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Source: Dale W – Youngstown AA – Hubbard, OH. – 1979 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: dale-w-youngstown-aa-hubbard-oh-1979-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:50:03
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Fulton Road Group in Canton. Dale, it's all yours. Thank you, Matt. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. As Matt told you, my name is Dale W., and I am an alcoholic. Really, I am a member of the Fulton Drive Group, but my home group is Lewisville. I attended my first meeting there. Now, I'm here tonight primarily for three reasons. First of all, Betty asked me, and I'm sorry that Betty wasn't able to be with us tonight.
I hope she gets well soon. Second, I drank too much. And third, and most important to me, I don't want to drink anymore. This morning, I had a choice. I could take that drink or leave it alone. It wasn't too long ago I didn't have this choice. I can still remember how miserable and sick I was those mornings, too. But it was through your love and your strength, one day at a time, I've been able to make it.
For those of you who care to, please join me in a serenity prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen. Well, it's nice to be asked back. I led this meeting some years back when you were down in the other hall. And for those of you that have good memories, my story hasn't changed much. But the only thing I can say that has changed, I put on a few pounds and I'm sleeping with a grandma.
And anybody that hasn't seen her picture, she's here with me tonight. She wants to show us. We'll get some of the statistics out of the way. I'm starting to lie already. I'm 51 years old. Married. We have been for 29 years, same gal. Only through her. Love and her. I guess we want to say willpower that she stuck with me when all was breaking loose all over. We have two children, a son, 27, and a daughter, 20.
As of Sunday, we have two grandchildren. And this is a big bonus. And this is a big bonus to me because a few years back, I didn't have anything. I was on my way out. But we'll get to that a little bit later. I had my last drink, as far as I know, sometime around the 12th of November in 1966. I consider November the 14th my anniversary date. I know I didn't drink that day. I was born in North Canton, Ohio, and I was raised in a small town of Sugar Creek in western Tuscarawas County.
Most people start out their lead, they come from a normal home. I can't say this because by the time I was 13 years old, I was an orphan. My dad was killed in an accident when I was 9 months old. My mother died of pneumonia when I was 13. And I tell a little story about my mother's funeral for one reason only. To show you what my attitude was long before I ever took my first drink. The night before the funeral, in those days, the funeral was held out of the home.
I came downstairs in my grandparents' home. It was a big, long living room. I came down and sat on the top step, and I could see across this living room. And I sat there and I looked at that casket, and I knew right then and there I was alone. And I sat there and I stepped that night, and I built a wall around myself. And for a 13-year-old boy, it was a pretty good wall, and it took 30 years for anything or anybody to break through this wall.
I came away from there with the attitude that everybody was out to get me. And I was going to get them first. And this is just the way I was until the day I found this program. I didn't start drinking until late in my senior year in high school. Oh, I probably had a drink someplace along the line. My stepdad had booze around the house. I probably tasted along the line. But being a cocky kid, I was one of those after mom died and you couldn't tell me anything.
I knew it all. I had trouble in school. I quit school, and then I'd go back. Had to make up. I quit my sophomore year and had to go back in the fall and take all the exams before they would let me come back to school that year. Just things like this. You tell me I couldn't do something, and stand back and give me a little room, and I'll show you I could. This was before I started drinking. Well, you add the booze to this, and you get a real problem.
Like I said, I started drinking late in my senior year. And I must have been a full-blown alcoholic from the time I took my first drink because I started drinking with both hands. I was one of these guys. I never could stand an empty glass or a full bottle. They had to go. That's the way I drank. I drank with both hands from the day I started till the day I quit. Primarily over the years, I was a beer drinker.
In the last couple years of my drinking, I graduated to the whiskey.
[00:05:02]
Then I finished off on the vodka bit because nobody could smell that. Only my wife, she could smell it on the telephone. I'd call up and say, some of you have been drinking. Well, I graduated from high school down there. Of course, this was during World War II days. I was called up for service. There was five of us from that small town. Went up for a physical. Two roughnecks got turned down. I came back home.
There wasn't too much to do in that area, and I moved to Canton. Took a job in the southwest end of Canton. Now, here I got to running with an older crowd, and I learned to drink real fast. I went through the training period. Like I said, I drank fast, and I tried to keep up with these guys. I got sick, but I kept right on practicing, just like you did when you were learning to play football or anything else.
You kept on practicing. Well, I got to the point where I could keep up with them. We'd run around all night, come home in time, change clothes in the morning, go into work. You was young, and you could do it then. Later on, this didn't work either. Well, I was staying in a boarding house. There was 21 fellas in this boarding house, and there was a fella that had a room across the hall from me, was a cousin to the gal that I married.
He introduced me to her. I don't know if she likes that cousin anymore or not, but he introduced me to her. I didn't give this gal much of a chance to learn to know me. We'd only known each other a short time. She didn't even know I drank when we got married. She sure found out in a hurry, in a hard way. I moved into the apartment before we were married, a week or two, I think it was. And when she came down to the house, she opened the refrigerator to the apartment.
She opened the refrigerator. There wasn't a thing in that refrigerator but booze. And she said, what's this all about? I said, well, we might have some company. We didn't have too much company, but the booze disappeared. There was a few words about the booze bet. She didn't want it in the house. I said, okay. So the booze stayed out. So did I. I would go to the saloons. I used to say she got married in 1945.
Because if I wanted to go bowling with the guys, I went bowling. If I wanted to go play golf, you name it, or play cards, stay out half the night or all night, I did this, this. And it was along in this period of time that I didn't remember this until I heard her make her first Al-Anon lead. We made a double lead one night here in Youngstown area. And boy, I got my eyes opened up that night. Any of you fellows that haven't tried it, try it sometime.
She started telling things that I didn't know whether they were true or not. I had no way of knowing. But this one thing I do remember faintly that she reminded me that I came home from work one night and I took her by the hand. I led her over to the couch and I set her on my lap. I said, I think maybe I made a mistake. Why don't you go home and let me think this thing over? I don't think I was ready to get married.
She thought I was kidding. Well, I guess I kept repeating this several nights in a row. And finally she got the idea that maybe I was serious. I came home from work one night and she had done just that. She had gone home, taken her things and left. I left the apartment and went back to the boarding house. I don't know how long she was gone. I don't remember anymore. But being a con artist, I talked her into coming back with the promises we all make.
You know how they work. I said, this time we'll get an unfurnished apartment. We'll buy all new furniture. Maybe things will be different. I don't know how long it was different. It wasn't too long, I'm sure, because I was off and running again. Three years after we were married, our first child was born. And I was the last boy in the family with the family name. Of course, all our children had to be boys.
As luck would have it, the first one was. And I said, I started to celebrate and I celebrated for 19 years. She raised this boy. She raised both the children, in fact. I had this poor gal on the move. She didn't know what was going on half the time. Now, already we have lived in two different places. Soon after the boy was born, I went to work for Ford Motor Company in Canton, Ohio, where I'm still employed.
And why I'm still there, I'll never know. I worked 11 to 7 shift most of the time over the years. And I went into that place night after night. I had no business in there. How I got through the gate, I'll never know. I know I couldn't do it today. They don't let them through the gate in that condition anymore. But back then, they did. And I was running an automatic machine that, in a matter of seconds, would have mangled a lot of equipment.
Somebody was looking over me, because I never had any problems along that line. Another thing, maybe my foreman had something to do with it. His golfing partner was the fellow that owned the saloon I hung out in and spent most of my money in. So maybe this had something to do with it. After the boy was, oh, I don't know, two, three years old, I talked her into selling the furniture and buying a house trailer.
[00:10:01]
We weren't in the house trailer very long. I talked her into selling the house trailer and buying a house. This is the way things were going. Well, we bought a little house in the Perry Heights area, which is between Canton and Maslin. Now, for those of you that know that district, you drive in Route 30 from Perry Heights. At that time, it was Genoa. You go through Reed Urban, all the way through Canton, through the northeast end of Canton, outside the city limit.
Oh, there's an awful lot of flashing neon signs in that area. And the fellow I was riding back and forth to work with, we were a pair. I used to ride with somebody most of the time. We were a real pair. She never knew when I was coming home. On Payday especially, she never knew. But even through the week, we would stop off. We'd hit all these places right along the way. And she wouldn't have no idea where to start looking for me if she'd have wanted me.
Well, this fellow, I should have wised up on this fellow. One day, they found him outside of his car in the parking lot. I wasn't riding with him anymore. And he'd gone into work, and he went to get out of his car, and they found him laying there. He wound up in Maslin State Hospital due to alcoholism. Now, I should have thought about something there. I thought this man died there. Here, about three, four months ago, I was called into the union office one day, and they said a friend of yours is out in the office.
He'd been in Maslin State Hospital for 14 years. And I just found out this week that he was left out that time on a trial period to see what would happen, and nobody has heard from him since then. Now, whether he's back in there again or not, I don't know. But this didn't scare me, even though I drank the same way he did. I must have just figured he couldn't take it the way it went. After we moved into this little house, our second child was born.
It was a little girl. Now, we had only two bedrooms there, and they advised me not to overbuild the house. The lot was too small to overbuild the property. So we started looking for another house. And I started talking about Louisville. My wife had no idea where Louisville was. I was talking about getting out. So one Sunday afternoon, we took a little ride. We were riding around. We'd seen this house for sale.
It was an older type home. We were both raised in this type of home, and we stopped and asked if we could see it. We fell in love with the place, and we bought it. Well, now here, things should have been real sweet. I'm about 10 minutes from the shop, 12 minutes at the most, under ordinary driving conditions. And things should have been real nice. One little problem. There were some of these flashing neon signs between the house and work.
I could get to work in 10 or 12 minutes, but sometimes it took a day or so to get home. I was one of these guys. I would stop off every morning for my two beers, you know. I never wanted one. I'd walk in there. They'd set two or three on the bar when they seen me come, because they knew if they put one there before they got to the other end of the bar, I'd be hollering at them for another one. I would get in there, and I'd start to drink those couple beers.
I would look up at that clock. Maybe it was 9.30, 10 o'clock. I'm going to catch it now. Why hurry, you know. Well, this led to problems. One day she asked me why I wasn't coming home. I said, because you're there. Well, she decided to do something about this. She got herself a job there in town, and the children were both in school by this time. And she would go to work. She was to be to work, I think, at 7.30.
And if I came straight home, we would pass halfway between the house and town. It was about 8.10 to a mile there. I would go home, and the kids would be ready to go to school. All they had to do was get on their bus. They'd had their breakfast and was ready to go. I'd watch them get on their bus. I don't think I shut the motor off, even on the car. You could bet your bottom dollar I beat that bus back into town.
I would go in there, sit in there and play cards and drink. Keep an eye on that clock, because sometimes she would go home on her lunch break and put something in the oven, set her timer for supper. I'd watch that clock, and about ten minutes before she was due to get out, I'd jump in the car, and home I'd go. Now, we only had a single driveway. I had a carport. I wouldn't put the car in the garage.
I'd leave it set under the carport. Now, the only way she could get in the house was to walk right by this car. You drive a car that hard in a day to winter, and leave it set there, sitting there popping and cracking and smelling. I used to think I was fooling her. I'd tear in the house upstairs, jump in bed, maybe I'd just take my shoes off, and cover up. If I'd hear her come up the steps, I'd pretend I was asleep.
As soon as she'd leave, I'd jump in the car and back uptown I'd go. Well, sometimes I'd get home before she got done work. A lot of times I didn't. I'd come home, maybe in time for supper, maybe not. She never knew when I was coming or anything about it. So she asked me one day why I wasn't coming home, and I said, because there's nobody here. The same way I was with her cooking. If she had steak, I wanted hamburg.
If she had hamburg, I wanted steak. I'd just give up. Well, while she was working there, I came home one day and she asked me whether I would go with her to see a psychiatrist. Whether I would go with her to see a psychiatrist, she would pay for it.
[00:15:01]
My first inclination was to go straight through the roof and blow my top. And I thought, well, maybe I'd better. There's something wrong with her. She's always bitching and griping at me. Maybe he can straighten her out. And I went to that man with this idea. I don't remember who went in first. I used to think it was her. Anyhow, when I got in there to see the man, he mentioned my drinking, and he asked me how much I drank.
We always told him, well, I have a couple beers. I think the story came out something to the fact that this wasn't the way he understood it. Right then and there, I decided, uh-oh, she's filled him up. So I climbed up right now. I wouldn't have told that guy the time of day if he'd had to catch a train. After a couple visits, I don't know whether he told her that she was wasting her money or she decided she was because we quit going to him.
Now, I have nothing against these people. They do a good job. But if you won't help them, they can't help you, believe me. It's the same way with this program. If you don't want to stop drinking, there isn't a thing in the world we can do for you. If you want to quit, this is the right place. Well, this didn't work, so we went back to our own ways again. By this time, my son was getting along into high school.
During his earlier years, I skipped over something there. I should have said that when he was about 5 or 6 years old, someplace along in there, I came home one day, and he did something I didn't like, and I scolded him. I probably bellowed at him, which I do yet. They can hear me half a mile away when I blow my top. Anyhow, the neighbors, her and a neighbor lady was talking, and they thought maybe I was a little too tough on him.
So right then and there, I said, well, if you guys want to raise him, you raise him. This is why I said she did a good job, because this is just about what happened. I washed my hands of the whole situation right then and there. During his baseball years, I coached Little League, and I worked with the Cub Scouts. I tried to keep my nose clean during this time. I would go there without anything on me, but believe me, I would make up for it as soon as the meeting was over or the practice was over.
By the time he was in high school, things weren't too good between him and I, because he would try to talk to me. I guess I wouldn't pay attention to him. There were several times when things were pretty rough. By the time I got into this program, we weren't talking to each other, and I used to say he wouldn't have anything to do with me, but I found out it was the other way around, because he would have walked to town in his best clothes if he wanted to go into town to a dance rather than ask me to take him.
This was the situation about this time. I'm happy to say this has improved over the years. We even play golf together, and my temper and that little round ball, bad enough without him. We get along real good, even on the golf course. Like I said, now I'm getting into trouble. By this time, I graduated of whiskey, and I was never one of these fancy drinkers. The only time I even drank a martini or anything like this was when I went out with a wife.
I found these places where you got to two or three of them in a little bottle at a time, you know, so I'd order that, and she couldn't grab at me for ordering too many drinks when we'd go out to eat. But I'm stopping off now, and if I'm trying to get home in time, I tear into the place. I get this one beer and maybe four or five double-headers real fast, and I go home, start a fight so I can go back out again, finish it off.
This is the way things went. When I'd get into trouble too deep, then I'd make all these promises. I'd try to be nice for a few days, and then away we'd go again. Well, someplace along this line, she woke me up one morning, and she said there was somebody downstairs who wanted to see me, and I went down there, and here's this man in a uniform. He had that little blue pack of papers. She had filed for divorce.
I didn't know until after I came in the program why I never had to appear. But when she told our little daughter at that time, she was 12 years old at that time, that she was going to divorce her daddy, she started to cry, and she says, Mommy, if we aren't here to love Daddy, he'll never quit drinking. A 12-year-old girl knew what was wrong with me, but I didn't have sense enough to know it. Well, she decided right then and there she would do what she had to do, take what she had to take to show these kids just how far I would go.
I don't know how long it was after this that I got myself into the corner that I did. I was one of these guys that when I got in trouble, I would start looking for a way out, and I really think this is why I got into the corner I did. I know I called home, and she asked me if I was coming home. She said her dad was there. Well, my old pat answer was one of two. As soon as I finished this game, or in a half hour, it was one or the other every time.
Well, some of them half hours, like I told you, took quite a while, and this was one of them days. I didn't go home that day. I don't know why. Her dad and I drank together. He never mentioned my drinking to me. All these years of my drinking, my family didn't know the problem I had, or her family didn't really know, until she filed for divorce,
[00:20:00]
and she had to tell some of them that she was doing it, and why. But she would go to family reunions or get-togethers, and she would cover for me. If I was too damn mean to go, she would make some excuse for me, and if I was sick, which most of the time I was by this time, she would tell them I was sick, or whatever it was. But she never told them it was because of my drinking. I didn't come home this day, and I didn't come home that night.
I went back into work at 11 o'clock, and when I came out the next morning, of course, I'm not going to go home and face the music cold and sober. You know this. I was a coward. I always was. And I headed for my favorite bar, and I got pretty well fortified before I went home. I went home, and all I wanted to do that morning was go to bed and get some sleep. And I would have said anything or done anything that morning, but why I said what I did, I'll never know.
I told her that I couldn't handle my booze, I was whipped, and that she should call AA. Now, why I said this, I don't know. I didn't know anything about AA. The only thing I knew about it was the jokes you heard in the shop, and believe me, the ones I heard were no reason to call AA. Well, I went to bed that day. When I got up, she said, Did you mean what you said this morning? I said, Well, I'm not too sure what I said, you know, in that morning, and I'm not going to climb out on a limb and saw it off behind me.
So I said, Well, what did I say? She said, You said to call AA. I said, Well, if I said it, go ahead and do it. She says, You want me to call him today? I got the thing, and I always thought it was on a Friday. I find out it was on a Thursday, but the weekend was coming up, and I get paid on Friday, so Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you know. I said, Oh, they probably won't be in their office anymore this week.
Just wait till Monday. Well, she did just that. She waited till Monday. Monday morning, she made a phone call. When she had filed for the divorce, her attorney had told her that if our problem at home was due to my drinking, maybe he could put her in touch with somebody that could help. So she called his attorney to find out what he had been talking about or how to get in touch, and he, in turn, called an attorney that's in the program, and he contacted my sponsor just the way they finally got in touch.
When I got up Monday evening, she told me somebody was coming to see me, and I thought, Oh, boy. Now you went and did it. But I was waiting, and there was a knock at the door, and I went to the door and answered the door, and here was Carl. I had known Carl for years. When I was coaching Little League Baseball, he was coaching hot stove teams. And when my son got old enough to play on that team, I'd go up and watch him play.
I'd seen Carl maybe for four or five years. And I just figured he'd come to see the boy about something because the boy was still playing ball for him. So we talked a little bit and passed the pleasantries, and finally Carl says, I understand you've got a little problem with your booze, do you? Well, you know, I'm not going to give him no answer either, right off. I don't know what he's talking about, but I thought, Uh-oh, this must be the guy.
I says, Well, maybe. So we talked a little bit. Finally, he asked me again, Do you have a problem with your booze? And I kind of looked toward the kitchen. Of course, the wife was in the kitchen. And I said, Well, yes, I do. So he sat there, and he talked to me a little bit, and he told me about his story. And I thought, Good God, no wonder he had to quit. Every time he drank, he got drunk, he got in jail.
He drank up a business, and his wife was going to divorce him, and all these things. Every time he got in a fight, one right after the other, I thought, No wonder he had to quit. So he talked to me for a while, and finally he asked me if I would go to Louisville with him the following night to a meeting. Well, I did, and now I've got to at least go with him. So I looked toward the kitchen. He says, Your wife can go along.
He said, My wife and I will stop by and pick you up. So I said, Okay. So before he left that night, he handed me a copy of the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous. He opened this book up to the fifth chapter, and he said, Sometime between now and tomorrow night, read this at least once. If you get a chance, read it the second time. And he left. I don't know when I read that, whether it was that same day, or the next morning, or the next night just before we went.
I don't know when it was, but I can remember I was sitting on a damn porch, and I had this book open. And see, when I was being raised by my grandparents after my mother died, I was made to go to Sunday school and church. It was the old church of the brothers, the old Dunkards. And every time that church bell rang, we were in church. Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, you name it. Well, I made up my mind way back then.
As soon as I was old enough, I wasn't going back to church, and I didn't for a long time. And when the kids were little, I tried that route to see if I could straighten out, and that didn't work. So by the time Carl handed me this book, I didn't want to hear anything about church or God or anything else, because my impression of a higher power at that time was a punishing God. My granddad, I can still remember him saying, if somebody gets struck by lightning out in the field, what did he do that God struck him down?
Well, this was my idea of a higher power. And when I started to read that fifth chapter, I think in there it mentions God once, but if that thing would have had a neon sign on it, it wouldn't have stuck out any better than it did. And I slammed that book shut, and I said, I'll be damned if they're going to make a Catholic out of me. I knew Carl was a Catholic, see.
[00:25:04]
Well, I went to the meeting the next night, and I walked in the door, and the first guy I ran into in the back of the room, he looked up. Huh, I wondered when you'd get here. Well, I knew why he belonged here, too, because every time I walked in the bar, this joker was in an argument of some kind. One thing I forgot, I was used to the other half the argument. And I went in there with the attitude that I was just going to go and get things quieted down and get out of here, you know.
Well, some guy got up front like I am here tonight, and he started telling his story, and this guy had only drank for five years, and that's about all I got out of his talk, that he drank for five years, and chased his wife around the house in the snow on her bare feet, and he bought a horse someplace and didn't know how he got it home. He was a schoolteacher, a retired schoolteacher, and I couldn't identify with him, man.
On the way home that night, I said to the wife, are you trying to tell me I'm as bad as that old joker was? And she looked at me as only a wife can, and she says, I'm afraid you are, and maybe a little worse. Well, I was. I went through my little bit. Like I told you earlier, you tell me not to do something and stand back and give me a little room. I'll show you I can do it. I told her I was going to get a colored television set one day.
She said, oh, don't get a colored television set. They're not ready yet. They're not good enough yet. All you'll do is have trouble with it. Well, I went out to get my colored set. I quit at 7 in the morning. Where do you go to get a colored television set? Off a friend. He don't open until 9 or 9.30, so you go across the street in a bar to wait for him to open up. By the time he opens up, you're well on your way.
I went over and I looked over the sets, and I bought one of them. I went home just as proud as a peacock and walked in, threw the handful of literature down. I got my colored television set. She says, what kind did you get? I said an RCA. Took up the steps. About halfway up the steps, she picked up some of this literature. She says, hey, this is admiral literature. I don't care what it is. I got an RCA.
When they delivered it, it was an admiral. And I used to say it was an alcoholic set, because when I sobered up, the set quit working. I still got it, too. I'm still having trouble with it. I got so much money into it, I can't afford to get rid of it. Well, I went to this first meeting. The next night, Carl called me up. He says, get ready. We're going so-and-so. Well, I found something out real quick.
I made the excuse, and Carl bought it. The next night, same thing. Now, I'm a lazy cuss. I still am. I don't like to work. Never did. But I even started working overtime now, so I wouldn't have to be home to answer that phone and make an excuse. I pulled every trick in the book to keep them going. Once in a while, they'd catch me, and I'd be in trouble at home again, and I'd go with them to meetings.
I'm not proud of the fact of what I did these six weeks after I was introduced to AA. But it was sometime toward the end of September of 1966 that I went to that first meeting. Now, being from Sugar Creek, those of you that know the area, it's known as Little Switzerland of Ohio, they had this Swiss Festival down there every end of September or first of October, whichever is closest to the weekend.
I hadn't missed one of them since they started, and I wasn't going to miss that one. So I had to go down there. I asked Bobbie to go down with me, and she said she would on one condition, that if I would promise to be home on Friday night when the little girl got home. She was going to a party of some kind after school, and that would give us plenty of time to get home. And I promised. We went down there. Of course, I wasn't drinking in front of her anymore.
I was sneaking my drinks by this time, hiding them. You name it, I was pulling it again, and strictly on the vodka by now, because, like I said before, she couldn't smell it, I thought. Well, we went down there. I walked in the house, and my uncle was there for my hour. I walked in the back door of my grandmother's, and there he meets me at the door with a one-handed doubleheader and the other. He hands me the doubleheader, and I said, No, thank you. I'm not drinking.
He just kind of looked at me. He's not too much older than I am, and we drank quite a bit together over the years. He just kind of looked at me. He drank the doubleheader and set the bottle down. I went through the house, said hello to everybody, and down the street I go. Well, there's two beer joints there was at that time. One on each corner, the fellow that ran the wine with his dad. Him and I graduated from high school together.
The fellow on the opposite side that had bought the hotel. Him and I, he was one of the older guys I ran around with when I first started drinking. Now, how do you go into these places, order a Coke or a Pepsi, and tell these guys you don't drink anymore? When maybe two, three weeks before this, you were down there on a Friday night, all day, Saturday, Saturday night, playing cards, getting drunk, making a damn fool of yourself.
You can tell them you don't drink anymore. Now, you know what happens. After a couple of Cokes, I'm to the beer, and that don't do it anymore. So, that afternoon, I'm up on the hill. do it anymore so that afternoon i'm up on the hill they got a place up there where they sold whiskey
[00:30:00]
that's where my wife found me about 2 33 o'clock in the afternoon now she she didn't even know where this place was and i was a little put out at my uncle for a while for him showing her where that place was he brought her up there she walked in and it wouldn't have been so bad just seeing the glass in front of me but when she walked in there was a 65 year old woman sitting on my lap and she didn't know her from Adam well her husband was sitting there beside me and her two children were there but my wife didn't know and i've known these people all my life they lived right behind my grandmothers and of course to say that i say i was in trouble would be an understatement but she asked me if i was going home now this is the way my thinking had changed from the time i took that first drink i couldn't have cared if i had a home a wife a daughter or anything else and i said no i'm not going home but i didn't use those words i don't suppose because i had a mean mouth i always did have well she asked me a second time and i said no and she went out she had tears in her eyes when she walked out my uncle says you better bring the car and come down the house at least so i took the car and went down the house she asked me again if i was going home and i said no so she took the car and left well i went out and i tied a good one on that night i was no shape the next morning my son called down and wanted to know if i'd been drinking and i said yes i had to say yes because he knew it he said you want me to come get you i said no i'll be home so i got home that next saturday night late sunday morning i got up and everybody was gone i was there by myself and the phone rang it's this guy that was sitting in the back of the room at my first meeting my sponsor had gone on a little hunting trip by this time and he wasn't home so this fellow harry was sitting that had been sitting in the back of the room called me up and says how are you doing all right just soon as he i knew it was him on the phone i knew he knew what the score was and i told him i leveled with him he says well he said i figured that when i heard you was going down there but he says what are you going to do about it he says let's go we'll pick you up tomorrow night we'll go to a meeting so they picked me up and they got me to a few meetings again i don't know how many meetings i went to in this period of time i have no idea but i never went to a meeting with booze on my breath i knew i was going to a meeting i didn't drink well this led up to the final drunk on the morning of november the 12th it was that big game between notre dame and michigan state and i was going to watch this thing and uh the wife and daughter had gone to a wedding my son and i were there alone he said pop put a pot of chili on he says that way we can just grab a bowl of chili during the game if we get hungry so i put it on and i left the house i don't know yet where i went or why i went i took the other car and i left the house i came home around noon or a little after they said i'd been drinking when i came back now i don't know to this day where i was or what i did i came in the house and i was one of these guys i got paid on friday and if i had bills to pay i had to write out the checks and get them in the mail right now or by monday i would put them bills back in the desk and use the money for me to drink on so i forgot to take these letters with me and i was going uptown to mail them and i had all intents and mail those those letters and getting right back home this is what i thought at least didn't happen that way i wound up in one of my bars i got in a card game and i can remember just like it was yesterday why this bar only had one door i'll never know no back door to it and i sit there with my back to that door that day and i was in a card game me and another guy i don't know how many guys we played cards with that day but all day long i kept looking over my shoulder i just knew that any minute my son my wife or my sponsor was going to walk through that door they'd come through the door i went through the roof well the afternoon morning evening evening started wearing the night and then i started getting mad because they didn't come nobody gives a damn anymore well to say this was a miserable day would be an understatement this is one of them days most of you've been there you couldn't get drunk you couldn't get sober the more you drank the more miserable you felt i don't know what time of the night or morning it was when i finally decided to go home and i don't know whether i went to bed that night i still don't know a lot of nights i would come home i'd get in the house i'd turn the television set on lay on the floor i'd wake up there the next morning somebody come down and cover me up or something to keep me from freezing or something because uh once i was passed out i used to say i just got tired and went to sleep i never had a blackout i never passed out this is what i was doing i'd pass out on the floor and they couldn't wake me he could have tore the house down i wouldn't hurt it next morning i got up by myself again i started looking around for something to eat and all i can find is that pot of cold chili and boy i didn't need to see that that morning sometime around noon the phone rang on the other end was my sponsor carl some of you may have remembered him he had away with his voice he just drove me up a tree good morning and how are you this morning you can imagine what i told him too he said well you damn fool he says when are you gonna get some sense
[00:35:00]
he's get yourself straightened out and get back to your meetings now he didn't say i'll pick you up tomorrow night and take you to a meeting he just said get yourself straightened out and get your meetings i went to work that night and i didn't drink on the way in this was rare i worked that night and everything went wrong at the shop just like it did the last day i drank i remember i'd hurt my foot it still bothers me sometimes when it rains it reminds me what i what a fool i used to be everything went wrong and i left that shop that next morning i was going out to get drunk and that's the first time in my life i can ever remember saying this and i left the shop with this in this in mind and i jumped in that car i always parked right across the street from the shop i see all these times when when i was out drinking i didn't go home i found out after i was in the program i parked in a private lot right across the shop because like i told you i'm lazy i don't even like to walk so i would park right across there and here all these nights that i didn't go home my wife and my son would drive by the shop after 11 o'clock if they'd seen my car in a lot then they know i was where i was for another eight hours at least they thought that i did they did like i say i came out here across that street into that car first one out of the lot and i was headed for the joint i got down the first corner there's a traffic light there the first bar i got caught by a red light when i left that light i don't know what happened my wheels were cut and i went in the parking lot to the bar between the time i left that light and got to that parking lot i don't know if my higher power took over if i got some sense like my sponsor told me or if i happened to see that pink card that i had on my dash i think it was mosey otter gave me it was a black card with white lettering i don't see him anymore and i was like a dummy i left it in my last car when i traded it i missed that too soon after i got it i'm going down the garage and see if they still got it but like i said i don't know what happened i went in one end of that parking lot and came out the other i haven't had that drink or that drunk to this day now i'd like to say that everything was a bed of roses from this time on but not for me for the next eight month i might just as well have been drunk but i was as miserable as you could make them nothing suited me even the wife and the kids had scattered when i'd come home i'd bought the little girl a poodle christmas little these little toys are miniature poodles that was the only thing come close to me and i'd growl at it and it didn't have sense enough to stay away they'd just keep coming back well like i said i was miserable for this next eight months someplace along the line i heard about a conference coming up at cincinnata and i asked bobby she would go with me and i guess maybe some of the women told her try anything you know and she agreed to go and she made arrangements for the kids and so we went i don't even know if i had to borrow money to go or not i was one of these guys i owe to everybody and everything i borrowed from one insurance company or loan company to pay the other one you know how that bit went and i know we went to cincinnata and i was so miserable that i probably cussed every car on the road i still have a little problem with that i can imagine what i was like that day going to cincinnata and when i walked in that hotel in cincinnata i told the wife later on and she said she knew what i could have just as well gone in the bar and getting drunk as to go up and register for the conference this was my attitude thank god i jumped the right way because here i met a lot of wonderful people from all over and it reminded me how it showed me that i wasn't such a queer duck after all and i wasn't alone in the world anymore i wasn't the only one that had this problem they've been trying to tell me this for eight months but i couldn't see it seemed like everything fell into place in a three-day weekend for me it was good we've been going to conferences ever since i met three fellas down there that stood out particularly because all three of their names were chuck the first one was a young fellow from the cleveland area he was on a panel and he was a nervous wreck he had only been sober about a year and a half and he was a nervous wreck and he was asking questions and i was hanging on and chucked coattail and well i was keeping my mouth shut my ears open for a change and i was picking up these little things that they were telling him next morning i heard his talk and he gave about 15 minutes of his talk i couldn't wait till time came for me to chair a meeting so i get him to come down so i could hear the rest of his story because what little bit i heard of it i told my wife for god's sakes if that guy can stay sober i don't see why i can't but the problem he had the second one was from california he got up there and he told about his higher power that he was a loving god one he could talk to he called him god which i do too today they told me when i first came in the program to find a higher power that i could hang on to well i couldn't find anything so i hung on to you people here in aa for eight months i hung on when chuck started talking about his higher power that when he goes along and he has a problem he just talks it over with him right then and there
[00:40:00]
and when he prayed in the morning he said he always waited till he was on his way to work as he was going out to candy he just kind of looked up as he was driving along well dad here i am i'm reporting in for another day you take over i'll do the best i can i thought this made sense i think i could do this i went up in my room that night in cincinnata and i tried it it worked and it's still working for me if i have a problem i just ask him for a little help and then i had a little talk there while matt was introducing her going through the steps and so forth here before the meeting i don't have any words of wisdom about the program like i said he helped me with that part the third one was a fellow from the canton area now i had met chuck in the canton area before but i thought he would have stuck up so and so you know because different times i tried to talk to him and he acted like he didn't know me you know i come to find out the man had a hearing problem half the time i was trying to talk to him he didn't even know i was trying to talk to him chuck come up to me on sunday and he or saturday night at the dance and we had to start talking a little bit he says hey when we get back to canton how about going around with me a little bit he says maybe i can help you we come back and i'll have some check coattail and him and miriam showed bobby and i everything there was about this program and this was good for me now i can't dance never could i got two left feet but i would i've even tried that and really they showed us everything there was to do i found out that i didn't have to go around being an old sour puss all the rest of my life i can have a ball if i want to and i have been having a ball for almost eight years now there's a lot of people in this room here have been a lot of help to me over these years i go by that 24-hour book and that's a must with me i have one on my breakfast table and if i get up late and i miss it there's one goes in my lunch bucket i ain't about to be without it i'm like one of the fellows i heard he'd rather go to work without his pants on and his 24-hour book and this is about the way i am and some of the things that stand out for me in a 24-hour book is on january the 6th it tells me the most important decision i ever made in my life was my decision to stop drinking and the most important thing in my life is my sobriety and to me this means aa and i put aa first my wife understands this she's real active in alan on she's doing a good job she understands this that my program has to come first oh we try to talk things out and work things out today i even win an argument once in a while today i didn't win too many before because i'd get mad and stomp out on the 17th it tells me it doesn't do much good to just come to meetings and sit back in a corner someplace and wait for things to happen i got to get busy and do a little bit of this myself i got to do some work because it's going to take me a lifetime working on this to get myself back to the point where i should have been all my life i don't wear a sign on my back and run around telling everybody i'm in aa but on the other hand i'm not i don't want to be one of these guys that my higher power don't even know i'm in the program because i know there's some of them around too and it tells me that once an alcoholic always an alcoholic these are some of the things i have to remember because i have seen my sponsor go back out he went back out after i was in the program about eight nine months to qualify some more and carl hasn't made it back yet every time i get a little complacent a little cocky carl pulls another one that goes down a little farther and it shakes me back up since he's gone back out he's lost his business he's lost his home his wife his family none of them will have anything to do with him and every time he'd go just a little bit farther i can only work this program one day at a time if you're a new man here tonight stick with him because anything i've said here tonight is my opinion of the way i work the program and understand it i can only work it one day at a time you know when i get up in the morning and you get up in the morning we both have the same time we both have 24 hours today what i do with my 24 hours is up to me if i make a little bit of headway it's better than nothing at all a lot of times i don't do very good at all all i do is stay dry that day believe me i'm not sober all the time but i'm dry i know i get i get go through these periods of depression and uh oh i got little aches and pains but i found out way back the line the old-timers told me leave the drugs alone i forgot to tell you during my lead but the year before i came into the program i went to the doctor with with nerves sure i had nerves i get up i shook all over and i counted him he gave me tranquilizers now if i'd have taken him the way he told me i might have been all right but i didn't i would take three or four of these after i come home half drunk i take three or four and go to bed
[00:45:51]
Become a Doctor at Mastin State Hospital, and I started laughing, they didn't know what I laughed about. I said, I don't, they don't know how darn close they were, only about me winding up Mastin State, but not as a doctor. I, each of us knows what we can do, you know. I know what I can do in this program and what I can do with my life, and I'd be a darn fool if I tried to push myself beyond my limits.
Now, I believe in meetings. I go to a lot of meetings, I always have. When I first came in, the first year or two years, I went six and seven nights a week. I still go four nights a week, not that I have to, I don't know if I have to or not, I don't want to find out how many I need, but to me, I go because I like these meetings. I don't know which one I'd want to drop, they're all good, and I enjoy them.
I go there for the fellowship, for the friendship, and I want to be there if a guy comes in, like I did. When I walked into Hubbard the first time, I met some of the people in this room, down there, and I was invited to, I mean, I walked into Boardman, I was invited to Hubbard, and I met most of these people just through being asked to come to a different meeting. And it's been a beautiful eight years, almost eight years now.
I haven't missed a state conference since I've been in. They're the icing on the cake to me. I look forward to them each year. For those of you that don't know about it, there's a World Conference coming up in Denver next July. I had the pleasure of being in Miami in 70, and believe me, it's a real experience. I'll never forget that one. I got to see Bill Wilson, that's the only way I'd have got to see him, and it was beautiful for me to be at something like this.
And like I said, it's frosting on the cake for me. Our life revolves around AA and Al-Anon today, I realize this, my wife, like I said, my wife's active in Al-Anon, and when I have a problem nine times out of ten, she sees it before I do. She can tell when I'm going a little bit caca, long before I do, and she has her way of getting around me. She don't tell me what I'm doing wrong. She makes little suggestions or little hints or something, and finally it soaks through this thick skull of mine, and I can see it.
I have to be grateful to the old-timers in this program that were here when I walked through the doors. Where the heck would a kook like me have gone had they said they all quit going to meetings and closed the doors? I don't want to end up in Madison State, I have no doubt about it. It's been nice coming down here again tonight. I hope I didn't bore anybody, and if you didn't get anything out of it, come back next week.
I'm sure whoever's here next week will have a message for you. I want to thank Matt for chairing tonight and Betty for asking me down here, all you good people for listening to me, and I'd like to close with this little story I swiped. Most of you will know where I got it, but it tells how I feel about this program a little better than I can. It seemed like there was an ocean liner crossing the ocean, and some place along the line it ran into trouble and started to sink.
The call went out to abandon ship, and everybody headed for their lifeboats. Well, as they were lowering the lifeboats into the water, the captain was up on the bridge. He looked down, and he seen one of the boats was overloaded. He said, hey, down there, number three lifeboat, three of you men will have to jump overboard or everybody will drown. Well, there was a wait. Pretty soon a fellow got up in a boat, and he says, vive la France.
He jumped overboard. After another long wait, another fellow got up, and he says, there'll always be an England. He jumped overboard. There was a wait that seemed like an eternity, and finally a great big American got up. He was a big Texan. He said, always remember the Alamo. He picked up a Mexican and threw him overboard. Now, the moral of this story really is that if the day should ever come when AA gets a little crowded and some old timer or bleeding deacon, as some of us call them, comes up to me and says, Dale, you've been around a long time.
How about you stepping aside and making room for somebody else? All I can say is, look out, little buddy, because I ain't leaving. Thank you.