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Source: DICOBE-00106 – Jack B – TOP O TEXAS – 1971-01-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00106-jack-b-top-o-texas-1971-01-15.mp3 Duration: 01:03:09
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If you're going to keep that long face on, you may as well go out in the lobby or get the hell out of here in distance. But if you really want to join in and enjoy your sabbatics, take your shoes off, because we've got a hell of a lot of liberty coming along that's really good. Jack Bees. Thank you. Thank you, uh, um, Circe. Damn, his name's Circe. He's a big one. Uh, my name is Jack B., B-A-I-L-E-Y.
Not Jack Bee, that's one of the world's worst introductions that I've ever had. And if you're from the press, I'll spell it again, B-A-I. I spend a lot of money every year to get my name in the paper. Why don't you mind your own business? You can put it in. Jack W. or just Jack. I am an alcoholic. And it's an honor and a privilege and a hell of an inconvenience to be here tonight. You got to have something wrong with your head, fly 23,000 miles or whatever it is, and get pushed around at this buffet.
Frankly, I stood out in the lobby for so long I thought it was an OA meeting. But I'm here and I want to thank the committee. Oh, God. I'd like to be in on the elections. Don't leave Ralph. They have been very cordial. Ralph C. is the general chairman. I met him last night, shook his hand and said, Can I have a dollar for tipping money? And I haven't seen him since. He's a cheap… Anyway, he's a…
Now the vice chairman, he's got a neat job, the vice chairman. Tom O'N. I haven't met him yet at all. I guess he's out hustling or something. I want to talk to you a few minutes about Ray M., the speaker's chairman. This guy is a bum. And we wouldn't have had any dinner if we'd waited for him. We wouldn't even got in the damn joint if we'd waited for him. There's a peasant, one of the laymen in the organization that saved our life.
Bob B., nobody's heard from him and I want to talk to him because my check bounced for the… Bill S., publicity. The level of press radio, B-A-I-L-E-Y, fellas. Boo M. for arrangements. Now what in the hell is that? Arrange what? Oh, boo. I have yet to be greeted by Marie W. I puckered up at a lot of them and none of them was Marie. I got one old mob from New Mexico and then… Oh, she's still warm, what do I care?
Laverne B., I don't know her either. So here I am. Ray drove us in from the airport. I'm sorry you missed that. We finally found the right holiday inn in Amarillo. There's four of them, they all know old Ray. And then I met his wife, the Alamond Manning.
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And I met his mother and his son.
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And all I can say is may God be with all those wonderful people. So far, my person in Molly's, Ray was not worth sobering up, but maybe he is. Then I found out he was a former Baptist minister and that is all I needed out of him. God knows a Baptist is bad, but a Southern Baptist, they're better drunk. Anyway, so much for the committee. I would like to thank publicly, and this is a weird name, the guy that saved us, and he fed us, and he took us in out of the stinking hole and said, come in, you're welcome, no matter who you are.
I straightened that out. But to dear Bub R. Bub, will you rise please, Bub? Stand up, Bub. And I would like to place your name in nominations for next year. And I know what Ray means now when you've got all these committee people, horse race. And you've been doing this for 24 years. I am actually very honored to be here. And I can tell you the truth, the top of Texas is talked about a lot on the West Coast and lots of places.
You have a very good reputation as putting on a roundup, and a real one. I'm sorry you blew it this year, but anyway, there's always next year. Like the Los Angeles Dodgers, for God's sake, it's always next year. But I think, as I remember, after that lengthy introduction of Searcy's, I forgot what the hell I was here for. But I think it's to do… I love you, you… Are you an Al-Anon? No. Thank God.
Bless you. How many Al-Anon are in here, just for the… God, shut up, I think we're outnumbered. You Al-Anon's got it made. You work the steps and still drink. Thank you, Sam. That's old Sam, Joe. It's all right, as we say, keep coming back. Oh, my God. Well, this is great. And I wanted to talk about booze. This is my last trip to Texas. I've been down here enough. That old Searcy will tell you. I've been down here in Dallas trying to sober up Texas.
There's a winner. Clearwater, where they have snakes in the lobby every year. You know about that. And I've done the best I could to keep out of Tyler, Texas. So far, I've been lucky. And here I am here, been in El Paso. And this is the last time, so I'm going to go as slow as possible. And I want you to listen because I'm never coming back again. And the way it's going, nobody's going to ask me. Well, I would seriously like to say on behalf of the visitors that we have here and the outsiders and the shoppers, I know we got some of them.
I smelled them. But in all seriousness, whatever I say or how I look when I say it or what I do when I say it, you may be sure I am in no way making light of Alcoholics Anonymous, the disease of alcoholism, in any way. Because in my particular case, it was a matter of life or death. And in your particular case, it was a matter of life and death. But I cannot approach my membership in AA with a sad, tragic feeling.
I'm so damn happy that I was a drunk. And I am so proud to be a member of an organization like Alcoholics Anonymous that I have to be happy about it. All the sadness, all the tragedy, all the horror, all the stuff.
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Close there, huh? I'm just testing you. You are evil, thank God. We'll go. You better. You leave your shirt up there. Just remember, you're safe in those hot pants when my pilot light is out. All right. Where was I? We may start to mingle a little late. But I am seriously very proud of the fact that I am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I have chosen for my subject on this sermon tonight, What I Like About AA.
That is a neat title. What I Like About AA. Now, I could give them a whole damn sermon in one word and sit down and we could get the bingo cards out and have at it. Because what I like about AA, actually, in all truth, is everything. But everybody's here. You've got to digest whatever that was we had for dinner. And so we might as well visit a while, right? I really do. Now, I was like every other drunk when I was first told, then threatened, about the organization of AA.
I thought, oh my God, that's all I need to join one more thing. Contrary to most drunks, I was a joiner. I thought I belonged to everything that they let me in, which was two things. The Rotary Club and the Masons. And I got out of the Masons, because I swear to God, a couple of those fellows reached up under my apron. You Catholics laugh. I'll get to you later. I also belonged to the Klan. Oh God, that's no joke in the South.
I'm not kidding. I don't. No sheep. For the Klan. Anyway, I was so tickled to death when I found out that Alcoholics Anonymous was not started by a bunch of social workers. Now, they still set me off. God damn, you know, they got those degrees from Yale and Princeton and all that. That is not how AA was started. You know that. And that's the first thing I liked about Alcoholics Anonymous. It was started by a guy that was in the stock market.
He lost his seat. A debarred doctor and a crooked nun. And that's a hell of an organization to start. The guy got thrown off the stock exchange for being stoned. The doctor couldn't get in his own hospital. And his darling crooked nun, she was sneaking drunks in the side door and said, Oh yes, doctor, they got bronchitis. I love her. That's the three nations. But I took great hope when I heard that.
That it was started by a bunch of drunks. And they were real losers because they couldn't keep whatever they were doing. So I figured already I don't have to beat the president out. He can't drink either. And I thought that was nice. And I was awful worried. And awful sick. Or I never would have gotten in the damn thing in the first place. Would we? Don't sit there and look holey or rotten drunken.
It's funny. You stand up here and you talk. And you say something about, you know, yourself as a drunk. And these old actors have been on over, you know, quite a while. They get that holey look and go. And they were members before Bill Wilson started it. Then I was awful glad when I found out that I wasn't anything that these people were calling me. You know, like weak-willed. Well, I don't dare use a lot of these things because it's going on them cassettes.
Who gets the money, Ray, for all the records you sell? I get a cut. Leave that on the record. In case you missed it. So I was called an awful lot of things, weren't we? And my idea of a weak-willed wasn't anything
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like they had in mind when they called me weak-willed. I thought that was what I did every afternoon. I'd sit there with some old broad that was still warm in the bar, and I'd fall off the stool, and she wouldn't. And look down and say, what's the matter, don't touch it, will you? I thought that was weak-willed. It was embarrassing, and it happened a lot. I don't know when women get out and drink me. I kept trying. Anyway, I found out that alcoholism is kind of the thing to have now, isn't it? We're kind of in. Yeah. Well, we've replaced cholesterol. Huh? With the United States government, whatever the hell that is. They're worried about alcoholism now. They're passing laws. They get 350 million dollars every old day. He got the President drunk on New Year's Eve, and he signed the bill there. Harold Hughes ended up with 350 million dollars. He don't know what the hell to do with it, but he got it from the federal government, and we shouldn't laugh too much because we have to pay for that. They've got the Alcoholics Foundation now. As they look down their nose and say there is something we should be doing about them, and while they're saying that, he's doing it. I got something that I want to pass on, and you're going to feel better, and every drunk in this audience is going to sleep better tonight because of what I'm going to tell you right now. The Alcoholics Foundation has taken 16,000 dollars.
That's pretty good, right? 16,000 dollars, and they have found out, thank God for us, that rats get drunker on bourbon than they do on scotch. Now, that's got to make you feel better, right? Well, that's a wonderful thing they're doing. Billy's got a drying out house here. They're drying out houses all over the country, trying to get four dollars out of them for some new shingles. They'll tell you about the rats. Yale Clinic, ivy-colored, old Eli Yale back in the East some place. They had I don't know how many alcoholics, they worked on them for five years in an awful lot of money, and they worked on them for five years, and at the end of five years, they came up with this wonderful thing. Alcoholism is a disease caused by drinking, and then they came up further with the cure. The only way to cure this vicious disease is to stop drinking. It took them five years, several million dollars to find that out, and it'd take us a half a pint, an old book, and about two hours as a man or a woman's time. So I'm proud to be in an organization that does something besides investigate rats and get people in there on high-class booze for five years and say, well, it didn't work, goodbye. If there is anything wrong with Alcoholics Anonymous, that's, it's too simple. Because we alcoholics have the big super brain, and we want to know why. And that kept us drunk for a long time, didn't it? Trying to find out why. But anyway, instead of being all of these things, I found out I wasn't any of them. But what really was wrong with me, I was sick. Sicker than hell. Most of the time, I was even sicker than they said I was. But what a revelation to find out I wasn't. And if you're new on the program, and you've only had a few days or a few hours or a few weeks, and your old lady or your old man comes at you and says, you know what you just did? Say, stop! I'm sick! And that'll work for about eight minutes. But will you please realize what a wonderful thing it is. We're sitting here
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laughing. Because we're sick. And it's a hell of a thing, because we are. Now, for the visitors and all of you, this is not AA material at all. The AMA, oh my God, the American Medical Abomination, have devised that alcoholics are sick. It's a disease. Now, there's cancer, there's heart, and by God, there's us. We are as sick as you can get and live. And if you just stop to think of it, you've got the damn near diet to get into AA, right? You've got to have our disease and have it good, or keep the hell out of here for another two years. Now, Jenny and Don and Gene, anybody'll tell you, in show business, top billing is the best. Second billing is good, but third billing is better than no billing at all, and we got third billing in the world of sickness. So don't hang your head that you're an alcoholic. Strut around and say, my God, Judah Heupertner died, but I didn't. And I was glad when I first got in to find out if I had to catch something, I had to catch that and got something pretty good, right? But that's the truth. That's why I'm mighty glad there's AA. That's the place for us sick folk to go. You never heard of Hearts Anonymous? They couldn't have a bingo game and a dance and get excited and lose half the members. You never heard of a cop going up to anybody on the street and saying he got diabetes, right? From down at the diabetes tank. But here we are, us poorest, suffering people near death's door, and we got the only disease known to the mankind that carries with it a jail sentence for Christ's sake. And there's no pills for it, because we'd have had them if they worked. There's no operation for it, or we'd have had it if it worked. The only reason we're not dead is that we proved, finally, conclusively to ourselves that there wasn't an easier or better way. As a matter of fact, there was no way but here. Now, when it first started, Bill Wilson went to Dr. Silkworth, and he said, Doc, I don't know what the hell's going on here, but for six weeks now I've been talking to these drunks, and I don't think I've cured any of them, but I haven't wanted to drink myself. And Dr. Silkworth, thank goodness, said, well, I'll be damned. And that's the medical side of alcoholic phenomena. So I figure we're pretty lucky, right? And thank God he wasn't an investigator that didn't have a laboratory. And thank God for a man like Dr. Silkworth, and Bill Wilson, and Bob, and dear Sister Ignatius. Now, I think I've covered enough of the medical area, right? Is that clear now, so far? Yes, I've gone as slow as I can for this rotten kindergarten teacher. My God, this is, oh, boy. Anyway, that's that. Now, we will jump lightly and quickly to another department of our ailment, which is the mental area. We'll not be here long, frankly. We got third billing in the sickness department. We're better off in the cuckoo department. We're number two. We tried harder. And in the insane department, number one is a very violent social disease, beginning with S. I've often felt if people were sober, they wouldn't have caught that. However, we were just about on the verge, if
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not all the way, cracked when we got here. Number two. Now, that's also from the outside world. So we were almost dead, almost crazy. And I'm not too sure that some of us weren't crazy. But that's pretty close, right? That is a human life I'm talking about. A human mind I'm talking about. And the only reason I'm talking this way is to scare the hell out of the newcomers. But it's all true. Now, at meetings, at 12-step calls, at discussion groups, in the grapevines, in the papers, you're going to hear all the time, you have to go to the end of the road. You have to be down. You have to reach bottom. Right? It can be in all departments or in just one department. But you have to be off base. You actually have to be no good. Because if you're any good to yourself, you're no good to us. So that's why I'm proud to become a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and stay in here. You have to be almost dead, almost crazy, and no damn good to get in the thing. And they go around, these old-timers, the deacons and the glee-goo-glee-goos, and they say, Well, do you know the percentage of the arrest of alcoholism? And they say, I don't know what the hell it is.
Fifty percent of the people come in and get it, right like that. Twenty-five come in and get it, whoops, go back. They never know what happens to the other twenty-five. Seventy-five percent arresting of alcoholism. Well, what the hell are you talking about? You're either arrested or they're dead. It's got nothing to do with AA, has it? That's the catch. Of the third-worst disease known to the medical profession, the second-worst insane cause, and it can only be diagnosed by the patient. So you've got to sit down on your fiditties tonight and think how lucky you are that you diagnosed it correctly. And a lot of them go out and try it again. And if you're new, you don't have to do that.
The brothers and sisters will do it for you. There are people, Cersei and I were talking, that have had seventeen years of AA sobriety. By God, they're outstoned and on balloon rides. And they're worse now than they were seventeen years ago. And when you hear at meetings and when you hear it read that alcoholism is cunning, baffling, and powerful, and a progressive disease, don't argue. Believe it. Because with total sobriety, in seventeen years, this one guy we know is worse now than he was seventeen years ago when he got in. So who needs it? The thing that we got over animals, barely, is that we can guide our thoughts a little. And you cannot possibly think two thoughts at one time. So if you've got a rotten thought, out. Get a good one in quick. And the good thing is the good life in alcoholic shenanigans. For you new people and you visitors, they don't even tell you in AA meetings to stop drinking. But for the rest of your life in these meetings, they'll tell you to not start. Hopefully, you've all stopped while you came in tonight. Unless you're sucking on a little vodka there under the napkin. You've already stopped. But for God's sake, don't start. Now that is about the only cardinal rule we have, isn't it?
The first drink is the one that does it. And that is so simple. Have you ever heard people come back from a slip, and they always, forever, say the one phrase, I don't know what happened. What happened is they took a drink. You can think of four thousand reasons after you've sobered up. Think of 4,000 reasons after you sobered up. But the only reason anybody ever gets drunk is if they drink.
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Now that's about as profound as I hope I'll get tonight. But the hell of it is, it's true. It's a simple, simple little fact. That's clear. Now, I'm not going to tell you a lot of my story, hardly any of it. As a matter of fact, I don't think I will, because the good stuff I don't remember. And I've been sober a long time, and the reports are still coming in. And some of the things I did and I remember are none of your business, but I am one.
And I thought, you're rotten and evil and I love you. That was a boy that was laughing. Anyway, because it's a thing in Texas, we don't do it out home, I would be glad to break my anonymity about my length of sobriety, because everybody else does it. And with any luck at all, and no help from any of you, I'm leaving tomorrow, I will have had 23 years of happy, grateful sobriety on October the 8th of this month.
Thank you for the applause. I did it all myself. And I damn near didn't make it. I got here just in time. I remember one time when it all sort of started. I knew I was going crazy, and I was right. And I knew that I wasn't physically what I was, and I was right. And I was getting cracked during the go. And you see, in your profession, you can say I did not do that at work yesterday. Charlie did it, or Ruth did it.
In the profession I was in at the time, I would say I did not say that, and they'd say, listen to the record. And I had said it. And I was about to drink and talk myself out of a career, so I decided to go around in a locked car for two or three days and plan the world's largest liquor store, because if I was going to drink myself out, and I knew I was, I was going to get everybody drunk and become very wealthy selling booze.
I was going to use my big brain. But there was a clean old man that worked on the show, Queen for a Day, in case a lot of you are… And I was not the first queen, is that clear? He's in Omaha. Drunk. This clean old man worked on the show, and he went by one of the tables at the Moulin Rouge one morning, and I was having a little problem getting a shot of booze up my head, let alone get it down. And as he walked by the table, he looked down, and he said, you only going to have the one drink this morning?
I didn't tell him I had eight ounces to get there, for God's sake. I was around the clocker. And I said, well, it's none of your business, and I'm sure I took a B1 last night, and it upset me this morning, or some clever thing like that. And he said, if you ever want to do anything about your drinking, and the day is pretty near here that you'd better, you call me. I had five years of sobriety, took a bottle of beer, and I was drunk for five years, and now I know there's a way out, if you ever want it.
Well, you can be damn sure he was fired before the sun set that day, right? Yes. No one talked to the great man that way and stayed on working. So he got rid of him, but you know what he did, and I hope you all realize how many seeds you plant by walking around sober. But he planted the seeds, which later, thank God, took root and grew. So one Sunday morning I decided, no one in the house but myself, I decided to see how long I could go in the morning without a drink.
That's highly unsuccessful. And to prove the insanity of a drunk, there was nobody there, and there was enough liquor in there to start a liquor locker. There's no problem there. But something here just said, why don't you see how long you can go without a drink this morning? And I got the, just a terrible morning.
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I never had the shakes in the morning. I had the leaves. Some of you still have. And I was leaping around there like a goddamn nut. And I said to myself, I knew I drank that coffee too fast, my God. Right? Inhale too deep. Right? I said, I'm going out in the porch, said to myself. I was doing a lot of talking in those days. Going out in the porch to get some air. I went out in the porch, put my arm around the post, and that fresh air damn near didn't do me any good.
And I went right back in. And I found out after I'd been sober for about six weeks, we don't have a post on that porch. And as the band came to one shot, I was naked. We lost a lot of neighbors. I thought it was from the noise. They saw me there, laughed until I stood up. Anyway, I was there. Well, I got pretty scared. And I got pretty worried. And thank God the seed that had been planted came to life.
And so I called the clean old man. And I said, I am near death's door at this moment. I am sick. I am scared. And you said to call. And I'm calling, and I need some help. And he said, do you admit you're an alcoholic? And I said, yes, I do. And he said, well, thank God you know it now. Everybody else in town knew it, so it makes it unanimous. And I said, well, I'm not here to just visit on the phone, for God's sake.
I'm scared to death. And I was. And I knew I was going to die. And I said, what in the name of God can I do? And he said, go out in the kitchen and take a drink. Now, that's the first time I really liked AA. But I thought, I'll take another swing at it. And I said, don't get too cute with me. I'm dying. I'm scared. He said, go take a drink. My God, your head's rattling so I can't hear what you're saying on the phone.
So I did, like every alcoholic would do. He told me to. So I went out in the kitchen and I took a drink. For you people listening to the recording, I'm holding up two fingers. Funerals, right? The truth. So then I got to walking around and the birds weren't screeching. I was singing. Awful glare was the sun and things weren't so bad there. I had, you know, a couple of belts in me and stayed there. And I thought, as all alcoholics should think, well, now I was especially sick this morning.
This was a terrible, terrible morning. I have done a grand thing and called him. And I'd better go. And he said to take one, so I'll go take another. And I went out and took a couple more. And by the time they hit bottom and my heart started and the blood circulated, he rang the doorbell. And so I opened the door and said, Come on in, glad to see you. Come on in and tell me what you got on your mind.
Well, thank God I picked the wrong Catholic for that. And he gave me the bowl of blows and he said, Remember one thing, sir. You need us, but we don't need you. Now that hurt. So I cooled it a little and he came in and we sat and visited. And he kept talking about himself. He didn't ask me about myself. He kept telling me what helped him. I'd hear the back doorbell ring. I'd go and answer the back door and there's nobody there.
Then I'd run upstairs to answer the phone and there's nobody on the phone. There's no phone up there. And about the fifth trip out of the room he said, Hey, Dad, why don't you bring the bottle in here? And I said, Who, me? And by God, he told me six places to hide it. I could have had 12 drinks instead of those rotten five ones while I was talking to him. And instead of resenting him, I loved it. And I said, Oh, you hid them there.
Oh, geez, that's nice, yeah. And all that. That's what I learned in It Takes a Thief to Catch a Thief. A doctor six months before had said, If you don't quit your drinking, you're going to die within the year.
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Well, I went down to have my own wake, for God's sake. I'm a Methodist and I had my own Protestant wake over that. I'm going to die, we think, waiting for ships that never come in. And we'll be thinking, now's the hour we must say goodbye. Dr. Stacy, I had my own wake. But a drunk said, Bring it in here. Here's what I used to do. And we started to talk. And he said, Why don't you try one of the meetings?
Who the hell needs you? I had one ace in the hole and I played it. And I said, And I bet a lot of you felt this way, I'm afraid to quit drinking because I know if I quit drinking, I'll die. And he said, Nobody ever heard of anyone dying because they did not drink. So I said, God, I'll go to a meeting, but I'm not going to go down and use my own name. So he said, Fine. Oh, mighty one, what name would you like?
Well, you know how we are, right? Oh, God, I worked all day for ten minutes. That's a unique thing to do. Changed my name. So I came up with, I don't know what the hell for, but I came up with the name Jim Bartell for no reason. Then he said, We'll go to a meeting. I said, All right. But by God, on the way over, I made him practice introducing me as Jim Bartell. Well, there's only two of us in the car.
So the AA member had to be the steering wheel, right? There's nothing left. So this poor guy, putting up with this flannel mouth all the way over, he said, Jim B., this is Roy F. And all the way over, he introduced me as the steering wheel. I think toward the end, he was beginning to like it. He's sober, but he's crazy. So we got over to the North Hollywood meeting, and they have a terrible thing there.
Just as they start the meeting, they turn the lights out. So just as we got in, they started the meeting, and the lights went out, and nobody asked me who I was at all. I didn't get to tell them I was old Jim Bartell. I don't remember too much about the first meeting, except the man was speaking. He was from San Francisco, and as a boy, he never had any tennis shoes. And I felt sorry for him. And I stood up in the meeting and was going to give him the tennis shoes because I'm the giver of all good gifts.
And I got such a karate punch in the belly, you never heard of it. And by the time I got my breath back, the damn meeting was over. And he got about as far as the, uh, in the amen of the Lord's Prayer, and my sponsor, the clean old man, had me out in the bushes again. And I didn't get to tell anybody who the hell I was. So, we decided that I'd better go to a sanitarium, that I wasn't able to take care of myself in lots of departments.
So I called a big meeting on the show and said, I have a terrible disease. I didn't know it then, but I have. I know what they thought I had, but I haven't. They're dirty. Anyway, and I said, I'll be gone. It was a private hospital, and don't try to call me because we don't want it to hit the press. Oh, Jesus. I went out full of humility. And nobody missed me was one of the things. But I went to the sanitarium.
I think I'm the only member of AA, or any drunk, that went to the sanitarium on Monday, picked up his room for the following, picked out his room for the following Friday and showed up. Unfortunately for the man that ran it, I got there. And the clean old man rolled me down. I had to go down, we had to go down Hollywood Boulevard, stoned out of my mind. And we're going down Hollywood Boulevard. And you may have noticed, or you will later, that I have kind of a loud voice.
And I rolled the window of the car down. And we're going down Hollywood Boulevard. I kept yelling, I'm Jack Perry, I'm an alcoholic, going to a sanitarium. The only time I could be used, Jim Martell was then. And I blew it. So I got in the sanitarium. Oddly enough, would you have, and I named, I'm sure, a very charming thing. And I named, I'm sure, a very charming thing, and he brought it in. Now, I used to cry a lot when I was drunk.
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I'd hissed about anything. Cried a lot. I don't cry as much now. I'm slobber yet, but I don't cry. Still don't have all the control. But when he brought it in, I looked over to clean old man and I started to cry. God knows why, but I cried at him. And I said, look at there. There's the only man that stuck to me in my time of need. Oh, Jesus. Can you hear this? I probably hummed some of it. And this dear soul has done his best to save my life.
Must have been 20 minutes speech I made. And then I ended by saying, I'd like to have this dear soul be the first man in all this world to see me turn down my first drink. Take it away. He did. And with that, the dearest old friend I ever had in all the world in my time of trial got the hell out the back door and never saw him again. And as I was watching him go out into the sunlight, I turned around.
There's a guy looked like he's nine feet tall. He had a white coat on. And he reached out that sanitarium arm at me. Maybe some of you have seen it. And they have a weird look down that arm. And the guy said, we're going upstairs, aren't we? I looked up and said, well, by God, I believe we are. So we got up in my room away from home. And the big guy looked down at me and said, take off all your clothes.
I said, oh my God, here we go again. He's got that Queen for a Day thing mixed up, too. But he was pretty big. And I was pretty thin. So I took off my damn clothes. And then he brought me some paper shoes. He didn't want me to hurt myself. It was nice. I liked him. The paper shoes were only the half shoes. You put your foot in it and there's no back. And they didn't fit me at all. It was a rotten fit.
And they turned up at the end like Emmett Kelly's shoes. They'd turn up at the end. Terrible fit. Looked like hell on me. And then he brought over one of the damn bed jackets. And he put it on me backwards. I had put myself in the bed jacket and it was split in the back. And they had ties in the back. And he didn't tie them. And that didn't fit. It didn't like the shoes. I was just a mess there. I felt a little foolish.
And there was a mirror over there. And I kind of sidled over in those paper shoes and this open bed jacket. And you heard about reaching your bottom. My God, I saw mine. And I don't ever want to go through that again. Well, when I turned around for that shot, the keeper was gone. He must have seen it too. Because he left. And I thought, by God, he's not going to do that to me. I'm paying a big price here for this room.
So I went over to the door. And there was no knob on my side of the door. Yeah. I don't have to do that anymore. I don't have to worry about ever going through that again. And that's kind of a happy thought, isn't it? I had it. And I'm glad that the Alcoholics Anonymous program makes it possible for me to go through life one day at a time, go to a bunch of meetings, go to wonderful conferences, attend dinners of this kind, and you don't have to make an H.A. of yourself ever again because of booze.
Cersei mentions it's a spiritual program.
[00:50:00]
Now this is the part where the newcomers and the other people start coughing. Here it comes, dearly beloved. You got the Baptist minister and God knows what Cersei is. I'm a Methodist. Good luck. One night I get through speaking at a meeting and a man came up to me and he said, I heard you talk too long again and you repeat yourself a lot. And I said, I have a question. And I loved him. I said, by God, any problem you got, sir, you've come to the source.
I'm one of the few holy men left. And just give me your problems and I'll solve them right here, all free. It's 50 cents if you go to Confession. It's Catholic, you know, I do it free. Maybe there's inflation, I don't know. Anyway, he said, you mentioned during your sermon tonight the spiritual side of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said, I certainly did. And he looked me in the eye and he said, what other side is there?
And that was a number of years ago and I've never been able to answer that. Now, if you're fairly new, don't get goosy about the spiritual thing. That has nothing to do with the religion, as we understand religion. I learned about a God that I can understand in Alcoholics Anonymous. I must quickly tell you that I was born in Iowa. Not Tulsa. Iowa. My mother was the world's greatest Methodist, bar none.
I'm not making fun of her. She was a saint, if there could be one, in the Methodist Church, right, Ray? She was a very devout Methodist. Her maiden name, which I hope you will keep as anonymous as possible, is John Wesley. Oh my God, you can't get any more Methodist than that. And my mother, at her knee and in her way, as she understood him, taught me and scared me about God. I learned about the fear of God.
Thou shalt not, or he'll come down and get you. Now what you're doing behind the man, he's walking. Had to cut that out for two or three days. I have a real problem. Every time I say that at an AA meeting, the women laugh harder than the men. And I don't know what the hell they're laughing at. I don't know what I was doing besides smoking. Would you care to stay after the service and explain it, you evil…
I have a statistic I damn near forgot to give you about women alcoholics. This is true. This is from the outside, fellas. That there is one alcoholic woman to every five alcoholic men. But listen to this, guys. That one alcoholic woman is worse than all five of the men. Isn't that great? That's a hell of a lot better than that rat joke. Which wasn't a joke. Seriously, my mother, in her way, taught me the fear of God, and I was scared to death of it until I got into AA.
So I came from a very religious family. Now people say my father was a drunkard and my mother was a drunkard and my grandfather died of booze. So I, too, am an alcoholic. Well, let me explain a little bit about the heredity of alcoholism in my opinion. Forget it. My mother was not the president of this little town in Hampton, Iowa. Not the county seat, but my mother was state president of the WCTU.
And I didn't inherit boozing from my mother. My dad took one drink for a boil once and was sick for two days. So you don't inherit it. People in AA must learn and do learn to use God as a friend. As a haven, as hope. Not a movie man and not a spook. I mentioned that you can only think one thought at once. Well, it's pretty easy to think good and leave an O out and you've got God.
[00:55:00]
I know a gal that stayed sober for about a year or so. She loved her dog. And she said, dog spelled backwards is God. Who cares how? It's a matter that you do. And you've got to be comfortable. And if you're not comfortable, get a new sponsor. Talk to somebody. Ask a minister. Anything. Because it's your very life. We laughed about damn near dying, we did. Reached the bottom. We're wired. And now it's got to be good or we're not doing it right.
AA doesn't work for you. You work AA. And God, as I understand Him, is my buddy. And He's got a hell of a sense of humor. And He loves to laugh too. And God likes to be thanked. Not just asked. The most unused word in the English language is the word thanks. And when an AA at the end of another 24 hours goes to bed and says thanks for sobriety, He said it all. His life, his health, his mental being.
The whole thing in one word. Thank you. And in the morning, you ask for help. And you'll get it if you let yourself get it. You see, not only would we kill ourselves, but we kill the love and the good and everything fine that surrounds us. I saw a lady. White hair. Beautiful dignity. Charming, charming lady. L-A-D-Y. She got her first year's candle. And during the meeting, I'd seen two little girls sitting on the front row in their party dress.
With their little feet sticking out. So this lady got her candle and blew it out for the first year. And she looked down at the two little girls and said, You girls are proud of Grandma tonight, aren't you? And your mother could have been here to see this if Grandma hadn't gotten drunk and killed her. So you got to, you got to take a little inventory and think, What in the hell have I got to prove?
Because you're proving it every day you walk around sober. Because you're trying. We are not saints. Thank God for that. I got that underlined. We're not saints. And you people that are young, you healthy, rotten… You're going to live. You don't quit living because you quit drinking, you start living. And you young guys are not going to end up with those old ugly mullets you used to pick up drunk.
It's groovy, as we say. But it's just another way of living without booze, and it's a happy way if you're happy. And it isn't a fantasy of joy and good luck and great abundance. You start from the bottom, but unfortunately you have to get off your bottom. And the more you put in, the more you get out. And it isn't your drinking that's going to help, but your thinking. And all the clichés which are as true as I understand them.
Now let me quickly tell you how Alcoholics Anonymous works without booze. It has nothing to do with booze. And I would like to tell you quickly that this comes out fine and happy. It's not a tragic story. About one year ago, October, I lost my wife to death after 30 years. And just like any other drunk on booze, I almost flipped out. The first thing I did was call M.A.A., who was an attorney. And he said, You got one job. Put one foot ahead of the other. That's all.
Don't think. Don't think. I became a God-hater, a bitter, whiny, the whole alcoholic pattern. And one day, once again, that phrase… Again, that phrase that's in the Twelve Steps, my God, what an order, I can't go through with it. And I went through it step by step of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
[01:00:03]
I had become powerless, right, over the fact my wife's on it. There is reality, you have to face it. I was becoming powerless over that. Wrong. Return me to sanity, right? Take an inventory, right? Talk to somebody, get it out, right? Then the Eleventh Step, which, which I was so happy Dick mentioned so many times last night, praying only for the power of His will for me and the book to carry it on.
Knowledge. That held, the Serenity Prayer held. Everything in it helped, and I got through the Eleventh Step, all I had to do was the Twelve Step. Remember the clean old man? We had an earthquake in February. His wife had terminal cancer, and was in one of the hospitals that was demolished by the earthquake. Went over and we Twelve Stepped. And we talked, and we visited. And I eased, but never will be able to repay, what he did for me because he got me connected with AA.
But you see what a beautiful thing it is, that the program of Alka-Molish Anonymous really, and actually, and by my own proof, works, as we say, in every department of our life. And there is a good God. And I have a feeling, in my Methodist heart, that He likes AA's and the dear Alamons just a little better than He does other folks. You know, we are a living miracle, because we couldn't handle it. We got here and it's being handled, so He did it, I didn't.
We have lived our own miracle. And we're going to go to all the states where you live. We're going back to the West Coast. We'll all be a part. And I hope for the rest of your lives, and I know for your lives and mine, if we try, that's all we have to do, try to live right, that the God is understanding, and He's got a little light in the heart here, that's kind of warm and that's kind of happy. And when you get to your homes, I get to mine, I hope God will turn that light on a little warmer, a little brighter, than you keep it lit.
Thank you. Thank you.