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Source: Gertrude R – Lake Boud Retreat – Reel 0805-105A (1962) – 1962-09-15.mp3 File: gertrude-r-lake-boud-retreat-reel-0805-105a-1962-1962-09-15.mp3 Duration: 00:37:06
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Open our hearts and fill them with love. Keep us from pettiness and self-seeking. Help us to know thy will for us. Open our minds and fill us with thy wisdom. Help us to know, O God, the grateful heart that we should have, knowing that thou art with us. Grant that this divine program is based on love for you, for ourselves, and for each other. Guide us and direct us. Be with each of the speakers. Be with those whose hearts are heavy. Be with those whose hearts are filled with resentment. And, dear Lord, replace each with thy wisdom, thy light, and thy love. Amen.
This is Ethel, and I'm an alcoholic. For the grace of God, and attempting to follow the twelve suggested steps of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I've maintained sobriety since May the 9th of 1951. I sure am glad to be here, and I've been having a good time. I hope everybody else has. We had such a good time last year. It wasn't quite as hot as it is this time, but after all, we don't have any control over that, so that's one of the things we've learned to accept since we've been here, the humidity and the hot weather.
Since I've come into Alcoholics Anonymous, I have found many things. First, I found my own sobriety, and that's the primary purpose of this program, is to attain sobriety and help others, sick alcoholics, to find this program. I like to think of the things that have come to me since and through my sobriety as the byproducts of my own sobriety, and those things are many, too numerous to be counted. But one of the things that means so much to me are the many friends whom I've made since I've been in AA.
I have more friends today than I ever had in my life. They're scattered throughout the world, and I'm so grateful for them. The second year I was in AA, I went to Amarillo. Well, I went the first year I was in AA. The second year I go back, and I meet a woman there who's just wonderful. I met lots of people, but this woman and I just seemed to hit it off from the very first. And we've been seeing each other off and on now for these years and have become fast friends, and she's given me a great deal, and I know that she has a great message for you, and I would like you to meet Gertrude R. from Houston.
Save it! I may be talking to an empty room, but thank you, Ethel. I'm really quite overcome. I often get this way, but I've never had as much fun as I've had since I've been here, and it brought back years of, well, it had been so far removed that I couldn't even count that far back because I'm an old woman. But this setup that, you know, we glamour gals have, I guess it's in that direction down in the dormitories, well, they brought two good things to my mind.
One was when I was in boarding school, and we really thought we were glamour girls, and the second, when I was in the booby hatch, and we looked last night pretty much like my little friends in the booby hatch. So between all the laughs and just being people, just being us, has really been the most uplifting and the most invigorating thing that I have experienced in a long, long time.
[00:05:03]
I didn't know what to talk about tonight. I never do when I come up here. But there's only one thing I know, and that's me. But there's one woman in the Bible I would love to have met. Now, I'm not a Bible student, for you preachers who are here, so don't become too upset. I'm not going to steal your thunder for tomorrow morning. But since I have stopped drinking, I have also learned to read. And one of the things that I really enjoy reading now is the Bible.
And the Old Testament intrigues me. I don't understand it, but I can read. And the one woman in the Bible I would really, as I say, would love to have known, and that is old Sister Eve, because I think she was a second Gertie R. And I, you know, these things don't come overnight. You don't identify yourself with people just all of a sudden. I'm not that smart. But she's always intrigued me. And, you know, I think she was an alcoholic. I honestly do. Because the things she did and the setup that she had coincided so much with mine. Only she had a fig leaf and I didn't.
But, no, please, be serious. I'm very serious. But here was this beautiful woman, which I'm not, but she had everything. She had a man. She had love. She had a beautiful garden. She was given everything in the world that she could want or wish for. And what happened? She wanted the one thing she didn't have, and that was one lousy stinking apple. All right, with old Gertie, I had everything that money could buy. I had everything that people would think that I should at least be the President of the United States White.
As a result, I didn't even have that lousy apple. All I had were stacks and stacks and stacks of empty whiskey bottles. Why? Because I needed something I didn't have. And that's what makes me think that old Eve is responsible in some way or other, no, I'm serious, about gradually instilling what we now have and call the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's taken a long, long time for me to be able to come up here now and laugh at the tragedy that I had caused to myself, that I had caused to people around me, to my family, to my husband, to my children.
I had nothing. But you know, with me, I had to have nothing so that I knew I could make a start. I'm not going into my drinking career because some of you women who yet aren't alcoholics might think, well, that old gal has just had too much fun. I'm going to try it, and I'm going to get in that outfit.
[00:10:07]
Well, now, we've got enough gals in there right now, so just don't come. Just check. But I do want to qualify myself to a slight degree, so that you can see I'm not completely crazy, and that this program has served a purpose for me. I was an only child, and I was born in northern Wisconsin. I had a very fine religious training, preachers, which I always abhorred, and I fought it just as soon as I could leave home and go to boarding school.
Then my religion flew out of the window. I had a fine family. I had everything that would make a so-called normal person. But I was never normal. That was the sad thing. And you know, this morning when Clarence got up here, and I love him, how he stressed and stressed on the importance of these steps and why they're so important. Had it not been for those steps, I would never have known what was wrong with me and what I could do that I could make myself a woman, a mother, and a wife.
Homer and I almost set up a Hollywood career. We were married and divorced so many times to each other that we ran out of preachers and we ran out of lawyers up in that state of Wisconsin. They were getting richer, and we were getting poorer. So finally, Homer was gentleman enough to volunteer and get in with Uncle Sam for the big service, which made my mother most happy because she knew the Japs would get him.
You see, she didn't like Homer. She thought Homer was the cause of all my drinking because I was always a nice girl. I always had such a fine background in yackety, yackety, yackety, yack. No. So all this adds up to zero. But this, the way we reach, you know, our points of destruction, you know, you non-alcoholics have an awful lot to learn. You may think you're pretty smart, but I do wish, if I can't get one other thought across to you, that if your spouse is still drinking, just please, if you're having a good time this weekend, remember, the next time you catch them drinking, don't say, oh, you're drinking again.
To me, that was the most irritating statement that could have been taught. It was just like flaunting a red flag in front of a hungry bull because I couldn't see that they could make any other statement if they had their eyes open. I wasn't only drinking, I was swimming in it, I was bathing in it, and I was just soaked in it. And I liked it that way. And I didn't want anybody to take away my fun. It was fun for a while. I don't think the two people had any more fun than old Homer and I when we first started in this drinking stuff. It was terrific because he's really a pretty good old boy.
And, you know, then it got so that we were having so much fun and it didn't need much, but that little quantity soon depleted itself that it was necessary to take more and more and more and more so that we could go and go and go and still be so funny. You know, people thought we were terribly funny. But oh, what a price Homer and I were paying. And finally, when it had reached the stage that even the people didn't think it was funny anymore, I said,
[00:15:08]
I was very sure with all this great character and all this big family background and all that crap, you know, that I would have enough guts when the time would come right out that I could just not drink. But I proved to myself they were right, I was wrong. And you know the most interesting thing, it's funny now, because an alcoholic's mind, if it could be diverted in the right channels at the right time, we could have been up to the moon years ago.
Because we're smarter than any one of these astronauts or anything that they've got out there. Houston, I was supposed to send them up there. But my mother, of course Homer was gone again, I think this was the third divorce or fourth divorce, I don't remember. But my mother had been down at the house that afternoon and she said, Gertrude, I hate to admit this to you, but you know, you're hooked on this stuff. I thought, well old gal, this is one time when I'm just going to prove to you how wrong you are.
But I didn't start proving my point while she was there. I waited until last night when I was brave. And I hadn't started my second sift. You see, I was a two-sift bourbon drinker a day. That went on for several years. So when I say I was saturated, I mean I was saturated. But it was about eight o'clock that night and I had my little supply in the little kitchen cupboard, the rocking chair and the radio and everything and I had this great burst of, oh I just knew tonight was the night that I just was going to show them that I was all through drinking.
So I ran all over this great big old house up there in northern Wisconsin and picked up all these clocks. Now why the clocks were so important, that's just my little way of doing things. And I got them all stacked up very nicely on the kitchen table and I set them all just exactly at the same time. I thought now I'm going to put them all away and I'll take one good drink and that's it. And then in the morning I'll pick up those clocks and I'll be able to tell them exactly what time I had my last drink. So that's exactly what I did.
I walked around the house and those children have never been so well covered as they were that night. And I'd think they'd get too hot and I'd go up and I'd take the covers off. And then I'd think they're too cold so I'd go back up and I'd take the covers back on. And I just roamed and roamed and roamed and I'd look out of the window and it didn't seem as though there was any light coming up. I didn't know which direction the sun was supposed to come and it had been so long since I'd seen it rise. And I thought well maybe this is going to be one of these foggy days, you know, that the sun just isn't going to shine.
Well I'd done that until I thought well by God it's got to be morning. And I was ready to fly apart. So I thought well I'll just look, just take a peek and see how long it's been. Well it was exactly 15 minutes. So don't think this stuff doesn't get you. Just stay with it long enough and you can find out. Well when I finally cracked up, as we all do, it takes some a little longer than others. I was a little thicker headed, Homer always says me being a Dutchman and a damn Yankee and a few other things, it just took a little longer for stuff to seep through.
I was never sick even though I drank all these quantities. I was just, you know, floating all the time. And finally the crack up came. And you know I didn't realize until late this afternoon that tomorrow afternoon at 5 o'clock it'll be 17 years since I've had that last drink. Now I want to show you that I didn't have a great big dent made right then. The reason I'm telling you I'm having my birthday tomorrow is that some of you people I know are feeling about this program yet the way I felt about it for years.
[00:20:25]
You see when I quit drinking in 1945, there was no AA in northern Wisconsin. And had there been, the type of person I was, I would not have identified myself with anything such as that. That much I know. For three years I was without a drink on my own. And I'd rather be dead than to put in another three years such as those. It was horrible. I went to the straitjackets. I went to the booby hats. I went to everything there was to offer. And the only thing that kept me from taking a drink was fear of another straitjacket.
I'm sure some of you people have been there. And it is something I shall never, never forget. I didn't know what to do with my time. I had spent 24 hours a day drinking. Here all of a sudden I have 24 hours a day that I'm not drinking. What am I going to do? I couldn't be with any of my friends who were drinking because they were scared to death they'd get themselves involved in more messes with me and they'd had enough of those.
The people who never drank didn't want any part of me because I had told them in no uncertain terms what I thought of them when I was drinking. My mother's friends who would pat me a little bit and say, well, Gertrude, we're happy for your mother's sake that you've seen the light. You know, that's not very helpful either for somebody who is shaking 24 hours a day. And when things would get so awful, my only source of strength would be to get that whiskey bottle out and talk to it.
And by getting that whiskey bottle out, I would dare it to make me try to pull out that cork and pour out a drink. How crazy can one get? The only thing I could do as an outlet, I used on my children. They were 8 and 9. I got into the Girl Scouts, I got into the Boy Scouts, I got into the Brownies. I didn't know whether I was a boy or a girl and it didn't make much difference. All I knew was that I was running like mad through the woods, but I wasn't drinking. And finally, in 1948, Homer called and said, I'm in Oklahoma, why don't you and the children come down and spend the summer for two weeks. We can go to the Ozarks.
Well, the children and I came down and Homer was awful drunk. And finally, when we came back from the Ozarks and landed in Ponca City, Oklahoma, he said, Gertrude, call old Cliff and tell him I'm ready for AA. Well, I didn't know who Cliff was and I sure didn't know what AA was, but if that's what he wanted, that's what he was going to ask. So I called old Cliff and I said, Cliff, you better come out and bring a lot of whatever it is that AA is because he sure needs a hell of a lot of it.
Well, that was my first meeting that night. And I thought, my goodness, here I am dry, or been without a drink for three years, and these people, some of them haven't had a drink in two years and they're just about as silly and about as nuts and are trying to follow something that's easy to follow. It's even sillier that I'm glad I have reservations to leave for Wisconsin back in the morning on that train, that I don't have to get involved in this kind of a deal.
But in January of 1949, we moved to Oklahoma and Homer hadn't had a drink. And I had never seen Homer looking so well, even when we were courting. I mean, the first courting.
[00:25:17]
And after we got all through kissing and the kids climbed all over him and everything, I said, Homer, what makes you look so good? I have never seen you looking so well. Well, he said, I've been going to AA just about every night of the week. And I said, oh no, not you. Well, he said, I think I'd do you a powerful lot of good if you'd start going. I said, Homer, that's not for me. I'm too smart. So I went up to that first meeting, climbed all those stairs, and I annoyed the people up there to death for a long, long time.
You know, first they'd listen to me, then they felt sorry for me, and then when they really completely ignored me, that was when it began to hurt. I was well into my fourth year. I knew all about this no drinking stuff. All you had to do was just not drink. Well, I thought I was crazy once from drinking. But you know, if you're an alcoholic and you hit it like I did, there's only one salvation, and that is the program. Get with it. Read it. Study it. Listen to it.
Absorb it so that it becomes such a part of you that you just feel undressed without knowing as much of these 12 steps as you can possibly swallow. I loved them because I had to fight every inch of the way from step number 1 to step number 12. I knew I had a drinking problem, but I couldn't admit to anything or anybody that I was an alcoholic. It was a dirty word as far as I was concerned. But until I had become so ill mentally, I'm this long, drawn out, call it dry drunk, ignorance, call it whatever you may, but Homer said that there was one of two things he could do with me.
I was in such a horrible condition. Either lock me up permanently in this place we have in Oklahoma, Bonita, I believe it's called, or take me down to Deep East Texas and turn me loose with Burton Crawford. Well, I didn't know, you know, which would be the lesser of the two evils, so I chose Burton Crawford. And Burton didn't impress me at all. I thought I should have been better off if I had gone to Bonita. But that Sunday afternoon, there was an open meeting in Kilgore, and Horace Forrest was the speaker.
I shall be eternally grateful to Horace Forrest. He told me of his background. He told me of his troubles. And he told me he learned how to live because he found a power greater than himself in AA. A power he could accept and a power he could call his God as he understood him. And you know, that man impressed me so tremendously. I thought, God, God is something that is not for me. Because I have ignored him, I have ridiculed him, I have shamed him. Why would he want one such as me?
But Horace gave me a hope that if I would go back to Ponca City, and if I would start with Step Number One and say, Narc was step number one and say that I was absolutely hopeless and helpless over my life
[00:30:02]
and if I would just turn a willingness over to anything other than to myself that I would get a relief of some kind. I worked, I worked and worked on this program and God just did not see fit to come to me easy. I think God as I understand him now is one of the most magnificent things that can be brought out to us and brought out so real because we feel it through this program. I still maintain that Bill and Dr. Bond looked death squarely in the face just as I and God could see that for once in their lives they were trying to do something right but they had to reach a certain point before he would give them their, his help.
I had to reach my point before my God as I understand him now would clean me out so completely that nothing of my past could ever upset me again. And the only way I could do that was by getting busy with that fourth step and learning old dirty. And when I learned what dirty was, she sure was dirty, dirty. But it was the first real knowledge that I had of myself or of something that I could work towards and get something for me.
Something wholesome, something worthwhile and something beautiful. And after I had made the effort, it wasn't suggested as Clarence said this morning, we suggest you take these things, we were told to take those things. And I still like to be told that I have to read those steps every single morning to keep in my mind that I am an alcoholic, that my disease is arrested for today, that I cannot lose sight of the fact that I am grateful not only to my God as I understand him but that I am grateful to groups of people who are going out and trying to teach and trying to keep this great thing alive and trying to keep these people who have gone on ahead, who have many, many years in this thing as Clarence has.
They still are searching because there's always something to search for when it is finer. As old Tom Schiff said last night, play it across the board or something like that. Half measures are nothing. I didn't drink in half measures, so how can I expect to be helped just haphazardly? I've got to go at this thing just as wholeheartedly every day as I did every day with my drinking. And you know this feeling that I have now of this power greater than myself, whom I choose to call my God, I feel is now respecting me as I respect him.
And many years ago when I was a child, my father told me, Gertrude, if you ever lose your self-respect, you will have lost your most priceless possessions. And now I know what he meant. The fact that I can wake up in the morning and look at myself, and it sure isn't anything pretty, but it's sober, and it's happy, and its eyes aren't, you know, just half closed. They're open. And there's a feeling of joy.
[00:35:02]
And that feeling of joy is because God sees fit to give me another chance today. If I will do certain things. And this course in self-discipline, and I call it that for me, it is the only time I have let myself be disciplined, and I am grateful that I understand discipline. I need it. I must work it on myself every day. You know, my God and I, we just kind of have these friendly little chats every morning.
And sometimes these chats aren't quite as friendly as they were the day before. But those awfully good, warm, friendly chats that we've all experienced at times, we know they're there. And we know that if we get back on the ball, and get rolling again, that we can have that wonderful radiant feeling that's just there for the asking. You know, he's such a gentleman. And I like to think, with him being such a gentleman, why can't I be just a little bit of a lady?
Thank you. Applause Isn't she wonderful? We're going to give you a seven and a half minute coffee break now. There's plenty of coffee in the back.