Why He Couldn’t Recapture the Feeling of Victory – 1958 – Ebby T.

I'm going to introduce you to stand here for a long, long time. I've been fortunate in knowing Eddie for 17 years. That's the length of time I know Bill, too. I met Eddie 17 years ago. Bill met him almost 24 years ago hate call it what you will grace of God but it was not for the man that you're about to hear you wouldn't be having this meeting tonight because he's the first guy that brought the message to our boy Bill if you've read the book Alcoholics Anonymous, and I know that most of you have. In there you'll hear in Bill's story always referring to my friend. And then in the later books describing Alcoholics Anonymous and other stories that just came out some short time ago, the name Ebby comes out. lot of us at different times and in different parts of the country, quoting how Bill came in, how the organization or the fellowship 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, Ebby. Thank you, Dick. As Dick told you, my name is Ebby, and I'm an alcoholic. I don't know just how to start this off. If Dick asked me over here. I was very glad to come, as I wanted to meet some of your Memphis people. But I had an 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'm known as the world's shortest speaker. They used me back there on a different close with a 10-minute and 15-minute spot. So I don't know if I'm going to go about holding down for 45 minutes so I do the best I can. As I say, I've been living in Texas for five years now. Maybe I've gotten enough of that Texas braggadocio somewhere in my system. Maybe I was sore for a minute so I can pull some of that out of the hat. There's a story I heard a year or two after I got into Dallas that's all a tickle I can't see. I hope you'll indulge me and let me tell it He was a Texas rancher, drove over to his nearest neighbor It was about 15 miles So what do you say we go to town and make a day of it? Yeah, that's all right Got his hat and he got in the car and he started out As soon as we got out of sight of the ranch house They opened up and set the bourbon Had a good long pull on the bottle And the first guy said, you know to the ship 2,000 bulls from Fort Worth the day before yesterday. Nothing was said. They drove on a while and came to a gate and they had to open that. They had another pour of the bottle and the second guy said, you know, I shipped 2,500 bulls from my side four or five days ago. They drove along just before they got to the main state highway. They stopped for a third good hooker 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 get it out tonight. I know that Dick and Jim Drake and some of the other boys wanted me to tell you some of my feelings about 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 me but I sometimes think it might be claim to fame as though 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 I come from all of them in New York it's my native town went to private school there I started drinking last year I seemed to hold it under control pretty well but 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 maybe some of us went out and got drunk and we got in a mess and the principal of the school heard about it. But nothing was said. But I, uh... Yeah, I wasn't very well that spring and they took me out of school before. School was over and that summer the principal wrote to my father and he always called me Ed. He didn't call me Ebby or Ed. He said, I don't think we can do anything more for Ed. Which meant that he was just calling me from school. So that fall, my father said You're going to work in the foundry My father happened to be in the iron pounder business So I went to work that fall And I confined my drinking to Saturday nights Naturally, I had to get up Six o'clock to go down I worked as a motorist helper Which is fairly rugged work As you may know And I did that for a year And I confined most of my drinking To Saturday nights Except around Christmas time When all the dances were going on And then I really stepped out. I remember I tried to go to work, drinking and dancing and getting down to work at 7 o'clock in the morning when I was young if you 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 all me home and other times I'd be climbing a chandelier at three or four drinks. I never knew what was going to happen. In fact, 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 and my father did. And I kind of figured that if they drank that way and it wasn't any good for them, but it was no good for me either because I was just about the same temperament as they were. But it was that first drink that I ever took on my own when I walked into the bar of the Hotel de Nicanor and ordered a glass of beer all by myself and I was a big shot. And I still say that was the best glass of tea I ever tasted. Sometimes I can almost taste it again. And somehow that just gave me just the same glow and that beer was a lot stronger than other beers, and it was real beer. That was about 1914, I think. Yes, it was 1914. 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 at two or three drinks. I used to grab an evening out spring And this friend of mine, I went to school. He called me up and asked me if I had my lessons done. I said, sure. I guess it was just a story because the family was sitting in the room. And I said to Andy, I'll go out and have a chug of milk with you. I've got time. And we were far from chugs of milk. But I managed to get home by 11 o'clock so there was nobody knowing about it. But I know that the effect and the taste of alcohol is fascinating to me from the beginning. and later on I read a book called The Common Sense of Drinking from which a lot of AA was 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 his pupils. Glass Crutch is one of them by Dutch Chambers and I can name half of those and I just think of them right now. But he said in that book That the difference between an alcoholic And a heavy drinker was That the heavy drinkers Might drink just as much on a given night As the alcoholic But the next day was another day to him And he went to work And his first thing in the Awakening in the morning was the office Well, the first step that the alcoholic had Was on 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, I know. I don't think we'll ever get back together. Don't think about it. Keep talking to them. All right. But I knew that But I knew then That a couple of the drinking in my family I figured out That I better lay Sit and stay away from them But I never did once I had that drink But as time went on I, of course, got into a lot more trouble And the family business broke up As one of those things do It'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 when the drinking was increasing. I didn't get overseas in World War I but 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 a druggist in one of the corners right near the armory. And I always somehow managed to get a barrel of whiskey and we could get it there because those were the days of prescription. A doctor would issue you a prescription during probation and you'd go in and get this pint of whiskey, but we got it all we wanted. We got that gallon jug filled repeatedly. And there was a pretty two-fisted drinking crowd and they're all older than I was. And finally, we got into a jam one night. We got in a taxi wreck and I just got superficial cuts on my both wrists and face. But I was kind of a bloody mess. I was just bleeding a lot and my father came in. I was sitting on the bed and he says, you get out of that national drive tomorrow morning until you leave my house. Well, I didn't feel like leaving this house last night, so late that afternoon Soon I walked up and told the captain I was going to resign, request to be put on the reserves. But that ended my National 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. and I lost half of it overnight in the 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. Fine As I get back 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 My father spent money at the hotel for all of us He bought a home He bought the house in 1923 And in 1929 he died And the house is out the door My other brothers are married Father died without a will so they just divided up the furniture and had to come for me. And 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 ready and then we jumped now. We're going to get up to the summer of 1934. Which is 24 years ago. And I'd been on the toils of the law twice that summer. I'd gotten drunk, gotten arrested for being drunk and disorderly Signed $5 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 in any one given year for drunkenness It meant six months in Windsor State Prison Well, I was getting drunk right along One time I got drunk And I still don't know exactly how it happened But I was in my own house And finally somebody got out a wire for me I still didn't see yet what I was doing Because I was on my own property But one of the boys The boy that was constable at the time Was the guy that I'd gone to school with in 1912 The same year that I went to school With Bill Wilson I forgot to say that I had 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 walked uptown the next day and I went up and sat on the store, the steps of the hardware store to talk to the owner of it. This son, John, drove up and said, sorry, he says, everybody got a warrant for you. Got to take you down to Bennington, which is a county city. He took me down and saw the judge, and the judge says he'll be back Monday. I said, well, let's 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. His name is Steve McGraves, and he's now living in Paris, France. 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, and these two guys wanted around. I was out and back somewhere in the kitchen, I guess. But I remember they came up the back steps. And they didn't know exactly how to begin on me because they remembered me and I had fun with my drinking. And I saw they had something on their mind, so I said, well, what do you got on your mind? What's cooking? And they said, well, we kind of come to see you and said we couldn't get some idea into 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 sort of... Well, we just thought 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 they 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, but 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 Oxford group. I don't recall the name of that book now but in it I could see myself staring out at 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 Bookman B-U-C-H-M-A-N got its name Oxford Group because Brooklyn 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 lot of people interested over there and from there they went to South Africa and they got up 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 their damn names 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 they were. A lot them 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 the 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 are very understanding and have a damn good knowledge of their 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 filled it up for a few days and I started to paint the house but I had a ladder that was too short and I couldn't get up to all these places and I made a deal with a boss painter 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 the bottle because I had nothing more to interest me. It was a letdown. And it was then, on that binge after the painting of the house that I was picked up and taken to this 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 know me, you may not get what I mean by that, 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 is Friday. And he says, do you remember the judge says be sober? I said, yep, I will 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 the one thing I like in this world is Valentine's Ale, and that was it. So I went down cellar, and I said to myself, I can't possibly get drunk between now and Monday on six bottles of air, and I don't think nobody in town is going to sell me anymore if 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 another, I mean the boatlegger was telling me that. And I got down and I reached one of those bottles and uh-uh. That ain't cricket. All right, the judge said you get there sober or you'll be there sober. No, that isn't, that's cheating or something. And I walked back upstairs and that damn devil got to my shoulder to get off and go on down and take it. I couldn't take that damn ale. That's just no, that's not That's not the spirit of the thing. It might be, technically, I might be all right. I'd get there sober by expecting it. Well, that's not exactly what he meant. He didn't say don't take a drink, but that's exactly what he 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, and 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 service the pink cloud and later on you can 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. His name was Roland Hazard. And he was a pretty swell gent too. I never knew him. I'd never met him before. These other two guys I had. And he would say, He was there on Monday when I was brought for the judge. The judge started giving me a little lecture and he says, Hazard, will you take this man and lease this door? So I was leased and my own recognizance and the charges were dropped and this guy took me and he took me back home and left me there. And a few days later I closed the house up and went down and stayed with him. He lived about 15 miles below south of the town. And then we went on down to New York and I stayed with Chuck Cornell one of his other chops 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 the Foxwood group which is a much looser membership than Alcoholics Anonymous I really think they got 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 uh really figured that these guys must have something, that there must be a higher power because they were the ones who originally believed in a higher god or a higher power as you understand them. And 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 a town six miles north of this town of Manchester, Vermont, where I used to summer. Also spent quite a few winters there. And I heard that Bill was in pretty tough shape, drinking bad, and I had been downtown on Wall Street and seen some of my old friends, one of whom I had built a 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 or a pretty great pick to give to him. And I can truthfully say now that I believe the designer. And I went over there and 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. because 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, and I didn't get the bill, but I got lost. His wife told her what had happened to me that this must have kind of shown me something that I don't even sober myself in about five, possibly six or seven weeks. But I think sometimes the initial effect that we get from a thing is we're more powerful then than we are later on. We get stale. Well, anyway, Lois said to watch me over to dinner that night. And since he's mentioned the date, I said fine. So that night I went over, got 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'd known for years, he'd been with the family And Lois' son and others And he said they're both out Both Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Wilson Come on in So pretty soon Bill appeared And he'd done drinking but he wasn't too bad and said hello and this, that, and the other thing and he's kind of raging around and then he made me excuse you to go out and get some ice cream something else for supper and I don't know where he was going after that and I've 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 and there's some apartments. So we all sat down to dinner, and Bill got a little gobbled in the book about the game across the kitchen table, but it don't make any difference, the idea is there. So we had dinner, and then we all moved upstairs in those houses, and back there in the eastmost living room was on the second floor. So we moved up on the first floor, and after a little hammering and hawing, Laura said, well, let's hear about yourself. So I started in. I guess they got me wound up and I guess that talk was put there at one o'clock in the morning. And I remember Bill said I walked to Subway with her and I knew that he wasn't going to go for a drink or if he had a bottle in the house anyway. And on the way over, he put his arms around my shoulder just before I went into Subway and said, I don't know what you got, kid, but you got 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 my ex-group was trying 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 First Avenue on 23rd Street in New York City that was run by Calvary Episcopal Church and called Calvory Mission and it was run under the offices of this Oxford group. It was 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. Well, when I was living there, and about two nights after I'd been over to see Bill, Well, 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. I'm wrong about... Those meetings there were called testimonial meetings. We had a man up on the platform and he would call on various men in the audience. They'd get up, say what they'd found. Of course, most of them are doing it just to get a place to sleep. They're called taking a motorbike for God to get aflop. That's the way they express it. Well, in the midst of all these proceedings, Bill gets up and walks up to the platform and he's about 6'3", you know, and he leaves his elbow on the piano and he starts to pout. And the superintendent says, Get him down! That's your friend. Pull him down out of there. It's a long go. Let's hear what he's got to say. The guy gave him 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 kind of memory to our stories because you go back 24 years and you count out to the left you recall things accurately well this was sometimes late in November of 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 take 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 you 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've got to stick with him through his tough spots as well as his victories. You were the one who started it and it's up to you to see if he gets on the street. So I followed Bill up up there and we had some talks and he got out and went back down around Wall Street and they make a few little moves in there and I kept riding hard on him as they say out in Texas and I wrote hard on him. And he came around when we began to attend Oxford Group meetings, which, I might add, are exactly the same as AA meetings. 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 on three or four speakers. And Bill spoke many times from Calvary House and Gramercy Park North in New York City and later on when we slipped from the Oxford group and became Alcoholics Anonymous we went back to that place and had our meetings there up to about two years ago the original Manhattan group now of course Ohio, Cleveland and one of the other cities claim that they are the original AA but I don't know I can't understand because there was a clear succession right through from the Oxford Group meetings until the time we broke off and the meetings went to that and Bill's house. And then they went to Steinway Hall on 57th Street and from there to Burke Taylor's shop on 5th Avenue. We occupied one of the floors of his tailor shop. and let's see there's a direct succession but I don't care whether Krugman or anybody else claims their first group it makes little difference the thing got started so Bill and I were together a great deal that first winter and then I went back to Albany in 1936 and Bill 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 to Dr. Bob found AA and in 1937 I had a slip I fell off the wagon after two years and seven months which was slightly different from that DuPont film The DuPon film had me falling off a month after I talked to Bill but that wasn't so, I was two months, 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 maybe 16 years. But they were the longest of 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 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. He's got something real and something tangible. And she said, I'm going to call him right away. And she called this man who came down to see me. He says, where do you drink? And I said, Well, around the third avenue. This is 12. Let's go. And he said, I ran into Steve McGrath, the man who originally came to see you over in Paris, France. He said how's old Evie doing? This guy said, I don't know Evie but I hear he's not doing 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. 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 the 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 and said, I'll see you tomorrow night. So he did and approved the performance and of course I worked him for another $5. That's for sure. And a few more drinks. And that was Thursday night. Now he said, I'm not going to see you anymore but the office still holds good. Saturday morning I walked over in 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 is Charlie Milton. And, uh, here I am. Well, he says, you ready to 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 Odie Lancaster and Dallas and said, how about taking this guy down there? All right, he said, send the yacky son of a bitch down. I could hear, I could hear all these booming about everywhere. So the next we got a reservation that night American Airlines for Sunday evening and it was the Sunday before Labor Day, September 6th. 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 it was on a plane or a ferry boat or where I was. And I got off the plane as the land stopped when I would I'd been offshore and had a ton of stuff, and it was... I got off that plane, and I was the first person out of it. They know soon I had that thing rolled up, and I zoomed, and I went down on the steps. I had enough flying for one night. And I got down there, andI looked around, and I saw two big guys, and, of course, I was having hallucinations all over the place, and I said they were either a couple of demons or a couple goons from some gangster squad. And then I heard that boom voice again. There's the achy bastard. There he is. I've seen him in New York. So they got a hold of me and put me in a car and took me down to Texas Clinic. And I stayed there. I guess I stayed 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 boats 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 The guy said, I'm going out to mail some letters to the airport Do you want to go out? And I said, sure do I want to see this airport and see if I'm really in Dallas When I got out then I got outta the car And I walked up to this placker It said, Love Field, Dallas, Texas I put my hand on it All right, I'm in Dallas. I believe it. Well, as I stand here, I did not believe I was in Dallas 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 thinking everything I could lay my hands on meant to be cut short like that. Furthermore, they gave me a few goofballs down there and I hate those things anyway. I hate the effect of them. They just make me... I'm sorry that I've taken up so much time I'm telling you, it's all been on myself, but I didn't know how to bring the history of A.A. in. You've all seen how it spread, how it's worked. I know that if it hadn't been for A.I. when I got to Texas, I never would have been able to survive. And 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 was enough evil to get from a 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 it one day and started up a set, lost my mind, and went back to the clinic. Almost like a guy going back and hiding under the bed. And I know that several 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 that worked there. She was quite an old woman. And she said, don't you worry about that man. You just leave him alone and he's coming 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 go around the club and get into the activities and maybe I got in on too fast. That was the hottest summer that had been on record in the Texas Weather Bureau. I went down on a ranch and I was out working the sheep with this man and he put me in as a shoot 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 was still struggling to get back on its feet. And I got in another deal and that flopped. I was sober 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 that Mr. Bill Decker's been for him. And I came out and some friends took me in their house and I sobered up and I haven't had a drink since. In other words, I've had about five years of sobriety in Texas. Out of five years in one month, I've been in the hospital and I've spent five years sobrieting. Total. And I know and 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 have given me another chance. I couldn't have done it by myself. It isn't under my own feet why I did 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 was then the help of a higher power and while I've lost that idea some times along this 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 they say there isn't a day in their lives 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. Just 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 where I'm going to end up, And I have no doubt that this time I know that that last drink 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 this 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 gotta go and work And I often think if I come home tonight, if I could take one good fudge of whiskey or one bottle of Valentine's Ale and go eat, it would help me a lot and it probably would help my physically and give me a lift. But I know I can't do it. So what is the use at the time of the idea? I don't quite get so much the idea that I used to. 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, there's an alter ego. And that old drunk that goes every patch is still in there. He may be dormant but he's there just like a volcano or he takes the top off and he's going zoom! Or this time he goes zoom, boom and then we'll be all over. But I haven't got anything much more to say except stick to your A.A. and stick to God. And I think that you'll find that if you're having any trouble, you'll find help there. I want to thank Dick and I want to thank the other members and all you people who have entertained me and I sure have enjoyed coming to Memphis. Thank you. and Harold and the boys are passing the remittance baskets I want to say again if you happen to go out Texas way where Ebby has been and where Ebby has done 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 were 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 in 35 that are here and active tonight. Everyone that comes in AA 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 as 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. 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 tomorrow. You're quick when you forgive yourself. You're quicker when you're going to get well. But when you forget where you found your sobriety, how you got sober, and you retire of the country club, and no longer are active in AA, you are no longer taking 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 are sober 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 years that never show 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 never come to AA, I'm warned it will never miss you. Because if you're ungrateful as that for what you found, I don't think, me personally, that I would need you, 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, is God in his infinite wisdom gave us the privilege of staying sober such as we are tonight. And I turn my back on the guy I left behind me. I don't deserve to buy it. 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. At all meetings all over the country those who wish to join us we close by saying the Our Father. Those who care do, will you join us? 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 it not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.