He has the privilege that most of us would like to have. He's a near neighbor of Bill Wilson. He has the inspiration, close at hand, that Bill could give him. Tom Powers is a writer by vocation, a freelance writer. He has written many things of an editorial nature, and I understand Tom has recently written a book which will soon be published. I hope for this book he'll send me an autographed copy. Free. Now, without going any further in the introduction, I want to introduce to you Tom Powers, Jekyll upon the Yonk. Applause My name is Tom Powers, and before the evening is over, I hope I will have identified myself as a fellow alcoholic. But to start with, I want to identify myself as not really an Eastern import. My mother and father were born and brought up in Winona, Minnesota. My dad started out there as a boilermakers' apprentice on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. He was chief mechanical officer before he died. I was born in Shadron, Nebraska. I went to school at the University of Illinois, the University of Michigan. I used to do a lot of fishing up north of Ely, Minnesota, when I was 16, 17, 18 years old. I moved down East to study and learn my alcoholism. But when I finally got around to getting dry in Alcoholics Anonymous, which was five years after I entered Alcoholics Anonymous, I did it in a group in Oak Park, Illinois. So I am one whose roots are in the center of this continent where we are tonight. I didn't drink until I got to college. When I was in high school, people were drinking, kids were drinking, but I didn't. I was afraid of it. I had some experiences when I was young. I think the grace of God is built into this thing way back. We don't see it, some of us, until we get into AA and get cooked out and get our buttons sewed back on again. But looking back on my experience with the clarity of a little returning sanity, now I can see that there was a great deal of warning built into my life before I ever came to it. When I was quite young, I saw some things that frightened me of alcohol. I saw an automobile accident one time in which four…