I say these two groups to 110 in just a little over a year. It was terrific. And how the drunks were traveling all over the country, which they are still doing. And then Kay Miller, who came out with the first book out to Los Angeles and was the forming of the first group out there, which you all are more or less probably shot at from San Francisco. So everything was going hunky-dory. We were going to help out for election. This anonymity thing didn't mean a thing except to the new person. We were all in the soapbox. We were always shooting our mouths off any time we thought there might be a buck in it or might help us to get a job or whatnot. Bill and Bob's name were in the paper every place. It was anonymity for the new persons. But not for us authorities. These are people that we knew. So we were on soapboxes and we were doing this and that. And we had groin pains. Forty to forty-four or five, it was every man for himself. They were opening up hospitals. They were incorporating AA from hither to yonder. We started busting at the seams. Well, you can see we finally get a foundation there. Now here we are. we're growing up and we're going in all directions there's no unity no man is boss but we say now the dictators are at every man for himself let's make this thing very very clear and cut and only the old timers are the ones that are going to tell the story and we have the right to do it so we opened up drug farms hospitals hanging out shingles going to Yale school telling us and claiming to be authorities and we were becoming a mess we were busting out at the seams. Then in 45, Bill got the idea that something ought to be done to sort of hold us together. So there came the traditions. Without those traditions, we would have probably folded. We would have gone in all directions without any control. Well, the traditions, everybody said, well, traditions are the piece that will end for the East. They say they're there for the people in the West. They're not for this group. We don't need traditions out here. we're all right, that's for those other people across the way or the other group and not for us. Well then we gradually over a period of a few years we began to see the necessity of this thing of common welfare comes first. We started cooperating. Then come the walls of putting this thing together. Then the great thing that came, really the thing that pushed us over the top was Sadine Post. How the post article came about was in Philadelphia. We were there at the time. We had two very fine doctors, Dr. Hammer and Dr. Saul there. They both had relatives in AA, and they were both terrific members. I mean, they did everything in the world for us there, medically and vocally, to get AA well accepted. Well, we had, they both knew Judge Bach, who was the owner of the Saddening Post. And we asked them to go to Judge Bach and see if he would run an article in the Post about Alcoholics Anonymous. So Bill goes down to the Saddening Post with Judge Bach, and they go up to the editorial section. Mr. Fuller, who was the head of it at that time, says, sure, we'd be tickled to death to write an article about Alcoholic Anonymous, we've been just thinking about getting ready to do it anyway, and we've just gotten the right man for this, Jack Alexander, And he's a wonderful guy. He'll do a wonderful job on telling the story of Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, Jack Alexander had then just made a terrific name for himself. He'd broken the Big Hines case in New York, and he'd broken other political cases. In other words, he was a racket buster. And what we found out later, that what the part of the reason the Post wanted to run this article on AlcoholicsAnonymous was, well, here was the Oxford Group under a new label with a new racket to work on drums and to make dough. And this is a chance to bust it wide open. And that was the reason that Jack Alexander was assigned and why we were chosen to go into the Saddening Post. So he could see what we were coming from. But Bill, smart as he was, said, Jack, do me one favor. Go to see 10 or 15 of these groups. Don't tell them who you are. Just walk in on them. Tell them anything you wish to, that you're going to write a book or something. Get this information. And don't write a thing until you've been to those ten groups. And Jack did that sort of thing and he has been the most enthused man. And the greatest article he ever wrote in his life is the article he wrote for the Sandin Post. That Sandin post article sold more posts than had ever been sold previous to that time. I don't know how it would rank with the day. There were more inquiries for that article than any article before or since. There were 15,000 inquiries in less than six months. Imagine those storming into New York. But we were in business and we made front page and we were accepted by Rockefeller. We were accepted by the largest magazine in the country. We were all right. We were good people. Then we were made. Taz and I started telling him, we started going, getting beady on this thing, getting ambitious, and we were going to save the world and we was going to straighten out religion and all these other things. And so the traditions came along. Then we began to see the necessity for keeping AA out of hospitals, out of clubs. We had to keep separate, keep out of corporations. We've had offers to have an act of Congress to be made on the AAs just like they've done on Boy Scouts. Today AA is not even incorporated. didn't. The book is copywritten. It wasn't even copywritten until this last book came out. Anybody could have copied the original book without anybody stopping them. That's how loose the whole thing has been in AA. So when the delegates brought it up, as Floyd and some of the others and Vic will tell you, how can you incorporate a way of living? So it's the AA is still unincorporated. There's quite a few towns in the country that did incorporate. But all of them have turned their papers in, so AA is unincorporated anyplace as far as I know of today. So then these traditions started holding us together a little bit and building up these walls. And all this time, from 1935 to 1948, the whole operation of A.A., all the major decisions, no matter what sort of boards they had around New York or any place, were made by Bill and Bob. If they didn't agree, nothing was done. And it was a hell of a responsibility. And they didn' t mind it as long as the money was coming in. In 45 and 46, they had a reserve in the New York Central Office of about $300,000. They were sitting high, wide, and handsome. They sold a lot more books in their early 40s there. And they didn't have so much overhead. And they were accumulating. So Bill and the rest of them up there said, The hell with you folks out there. So what happened to the groups throughout the country? They said, The hell is New York? You won't tell us what we're doing. We don't need you. We're self-sufficient. So we started growing away. And we don't leave New York. We can get along with that. And New York says, We don' t need you as long as we are selling our books. So the thing became quite a mess there in the latter part of the 40s. Then began Bill, with Bob Smith dying of cancer, knew the responsibility was going to be on him. Then he started getting a little scared. It's like anybody, if you'd built this baby up and had control and brought it all the way up, how can you understand anybody dropping it out with a bunch of these drunks all over the country you don't know and say, well, go on, you boys run it. But then Bill hit bottom. Now Bill will not tell this story, but it is an interesting story to show how AA is forced into the right routine. Sooner or later where it wants to be or not. So in 48 and 9, Bob dying. Five percent of the groups in the country contributing to New York, they start going broke. And by the end of 1949, they had less than six months operating expense in the New York office. In other words, Bill and the old-timers hit pop. Then they decided on the General Service Conference. Taxation with representation. so that everybody could get in the ballgame. A lot of us older people were very worried in those days on what would happen if Bill and Bob both died quickly. What would have happened? I hate to think what would have been. They might have been north and south AA, east and west, because we wouldn't have allowed anybody to lead us like Bill and Bobby because they had saved our lives. But there would never be anybody who could replace them. There's no way they are two unreplaceable people. not the people that are giving your life back these other people that come later they're different they're just the routine so that going busted broke AA wide open into putting on the completion of bringing this thing to the roof now the groups from 5% contributions to New York it's 65% we have 7500 groups now throughout the world I think we're in about 65 different countries. We've got in about 8 or 10 different languages now. And the interesting thing is that we're going to let these other countries operate their own AA. England is now completely on their own. They publish their own book, they'll have their own foundation, they'll operate as AC-5th. Who are we to say over in America that AA should be so and so over there? But they will find, we know now that this divine guidance that seems to come with this group conscience that seemsto bring things around to the proper perspectives and to theproper slots that are necessary at the time. We have to have these growing things. We've got to tell them. You'll find new groups starting and they say the same things have happened to this group that happened to the other. It's routine no matter what part of the country. It's always the boys in trying to get the boys out, and that boy's out trying to give the boys the same old routine as anything. But now we know that there's rotation, that nobody in AA is important, but everybody is important. And we know this, that there isn't any big shots in AA. As soon as you get important in AA, I mean, there's nowhere to go. There's no running in importance here. There's not publicity. There's nothing you can do except beat your ego to pieces. And the drunks won't take to that very lightly. They'll start cutting you down. All of us have been kicked out of groups, hither and yon, which was good for us. Bill himself has been kicked back two or three times, which was great. It was good to him. Those are the things we had to learn because those are some of the things that alcoholics seem to have to learn. So now we are getting to the thing that we have an organization. yes we have it organized to keep unorganized to keep this fellowship simple to keep it as it is to keep out these wrinkles to keep out this different types of AAs or whether they're spiritual proof AAs or whatnot let's keep it simple to help the drunk that doesn't know to give him a chance now some people want to get 12 step housing they want to do that on the side for clubs which I'm a great believer in that's swell for them that likes it. But these 12 steps, these central offices, the groups, the individuals, those are the important things, these steps all the way up and down to hold us close together for these millions that don't have a chance. Well you can see all these crazy things that we were trying to do. I wish I could express them better tonight. I felt I was running so long here that I didn't want to go into detail so much. but I can't express to you how much you hear these old folks talk about the good old barefoot AA it's the most ridiculous thing in the old days we would go with pills in one pocket a bottle in the other take them to hospitals wash their diapers babysit and what did we do? not a damn bit of good we did nothing to help the man stand on his own feet we know now that the drunk is the only one that can do it. All we can do is give him balance as he goes along, give him this touch, this feeling of wanting and to be part of us. And it's so much fun to see what we've been through and to see this proof so positive that the group conscience is never wrong in AA. You can bring any question you want up here and you will get, I don't care what it is, it'll be 95% yes or no. There's no split majority in AA because of the group conscience. It's this tradition and this thing about common welfare is the most important thing about sticking together and making AA more year in, more year out, more similar so that the new man has a better, better, better approach at all times. And I want to thank you all for listening to me so long tonight. I got a little weary but I so enjoyed doing this to let you know that these weren't great people these original people they were screwballs just like all of us and we had to learn and you folks that have been around here Floyd, some of these old timers you can look back and see the growth that we've all gone through I don't think there was a I don' t think there's been an AA a more militant agnostic than I was when I came in I'd been to church schools. I was a miller. I mean, I'm just a fighting agnostic. And when people like myself can switch and can see, when you see these miracles happening, when, as I forgot to tell you, the Hank Parkers who did all these things made Bill write the book, pushed him along, tried to gimmick the whole deal. As soon as the book was finished, he got drunk. or if that isn't God's work I'll teach you how they had to have somebody to give Bill a push as soon as he ceased to be any use limited and they did the whole bit of that to me in several spots but it's been fun to be here and I hope I haven't talked too damn long but I am so anxious this only happens once in a neighborhood but to get the true story of what we went through and it is fairly close and I hope you all got something from it. Thank you.