Worth More Than Ashes: Redemption by the Master’s Touch. – Speakers A – D

Thank you so much. My name is Aubrey Hayes, and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm a very grateful alcoholic. I was just thinking as I sat there, it's been about five years since I came down here to Orlando. And when I first got down here, I joined the Central Group. And I went to a lot of other groups in the area, but Central Group was always the one that I felt and still feel the closest to and still am a member of. And I just want to start out by saying how much I love everybody in the Central Group and how much they've meant to me these last five years. And I'll tell you a little bit later on in my talk exactly what I'm talking about. The first time I made a talk years ago, I asked my sponsor at the time, I said, well, what should I talk on? You know, I thought it was maybe like a speech where they gave you a subject, you know, and you... And you had to research it and that sort of thing and write an outline and all that other sort of stuff. And he said, well, there's only one outline that you can use for an AA talk. He said, a personal talk. And that's what it was like, how you became an alcoholic and how you found AA and what it's like now. And every good talk that I've ever heard... And I have a lot of convention tapes that people have been kind enough to give me. Lowell's given me a bunch of them. Billow's given me a bunch of them. And other people. And every one of the talks that I've ever gotten a hold of like that, the same was that same sort of outline. Just what it was like growing up and how they became an alcoholic, how they found AA, and then what happened afterwards. I was born into a good family. I had a good mother and father. They had some faults like every mother and father do, but I can't complain about that. They did the best they could for me. Mother was a minister's daughter, and she was a little bit more... a little bit more conscious of right and wrong and principles and morals and that sort of thing. Daddy had been an athlete. Daddy played football over at Alabama when Johnny McBrown and all those guys had the same... They had the first Rose Bowl. They had the first Rose Bowl team, and Johnny McBrown went on out to Hollywood and became a cowboy movie star and everything. And Daddy was more happy-go-lucky for a number of years. He was... And I think he did some drinking, too, away from home. I never did see any of it until later years, but... But he was not as... not as strict as Mother was as far as behavior and that sort of thing. He was more inclined to want me to be an athlete and to teach me, you know, that when I exercised, if it didn't hurt, if it wasn't pain, it wasn't doing me any good. If I didn't do one more after I was so tired, I couldn't do one more that it wasn't doing me any good and this sort of thing. And between the two of them, I kind of got the idea years... you know, back years ago that... that if anything was going to do you any good, if it was fun, it wasn't going to do you any good, you know. If you enjoyed it, it was wrong. And if... like even sports. If sports were real, if you enjoyed it, it was a real pleasure and you weren't, say, going past the point of actually playing the game and enjoying it, that you weren't really getting the benefit of it and you probably weren't ever going to be a top athlete or anything like that. Not blaming them for anything because they... This was back in depression days when I was born and grew up and people were working real hard to try to get out from under a lot of the hardships that they were in. And the work ethic was pretty strong back in those days. And some of the other ethics... ethics... ethics... ethics... ethics... puritanical ethics and other things were pretty strong back in those days. But anyway, I had a happy childhood. For the most part. I had one sister and she never gave anybody a minute's trouble in all her life. She... she's been a wonderful person all of her life. Everybody I know loves her. She works with retarded children in Rome and has for a number of years. She's a program director for the Cerebral Palsy Center there in Rome, Georgia. And she's been doing it for long past the age when she could retire, but she just loves it. She doesn't want to quit. And neither do the children and the other people that are there. And more than dead were always credits to the family. My grandfather, great-grandfather, great-uncle were all ministers, Methodist preachers. And I've looked around and I can't find anybody that was alive when I was born that was ever abled to do anything. There was everybody else. There was everybody else. There was everybody else. There was everybody else. There was everybody else. There was everybody else. There was nobody but me. Can't find but one. And up until I was 17, I wasn't one either. That was when I had my first drink. We'd had two successive years in which we'd played for the Regional Football Championship. I was a quarterback. I had stayed in the Boy Scouts until I was about 17. I'd become an Eagle Scout and Explorer Scout and this sort of thing. And I was president of the Methodist Youth Fellowship in church and delegate to the Camp Glisson Assembly. And was the type of person that if anybody cussed on the football field or anything like that, I'd always correct them for it. I'd always stop them. And I was able to do that. That didn't make me very popular. We moved several different times when I was in school. And there was a problem there with having to leave friends and go somewhere and make new friends. And this business is about trying to set an example for other kids. Made for a kind of a lonesome thing for me. And my senior year, we drove out between Forsyth, Georgia and Barnesville. And there was a liquor store out there, a roadhouse there that would sell us beer. And the first time that I ever went with the guys, I didn't have any myself. I just ordered a Coke. Second time, I drank part of another guy's beer. The third time, I ordered a beer for myself. And the fourth time, it was my idea to go. And within about a matter of just about four years, I had come from that high-principle sort of a person to where I remember lying to my dad and telling him that I got hurt playing football and that I couldn't go back. The doctor had told me not to go back and play football. And the doctor hadn't told me that at all. He just told me to lay off for a few days. I'd had a slight. I didn't have to quit or anything. But I was having so much fun not playing football and sneaking out to this beer joint that I lied to my dad about it. And I became a liar. I became a liar. I became a cheat. I became a total degenerate within a matter of a few years. The drinking was a great thing for me because it made me feel like I belonged. It made me relax. It made me feel accepted. The first time in my life that I ever felt like that I was among friends, that I had friends all around me, that I was able to be myself. And I used to just love the fellowship of the bar room, the drinking and the singing and the whiff and poo songs and all the crazy things that you do with the other crazy people that are drinking, all that sort of thing. And it was fun for me for a long time. And then my friends, I noticed my friends were continuing to finish college and get their degrees and get married and have children. And the guys that I used to meet for work after five o'clock in the afternoon and sit around and drink and everything like that, they were leaving after one drink and going home. And I thought, boy, what a square bunch of guys these are. You know? What's the matter with them? You know? And I was constantly... There was a song that came out a few years ago that reminded me a lot of myself back in those years, that Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues. You all remember that song? And everybody's leaving town. Everybody's settling down. I remember that song. There's this guy drinking in a bar all by himself and all of his buddies are gone. That was the way I was. And then my folks began to get on me a little bit about it and other friends and everything like that. And I began to... try to figure out what was wrong. Why were they bothering me like that? There wasn't anything wrong. I wasn't going to be a minister like my grandfather. I wasn't going to be a great athlete like my dad. Why wouldn't they let me just drink like anybody else? But they wouldn't. And so that's when I started going on some geographical tours. I first went to Atlanta. And Atlanta, I found out, was just a real cold... hard... town that didn't seem to have any better attitude towards somebody drinking than they did back in Savannah, where my folks were living at that time. So I came back to Savannah and made arrangements to get into the Air Cadets. As soon as I finished junior college there, you could get in the Air Cadets and go on to flight school and get a commission. And an old drinking buddy of mine and I got drunk about three weeks before we were to leave. And I said, That is my mission. And he got sober, got called into the<|sd|> Union, and ran into an old line of infantry sergeant and one of the bars we were drinking under and the next morning he signed us up three years in the infantry. And we were sitting in Fort Jackson, South Carolina that next night without a wind in the kennels and a sleep coming through the windows, sober and cold and hungover and what in the world have we done? him schools after we got out of basic. I went to physical instructor school, and he was trying to go to the same place I was, and they called it down at headquarters and sent him to radio school, and I never saw him again for maybe 10 or 15 years. And after I got out of the Army, I came back. I got armadillo discharge with a disability. I had cracked a vertebrae playing football in Fort Riley, at Fort Riley, Kansas, and came back home again and found out things weren't any more tolerant than they were before. So I decided this time I was going to head for New York and really hit the big time. So I went up to New York City and stayed up there for about nearly two years. And by this time, it had been probably five and a half years that I hadn't missed a day being drunk, even the times that I was in service and just without being, never buying a bottle. I don't remember. I remember buying a bottle. It was all across the bars. It was all starting out usually at three or four in the afternoon and drinking until two and three in the morning. Those last two years in New York was nothing but a drink. My folks thought I was up there studying music, and they kept sending me money and things. And finally, they realized in talking to me on the phone a couple of times that there was really something wrong, because by then I'd started to have blackouts. And there were pieces of evenings that I couldn't remember. I could remember leaving, and I could remember coming back. I couldn't remember anything in between. And this tremendous paranoia hit me, fear that I may have done something. I had this upbringing in church and this conception of God that I was going to get into some terrible trouble that I couldn't get out of. And I just lived in a constant fear. And on top of that, I had a session with delirium trimmings, and I didn't even know what they were. I was so secretive about my drinking, even around other drunks. And I never discussed anything that could be incriminating or could be in any way out of the ordinary. I just didn't trust anybody that much. And one night as I was getting ready to go to sleep, I made a resolve that I was going to quit drinking. And there was a girl that I was corresponding with who was a real Christian girl, was going to be a missionary and go to Wheaton College. And she had asked me to quit drinking, and she was praying for me to quit and the sort of thing. So I just had a sheer will just cut myself off from liquor. And about the third night, I turned out the light to go to sleep, and I saw the room, the adjoining door to the other room open. And it was a chain lock on it and a bolt. And I turned the light on, and the door would be closed and locked. And I turned the light back off and tried to go back to sleep, and I would see the door open. And this time, I'd say, well, it's got to go away, but something would come through the door and stand in the bed, some horrible face. With my background, I thought the devil was after me. And after I had turned that light on and off about 25 or 30 times, I finally left it on and looked all around in my stuff until I finally found an old Bible, and I read it all night. And this, I didn't know until years later when I went to AA. I was sitting in the room there, and some guys were talking about, talking about some experiences like this. And I still was a paranoid. I wouldn't tell them that I had ever had one like that, but I told them that I had a friend who was in a room one time, and he turned off the light and saw that something come through the door. And this old boy said, yes, that's what it was. He said, a fellow come through the door, said, was he a big man or a little one? And I said, well, I don't know. I said, well, I don't know. I said, well, I don't think he said it. He said, he said it was kind of a big man. He said, well, that wasn't what I saw. So I saw a bunch of little ones. I said, well, I saw a pretty big fellow myself. And I said, well, what was that? And he said, oh, said, whoever your friend was, said he probably had been drinking a lot and said, got cut off real quick like that. Said, said he was having the whim whims. I said, what are the whim whims? He said, well, some people call them the DTs. That was the biggest relief off my mind, you know, to know that. But anyway, I came back to Savannah finally, almost in a basket. I had, I had told my folks I was in a wreck, but actually what had happened was I went into a bar one night and, and it was several little piano bars in Greenwich Village that I'd go into and I'd start people singing. I'd get up to the piano and start singing and everything. And they, and everybody would start singing. And the guy that owned the place would give me five bucks and you'd pick up my drink tab. Well, every night I'd make the rounds of these different places. And I was staying pretty drunk that way. I was trying to get a job. I was trying to get a job. I was trying to get a job. I was trying to pay the rent, survive, but I was really getting into terrible shape. And this one particular night, this gal came in the bar with three or four real tough looking guys. I mean, you know, this kind of tough, you know, with a, like that. And she sang a couple of songs with a piano player. They had a gorgeous voice. And I don't know why I said it. I was usually, pretty diplomatic when I was drinking like that. But I told her that I thought if she lost a little weight, she could really go places in show business. And this guy, next thing I know, I'm flat on my back, you know. And I jumped up. You can't do that to me. I'm Aubrey Hayes from Savannah, Georgia. And I jumped up and threw one punch at this guy and somebody hit me from here and another would hit me from over there. And he threw me out on the street and I came back in. And he threw me out again. And I came back in and he threw me out again. The next thing I know, I'm leaning up against the wall, bleeding and two policemen are saying, what in the world happened to you? I said, oh, I don't know. I guess I fell down. And they took me over to St. Vincent's Hospital and got me patched up. Well, I was so beat up, I couldn't go any, that bar didn't want me back in there anyway. But the other three places in which I was working, I was too beat up to appear in public. So I had to come home. And mother took one look at me and screamed when I got there. And they kept me in there. And I was in the hospital. And I was in the hospital. And I was in the hospital. And she had the barber come by the house and cut my hair. And the doctor come by the house and patch me up. And shortly thereafter, they prevailed on me that I should go and talk to a psychiatrist, that there was something wrong. I said, well, there's nothing wrong. They said, either you're losing your mind or you're drinking too much or something's the matter. Well, since drinking was so necessary to me, I opted for the losing my mind part. And I said, well, I'll go ahead and talk to him. And he said, well, I'd rather be crazy than cut off. So I went to see the doctor and he asked me the standard question. He said, how much do you drink? And I gave him a standard answer, two beers, a couple of beers, you know. Maybe not every day, but, you know, several days a week. And he was a smarter fellow than I thought. But he told me, he said, well, he said, why do you drink? He asked me this question. I said, well, I said, all my friends drink. Looking back on it now, I really didn't have any friends left. They were all married and moved off or had completely washed their hands of me. And so he said, well, he said, he said, why don't you why don't you find some people to be around? He said that like Alcoholics Anonymous. I said, well, who are they? And. Played dumb because I heard of them once before. I'd heard of them in New York City and in theater bar on the other side of theater, all those little bar there where the unemployed actors would sit when they weren't in a play or something and drink, drink 15 cent draft beer. And there was a guy in there on the barstool. His name was Lee Dixon. And Lee Dixon, one time had the lead in Oklahoma. He had had bigger raves in that show than Alfred Drake and drink. And he'd gotten to him. I didn't know it at the time, but he was still a minor celebrity among the drunks. And he was sitting on this barstool about half guest. And he said, he said, I couldn't make it in that Alcoholics Anonymous and I just couldn't make it said that ex-wife of mine just wouldn't leave me alone. He said, so I got drunk. And he said, but I'll tell you one thing. If anybody ever says anything about those people, he said, as sick as I am and as bad as I feel, I'll get up. He said, you want to hear something pretty? And I said, yeah. And he then recited the serenity prayer. And I thought it was so beautiful that he and I both sat there and cried. I thought that was the prettiest thing I ever heard in my life. He said, I knew it. And then he bought us both a beer and we sat there. So that was my, that was my only, the only time that I had heard about it up to then. And I thought it was a group of people that all had drinking problems where half of them stayed sober and looked out for the half that was drinking. And the next week, the other half drank and looked after the other half. See? He told me where it was and how I could get there. And it met at that time at the intersection of Abercorn and Liberty Streets in Savannah, upstairs over a store. And they had one of these things where you mash the button and it rings upstairs. And they hit a button upstairs and it buzzes and you can push the door open while the buzzer's going. So I rang the bell and they hit the buzzer and I was there. And I said, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I thought they were going to get a drink. And they did. And I walked through the door. It was about eight o'clock on a Saturday night and I heard all this laughter coming down. I mean, it was just this belly laughter, you know, and I hadn't heard that kind of laughter except around a bar, you know, where people were telling jokes or where there was some comedian up somewhere in a nightclub and everybody was just really, you know, uproar. So that, and my first thought was they started without me. And I got upstairs and there was not a drink anywhere in sight. They were drinking coffee. an old string thing hanging down with a light bulb on it in this main room. There were about 20 people in there. And they were all a good bit older than I was. And they were getting ready to have a meeting. And they shook hands and welcomed me. And I sat there and listened to this man talk. And he told his story. He told about how he had, the drinking he had done, that sort of thing. And how he had come in AA and how he had gotten sober and that sort of thing. Well, I don't think it made too much of an impression on me that particular night. The one thing that really made an impression on me was that after the meeting, everybody came up and told me to come back. And that's the first time anybody had asked me to come back anywhere in a long time. And it really made an impression. And I didn't go back the next week, but I went back the week after that. And that time a fellow came up to me and he said, He said, Do you know anything about AA? Do you have a big book? And I said, No. I didn't know what a big book was. And he said, Well, you need a sponsor. He said, I'll be your sponsor. And his name was Luther. And to this day, Luther is one of the most unforgettable people I ever saw in my life. His attitude. Luther had drunk so much liquor that he couldn't remember World War II. He was in the tire recapping business there in Savannah, and the only thing he could remember was that for a stretch of about four or five years, he made more money than he ever made in his life. Because people were recapping all kinds of tires. And he never figured out why. He just was so busy trying to make money and drink it up that he didn't realize until years later after he got an AA that there had been a lot of money. that there had been a lot of money. that there had been a lot of money. And he was in a real big war. And Luther never did quite get all of it. He had what you call a little bit of a wet brain. But he was a successful businessman, even in a small way, although times have changed. But he had the most beautiful attitude of anybody I've ever seen. The first meeting he took me to, my mother was kind of a society lady. She was on the National Board of the Girl Scouts from the American Air Headquarters in Savannah. She was in the Colonial Dames and DAR and all that sort of thing. And she was just tickled to death that somebody was going to come take me to an AA meeting. Until he drove up there with a stake-bodied truck full of tire cases. And anyway, he took me downtown, and he didn't have a chain or anything, over those tires. He didn't have anything over that truck. He just, he just, those tires were laying there. And he parked on a dark street. And I said, Aren't you afraid somebody is going to take these tires? He said, No. He said, 95% of the people on us, the other 5% don't come around too often. And he said, Let's go to the meeting. So we went to the meeting. And there was a fellow up there that was really giving a real harangue. He sounded like one of these old backwoods features. He was pounding on the podium, and he was saying, . . . I'm glad I'm an alcoholic. And he was just going on and on and on. And after the thing was over with, Luther said, What did you think of his talk? I said, I didn't like it. He said, I didn't either. But he said, You know, if that man can think like that and stay sober, he deserves more credit than we do, don't he? And I never forgot that. And that was around that time. And I never forgot that line where that guy said he was an alcoholic either. I thought, Boy, that guy's got to be the sickest guy that ever walked the face of the earth. Because it was Saturday night in Savannah. And I knew every bar that was open. And Savannah Beach was wide open. It was in the summertime. And I knew where all the good-looking girls were walking in about that time of the night. And I knew where the poker games were behind the bars. And I knew where the dice tables were out on the county, in the county. And all this excitement going on. And I'm sitting up there in that room with a bunch of people 20, 30 years older than me. And just not really enjoying it at all. So needless to say, I went back out. And I went back out time and time again. That third chapter, when you read all those different ways, you know, that people tried to drink and it didn't work. I got a few that I can add to it. I mean, I was so unhappy. I was so miserable, so miserable. So that any time there was a least chance that I could get by with drinking, or that I could find some way to successfully drink, I tried it. And I'm not proud of that fact. But I remember one time with about three months to bright, I had just gotten a red chip at an AA meeting. And I was standing on the corner. And a guy that tended bar in a bar I used to go into said, Where you been, Aubrey? I said, Oh, I hadn't been. I hadn't been coming around too much. He said, Why? I said, I said, Well, you know, I just was having a little trouble with my drinking. He said, You know, you're trouble. He said, He said, You drink out of them little short glasses like that. He said, If you drink out of a tall glass, he said, I don't believe you get have any problem with it. I said, You think so? He said, Yeah, I've seen it happen a lot of times. So I was over this place. You know, the next the next night and the glass he gave me wasn't quite tall enough, whatever it was, but I just as drunk. I was sitting in a meeting room one time and I was 12 step in two fellows because they told me if I'd work with people, I could stay sober. And I was reading Atlanta paper and down at the bottom of one of the columns, it said down there, said, If you have trouble from hangovers, eat a little sugar before you drink. Why? Because you drink. And I looked at that thing and I said, You know, it makes sense. You know, sugar, sugar give you mighty energy, you know, and it'll help you throw off the alcohol and that sort of thing. It makes a lot of sense to me. So I folded up paper and laid it over and I went over these two fellows I was helping. I said, I'm going to leave you a little money to go to supper with tonight because I may not get back in time to go with you. And I was down to the corner. The. The next corner down there was the San Maru. And I'd sang for the opening of that thing with when Dick Van Dyke was a member of the little group called the Maramutes, where they pantomimed all these records and everything like that. And I knew and I knew all those people in there. And I walked into that place and they all welcomed me back like I was some lost soul. They'd forgotten the time I broke to the chairs, other stuff. And I went over and got me a handful of sugar cubes out of one of the sugar bowls and ate about four of them. And drank some water and then ate two more and drank some more water and then ordered a double martini. And I ate so much sugar for about a week. I don't know why I didn't turn into some kind of a diabetic or something like that. But I got just as drunk and I got just as sick and I wound up in just as much trouble. And another time that that I rationalized, I said, you know, really, that when I was in the army and PT and drill instructor, I was given four or five hours of calisthenics. I was in the army. I was in the army. I was in the army. I was in the army. I was in the army. I was in the army. And I was in the army. And I knew I'd get out of that camp. I had four or five hours of calisthenics a day in the hot sun out there in Kansas. And I would drink all night and give those calisthenics all night. I never had a hangover or anything. I'm just out of shape. So I quit a job where I'd made real good money the year before to take a job over here in Daytona Beach at the YMCA teaching swimming for $50 a week. And I set myself a schedule to get back in shape. And I'd teach those swimming classes and in between the classes I'd go up and work out. And I'd run. I stayed on a diet of salad and steak and eggs and went and got vitamin shots two or three times a week. And I went to A the whole time to make sure I finished this three-month program. And at the end of that time, I had a bar picked out over on the beach side that I was going to go into and drink like a gentleman. And so I went in that night, and I'd always seen people come into a bar and order a drink and ask for the menu, you know, at the same time. I thought, boy, that's a classy thing. But I never did that. I just come in and drink and never ate. So I said, well, you know, I think I'll have a martini, and I want a menu. And so they fixed me a martini, and they handed me a menu. And at 10.30 that night, I'm still sitting there drinking. I haven't ordered anything to eat. I had gotten to where I could do a stand-in military press with 225 pounds three times. I was stronger than I ever had been in my life physically. And, you know, three days after I started drinking, the two guys, had to come into my room, pick me up, and put me on a stretcher, and take me to a hospital. It was like I'd gotten to where I'd progressed to where I don't care how strong I was, if I took a drink, the strength just went out of the soles of my feet. I got as weak as a kitten. Now, I've left even that part of my story, and I'm not going to get into any more of the drunk log, because that's not the real important part of it. That they, during that period of time, I was in, and this is by actual count and cancel checks and other things, I was in 51 trying out spots. Some of them only lasted seven, eight days. Some of them lasted three months, like Silver Hill up in New Canaan, Connecticut, one of the finest places in the country. Mother and Dad had gone to the wall trying to help me get sober. They'd sent me everywhere that they thought that it would help me. And I would get sober and get out. And I'd go to the hospital. And go to AA for a while, and then get drunk again. They lit a fire in me to get back into AA, and I kept going back to AA. Finally, I decided, well, you know, getting married might help. I spent a lot of time chasing girls. And maybe if I just went ahead and got married and didn't have to go out in these bars and places like that, that might solve a lot of the problems and I could stay sober. So I got married, and I got drunk. And I got married. And I got drunk. And I got drunk. This time I wound up down in St. Petersburg, Florida. And I was in a room, a little apartment-sized, efficiency apartment-type room, three or four weeks behind on my rent, out of jail on the fourth DUI. My wife was divorcing me and taking my little girl. And it was just hopeless. And so I called for the AA. They'd always come before and help me. And this time they didn't come. And there was a liquor store across the street, and I had maybe 10 or 15 bucks to my name. And the sign kept blinking on and off. And I thought, well, maybe I'll go over and get a couple bottles and just think this thing over. And something told me that if you do, you've been lucky so far. Lucky so far. But if you do, it's going to be downhill road. It's going to be downhill from there. You know, you've hit the hospitals. You made a few jails and one chain gang. And you've had some rough breaks as a result of the drinking. But, man, you ain't hit the asylums yet. You ain't hit the long-term prison sentences and all this other stuff that's staring you in the face, the yets, as we call them today. So I got a big book out and I started reading. And I was reading in there about that man that they went to see who was in a straitjacket, who'd beaten up several nurses and they put him in a straitjacket. And he was in DTs. And something just jumped off the page in that story that I never had noticed before. That as sick as he was and as bad off as he was, they told him he was going to have to believe in God if he ever wanted to get sober and stay sober. And then I noticed something else amazing. That this man slid off the bed in the late hours of the night in a straitjacket and prayed. And he never drank again. And I pitched forward on my face on that floor. And for the first time in my life, I truly wanted God to help me. And I asked him, I said, God, if you will give me back the peace that I had when I was a boy growing up, I'll do anything you want me to. But if you want me to quit, you've got to take away the desire, because I can't. And I'm going to stay here till I get some relief. And I stayed there on that floor. Finally, I drug myself to my knees and I stayed by the bed, I know, for an hour. And I felt something come over me and I began to cry. And it was like water pouring over me. I don't know what it was, but when I got up from my knees, I felt like everything was going to be okay. I didn't know how, because I had no money. I had nothing coming in. I had lost my job. Mother and Dad had no more money. But what they didn't spend on me, that Daddy lost in a business venture. And there was nothing to do but believe. And so I went to the church. And so I began to believe and trust. And that night was the first time that I can ever remember being able to sleep after a drunk without some kind of a sedative or a drink or something. And I slept like a baby. The next morning, I woke up and I had a couple of eggs in the refrigerator and a couple of pieces of bread. And I scrambled up some eggs and made an egg sandwich. And while I was eating that, a knock came on the door. And there was a man there at the door, a nice-looking man. And he says, And he says, My name's Walter. I'm from the AA. And he said, I apologize about missing your message last night. But he said, Is there anything we can do to help you? And I said, Well, I'm here. My car is in the pound. My check is in Bradenton. He said, Well, let's go get it. And so we went down over the Sunshine Skyway and got my check and came back into town. And he rode me by a bank that was a member of the... I was working for the U.S. Chamber then. He said, I'm going to go to the U.S. Chamber. And he said, Well, I'm going to go to the U.S. Chamber and get my check. And I went down and got my car out of the pound and came back to the room. And went and got some groceries and ate again and slept again that night. Well, I'm going to make this story short. But in the next couple of months, I made more money than I had made in ages. And I would get lost going to a place and wind up in front of another place and walk in and sell them more than I would have ever gotten if I went to the other place. It was like... I was in an attitude of prayer looking for God's will for me because I firmly believed that he wanted me to be a minister. That's what they'd always told me. That's the only kind of full-time serving him that I could envision was being a preacher or being a missionary to some leper colony somewhere, you know. That's why I'd fought it so long. And it turns out that he didn't want me to be any of that. I probably didn't even qualify for that sort of thing. That sort of stuff in any way, shape, or fashion. He just wanted me sober and in a mind to worship him. Well, I went back to church. And I said, if I just go back there and just take up a seat and encourage that preacher out of gratitude to what God's done for me so far, I'm going to do it. I came back over here. And Mother and Dad were living in Winter Park then. And it came time to go back over there for that trial. And I'm sitting down and talking to my dad. And in the meantime, Dad's become a very spiritual person over the years. All during my drinking. I think it drove him closer to God and helped his faith. But anyway, when I was getting ready to go back over there, he said, Are you nervous? I said, I sure am, Dad. I said, you know, I think they're going to put me in jail. And he said, well, what's happened? He said, something's happened to you, I know. He said, you've changed. And I said, well, I hope so. And I told him some of the things that had happened that were like coincidences. He said, those aren't coincidences, son. He said, that's God working in your life. He said, you go on back over there. He said, you won't have any trouble. He said, if you do have any trouble, you call me. But he said, you're not going to have any trouble. And I went over there. And it turned out that the city attorney in St. Petersburg was an enemy of the, politically or something, of the guy that was my lawyer. And they got into an argument. And the city attorney lost his temper. And the judge declared a mistrial. And so they settled for careless and reckless conduct. And I was driving. And I came back. I'm just like walking on a cloud. I said, I've never seen anything like this. Daddy said, I knew something like that was going to happen. I said, I didn't know. Because he'd been walking in the Spirit a long time longer than I did. But at any rate, got my family back together. Got back into, continued to work in AA. I worked at the old Court Street Clubroom down across from the city hall when it was there. That's where I went to AA when I was here. And also up at 1000 North Orange. And went to Park. And then I got a chance to go to work and leave the area. And I did. And didn't get back for a long time. But I continued to go to AA. And I continued to go to church. And I continued to try to practice the principles and so forth in all my affairs. And I, I guess I kind of took the good parts of AA, the sobriety and the blessings materially, and all the things that happened to me in the intervening years, I guess I kind of took them as being my due for being sober. And I used to travel out. I got a real good job traveling through a series of coincidences and things. I got a real good job making a lot more money than I ever thought. And I would commute out of South Georgia, change planes in Atlanta every week, and I'd be working in different towns all over the country. And I'd go to AA meetings. I'd go to speaker meetings and discussion meetings in different towns. But I never went to AA. But I never went to any one regular group. When I'd come home on weekends, I'd spend that time with my family. And, because I was gone five days a week for about 20 years. And so I never really got into AA much around home where I could see people every day or every week at meetings and things like this. And through a series of reversals and changes in life and all happened sober and everything like that, my wife and I wound up getting a divorce. And the company that I was with all the time, I was in. The company that I was with all those years went broke during the recession. And I came down here where I had a couple of good friends in AA. And one of them told me, he said, Arby, you ought to put some roots down down here. He said, you got to live somewhere. And he said, you don't want to live up there. And so I did. And that's when I started coming here. And this is the part I wanted to tell you about, why I'm so grateful to the people here. I knew there was a power in the AA program because of what had happened in my own life. I knew that God had answered prayers for me. But it's always surprised me when He answers them for other people. I've talked to people that I sponsor. You know, a lot of times the guy says, What am I going to do about this? I said, Pray about it. About a week later, I'd say, What happened to you? How are you feeling now? He said, Well, you know that problem we were going to pray about? Yeah. He said, I prayed about it and it just disappeared. I said, A couple of things happened. It just solved itself. I said, Really? Oh, my God. Always kind of surprised me. But anyway, I came down here. And when I came down here, I was total. I was like a guy that had been hit by a semi-truck and got up and dusted himself off and straightened up a little bit and pulled himself together a little bit and then got hit by another semi-truck. That was an emotional condition I was in when I got down here to Orlando about five years ago. And when I first got down here, I didn't know where I was going to stay or what I was going to do or anything else. And I was standing in the back one day, and I said, Well, I'm going to pray about this. And I was looking for a place to stay. And Lowell pointed to a bulletin board there, a room for rent. So I called the fellow, and I said, You got a room out there? And he said, Yeah, I got a room. And it turned out to be Tom Blair. I stayed out there two and a half years in one of Tom's apartments. We had AA meetings about every day. And I came to meetings here two or three times a week. George here had one meeting. George here had one of my favorites. He had a Monday night 6 o'clock meeting, and I just never did miss as long as he was holding it there. And we used to sit around and talk a lot other than that. And I got to know so many other people around here. And it was a real, it was, the great thing about it was that I could see people come into the thing, and then I could see them three months later, and I could see them six months, and I could see them a year later. And this had never happened to me in all the time that I'd ever been to AA, that I ever get to see people on that regular basis. And so I did. I did come to a startling conclusion that there's a tremendous power working through this program. It's just amazing. I've seen people come into these rooms and they'd say, I don't want to hear any of that God stuff. You know, I want to stay sober. I just want to get sober. I want to quit drinking. I don't want to hear any of that God stuff. And then three or four months later, a chairman meeting will say, Anybody got a topic? And the same guy will say, Yeah, I'm about to live in St. Louis. And I'll say, What's that? You know? This whole thing. The change, you know? And the evidence of that power is in these changes that you see in people. That's the evidence of the power in the program is the changes that you see in people. It's just impossible to come in here into AA as it's practiced in Orlando, Florida, in this group, and in some of the other groups around town, and not change. And change for the better. And change for the better. People don't even look the same as they did when they first came in, the ones that I've been able to see. A fellow said one time, said, You know, the evidence of the power of Hoover Dam is not the mass of concrete and steel that you see there, or not all them hundreds of thousands of gallons of water pouring out through those sluiceways, or all that big mass, or how high it is, or anything like that. It's the evidence of the power of Hoover Dam. It's when somebody walks into a dark room down in Southern California and hits a light switch and a light comes on. That's the evidence of the power. And that's the evidence of the power of this program. It's not in how many thousand people we got that are members. It's not in how many meetings go on in Orlando. That's all great. There's probably 30, 40 meetings going on right now, maybe somewhere within 25 miles of here. That's great that that's happening, but that's not the evidence of the power. The evidence of the power is in the changes, I think, that you see in the people that are here. And that's the thing that I think is the real message of AA. Is that no matter how confused and beat up, you still have value. I can remember, and you have value to people, not just me, but you've got value to a higher power. I can remember one hot summer in Monroe, North Carolina. We'd just sold off some bottles and picked up some, trashful 80, and scrambled up what we had for allowance, about 10 years old. And we got four or five cents together. And back then, you could go to one of these old-time grocery stores, you could get something for four or five cents. I mean, they had five for a penny candy, and they had all-day suckers. I'm talking about those BB bats they had. They were that long and that wide for a penny, and they'd last all day. And as we were walking out there, we found another penny there in the road, this muddy road. And went to Mr. Bundy's store and laid it up there on the counter. And went over and picked out three or four things and came back and laid them back up. He put them in two little bags, my friend and I, myself. And then he pushed over, he pushed over this change, about nine cents change. And I was in the Cub Scouts, and I was honest and everything, and I said, Mr. Bundy, you gave us back too much change. He said, no. He said, you gave me a dime and three pennies. And I said, really? He said, oh yeah. And he took this rag and he wiped this thing off and everything like that, and it was a dime under there. It was all scarred up and beat up and everything like that, mashed and bent. But he gave us full value for it. And in later years, I found out when the federal government puts their name on something, like a coin, or like a dollar bill, or anything like that, that if you can find one recognizable scrap of that thing, that they'll deem it to have value. And that's where the word redeem comes from. They'll redeem it. I knew a man one time that had a metal box full of $100 bills, and it had gotten a fire, and there was nothing in that box but ashes. And he was just in tears. He said, no, send it to me. He said, no, send it to me. They sent it off to some laboratory that the government's got. He got all his money back. And it was just ashes that they could find through tests. There was enough there to recognize that there had been something there. And it's the same way, I think, when our power creates a human being. If there's enough of them left to recognize, to make any kind of decision, that he'll redeem it and cause it to have a new value, the same value it always had, but just like it was a brand new 50-cent piece of dollar bill or whatever it is. I know you all heard this poem, The Touch of the Master's Hand. Has anybody said it lately around here? Have you heard it lately? Well, I'm going to say it then, and I'm going to close. It was battered and scarred, and the auctioneer thought it scarcely worth his while to waste much time on the old violence, so he held it up with a smile and said, What am I bid for the violence? Who'll start the bidding for me? A dollar, a dollar, then two, only two. Two dollars, who'll make it three? Three dollars once, three dollars twice, and going and gone, but no, from the back of the room came a white-haired man, and he picked up this violin and bow and wiped in the dust from the old violin and tightened in the loose strings. He played a melody soft and sweet as a caroling angel sings. The room was quiet, and the auctioneer in a voice that was hushed and low said, What am I bid for this violin? Holding it up with a bow. A thousand dollars? Who'll make it two? Two thousand, who'll make it three? Three thousand once, three thousand twice, and going and gone, said he. The people cheered, but some of them cried, What change this worth? Swift came the reply. It was a touch of the master's hand. And many a man with his life out of tune and battered and scarred with sin is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd just like that old violin. A mess of pottage, a glass of wine, a game, and he travels on. He's gone once, gone twice, gone and almost gone. The master comes, and the foolish crowd never can quite understand the worth of a soul or the changes wrought by the touch of the master's hand. Thank you. Subtitles by the Amara.org community