Wiping Out the County Wheat Crop with a Prayer — That’s an Ego Problem – Howard P.

About This Speaker Tape

Howard grew up in a small Kansas farming community in the Bible Belt, where he absorbed limiting beliefs he compares to a baby elephant trained by a rope. At four or five years old, he prayed for dry weather and blamed himself when a storm destroyed the county wheat crop — an early sign of the outsized ego and guilt that would follow him for decades. He fell in love with Pat in the seventh grade but was too afraid to tell her until a Navy mentor called him a "loser loser" for never speaking up. They married, but the weight of responsibility sent him deeper into drinking.

Howard discovered that whiskey unlocked his ability to write technical reports, and his career took off — process analyst to engineer to senior engineer to engineering manager at Hughes Aircraft on the Apache helicopter program. He genuinely could not function without alcohol, and when tolerance caught up, he added Benzedrine. His boss demoted him. Pat filed for divorce for roughly the 850th time. He negotiated a "half a pint a day" deal that immediately collapsed into four half-pints and elaborate schemes to hide the evidence. Desperate and deeply in debt, he stole calibrated government test equipment — and lost both the equipment and the fence who took it.

On July 26, 1972, he hit bottom and read page eight of the Big Book: "No words can describe the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity." His father had died sober at an AA meeting in 1951, so Howard knew AA existed. He called Kenny S. from his regular bar, the Tattletale Lounge, and went to his first meeting that night. He met Frank, whose quiet sincerity broke through his defenses. Kenny told him to just attend meetings for 30 days — no steps, no Higher Power required — and that acceptance changed everything for Howard.

Howard resisted the steps and Higher Power for a long time, but kept showing up and taking home small pieces of hope. Don Gates finally got through to him: if you quit AA without trying the steps, you cannot say AA did not work. Howard did a fourth step and realized his father was not his problem — fear was. A fifth step about childhood molestation by a schoolteacher released decades of guilt within two weeks. A second pass through the steps revealed he was a total taker in every relationship. In his ninth year of sobriety, during meditation, he had a vision of a frozen lake: walking across it one step at a time was living one day at a time, but only trust that the ice would hold — trust in a higher power — could remove the dread from every step. He found Higher Power not through scripture but through science, through Einstein, through the order and harmony underlying the material world. AA became his window to that discovery.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Howard introduces himself, thanks the chain of AA members who brought him to speak in England, describes visiting Higher Power's Hill and Winchester Cathedral
• 4:30 Baby elephant story from a free movie in Kansas — how limiting beliefs imposed in childhood hold us captive our entire lives
• 9:00 Childhood prayer for dry weather that destroyed the wheat crop — the origin of his guilt and ego, feeling separate from Higher Power
• 12:00 First drink at 13 — half a pint of bourbon and feeling good for the first time; falling in love with Pat in seventh grade
• 16:00 Navy mentor calls him a loser loser for never telling Pat he loved her; comes home from Korea and finally tells her
• 20:00 The Wednesday night refrigerator discovery — whiskey unlocks his ability to write technical reports, launching his engineering career
• 27:00 Half-a-pint-a-day deal with Pat collapses into four half-pints and elaborate cover-up schemes; steals government test equipment
• 34:00 Calls Kenny S. from the Tattletale Lounge, goes to first AA meeting, meets Frank whose quiet welcome breaks through his defenses
• 42:00 Collecting hope from meetings — the brooding lesson, learning to love the rain, Don Gates saying you cannot reject what you never tried
• 52:00 Vision of the frozen lake during meditation in his ninth year — trust in a higher power as the only cure for lifelong dread; finding Higher Power through science rather than scripture