Audio
Transcript
Source: Bill G – Early Member and Big Book Story Author (1954) – Date Unknown.mp3 File: bill-g-early-member-and-big-book-story-author-1954-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:37:52
============================================================
Tonight I'd like to talk a little while, if I may, about a little bit at a time. I think it's very important and I think it's quite apropos of the growth of this group. I don't think any of us started out on our first drunk to get drunk all at once. I think perhaps we started off with that one small one just to be a good fella. Like Helen and the good Chris, I never drank because I liked the flavor, but I did love the effect it produced.
I liked that, because I was a big skinny kid and it made me a veritable tiger. And it seems that the one or two little drinks on a Saturday night soon blossomed forth into three or four, and a little bit at a time I discovered that I enjoyed this stuff. Yes, it did things for me that nothing else could do. I happened to be in the furniture business. A more miserable business was never invented, and especially not.
But it seemed that in the furniture business, the people who sell things, you must have a little drink to celebrate an excellent day. By the same token, you must have the same little drink to drown your sorrows when there are no sales. So a little bit at a time, instead of drinking both in celebration and in depression, I drank all. And the little three quarters of an ounce developed into a big fist.
Well, it wasn't a fist when I was a young man. Of course, I'm 50 now. That's a long while ago. But when I was a young man, during Prohibition, we had flasks that were about that long. And I didn't carry a little bit at a time. I carried it all at once, you know. It hit you right in the shoulder blade. You could always tell who had the flask for the way he walked around. I liked that. I was a dirty, stinking slob from the woods.
I loved that because they'd have to come to me to get a drink. Well, the halcyon days of my youth passed very rapidly. And I often thought sometimes, unfortunately so, too. Because from the little bit of drinks that we had on Saturdays and on weekends, it developed into this long, steady grind of drinking all the time. So little by little, I developed a persecution conflict. Yes, it seems that everyone was after me.
My fellow business associates, they said I drank too much. And I was married to a very charming girl, and she expected me to bring home money on Friday. All that silly stuff, you know. It seemed that she would hide the bottle. I belonged to a golf club over in Jersey in those days, and I didn't play much golf, but I spent a lot of time drinking their whiskey there. And it got so bad, and I was just a young fellow, that whenever I would go into the 19th Coast for a drink, everybody else would move down the other way.
Then they asked me to resign. It seemed that I didn't pay my tabs on the first of the month. A miserable bunch of people. So a little bit of the time, it began to filter through that I was no longer wanted. And I felt so sorry for Bill Green. Oh, I felt so sorry for Green. Because I knew I was a wonderful fellow. As I would shave in the morning, I'd look in the mirror, and I would say, Oh, Bill, you're a jock.
[00:05:00]
Now, that's a hell of a way to go through life, whether you're an alcoholic or not. So then I decided that I must try willpower. Not much willpower, just a little bit. All you have to do to stop drinking is precisely that, stop. So you turn in your keys and your cards, and you go home and you break all the bottles, and you profess to all in the family that you are through with the foul stuff. Your halo is setting tightly on your head.
And I didn't drink Tuesday, and I didn't drink Wednesday, and I didn't drink Thursday. I said to myself, Well, there's nothing Tuesday stuff now. So I went out and got drunk on flasks. This first picture that I'm painting for you, as I said, is in the halcyon days of my youth. Youth is something that, when you're old enough to know what to do about it, you can't do it anymore anyway. George Bernard Shaw said, It's such a wonderful thing, it's too bad they have to waste it on the young.
And that is true. I'd been drinking about ten years, and it seemed that my drinking had progressed to the stage now to where I would drink to get sober. You see, you're in this half-fog all the time. And I met a bartender friend of mine, and he told me about this little drink in the mall. Oh, he was a lovely fellow. I loved him to both. He was a most admirable young man. He gave me this prescription, and I think it was wonderful.
As a matter of fact, at that time, it was the panacea to end all pain. You take a jiggle of gin, the drop of the white of an egg, and a dash of iron fizz. Now, can you picture this trembling drunk falling out the drop of a white of an egg? Well, for a few mornings, I would go down to the bar, and he'd make this concoction for me. And it was wonderful. It seemed a little bit of a crime. I dispensed with the egg.
I didn't have the bitters handy. There were no small glasses, so I drank it right out of the bottle. From that point on started my years of flight. Five hundred miles down the road, no one knows Bill Green. That's it. I must leave. I sold my business, loaded my car with Canadian clubs and a railroad. I didn't stop at five hundred miles, I went out to Seattle. I couldn't go any further, because that's the end of the line.
I went into business out there, and in twenty months, I was a bankrupt. I felt awful sorry for Green then, because now I had entered into the sick state. I would get so sick, boys and girls, that when I would get a room in a hotel, I would always get two beds. One to sleep in, one to pee in. You see, I was the high type. It took me nine months to get from Seattle back to Newark, New Jersey. I went the long way, by way of San Diego.
I would drive a little, drink a little, puke a little. I got back to Newark. I had fifty dollars, a beat-up Oldsmobile, no whiskey. I felt so sorry for myself. No one had had it as miserable as Bill Green. I'd been robbed, robbed, cheated. I was living in a very slimy world. And it was all their fault.
[00:10:01]
And I told it to myself regularly, but I was beginning to doubt it a little bit too long this time. I woke up one morning, and the Oldsmobile was gone, and so was the fifty dollars, and I'm standing in the middle of my wardrobe. I have a pair of dungarees with the fanny that was out, a blue shirt, and a pair of Stacey Adams shoes with no socks. And I'm sitting on the end of this bench down there in Lincoln Park, and another bunch came along, and he says, Oh Slim!
Hey, he says, that's a fine pair of shoes you have there. Well, right away, boys and girls, I could tell you that this fella knew class when he saw it. I like this boy. Yeah! And I started to tell him of my former exploits. Well, he seemed to want to concentrate on the shoes. In 1939, shoes were bringing seventy-five pence in pawns. And so we went down and pawned shoes. Two bottles of Sneaky Pete and a pair of canvas relievers.
This is November. Nothing that I ever did. I was off. So you see, a little bit at a time, I've gone down to the bottom of the barrel. Not all at once. For twenty-five years. Twenty-five years, and a lot of money, a lot of heartache, and a lot of sorrow. Sitting there on this bench, this bum and I, telling each other the wondrous things we have done. And he loved me, and I loved him. And there's no love like one drunken bum for another, believe you me.
As I looked off into the sky and the snow started to fall, I mean, you know, it's getting cold on this bench, and I turned around, and the bum was gone. The dirty dog took the other bottle with him. So you see, in that half-lit world that you live in, when you don't have home or substance, there's always plenty of company. Misery, love, and company. Another guy came along and said, if you don't get off that bench, you're going to freeze to death, and you'll get pneumonia and you'll die.
I always hated to think about dying, because I was such a lovely fellow, I knew they'd miss me on Earth. What do you say we get down to Sally? Well, I didn't know who Sally was, but I knew in my present condition that she wouldn't receive me, and I'll tell you that right now. No, he said, we'll get down to the Salvation Army. I want to tell you right now that it's a pretty fine organization. I hope none of you have to resort to it, as I mean to food and shelter, but they're a wonderful people.
They're an understanding people. They have a deep love of God that we that walk around in our daily business world never will understand. They give just for the glory of giving. Wonderful thing. And they took us in, and they gave us a bed, and next morning, they put us out in the bathing room. Stop! You have never lived until you've been in the Salvation Army bathing room. It's a room of this size.
At one end is a big steel ball into which you pour endless miles of newsprint. And at about 800 pounds worth, you step on the trigger, this big thing throws up this veil, and you start all over again. And for that labor, we receive 95 cents a week in our room and board. A magnificent sum for one so dirty as I am. But like all drunk, when they start to sober up for real, I looked around me, and I saw all these other bums, and gee, I knew I was head and shoulders over those guys.
Now, I'm going to work hard in the future. Now, I'm going to work hard and apply myself and advance myself in this humble job.
[00:15:05]
I worked hard for two weeks out there. Finally, I got promoted to be the helper on the truck. Now you get two bologna sandwiches, a container of cold coffee, and you get out in the open. Three dollars a week. A little bit at a time, I progressed until I became a driver. Europe, Delfia. I didn't have to sleep in a dormitory when there were 200 anymore. I slept in a room with absolute privacy. There were only six.
Living? For that, I received five dollars a week. Well, I don't have to tell you what happened, because no drunk can stand prosperity. So I ended up back out on the street. Only this time, I had a pair of shoes, and a fellow had given me a size 46 gabardine suit. I have since developed into a 40 long, but a 46 is just a little big for me. I wondered what to do then. I didn't believe in God, because I knew God was something that had been cooked up for public consumption. Mass peeing.
You gotta have something to keep the dummies in check. Nice, vicious thinking, yeah? This boy is going places. I did it. I went from store to store, and from door to door, and slept under the bridge. I drank Bezo, Giroc, candies, sneakies, shoe polish, anything that had an alcoholic content. Why I didn't die, God only knows. I didn't wash them, he sent them in. Just a dirty, filthy, slimy thing that came out from under a flat rock.
How God in his wisdom let such a thing live, only he knows. You have no sense of responsibility, no moral code, no sense of ethics, nothing. Just a filthy, half-dead, stinking thing in a half-dead world. And they'd go round to the city hospital. So finally, one day, on the Jordan Market Street, and I ran into my child bride, a lovelier girl, God never endowed with life and breath to breathe in there.
Why she stayed with me for over a quarter of a century, I don't know. She goes, what in the hell happened to you? Ma, hello Ma, I, I don't feel well. I've been a bad boy. My girl was raised very tenderly and gently in a parochial school in New Jersey. She had never had to work as a young woman. She ended up slinging hash in a dime hash house to support my daughter and herself. She took me to a hospital.
The doctor said, let him try AA. AA? Ha, I don't feel well Ma, I'm sick. You're sick all right. I stayed there ten days. I promised her I'd go to an AA meeting. Now I want you to get this mental picture of this maniac that they turned out of this hospital. Here's a guy that's been a drunken filthy bum for over two years. Here's a man that has descended to social scale from having his own business down to the gutter.
Here's a guy that is just hanging on the edge of life. Who's been given another chance.
[00:20:00]
Yes, I'll go to an AA meeting. No, I just want to get out of the hospital. I want to go home. She takes me home, buys me a $15 suit, and I went out and got a job working for a guy that used to work for me. A nice stuff. An awful nice stuff. Every Wednesday night, I'd get down to the meeting. I'd look in. Some guy's talking about the grace of God. I'd go home. On the way home, I'd stop and have one, two, three, four.
Well, how was the meeting? Oh, the meeting's all right. It's just not for women. You know, they have a lot of old bums there. Next to the speaker's table, they have another little table, and they've got a bowl of cracked ice on the table, and a bottle of wine, a bottle of scotch. You see, all the way in my mind I'm planning how I can drink a little bit without getting caught. How about that? Is that insanity? I ask you.
She goes, what is all that stuff for? Why did they just put that there? So when I'd come home and she'd kiss me and tell me that she smelled liquor on my bed, I'd tell her I'd just been testing. And I did test a little bit at a time until I came home one night about two o'clock in the morning. Drunk as a goat. And twice as stinky. I'm pounding on the door, demanding an entrance. I demand my marital rights.
Don't be flabbergasted. He hasn't done anything for the last five years since he took it to the household. Now he wants in. My wife opened the door, and I fell in. She goes, what happened to you? I drew myself up to my full height, and I looked down at her. My wife's only about five foot two. I said, madam, they put me to the test, and I have failed. I don't have to tell you I slept on the street that night, either.
And so ends the sordid part of my story. It's not a pretty thing. I don't enjoy telling it, only for the fact that I'd like to remember the humble earth from whence I sprang. I don't want to ever forget it, because three quarters of an ounce of whiskey can put me right back. I'd like to take the few remaining moments, if I may, and tell you a little bit about the romance of recovery in AA, as seen through my eyes.
I think it's a beautiful story. Thrilled me. I like it. I hope you do. It seems that this particular Sunday I'm lying flat on a pile of rug. I know I'm going to die because I'm hemorrhaging. When you put your hand up to your ear and you take it away and see blood there, it scares you. When you wipe your eyes and you see blood there, that scares you, too. I knew this was it. Oh, God, if I could only try that AA.
I said, I don't know. Yes, yes, I must try AA. That's the only thing for me. And so we called up the Al-Nan Club in Newark. Here's the thing. We're in a corner drugstore. She put the nickel there. Stood right there. Dialed the number. The guy answers the phone. He says, Al-Nan Club, Louis speaking. Right away I knew it was a phony deal. He told me who he was. Well, I said, this is Mr. G. Now, he's asked out.
Yes, I said, this is BG. Well, where are you? Told him. Did you marry her? I said, I'm not looking at it, though. Well, he said, would you like to come up to the car?
[00:25:01]
Yes. You got a car? No. Well, get in the bus and come on up. And up we go. And we get up there and the Al-Nan Club in New Jersey at that time, 1945, was a big mausoleum. There was a barn. And we walked up and here was this great big guy about six foot two and as red as a house smoking a pipe. Tell your boys my name is Charlie. This guy I don't want to talk to. I want to see Louis. Well, that's all right. Meet Joe.
Joe was a guy about so broad bronze from the sun to the color of this modern day. Seems he was a keeper of the greens of the golf course. How are you? He said. What is the name? I'm not going to tell you. Well, he says, my name is Joe. This is Charlie. Meet Frank. All right. My name is Bill. As a fellow, you don't know how sick I am. Everybody is laughing. The guy with the pipe is blowing that smoke and my face is killing me.
They take me in to see Louis. This is Louis. This guy needs a drink. No, no. Don't drink. Take him to the coffee bar. Give him some coffee. No. I want to tell you. Shut up. Listen. Joe is on one side. Charlie is on the other. The girls have swept up my child bride and taken her off into another room to cover the facts of life. Their version, not mine. Over in Jersey, in those days, the girls sat on this side and the boys on that side.
I looked over at my wife and I waved. She looked over at me and waved back. They've been talking to her, you see. You know what I mean? You know what I mean, Scott? I'm, Joe is here, Green is there, and Charlie is over here. I say to Charlie, do you have cigarettes? Never use them. Do you have cigarettes? Don't smoke. You see what a vicious state 60,000 people in AA at that time and I'm sitting between the only two skiffs that don't smoke cigarettes.
The first speaker got up and he started way back at the Boer War. And he brought us all the way up to the white cliffs of Dover. He took us back into the African campaign. And I said to Charlie, what the hell does this have to do with me? And he says, shut up. The second speaker. Oh, a most poignant story. A fella had a wizard left in L.A. Handicapped from birth. He had a lovely wife and two beautiful children.
It seemed that he'd just purchased a new electric stove a month before Thanksgiving. She had Thanksgiving dinner cooking on this new electric stove. He had one of his ponies ring the front doorbell. He and two of the other fellows when she went to answer the bell took stove, dinner and all. Oh, that made me feel good. I looked at my wife and said, I never did that. I never had a stove that was worth a damn.
They passed the bath. I have nothing that remotely resembles mine. As it goes by, I go Oh, I felt bad. I said to Charlie, I must get out of here. I can't stand it. He hangs right on to me, and as Joe's gone, I can't move a muscle. The coffee's beginning to turn over inside and I'm in pain. Finally, the last speaker was Stoney. Many of you have heard Stoney years ago. Stoney with his five carat diamond ring and his diamond cigarette lighter and his big Cadillac convertible says, If you're not working, don't anybody.
I don't have a shoe on a key, and this guy's telling me don't let it bother me.
[00:30:07]
Bonnie, the meeting is over, and they tell me take a few pamphlets. I get pamphlets. Buy him the book. The book's free, and that's a lot of scratch in our family. Buy him the book and make him read it tonight. Yeah. All right. Bought him the book. Fellas, I'll see you next Sunday. Nah. I must have been the only schnook they'd had there in a month. We'll see you tomorrow night. Home we go. Knee to the rug on the floor?
No. Sit up in that chair and read that book. I don't have a shoe on a key, and this guy's telling me don't let it bother me. Buy him the book. The book's free, and that's a lot of scratch in our family. Buy him the book and make him read it tonight. Nah. All right. Bought him the book. Fellas, I'll see you next Sunday. Nah. I must have been the only schnook they'd had there in a month. We'll see you tomorrow night.
I must have been the only schnook they'd had there in a month. I was a little puerculous. Very sad beginning. Finally, somehow, ten days passed in rapid succession. I recognized food for what it is. I began to feel alive again. I was sober for the first time in my life because I had a desire for sobriety greater than any other desire I had in my whole life. Yet, meetings and more meetings and more meetings, Charlie and Joe, and I learned to stay away from the pipe and all that.
I even got another job working for this same guy again. And lo and behold, three months went by, and they gave me this little pin that I've worn from that day to day. And they said, Bill, get up and say a few words. We had about eight people in the group then, and I looked at these eight, and I said, Mom, I'm glad to be here. And I sat down. And the applause was tremendous because I was so pleased.
Ha! Never happened to me again. At six months, I had begun to speak as if in meetings. At six months, my halo was killing me. My iron and cork had smothered me. I used to look down and wonder what the hell the little people did for a living. I didn't walk in, I sweat here. You see, all that I'd accomplished in six months was to die. I was as dry as dust, and just as useless. Yes. One night, we went into the club, and Jack Sullivan said, Bill, we're short of speaker.
Will you say a few words tonight? Of course. Of course. Isn't that beautiful? The meeting started, and I didn't see Jack anymore. They called on the first speaker, and it wasn't good. They called on the second speaker, and the third speaker, and the meeting was over. Ha! How about that, huh? I brought my heart to the party, and nobody asked me to play. That taught me the most important lesson that I have ever learned in my entire life.
You know what that is? A.A. doesn't need Bill Green. But I need A.A. very desperately, very sincerely, very humbly. Not all at once, because you can't get it all. Just a little bit at a time. They told me, you've got to get out and work a little. You've got to give a little. They told me that giving was living. Living was loving. Loving God. We had an anniversary, and I forgot the cake. It didn't seem so important anymore.
I was very grateful for a year's surprise. And it seemed that when you go out and you tell the story of A.A., in the very haunt to which I had left only such a short time before,
[00:35:04]
you watch a guy come in and get big and strong. You don't have to worry about God, because he's sitting right in front of your eyes. You get a warm blow down in your belly sometimes. You try it sometimes. Wonderful experience. It seems that you get just a little sobriety. You get just a little humility. Not much, just a little. Not the humility of sackcloth and ashes, but the humility of a humble man that's glad he's alive and can say it.
You get just a little tolerance. Not too much, but just enough to sit and listen to the other guy. Somewhere along the line, you stop and wonder if you've forgotten how to pray. I divorced myself from the Church when I was 21. I thought about it. I spoke to Fr. John McNulty about it now that Montaigne is in the hall. Don't worry, Bill. You'll develop an awareness of God. How? Why? I don't know. One morning I awoke.
We had a basement apartment, and it faced right on the sidewalk. And outside of our bedroom window, there was a little bush about so high. This particular morning, there was a little city sparrow taking a bath on this little bush. The weight of this tiny creature's body caused the branch to rise and fall. Isn't that a wonderful thing to see? An awareness of God. You hear it? You're aware of the sunset.
You're aware of the blades of grass. You're aware of food, cooking, and so forth. Odors come easily to your mind. You delight in walking down the street, and you see someone you know. The first thing that enters your mind is, What is there good I know about that guy? You find that big people discuss ideas. Average people discuss things. And little people, they just talk about people. And you realize that if you put this all together, you get a little humility, a little calm, a little honesty, a little sincerity, you get a little prayer, you get a lot of AA.
Thanks very much.