Audio
Transcript
Source: DICOBE-00244 – Bob C – CORNHUSKER RNDP I – 1978-08-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00244-bob-c-cornhusker-rndp-i-1978-08-15.mp3 Duration: 01:01:09
============================================================
This is my grandson. We've come a long way, baby. My name's Bob C. and I'm an alcoholic, and of course I'm glad to be here, that goes without saying. Oh God, he's cutting into my time again. Never saw an AA meeting where the guy says we just ran out of power, but that's what he said. Man, we're in trouble if that happens. Sure I am. I'm delighted to be here. I just lost my sponsor last month, he died.
They died. I never needed a meeting so bad in my life as I did that night. I had no thoughts about drinking, don't misunderstand me. But I needed that understanding and I happened to be speaking that night in a town in Los Angeles and I was so grateful to be there when I was hurting so bad. Well, I'm not hurting now. I want to thank the committee and those people who asked me to come here. Sometimes I forget to do that, get all wound up in this AA thing and we forget these little civil amenities, but I am extremely grateful and I marvel at, you know, here I am.
Now I wish that somebody with a Polaroid camera would take a picture of me with that sign behind me and mail it to my ex-wife. She ain't going to believe it anyway, but I don't know, I loved the reading of the fifth chapter here today by Louis. Now, naturally you didn't understand a lot of what he was saying because he was reading something you never heard before. Now actually, without acting like the wise old guy, that was actually written first and appeared in the multilith copy that Bill sent out to various doctors and institutions around the country.
It was a mimeographed or multilith copy and he wanted to get their reaction to that. I didn't know they were going to read that today and I'm glad they did because it points up some very interesting things. There are some changes in AA. For example, did you notice in the twelfth step it said, as Louis was reading it, having had a spiritual experience. And if you'll recall now, it doesn't say that at all.
It says having had a spiritual awakening. In fact, it also said in a part there that when they didn't read in the old multilith, it said, as ex-alcoholics, we did so-and-so and so-and-so. And they quickly, before the book ever got into print, no, I beg your pardon, in the first edition they also say in the first edition, as ex-alcoholics, but in the very next edition it came out and says, as ex-problem drinkers.
Because we learned that once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. But that's a revealing thing about the success of Alcoholics Anonymous. If they had published that book the way it appeared in the multilith that Louis just read, the portion that Louis read from it, we wouldn't be here today. I guarantee you, I wouldn't be here today because did you notice the musts? And did you notice that they were saying, this is what you ought to do.
Here are the steps you should take, and here's what you ought to do. We have a pamphlet, by the way, in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I saw it out there. It's called A Member's Eye View of AA. And he says in that pamphlet something very apropos to our program. He says, I wonder what the history of the world would be like if the Ten Commandments had been written instead of thou shalt not, or thou shalt, instead of saying you should honor your mother and father, suppose it said we honored our mother and father.
[00:05:01]
We did not steal. I wonder what, it's what he says in that pamphlet, and I've often wondered about that too. Well, that's exactly what AA finally came around to realizing, the soft sell. You tell an alcoholic to go north, he's going to go south every time. And they wrote back to Bill and said, you know, you can't lay it on like that. You can't lay it on to him that way. The thing that makes Alcoholics Anonymous successful is that it's really one drunk talking to another, whereas in that first approach there, it was kind of the superior talking to the inferior.
Here's what you ought to do, the old Laurel and Hardy bit. Why don't you pattern your life after mine? We don't do that. Now, I'm a man who is absolutely head over heels in love with Alcoholics Anonymous. It is the most fantastic love affair of my life. And I think like all love affairs, like all marriages, they have to get better. And that's the way it is in AA. Now, that's not always the way it was, that's not always the way it was.
Who I, for example, I never thought I'd be in Omaha. You know that in all my drinking days, with the exception of the war, I never got out of Los Angeles. I never got out of Los Angeles. Once in a while I get drunk and drive to Las Vegas, but that's it. I never got, I never went anywhere. No place did I ever go. Now, here I am in Omaha. Hey, I got something I'm going to lay on you here. You got your program with you?
Any of you got your little programs? All right, get your programs out. Now, you see this little thing here that says, Cornhuskers Roundup, and the circle and the triangle, and underneath it says Omaha, Nebraska? All right, now you follow right along with me on each letter of Omaha, Nebraska. Obviously, many alcoholics have arrived. Very brilliant. Now, enjoying beautiful recovery amongst sober, kind acquaintances.
So, if you don't remember anything else that I say today, you may remember that. I got to Alcoholics Anonymous when I was 27 years old. That's the first time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. I got, there's a lot of firsts. I got a lot of one-year cakes. Now, I don't know about out here, but back down in Los Angeles, why, we have, we say, how many of those who have been sober less than 30 days, please raise their hand.
And hey, you know, it wouldn't be a bad idea here, would it? Because we do like to get to know you. And I wonder, I'm not trying to embarrass any of you or anything, but I wonder if anyone in this room who's been sober less than 30 days, would you let us know you're here? Would you show us your hand? Would you raise your hand? There's one. By God, there's two, three, four, five. Clancy has 25 a night at his meeting, new ones.
I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. But anyway, and in Los Angeles, when they do that, why, I would be in and out of AA so often, and they'd say, Lowe's been sober less than 30 days, please raise your hand. And they'd give them a hand, and finally, I'd raise my hand. They'd finally, they wouldn't even give me a hand. I'd raise my hand so many times. I was 27 years old. I went to this meeting, and it was a pretty large meeting for that year.
It was 1949. And there were a bunch of old, gray-haired, bald-headed guys there. They had false teeth.
[00:10:01]
A lot of them sat on little round, donut-shaped cushions. Talked a lot about their bottom. And then they asked me if I wanted what they had. I will admit that now I kind of think bald is beautiful. And as you see, I wear glasses, and my proctologist and I are on a first-name basis. But that first meeting was a real nightmare to me. I hardly knew what I was doing there. I really just walked up the stairs because a guy asked me to.
Now, they didn't open a meeting by saying, this is the regular alcoholics meeting of Downey, California. They didn't say anything. First thing they said, tonight is old Joe's birthday. I don't know, back here, do you have birthday cakes and sing happy birthday? Oh, good. All right, I'm sitting there in this meeting knowing that they're really going to help me because that's what the man said. And they said, tonight is old Joe's birthday.
Right away I thought, who cares? And so old Joe, or whatever his name was, who was at least six, five years old, get up and they give Joe a cake with one candle on it. I'm trying to figure that out. And then they began a terrible thing. They began to sing happy birthday. And I thought, oh my God, is this what these clowns do on a Saturday night? Who's going to really have a good time? I quit singing happy birthday when I was four years old.
Singing was horrible. Now, I'm a trained singer, so I know I sang in the choir at San Quentin, so I know good singing when I hear it. But that was horrible and it hasn't improved a bit. I hate to keep mentioning Clancy because he probably won't mention my name at all when he's talking, but I will say to his group, my God, they even sing good. They do. My God, they harmonize and they're organized and they sing right, but the rest of AA stinks when it comes to singing.
And so there I was listening to this singing and wondering what's going on here and how can this possibly help me with this gooey cake with a candle on this guy and they're all singing happy birthday. And then when they stopped singing happy birthday, they all went ape. Hooray, oh my God. So then it was his birthday, so he started to talk, and they never did say it was an AA meeting. I don't know why I was in.
And I don't know exactly what he said, but it was something like he beat up his old gray-haired grandmother and took ten bucks out of her purse to get drunk on and then they gave him a hand for that. Now I know I'm in the wrong place. There's no doubt about that. Well, it wasn't really too bad until a little gray-haired lady got up. All the gals in those days were over the hill. Excuse me, Sid. And, well, heck, when I met Sybil, that was a phenomenon, I'll tell you.
She was down at the Hohner ground leading a meeting there one night and she had a little hat on with a feather sticking out of it, and I thought she was a social worker. Or if she was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I figured she probably got drunk and burnt the toast and joined AA. What could she know about good two-fisted drinking? Well, we learned if we stick around. And this little gray-haired lady got up and started to read the fifth chapter, which just turned me off right now.
Just right now. Long before they got to the steps, because she got to the part that says, Without help, it is too much for us. There is one who has all power. That one is God, and may you find him now. And I just closed my mind, shut everything down. That was all I could stand of that. Now, the reason it affected me that way is that I was, past tense, I was an atheist. My father was, and still is, an atheist.
And my father raised me. And my father raised me as an atheist. I got a kick out of Blanche when she was talking today about Mark Twain.
[00:15:04]
I read all the works of Mark Twain by the time I was eight years old. And he has a marvelous, wonderful philosophy for someone with a halfway mature mind. But you can read this because he's a cynic, and he cuts through all the froth, and he exposes a lot of things and bursts a lot of bubbles. And I went along with all of that stuff and didn't hang on to any of his good stuff. And I agreed with him, and I agreed with my father.
So I was an atheist, so I get to AA, and the first thing they do is they hit me in the face with AA. Now my sponsor, who just passed away, his name was Bill Gartland. And one of the reasons I had this beautiful identity with him was that he said, you know, he said when he came to AA, he felt exactly the same way. Exactly the same way. He said, my God, not that. You know, he's not aware of any great wholesale recoveries down through the ages on the God routine.
He said he didn't know what they were going to do to him in AA, but that is the last thing in the world he ever expected to hear was the word God. He said, now you know, if they had said, now what we do is every time there's a full moon, we get an old dead cat and we go out here and we dance around a palm tree. He said, I wouldn't have understood why that would work, but I would have expected something like that, but God.
And I felt the same way. Exactly the same way. Now, if you're wondering and if you knew those hands that went up, what we're doing here is that we're, AA works because I tell you my story and you tell me your story. And without that, AA does not work. We have to have this identity. So we tell a little bit about ourselves. So I'll tell you just a little bit about myself. Before I got to AA. When the Marine, I resigned my commission as a major in the Marine Corps and I went back to Cornell University and I finished my master's degree and I went out to California and between Berkeley and UCLA and Caltech, I finally matriculated for my PhD and I worked on a grant from the Carnegie Institute, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation.
At that time, Dr. Hale, who was the founder of the Mount Wilson Observatory and then the founder later on of the Palomar Observatory, which we now call the Palomar Wilson Complex. At that time, he died just prior to the dedication of the big instrument out there in Palomar. And I had the good fortune of being appointed administrator pro tem of the Mount Wilson, Mount Palomar Complex. I was one of the youngest men ever admitted to the Royal Astronomical Society of London.
And then when I joined Alcoholics Anonymous, my sponsor told me I would have to quit telling those lies. But that is the way I used to be. That is what I used to be like. When I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, as my mouth was moving, I was lying. I had no trouble with my inventory once I really got the hang of it. See, I thought in an inventory I had to write down every naughty bad word I ever said and every naughty bad thing I ever did.
And I never understood the nature of my wrongs. But when I finally found out, like Tissell was saying last night, that all I had to write down was, I am a liar. Period. I am a liar. Period. I don't have to make a list of every lie I ever told. I am a thief. I don't have to make a list of every liquor story held up. I am a thief and really know what I am. Well, I'll tell you why I went to San Quentin.
The only reason I'm going to tell you why I went to San Quentin is because I know you want to know why I went to San Quentin. Even in San Quentin, we want to know why a guy went to San Quentin. We say, what are you in for? All right, so I'll tell you now. You know, I figure if you're going to go to San Quentin, you ought to go for a good reason. I sure would like to impress you with my keen alcoholic mind, which we used to talk a lot about in AA and we don't talk so much about it anymore.
We know better. What I mean by that is that there may be keen minds in Alcoholics Anonymous and there really are. But it's irrelevant. And they used to say in the early days, alcoholics are smarter. I'd agree with them. We work better. I'd agree with them. I never worked, but I knew that if I did, I could.
[00:20:00]
And we talked a lot about the keen alcoholic mind. And I got the impression that God kind of skimmed the top 10% of the cream of humanity off and made alcoholics out of us. So I was very proud to be in that group of people. And it isn't true at all. We are a cross-section of society. We are an absolute cross-section. We got dumb, fat, tall, short, smart, ignorant. We got everything that society has.
We are a cross-section. There's no special kind of person who is an alcoholic. No special kind of person at all. He has no special attributes except that allergy. And you don't have to be special to get that. Yeah, I do agree with old Chuck that says you can be just maybe too smart to sober up. Maybe just too smart to get this program, which is just darn near what happened to me. Darn near killed me.
With my high IQ and my keen alcoholic mind. Damn near killed me. But anyway, with this keen alcoholic mind, I want to tell you how I went to San Quentin. If this wasn't Alcoholics Anonymous, and I wasn't a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and we were sitting in a bar, I'd tell you that I engineered the Brinks hold-up. Because you'd be impressed. But I got to tell you the truth so I don't get drunk again.
Because if I lie to you tonight or today, then I can't come back tomorrow because you know the truth about me. And I'll cut myself off from the only help I've ever had in my life. So I got to tell you the truth. Oh, God, I wish it just sounded better than what I got to tell you. I held up the hotel that I lived in. You see, I had got out. I was in the Marines. But I went all the way through World War II and never, never got out.
I went through World War II and never, never got above the rank of private. Never. They'll make them PFCs before they get out of boot camp. But I never got out. Anyway, when the war was over, I was living in a hotel there in Los Angeles. No slopshoot, pretty nice place. You know, half between the skid row and the hotsy-totsy ones. Everything was fine. I lived there until Memorial Day of 1946, which is a red-letter day in my life.
And that night I was sitting there in the Zimba room, which is a nice little cocktail lounge off the lobby. And everything was just right. The music was right. I had that good glow. And I was so brilliant, I could tell. You know, when you get that… I was so charming. Everything was fine. All of a sudden, I really wanted drinking money. I always hear about these great flashes people get. I got this clear flash to go hold up the desk clerk.
To whom I'd been paying rent rather regularly. I didn't have a gun or anything. I put my hand in my coat pocket and I come out of the Zimba room there. And I came in here to the lobby and put a mean face on. I put my hand up here. I says, give me all your money. And he says, oh, Bob, you can't do that. I said, oh, yes, I can. So he opened the drawer and help yourself. And I went back in there into the Zimba room in there.
I ordered drinks for the house. Which I thought was the least I could do. And in seven minutes, I was on my way to San Clemente. And I hope you're impressed. It's a crazy, you're really a bunch of kooky doodles. Since when, I'm like the old guy that beat up his grandmother and took ten bucks out of her at first. Now you're giving me a hand for going to San Clemente. I don't understand that. However, it wasn't all bad up there.
I got my start in show business there. It ended there too, but… Gordon Duffy had a radio program that came out over the 11 western states. It was called San Quentin on the Air. And I got to be the radio announcer. And I'd come on and say, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is inmate number 4127. This program is emanating to you from within the walls of one of Northern California's most exclusive resorts.
San Quentin by the sea. And in the corner, I would play Time on My Hands. And it just kind of made you want to go. But it couldn't all be fun and games. And with that little rap, I was soon out of there and back on the streets again. And that's when I went to my first AA meeting.
[00:25:01]
Heard the old man talk about beating up his grandmother. And heard the lady talk about God. And I walked out of there saying, I got no problem with booze. No problem with booze. That's not a problem. Now I knew my life was unmanageable. I hadn't admitted that long before I went to San Quentin. I got no problem with booze. So as a stipulation of my parole was, don't drink. That's all. In fact, they were so happy to get rid of me.
I mean, my crime was so embarrassing to those guys up there that they didn't get me out of here. You know, I wasn't even welcome. I was a failure at being a crook in San Quentin. But the only condition of parole was that I don't drink. That's the only, I didn't go to work. That's the only condition I had. To stay free for the rest of my life. And I'm going around after my first encounter there at that AA meeting saying, booze is no problem with me.
Booze is no problem with me. So I tail it down to the nearest bar. And I'm having a good time until one day my parole officer walks in. And you understand, this is for a good reason. And you understand, this is a man saying, I have no problem with booze. It was only the most important thing in my life and I didn't know it. Because I was willing to risk my freedom for that drink that he caught me with.
And he sent me to Folsom for 15 months over something that was no problem to me at all. How blind, you know, my good friend Chuck and you know, Chuck says you can't see till you can see and you can't hear till you can hear. And I used to sit there and look at him and wonder what in the hell is he talking about? But if you're new and you wonder what's rough about AA and what's the hardest thing about AA, I maintain the hardest thing about AA is getting here.
The hardest thing about AA is getting here. The things that we go through before we finally, the light finally dawns. And if you have ever been a member of AA and enjoyed it like I finally got to be, a guy that enjoyed the meetings, my God, I was active in AA, then turn around and get drunk. Now there's the worst kind of drinking you can do in my opinion. I don't know about you, but I'm talking about me.
The worst drinking I ever experienced, the worst remorse, the worst regrets, the worst loneliness that I ever felt in my life was after being exposed to Alcoholics Anonymous. Prior to that, I didn't know any better, really. Prior to that, I couldn't blame it on anybody. Prior to that, I could really kind of get away with it, at least within my own head, because booze wasn't my problem. Once I got to AA, I knew, I knew.
And the loneliest feeling in the world would be at 8.30 at night, because that's the time our meetings start out there. 8.30 at night, I'd look at that clock and I'd know what was going on all around town and I wasn't there. I went to a meeting after I finally came back. I've been sober 15 years. I may forget to tell you that. You know, I may forget. I've been sober 15 years now. So I want that, because I may never get back to that again.
Sometimes I don't and people say, you know, when did you get sober yesterday? So anyway, I'll tell you that now. When I came back, I went to a meeting out in the Sheriff's Station, where is that? Malibu, yeah, out in Malibu. And a guy was talking and he hit me and he hit me. You know, you've got to listen in AA. I don't give a damn what they say. You've got to listen. I don't care if you don't like the speaker.
I don't care if you like the way he cuts his hair, what dress he's wearing. If you don't listen, you're going to die. Because they're going to tell you things about yourself that you don't know. For example, I am convinced that if I took a brand new person today who came in this room, who had never been to AA before, and we do it in the holding ground down there, we do that, the next day they've been there, we say, get up and tell us about yourself.
And the poor guy tries. Well, my name is like I used to. Well, my name is Bob and I'm an alcoholic and I'm glad to be here. And I sit down. But the only thing that was true is my name was Bob. But they get you up on your feet and they get you moving. Now, if we really ask a new person to tell us about himself, he can, he or she cannot do it. They think they can. The only way I found out about myself was by listening to you.
And that's a fact. Because every time I hear what we call, quote, a drunk-a-log, somebody will tell me about an experience that they had that will remind me of an experience that I had that I had totally forgotten about. Completely. So that what I used to be like is a constantly changing picture. Because more is constantly being revealed to me about myself by listening to you, things that I've buried so deeply.
Myself By Listening to You, Things That I've Buried So Deep, One Time, In This Very Same Bar I Was Talking About Over In The Zimmer Room There, Before They Finally Nailed Me, I Ran Out of Booze Again, Always That Was My Biggest Dilemma, Running Out of Money, Ran Out of Money Again, And I, So Naturally, You're Out of Money, You're Out of Booze, I Gotta Get Some More Money, So I Went Back Up to My Hotel Room, And All Alcoholics Were Consummate Actors, So I Came Down, I Had This,
[00:30:24]
Face You Could Possibly Imagine, And I Had Just Left All Smiling, I Had It All Worked Out, I Don't Know What I Was Going To Do, I Come Back, My God, Bob, What Happened, I Said, I Just Got A Telegram, My Mother Just Passed Away, Though I Know None Of You Have Never Done This, And, So, They, Oh My, I Said, Where, Where, Where Did Your Mother Live, Now My Mother Lived Exactly Three Blocks From Where I Was Telling This Story, And She Could Have Beat The Hell Out Of Me At Any Time, But, So, I Didn't Want To Know Where She Was Three, Because That Wouldn't Fit Into My Little Scheme, I Said, Now, This Is In Los Angeles, Of Course, I Said, Norfolk, Virginia, Which I Thought Was About As Far Away As We Could Get Her, And, So, I Said, Now, You Know, I Haven't Got Any Money, And I Can't Go There, But, God, I Sure Would Like To At Least Be Able To Send Flowers To My Own Mother's Funeral, So, The Nice Guys Took Up A Collection For Poor Old Bob, And They Put It In An Envelope So As Not To Embarrass Me, You See, And They Put It In An Envelope, And I Thanked Them Humbly, And As I'm Walking Out, I'm Counting This Stuff, Oh, I Did It Again, And I Scoop Right On Down To The Next Place, And I'm Happy And Living, And Then When I Go, You Know, Los Angeles Is A Big City, But There's Always Somebody Who Knows Somebody, Pretty Soon, Somebody Who Knew Somebody Knew Somebody, Pretty Soon, My Poor Father Is Getting Condolence, Letters, And Cards, In His Hour Of Grief, They Got Ahold Of Me, And My Dad Said, No, You're No Son Of Mine, Any Man That Would Do A Thing Like That, To Get A Drink, To Say His Mother Is Dead, Is No Son Of Mine, Get Out Of Here, And Don't You Ever Come Back, And He Meant It, Years After I Got Sober On The Program, I Would Call Him Up, And He'd Hang Up On Me, And He Meant It, Oh, I Buried That Way Down, Way Down, And I Felt Like The World's Biggest Freak, Who Would Do Such A Thing, And One Night, I Was At The Meeting, At The Hole In The Ground, A Guy Named Madeline Swayze Was Talking, And Madeline Was From Oklahoma, And Madeline Said That Once She Was Sitting In The Bar, And She Ran Out Of Drinking Money, And She Went Outside, She Came Back In, Said My Mother Just Died, Same Damn Thing I Did, Well, Back There, They Kind Of Held A Little Weak For Her, That's What She Really Wanted Anyway, So They All Sat There At The Bar, Drinking And Commiserating With Poor Madeline, The Next Day, They All Come Over To Madeline's House, They Want To Commiserate Her With A S'more, And Madeline Had To Hide Her Mother In The Closet, And I Felt A Big Load Go, Because I Wasn't Alone, And This Is What Happens In AA, We're Not Alone, We're Not Freaks, We Can Pull Up A Chair And Join The Human Race, Oh God, There's Nothing Like It, But You Gotta Listen, If You Don't Listen, You're Not Gonna Hear What Happened To You, You're Not Gonna Hear What Happened To You, Because Most Of Us Got That Buried So Deep, We Won't Talk About It, We Don't Even Know It, Until Some Other Guy Or Gal Mentioned Something That Happened To Them, And It Still Happens To Sybil, Who's Been Sober Longer Than Christ, And They'll Say Things That She Doesn't Remember, And It's Just A Great Thing, Alright, Now, How Does A Guy Who Can Stand Up Here Tonight And Tell You That Of Myself, I Cannot Resist Booze, Or Marijuana Cigarettes, Or Benzedrine, Those Are My Three Things, I Never Tried Any Other Kind Of Pills, But Man, Those Binneys, Turned Me Right On, Now, Of Myself, I Cannot Resist Those Things, I Tried Too Long In And Out Of AA, To Resist These Things, To Overcome Them, On My Own, With AA Kinda In The Background As A Social Club, A Place To Go In The Evening, But Not Really Needing These Principles, How Does This Guy Then Stand Up Here Today And Tell You, I Have A Power That Sustains Me Daily, Without Which I Could Not Be Sober 15 Years, I Couldn't Be Sober 15 Minutes, And Yet I Am, How Do I Make That Transition Into A Guy Who Has A God That Sustains Him Daily, Well, I Don't Have Anything To Tell You, I Think That's It, When I Finally Came Back To Alcoholics Anonymous, It Was Not With Any Great Idea That This Was An Easy Program, When I Got Here At First, It Was Too Easy For A Guy Like Me, Oh, I Agree, It's Simple, But It Isn't Easy, There's A Big Difference, But The Sneer Now, The Alcoholic Sneer That I Always Had, Sitting There, Daring Some Guy To Say Something That Might Save My Life, That Was Gone, And I Came Back To AA With No Socks In My Shoes, Been Walking Around Town, Had On An Old Pair Of Khaki Pants, No Shorts, Now You Wanna Know What Spiritual Clean Clothes, Dry Socks, I Got Shorts On Now That Don't Have Any Holes In Them,
[00:35:29]
You Better Believe It, That's Why When I'm, Now I Don't Always Put A Necktie Or A Coat On In Los Angeles Meetings, I Know Everybody Real Well There, And That's Different, But I Want You To Go Away With An Impression That This Guy Got Himself Cleaned Up, Cause I Wish You Could See The Way I Looked When I Got Here, Sybil Is The Only One Who Saw Me, She Knew, She, I Went Down To The Hole In The Ground, I Said I'm Going Back, See Cause I Used To Wander Around The Hole In The Ground, Finally I Wouldn't Go In, And I'd Look In And I'd Listen To The People, My Friends, Duke Carson, Sybil, Bud MacDonald, Ray Tannouris, My Friends, All Sitting There Wanting Me To Come Back, And I Finally Couldn't Even Go In The Door, And I'd Look In And I'd Hear Them Talking, And I'd Hobble All Down The Street With My Little Bottle In My Pocket You Know, I Figured I Was Doomed, But Once You Know, I Ended Up Living In The Back Of A Bar, Mopping It Out When Somebody Would Throw Up And They'd Give Me A Drink, And Finally I Said I'm Going Back To AA, Not Because It's Gonna Get Me Sober, But Because I Need The Rest, And That's A Fact, I Just Needed The Rest, I Was Dying, I Walked Down The Street And I Heard My Mother's Voice Say, Bobby, Bobby, And I Knew I Was Dying Now, And I Didn't Want To Die On The Street, I Wasn't Worrying About Dying Sober, I Just Wanted Somebody To Find Me, So I Went To The Hole In The Ground, The Meeting Had Broke, And They Usually Close The Doors About 11 O'Clock, But They Sit Around Inside And Have Coffee Sessions, And So I Kicked In The Door With Every Intention Of Breaking The Door In, But They Open The Door And There's Sybil, And Duke Carson, And Some Of My Other Buddies, And Of Course They Just Took Me In, Now I Really Wanted What You Had, I Knew I Couldn't Get It, And I Think That Was The Difference, Because I Was Full Of Cock Sure Certainty When I Got Here, And As My New Sponsor Tom Moore Says, We're Now Filled With Thoughtful Uncertainty, I Knew I Couldn't Get The Program, And I Wanted It, And I Wanted To Be Like You, I Had My Heroes And There's Nothing Wrong With That, Finally You Gotta Get Off Your Heroes, It's Okay To Have Your Heroes Finally Become Your Friends, But In Alcoholics Anonymous There Are People You Want To Be Like, And There's Not A Darn Thing Wrong With That, It's A Program Of Attraction, How Else Can You Decide If This Is What You Want If You Don't See Somebody That You Want To Be Like, And I Had My Heroes And I Want To Be Like My Heroes, And All Of Them, All Of My Heroes, Said They Believe In God, Now I Knew I Was Doomed, But I Still Wanted What They Had, So I Evolved Into An Agnostic First, As I Say The Alcoholic Sneer Was Gone Now, The Cock Sureness Was Gone, So They Evolved Into A Guy Who Didn't Know, Then I Changed Finally Into A Guy Who Wanted This Thing That You Called A Higher Power Than Most People Simply Came Out And Called God, I Wanted It, And I Became A Seeker, I Began To Seek This Thing, But I Knew I Couldn't Find, And I Began, So Instead Of Reading This, Where All The Answers Finally Are For Me, Instead Of Reading That, I Read Books On Self-Help, The Power Of Positive Thinking, Joshua Liebman's Peace Of Mind, And All The Religions Of The World, And I Went Seven Ways Nuts, But I Didn't Drink, Then I Was In A Meeting One Day, Some Place, Some Where, And I Always Keep Saying This Is That Man In The Crowd Today, Because I Don't Know Who He Was, I Don't Know His Name, I Don't Know Where He Came From, But He Said Something That Changed My Life Relative To This Search For God, He Said In Our Pursuit Of God, We Are Like Little Kids Chasing Butterflies, We See This Pretty Thing Flooding Around Out There, And We Want To Examine It More Closely,
[00:40:22]
So As Children, We Grab This Butterfly In Our Hand, Not To Hurt It, But To Admire It, To Examine It More Closely, The Little Butterfly, He Says But In So Doing, The Butterfly Loses Its Glitter, And It Dies, Now That Is The Way It Is With Butterflies, I Know I Had That Experience As A Child, And I'm Sure You Have Too, And I Remember The Regret That I Felt When The Little Butterfly Instead Of Flying Away, Just Fell Down On The Sidewalk And Went Like That, And I Didn't Mean That To Happen To The Butterfly, Well That's What Happened To Me Every Time Someone Would Talk About God, I Hear A Wonderful Talk In An A.A. Meeting, And I Get All Filled With Some Spiritual Thing, And I Get On A High, And I Get Driving Home, And Then My Keen Alcoholic Mind Would Come To Bear On It, And I Say Yes, He Mentioned Heaven, Doesn't He Know That The Nearest Star Is 4.3 Light Years Away, I Bring To Bear On It The Weight Of My So-Called Intellect, And It Would Crumble, It Would Literally Lose Its Glitter And Die, This Search For God, What It Means To Me, Merely The Butterfly Thing, Is Just Easy Does It Bob, It Isn't That Heavy, Look At It Work, Look At The Butterfly Today, Flitting Around The Room, In Any A.A. Meeting That You're At, In Los Angeles As I Say Our Meetings Come On At 8.30, Do You Know What A Big Time Slot That Is North And South, Do You Know How Many Thousands Of A.A. Meetings Are On Up Through The Yukon, Up Into Anuvik 300 Miles North Of The Arctic Circle Where I Have Been At A.A. Meetings, Do You Know How Many People Are Sitting In An A.A. Meeting Right Now At This Minute, All Over I Don't Mean Just In This Room, That Butterfly Is Working, Flitting All Around The Place Bob, Leave It Alone, Let It Fly, You Don't Have To Know All About It, So, In Fact When I Was Sober 10 Years, Sybil Bought Me A Butterfly, And I'm Never Without, And I Usually Don't Wear A Necktie, And It's Usually Under My Little Polo Shirts That I Wear, But I Always Wear My Little Butterfly To Remind Me Of Easy Does It Bob, It's Got A Whistle, She Bought It At A Women's Store In Beverly Hills And It Was Made For Something Else, But I Keep Hoping I Have A Lot Of Little Mechanical Things I Do That You Will Not Find In The Book To Help Me Maintain My Sobriety, I, For Example I Have A Wonderful Friend Up In Jasper, Alberta, Canada Who Is A Locomotive Engineer And Is Also A Member Of This Program, Sober Member Now For About 12 Years, And That's Another Point, You Know When We Sober Up We Get All Worried, All Hung Up About Making Amends, Now This Guy Probably Has Never Made Any Amends At All To Those Passengers On That Train, But He's Sober Now, And They're A Lot Better Off Than They Don't Know It Cause He Used To Take That Train From Jasper Down The Hill, Down The Rocky Mountains Into British Columbia, Boom, Full Throttle, At All Baby, Drunk So We Just Make A Lot Of Amends Just By Not Taking That First Drink, You Know How Much Better Off The People In Los Angeles Are Because Sybil And I And Clancy Aren't Driving Those Freeways Drunk? They Don't Know How Much Better Off They Are, But They Sure As Hell Are And I Get Too Hung Up About Making Amends, Usually When I Make Amends The First Thing The Guy Comes In The A.A. Wants To Make Amends He Wants To Run Down And Pay Off That Old Liquor Tab, That's Usually The First Thing They Think Of, Cause That's How Close And We Can't See Ourselves Too Well, First Thing We Want To Do Is Pay Off The Old Bar Bill Well, Anyway, Because Of This Guy, The Locomotive Engineer Alex Gillis, He Works For The C.N.R. Out There And I Have A Locomotive Bell On My Patio, Kind Of Because I Like Old Gillis And Underneath The Locomotive Bell I Have A Bronze Plaque Of The Serenity Prayer Well, You Know On Our Tenth Step It Says, When Wrong, Promptly Admitted It, Not Promptly Omitted It, But Promptly Admitted It, But Prompt Is A Relative Term And Now You Take My Relationship With My Wife, When I Am Wrong, I Am Wrong Most Of The Time With Her And I Mean That Honestly, Because I Am In Contact With Her More Than Anybody Else In This World in contact with her more than anybody else in this world.
And this is where the friction, you know, comes more than anything else, so I have to make amends to her more than anybody else.
[00:45:02]
So let's say I cuss her out for something, I don't know what, I can't really think of what, but we do it all the time. Conversation around our house is scintillating, too, Blanche. But once in a while something will happen, and I will be wrong. Now there's a, hey, there's a big difference between I'm saying I'm sorry and I'm wrong. A lot of times I may call some guy an SOB, and I may be sorry he overheard me, but I know damn well I ain't wrong.
But saying I'm wrong is something else again. I said I was sorry all my life. I was sorry for being born. But it didn't mean that I was wrong. All right, so what I, now when I have this trouble, some kind of a trouble with Sybil, I'll go out in the backyard, poor old Sybil, she'd be in there running around with a bottle of Pillsbury, trying to mix something up, you know, and I'm out in the patio, and I'll kick a few stones around, then I'll see that serenity prayer underneath Gillis' locomotive bell.
That brings me back to where I am. I've been wrong. So I reach up, and I grab the lanyard on that bell, and I clang it three times, one for each sentence in the serenity prayer. Now Sybil in the house, she hears that bell ringing, see, clang, clang, clang, and she says, well, that's old Bob out there making his amends, she knows that, see. I put a bell in there for her, she never did ring back. So I go through the light, blowing my whistle, and ringing my bell, and staying sober.
Oh, I… I know it's kind of weird, but so are you. And I guarantee you, that knowledge makes me very comfortable. Can you imagine me telling them about blowing my whistle, and ringing my bell at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce? Not likely. But here you don't care. You say, okay, right on, man, that's fine. You know, I don't care if you hang by your thumbs and say it's over, but if God says it's over.
See, I know you're on my side. I really know you're on my side, and that's an amazing thing to know that. I know that nobody's going to come to me and say, hey, you're staying sober wrong. Huh, what the hell is that? I'm staying sober… What do you mean I'm staying sober wrong? I'm going to come here to stay sober, and I'm staying sober, so how can I be staying sober wrong? Now, if I get drunk, then you come telling me, hey, you've been staying sober wrong.
I sure must have been. All right. Let me tell you a little more about God. Me, the atheist, going to tell you about God. I had a dull partner who had tattooed his fist, L-O-V-E. Now, it wasn't that sweet of him to do that. He tattooed his fist, love. And when love got all well, he hit me right in the mouth with love. Knocked out this tooth right here. I wasn't terribly impressed with the incongruity of being hit in the mouth with love.
I gave him a little love back, I guess. I don't remember exactly what happened, but the point that I'm trying to make is that love was a meaningless word in my life. Now, I get to AA, and I begin to think differently. Whether you know it or not, atheists are well-read in the Bible. We use it as a club to beat you believers over the head with and show you all the contradictions. So I was well-versed in the Bible.
But something kind of like that old song, It All Comes Back to Me Now, happened. I remember about an old, dead Greek, and his name was Paul. You know the guy who got the hot flash on the road to Damascus about 2,000 years ago? Sybil says, I shouldn't use hot flash. Kind of reminds some people of the menopause. But if he didn't have a change of life, I'd like to know what it was. Anyway, I remember he said something like this.
He said, God is love. And then he began to explain what love is. He said it's made up of little things we do all day long and don't know it. Just little good things that we do. It ain't one big lump. It's a lot of little things. You're doing one of them now, for example. You're exhibiting one of the attributes that this guy Paul says is love, and bearing in mind that he says God is love.
[00:50:01]
He says love is patient. And you're being patient. You know, for example, I know that you know what time it is. And I also know that you hope to God I know what time it is. But I don't see any of you subtly snapping your wristwatch band at me to remind me that, come on, I got another meeting here at 3.30, fella. It's time to sit down. Oh, I used to take it off and run a bit at the speaker. No, you're being patient, and he says that that's one of the things that love is.
Love is, well, he actually said, I hate to use what he, he said love is long-suffering. I hope you haven't been long-suffering, but I like the modern version is that love is patient. And love is kind. Love is slow to anger. Good temper. Love does not behave itself unseemly. Unselfish. Humble. Humble. There's a word that's had a heck of a time of it now for us in office. Humility. Don't talk about it.
If you talk about it, you ain't got it. So we joke, we joke, we make all kinds of jokes. We're embarrassed to talk about humility. Clancy, give us your 30-minute talk on humility. Oh, Clancy gets that all the time. It's a joke, we're embarrassed to talk about humility. I may not be the most humble man in AA, but I'm one of the top ten. But if you can't talk about it, because you see, they say if you talk about it, you haven't got it.
But that raises an awful dilemma in my mind, because if I can't talk about it, how are we ever going to find out what it is? Because to me it isn't that heavy. But God is love and love is humble, so what does he mean? Well, to me it just means, it's kind of simple, you and I have a right to be here on this planet. Nobody has any more right to be on this planet than anybody else. But I have a right to be loved, and you have a right to be loved.
And what that blade of grass out there is, me and that distant star, we're all kind of the same thing. Now, I don't find that too heavy to handle. That's okay, I like that. All right, these are the things that Paul said that make up love, and he said that God is love. Well, for an atheist then, in step three where I make a decision to turn my will of my life over to the care of, those things that I just enumerated.
Try to be a little kinder, Bob. Try not to be so offensive with your language. Try to be a little less selfish. Try to not get so angry so often and so violently. You know, not how many angels can balance on the head of a pin. Something I can really handle. In step 11, when I seek the prayer and meditation to prove my conscious conduct with God, praying only for knowledge of his will for me and the power, I know what it is I'm talking about.
I'm trying to draw closer to those things that I just mentioned. It's no big deal, and it's not heavy for me. It's a very simple thing. That's how this atheist became a believer. I want to tell you one more thing, and then I want to sit down. I was at a meeting in North Hollywood one night, and a lady was talking. Now, as I told you, I used to figure that women probably got drunk and burnt for toast and joined AA.
So I wasn't listening to this woman. And if I hadn't heard what she said, though, I would not be here today, and I know it. But I wasn't listening, so how did she get my attention? Well, I like to pretend a little miracle occurred that night. Helps me, doesn't hurt you. A North Hollywood clubhouse meeting on Thursday night has rather large attendance. They have a podium, and in those days they used to do a dumb thing.
They'd turn the lights out and put a speaker on the guy. It's their meeting. I can't tell them how to run it, but I still thought it was a dumb thing to do. And so here's this poor gal up there, Ellen was her name, talking along. It's a big meeting there on Friday night, Thursday night at the North Hollywood clubhouse. And all of a sudden she got stuck, right in the middle of her talk, stuck. I don't know of a better word, it's wrong, it conjures up the wrong picture, stage fright.
But it conjures up a picture of what we're not doing here. But I don't know of a better word to use for that particular situation. She grabbed a hold of this podium and clutched it, and she didn't say a word for like 45 seconds. Now everybody's listening to her. We're all looking at her. The leader went out and got her a drink of water, came back, she's still not talking.
[00:55:00]
She's petrified. Something, I don't know what happened. Now a person with an ounce of human compassion is going to feel sorry for a person in a predicament like that. And I'm no exception. I felt sorry for this gal. And I'm sitting right about there, and I'm saying to myself, I'm going to say it out loud, I'm saying, come on baby, start talking. Start talking. I'll trade you my glib tongue for your serenity, your sobriety, and your belief in God.
I'll be happy to trade you. But for God's sake, start talking. Well, now she started talking. Now I've got an investment in this gal, so I'm listening. And here's what she said. And it changed the course of my life to where never again have I ever been troubled with the word God at all. At all. She says she read a book and she can't remember the name of the book. She can't remember the author or anything else that he said.
Any more than you can remember what the heck I've been talking about today. I want to no illusion that you've been hanging on to every pearl that we've been dropping in your lap. You're lucky if you get 7% of what a guy says, and don't feel bad about it. Because we don't have that kind of attention spans. If I tell you about my locomotive friend, you'll start thinking about locomotives for the next five minutes.
But that's the way it is. So she doesn't know what the book was about. But all she can recall from that book was really what all the author had in mind anyway. One good point. And here's what he said. This is what he concluded his book with. To this day we don't know what the book is, and I keep telling Ellen, don't find out. I don't want to know. I just like this thought. He said in all probability, in all probability the closest is you or I or anybody else.
Will ever come to finding God. Will be in the seeking. Hmm. It may be the closest that you and I or anybody else will ever come to finding God. Will be in the seeking. And that hit me like a lump. I said, my God. You know, if she's right, and for me I intuitively feel that she is, then I've been right for a long time because I've been seeking. Then my mind flipped back through my AA, quote, career to those early days in AA.
And I thought, you know, why didn't they tell me that at my first AA meeting? Why didn't they tell me, maybe the closest I'd ever get to finding God would be in the seeking? Why didn't those guys with their keen alcoholic mind, why didn't they put it in the book? Well, you see, like Chuck says, you can't see what you can see. And you can't hear what you can hear because they did tell me that at my first meeting.
And they did put it in the book, and they did tell us that again here already today. But I didn't hear it. Not only did they put it in the book, they put it better than Ellen said it, or the author of that anonymous book. We conclude the reading of every fifth chapter that everyone's ever read in Alcoholics Anonymous, as far as I know, with, God could and would if he were sought. But I always somehow used to hear it, God could and would if he were found.
And it doesn't say that. That all I have to do to recover from alcoholism is to seek this thing. Everything else will work itself out, and it does. Everything. Today, I'm a happy man. A happy man. Now, for you new people, that doesn't mean giddy-ha-ha-hoo-hoo-hoo. It's just wonderful, wonderful, forever and ever without any men. Nobody lives happily ever after. That's an asinine, juvenile thought. We live in this world with all the bumps and lumps that it offers us.
Death is not happiness. So you're not going to live happy ever after. You're going to experience death and a lot of other tragedies. But when I say I'm a happy man, I mean that back here. Back here in some little recess of my mind is a little reservoir of compassion. Recess of my mind is a little reservoir of contentment which tells me that no matter how rough things get, no matter what life throws at me, I'm not going to make them worse by getting drunk at them, and that in itself always keeps this little reservoir of contentment in me in the middle of any crisis.
[01:00:10]
I feel honest to God, I feel a lot like Martin Luther King, I feel a lot like Moses must have felt when he looked into the Promised Land. He didn't get there. But he did say, and I say the same thing, when I think back of those days of walking around Los Angeles with no shoes, looking in the old hole in the ground. And now standing up here looking at you, seeing you look back at me, because that's the only place I ever found God was in the eyes of my fellow AA's. I have to say that my God has brought me from a mighty long way. Thank you very much.