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Source: DICOBE-00260 – Tom C – OKLAHOMA STATE CONV – 1978-05-19.mp3 File: dicobe-00260-tom-c-oklahoma-state-conv-1978-05-19.mp3 Duration: 01:08:20
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My name's Tom Clunch and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, y'all. I don't know what to think about that. My little boy thought y'all had strange Indians out here. He said, where's his father, daddy? I said, I don't know. I knew I'd get him back. I want to, of course, thank the committee and everyone that's here for inviting me to come out and share with y'all for your convention. It is tremendous. I think as I share my story, you'll find out that my main crazy period was right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I feel much like a prodigal son or something coming back. And I've been kind of looking over my shoulder, too, because I don't know if there's any outstanding warrants on me, but I've kind of been avoiding Oklahoma for some time since I found out they got some strange laws here. And I suffered the consequences of them. But it is a pleasure to be here. I also want to thank the committee for our pretty rooms. My wife Julie's with me and she's over on the front here and the fruit basket that my kids ate up. And they're with us, but we left them upstairs. It's hard to explain how I feel standing up here after the way I left Tulsa about ten years ago, because it's just amazing. And the spinoff or the fringe benefits of this program are just unbelievable. I've heard many, many a speaker, and when I first came to AA, I heard him stand up and say, I'm glad I'm an alcoholic. And I remember a time when I would have rather been a one-legged Russian midwife than an alcoholic, you know. But a little while ago, I got something different. My sweet little Al-Anon looked at me and she said, I'm glad you're an alcoholic. And you know, that shows she's growing, doesn't it? I don't know whether she thought I was a one-legged Russian midwife or what I was back in those days, but we're growing together in this program. And we have God, our higher power, and we have all of y'all and lots more like you to thank for it.
I wanted to share a little story with you that I very much enjoy. It's about a Baptist preacher. I'm a Baptist, so I'm going to let this one be a Baptist too. But this Baptist preacher from a small church in Alabama had been doing such a fantastic job shepherding his flock for these low many years that his congregation got together and passed the hat and took up a special collection and sent he and his wife on an extended vacation to Hawaii. They were gone to Hawaii for about a month and had a marvelous time over there. And of course, they came back and they were on the way to church that first Sunday. And the preacher's wife did like preacher's wives often do. She looked over at him and she said, what are you going to preach about this morning? He said, I think I'll preach on surfing. She said, what do you mean you'll preach on surfing? He said, well, I observe you. She said, I think there's some things about surfing that would demonstrate life and morality and pursuit of happiness and conquering obstacles. And she said, you don't know anything about surfing. You can't preach on surfing. And they got into one of those big fusses all the way to the church. He's saying, I am going to preach on surfing. And she was saying, no, you can't. In fact, they got in such a battle that when they pulled up in front of the church, she just looked him dead in the eye and she said, if you're going to preach on surfing, I'm not even going to go in there and listen to you embarrass yourself like that. I'm just going to sit here in the car. And she did. But when he got back in his little room, back behind the pulpit doing whatever those preachers do in their little rooms, you know, he decided, well, maybe that woman's right. And he got to looking through his file cabinet and he pulled out this stock Baptist sermon on sex. You know, they all have one and changed his mind. And he went out and he preached on sex. And I mean, he really low preached the Baptist sermon on sex. It was fantastic. The congregation was all excited. And when the church let out to it, a sweet little old ladies were coming down the steps, just talking. Wasn't that wonderful? Wasn't that marvelous? And they spotted to preach his wife in the car and they just ran up to her and they said, oh, you missed it. You missed it. He preached the most wonderful sermon you've ever heard. And she said, I can't understand that. It's a subject he doesn't know anything about. She said, he's only done it two times.
Once before we were married and once after we were married. And he fell off both times. You know, I like that little story because it demonstrates something very, very important. It demonstrates an absolute total breakdown in communications. You see, those people were not communicating at all. And I'm standing up here and I think something that Father Martin says in one of his films, I'll be speaking with my lips more or less. And y'all will be hearing with your ears. And you don't always hear the same thing I hear because we're I'm like the transmitter and
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you're like the receiver. And I understand that. But A.A. taught me to try to do the very best I can. And I know that with an awful lot of y'all, we'll be communicating and we'll be communicating on a different level than most people communicate. We'll be communicating on a level of empathy, a level of love. We'll be communicating on a level of the heart, not just with words. And I understand that. And also note that some people here because I was there and I've sat there and many a time and I didn't hear a thing the speaker was saying. I heard his words. I might have laughed at his jokes, but I didn't get the message. And I bring to you tonight a very simple message. Now, I'll tell you why. I like to call myself an extremely conservative, far right wing, radical, big book A.A. member. That's the way they taught it to me in Alabama. And and I know that I'll say some things tonight, possibly that you would disagree with. I hope not, but I can. But on the other hand, if it's something in that big book and you disagree with it, you see you're in a world of trouble because our whole program was laid out there for us in simple black and white. And I believe some strange things about that big book that I've heard people's feelings saying depends on who they are. I don't think I hurt your feelings, but there is not a doubt in my mind that when that book was written, that it was very, very much divinely inspired. You see, that book will tell you one thing when you first read it and you come along three or four months later, maybe with a little sobriety and it'll tell you something else. And you can put it on the shelf and get all excited and go off every direction and you can stay sober and pick it up again three years later or seven years later.
And it'll give you a message, a different message every time you read it. And not only that, it'll give you the answers to the very questions that you have right now. That's the way I believe about that big book. You see, it just doesn't stand to reason in my mind that an old reprobate of a doctor, a failure of a drunken doctor, and y'all know what kind of doctor he was, too. I mean, he worked on the wrong end of folks. And people like he was not an author. He was not. He was a drunk and an old reprobate of a stockbroker, a failure and a drunk and a bunch of folks off the riverbank because they were all low bottom drunks in those days. Just plain old people like that couldn't have gotten together and just sat down and written up a book like they did in 1939 that has all of us here today and hundreds of thousands more like us. That's the reason I believe there was a higher power involved in the authorship of that book. And this is very, very important to me. So I base my whole program around that book. And the message that I bring is a very simple one. And I bring it from the guidelines from that book. I share my experience, strength and hope. I tell how it was, what happened and how it is now. And a lot of people can call it a drunkologue if they want to. And that's okay, because some of the old timers and it's fine with me. I love it. But they can philosophize and expound and everything. I can't do that. You hadn't worked on me long enough. And some people are sicker than others. And I'm one of others, you know. But what I can do is this. I can share with you, just like the big book says, I can share with you a real live, modern day, 20th century miracle of God. And that's what the big book shows. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a long time ago, when somebody named Terry handed me a big book, and I took it home and opened my bottle and drank a little bit and read, I turned immediately to the back. And in the back, there's a whole bunch of stories. And they're better than As the World Turns ever thought about being. But I didn't get the message, you see, because the message in all 30 of those stories in our, more in the third edition, but in the second edition, there are 30 stories. And the message back there, if you read in the front, it says it shows the miracle of our spiritual awakening, the miracle of our program. And that's what I share with you. There's a little word of warning of caution. And that is that you don't have to go as far down as I did. If you're sitting out there right now, and as I start talking, if you're sitting there saying, I didn't do that, and I didn't do that, and I hadn't done that, and I'd never do that, if you're sitting there saying that to yourself, you don't have to do those things if you learn how to stay sober. But if you keep drinking, alcoholism, y'all taught me, is terminal, and it's progressive. And that means it gets worse. It always gets worse. And y'all told me in Oklahoma about 10 years ago that it would get worse. And it did, but I didn't believe you. But I'll tell you right now that you don't have to go to the bottom like I did unless you want to. Because there's one other little thing that you've taught me and I want to share with you. And that is that nobody in this room ever has to take another drink unless they want to. There's been an awful lot of times in my life where that was not my
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option. I had to take another drink. At least I thought I had to, and I did. But I know now that if you don't want to, you don't ever have to take another drink. And that also includes alanons, by the way. They can take it or they can leave it, but they don't have to take it, and that's the important thing. You see, the so-called social drinker, which I'm not, they have an option. They can not drink it or they can drink it and control it. I don't have that option. I can not drink it or I can drink it and it controls me because I'm an alcoholic. There's something different about Tom Clonch, alcoholic, that ethyl alcohol doesn't get along with me. It doesn't get along with me in any form. It doesn't get along with me in 60-year-old five-star Napoleon brandy. It doesn't get along with me in wild turkey sour mash bourbon. It doesn't get along with me in aqua velvet or squeeze. None of it gets along. Not, you know. I grew up in a little small town in Alabama, a little bitty town called Hainville, Alabama, in what they call the Bible Belt of Alabama, or the Black Belt. It's named after the soul, not the people. But it's where, it's just a stereotype classic of the Old South, a beautiful community, I might add. Everybody goes to church. It's a nice, nice town. And I grew up and graduated from this little high school called Hainville High School. There were 19 students in my graduating class. That gives you an idea about Hainville High. I might tell you a little more about Hainville High. There were no big, what the psychologists now call peer group pressure on me to drink. At Hainville High School, the boys played football and basketball and baseball and chased the girls. And the girls let us catch them. That's all that went on at Hainville High School. And there wasn't anything about drugs or dope or anything. But in my, in my learning, I developed a pattern. And I think this pattern was good. But on the other hand, with me, it almost killed me. But I'm sure I'm putting the same thing on my children. You see, I was convinced by my parents and by my friends and by my heritage and everything, that I was supposed to grow up, graduate from an accredited college, get a job with a large corporate structure, rise in small jumps unerringly to the top, marry a beautiful young blonde, preferably from a rich family, an old rich family, have a couple kids, get a three-bedroom brick with a two-car garage with the two cars to go in it, and have a pocket full of credit cards, and be a deacon in a Baptist church. Now, I don't see a thing in the world wrong with that track. The only thing wrong with that track in my case was that I'm an alcoholic. And I was also learning something else. I was learning it from television, movies, society, my parents, and everybody else. And that is that I was supposed to learn to drink like a gentleman. And that's the thing that I found out years later that absolutely almost killed me and cost me everything that can humanly cost a person except for his life itself. And that is that I continued to try to learn to drink like a gentleman.
I read in the big book that's the great compulsion that we can learn to drink normally. Every time I would say, this time it's going to be different. But it wasn't ever different. But next time I would say, this time it's going to be different. And it still wasn't different. And when I went off to college at about 17 and a half years old, it was amazing because I was grown, you see. I had graduated from my little high school and matriculated into Auburn, which was Alabama Polytechnic Institute then. And it was a big college. It's bigger now. It's kind of like OSU, Agricultural Mechanical School. And my friends were all there. And I went up to Auburn and I had my dormitory room that my daddy paid for. I had my clothes that my daddy paid for. And I had my transportation that my daddy paid for. And I had my bank account that my daddy put the money in. You see, I was definitely my own man. And I got up to Auburn and I started to pursue this growing up process and that goal, that life perception, that standards that I'd been reared to seek. And I also started out to learn to drink like a gentleman. But it just didn't work in my case because I'm one of these alcoholics in looking back. Now, I promise you, I couldn't see it then at all. But in looking back, there's a little doubt in my mind that I'm one of the maybe five or ten percent of we alcoholics who are alcoholics from the first drink because my drinking was never very normal. And at Auburn, well, it went like this. I was out after the first quarter. The exams were held and I had borrowed my roommate's car and I was out celebrating my grades. I'd made four D's and an F and I was celebrating.
I'd made four D's and an F, and I was celebrating, and on the way home, happenstance and coincidence
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always followed me, but on the way home from celebrating, this Chevrolet I was driving just arbitrarily decided to turn over. Now all by itself, I didn't have nothing to do with it, but it just turned over, and then it rolled back on its wheels, I didn't even spill my beer, I don't think, and then, I think anybody could do that, you know, I think an intoxicated earth person could do that, but I had to not keep it simple. Now in AA, the sign on the wall back here is supposed to say, keep it simple, and the reason it says that is before, because I never kept anything simple. What I did, I took my roommate's car, I drove it out in the woods and I hid it, and then I went down to the sheriff's office and informed him that my roommate's car had been stolen and probably wrecked, and you know, I had glass in my hair and I was all drunk, probably a little bloody. Well, when I woke up in jail, I found out that I didn't keep it simple, see, and to make a long story short, I was fined, the lawyers were obtained, my daddy's money and friends bailed me out, and the dean of men asked me not to come back to Auburn. So I was kicked out of a major university, I was a little off my track. I went down in New Orleans and I worked for about nine months at a little job in an insurance company, and during that nine month period at about 18 years old, and it was so humorous, it was funny, I was arrested two times for what they call common drunk, and down there, you know, it was real nice, they just pick you up and they take you to jail and they wouldn't even book you, they'd hold you eight hours, they'd give you a little watery chicory coffee and some oatmeal and they'd turn you loose. And I'd usually be with a couple friends and I'd kind of laugh about it, I thought it was funny. But I had to get back on my track, so I matriculated into the University of Alabama. Now, I found out the only thing different with me at the University of Alabama was that at the university, we drank with ties on, because it's a more uptown school. And I got up there and I tried to learn to drink like a gentleman. But I did one thing different as I was progressing into this alcoholism. At Alabama, I learned, I guess what you might call compensating behaviors. Typical alcoholics, y'all taught me this.
That's where, well up there I made almost straight A's. I made the Dean's List every semester I was there, and I drank. Because I knew something, I was learning something that a lot of drunks learn. And that is that you do very, very good things on the one hand, so that when you come over here and do some bad things on the other hand, they kind of balance off, you know? Like the boss that says, he's the best mechanic I've got, do more work than five men when he's right. Or the wife that says, oh, he's such a wonderful loving husband, kind and courteous and great with the kids, you know, when he's not drinking.
Or in my case, I was a super outstanding student when I was not drinking, because I got in little scrapes, and I kept trying to learn to drink like a gentleman. After about four semesters or maybe five, I don't remember, I was out one night and it was late, and Tuscaloosa was a little town then, and the school made up mostly the whole town, and around twelve or one o'clock in the morning, I had a craven flung on me for some fried catfish. Now, I'm going to tell you, friends, I still get cravens flung on me. About a week ago, I was watching the nighttime news, and a craven was flung on me for ginger ale and orange sherbet. I went to three 7-Elevens in the middle of the night hunting for orange sherbet, you know.
But when I was drinking and a craven was flung on me, that was a whole different ballgame, because then it didn't make any difference whether what I craved belonged to you, the police, the community, the university, or the U.S. Army. It didn't make any difference. I got it. And in this case, when this catfish craven was flung on me, you know, we looked for a few restaurants and none were open, and then this guy that I was with, one of those bosom buddies that you meet where they have free beer, you know. I'd never seen him before. Bosom buddy. We were loving each other, and he was helping me hunt my catfish.
And he said, you know, my uncle is a catfish fisherman down on the Warrior River, and he's always got all this catfish in the deep freeze, and we could go over there and we could get some, and we could take it back to the dorm, and we could fry it up in the electric skillet, and we could drink our Budweiser, and we could let, you know. Ooh, I said, that's fine. So when we got over to the uncle's house, it was all dark because the uncle wasn't home.
So I kept it simple. I did the thing that I'd learned to do with almost six semesters of higher education and all that sophisticated academic knowledge. I just kicked the door down, you know. And we went in there and we got the catfish, and then on the way out, he kind of whispered in my ear. He said, you know, this is my mean uncle. Well, I continued keeping it simple. I got my gun out, my .38. Now, if there are any psychologists in here, and y'all want to start talking about guns being an extension of your male virility and
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all of that business, I'm going to tell you, I just like guns. I like guns before I drank, while I drank, and I still like guns. And I had guns all the time, and I got my gun out, and I assassinated the television set. And I killed the drapes in the picture window, and I sprayed a few shots in the couch, on the theory that when the FBI and the CIA and the Tuscaloosa Police Department, county sheriffs, and the university police, and the Canadian Northwest Mounties, when they all came to investigate this situation, they would think that some interstate desperado had come through, not some student making straight A's out at the university, no. Well, when I woke up in jail, I found out an interstate desperado interesting fact, and that was that I wasn't as clever as I thought I was. And you know, I found out something else, too, at about age 21. Sitting in that jail, I promise you that I had all the symptoms that I later had that are so classic of alcoholism. I had guilt.
I had remorse. I had fear. I had anxieties. I had, of course, the hangover. I had everything that I always had. But it's very interesting, because in those days, in that early part of my drinking, all those symptoms would go away about the same time my hangover went away, and that was around noon. And then I would feel well and good again. And I'd go back to Haynesville, Alabama, and all the sweet little old ladies at the Haynesville Baptist Church, they still loved me, you know, because I was from the good old family, and I had helped with the youth movement and all of this. And they knew that I was just one of the good old southern boys out. What we did down there, we'd go out all during the week sowing our wild oats, you know. And then on Sunday, we'd pray for a crop failure, see. And anyhow, I'd ride around to Haynesville Square and shoot out the street lights. If you visit Haynesville, Alabama today, you'll find that half the street lights don't have a little glass globe on the top of it, because that's my favorite sport, ride around and shoot them out. My cousin was the sheriff. My daddy paid for the lawyers. Why not? You know, that was good thinking. And of course, all my friends got in little troubles, but I was kicked out of two major universities, been to jail in New Orleans, all because of this thing we call alcohol. And I knew it. That was the funny thing about it. You know the thinking that went on in my mind? I'd say to myself, Seth, every time in your life that you've been in trouble, you've been drinking. But then, something the big books talks about would come into play, and this other little voice would say to me, but on the other hand, every time that you drink, you don't get in trouble. And this time, it's going to be different. And that was about right, because every time I drank in those days, I did not get in trouble. But as time went along, it got closer and closer and closer together to where maybe it was a 50-50 chance that if I took a drink, I'd end up in jail.
But you know, y'all taught me something. I believe, and I believe if any of y'all believe, that if I had one chance out of a hundred, one chance out of a hundred, that I could take a drink and get away with it, I probably would try it, because I'm an alcoholic. But y'all taught me that I have zero chances out of a hundred. There is not a doubt in my mind tonight, not a doubt in my mind, that if I took a drink of alcohol in any form, by Monday morning, I would be dead in a hospital or in a jail. That's just, y'all taught me that.
And that helps an awful lot when you learn that. But when you still have that little sneaky doubt that maybe one chance out of a hundred, this time it'll be different, then you're in trouble, because that'll play on the back of your brain, and you'll take that drink, and yes indeed, you'll get drunk. Well, I was kicked out of these two colleges. I was kind of off my track. And so I joined the U.S. Army, volunteered, and I went over to Okinawa, and everything in Okinawa was about the same. I learned one new trick in Okinawa. Basically, I learned this. I was out from under the influence of my daddy and his ability to get me out of trouble and keep me from suffering the consequences that I was getting into, and I learned that if I did very, very good, again, I could compensate for my bad. I felt like I'd been in a few courts, and you know this, in front of courtrooms where they have this lady justice with the blindfold and she stands there with the scales?
I felt like if I did the very, very good things and the very, very bad things, they would kind of average out. For example, in the Army, in the peacetime Army, before Vietnam, I always liked to play soldier. My daddy's a retired Army colonel, and I liked to shine brass and stand tall and shine shoes and march. I liked flags and mom and apple pie. I liked all that business. So then in the Army, I got two letters of commendation signed by general officers before, you know, in peacetime Army, two letters of commendation. This is very, very good.
On the other hand, I got two court marshals, you know, balanced out just perfect, you know.
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Here's the funny thing about me, and some of y'all are probably looking at it right now, I need to mention this. I've heard a lot of AA speakers talk about when they took that first drink, you know how they were shy, and when they'd take that first drink and feel that warm stuff going down, they'd feel bigger, and they'd feel stronger, and they'd feel sexier, and they could chase the girls better and dance better and drive cars better and do their job better and everything better than anybody else. Alcohol didn't do me that way, because before I ever started drinking, I knew I could do all those things better than anybody else anyhow, see. In fact, the matter is, I had a massive inferiority complex.
I thought everybody else was inferior, and the alcohol intensified this in me. It intensified it very much. I'll give you an idea of the types of things that I did in the Army, but I'm not proud of these, but they were just, I lived from crisis to crisis, and I did very good things in between, and this pattern followed me on and on and on. I was coming back from the NCO club or the EM club one night, I don't remember. I was a classic case of one of these guys that had his stripes on with a zipper, you know, because I was up and down. And I was minding my own business, and we talk a lot about serenity, but I guarantee you after about ten of those 22-ounce Japanese beers, I had serenity. I was walking down the beach of the South China Sea, and the moon was out there, and what, I was at peace with the world.
And I started walking up, and all of a sudden, now visualize how I was not hurting a flea. This extremely aggressive and hostile pineapple bush attacked me. That little bush just jumped out and tripped me. So I looked at him, and I said to myself, self, I ain't going to let him get away with it. And I went to my car, and I got a five-gallon can of gasoline, and I ceremoniously baptized the little boy, and I lit him up, made a beautiful fire, but the only problem was it was about two feet away from the orderly room door, you know. Well, after the MPs, and the company commander, and the first sergeant, and everybody came, and they did. That was when I got another one of my court-martials, and that didn't bother me. It didn't bother me a bit. It didn't bother me when they fined me some money, and busted me my last rank, and confined me to the, but here's what bothered me. When I had won one of those awards, they had given me a big trophy, and they put it in the company trophy case. And the first sergeant brought that trophy back to my bunk, and he says, put this in your foot locker. We don't want, you see, they took my trophy out of the company trophy case, because they were ashamed of the things that I was doing. Like, and that isn't all I did. Anyway, I got out of the service, and remembering that I was not on my track, but remembering this, while I was in the Army, I did take an awful lot of night courses at the University of Maryland, because I was still seeking that degree. In fact, I took nine courses in psychology, and I know now why I took those courses. I was trying to figure out what was wrong with me, hoping that I could do something about it. And in case any, all of y'all in here are interested, do you know where you find Alcoholics Anonymous in the psychology courses? You find it right in the abnormal psychology course. That's where you find it. Right in between the neurotics and the schizophrenics, my first contact with AA was a little paragraph that said something about this wonderful, informal, non-directed group therapy, peer group therapy, you know, that was helping some alcoholics with their underlying character disorders manifested in, you know, symptomatic heavy drinking and all that business. Well, anyway, I made A in that course, probably answered that question right, but it didn't help me with my drinking, you see. So I got out of the service, and that's when your fair city was just graced with my presence, because I condescended being a former student of the University of Alabama. I didn't tell you what happened there. What happened there that ended me up was that the dean of men asked me not to come back to the University of Alabama, and the judge asked me not to come back to Tuscaloosa, and I didn't.
And that's the reason that I condescended to go to your University of Tulsa and give them all my academic glory, and I did. I got discharged from the service, I kind of rounded up an honorable discharge by hook and crook, and I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. My dad was here working with the Corps of Engineers, and for about a year, I hit a plateau in my drinking. For one whole year, I only went to jail one time. And this was another one of these flukes, an absolute fluke. And if I get some of my geography of Tulsa wrong, you've got to remember that I was here in my insane period. But anyway, when the police station was downtown, and this is what happened to me. I just happened to lose control of my car. And I just happened to be right across the street from the Tulsa police station when I lost control of it. And they just happened to be changing shifts.
It happened to be changing shifts, and 40 of them tried to write me a ticket at one time.
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And the funny thing, well, I graduated from the University of Tulsa, I made very, very good grades, I did do that. And I married a beautiful young blonde. Now, she wasn't from a wealthy family, but she made up for it in other attributes, if you know what I mean. And anyhow, I got a job with a large corporate structure at 21st and Yale, Sears and Roebuck by name. That's a large corporate structure. And I want you to know that I started unerringly rising to the top.
And for a long time, I really believed that, and I still believe it somewhat. But I was getting promotions, I was getting recognition, I was the fair-haired boy in that big store. And at that time, that store was the largest Sears store in the Southwest Territory. It was a biggie. And all the big wheels always flew down to look around. And we did all kinds of things. I was managing two departments out there, the Peace Goods and the Notions Department, you know, and had knitting schools, and I was getting involved in everything in the world.
Some of you ladies are probably my customers. And I had a pocket full of credit cards, I had that new diploma on the wall, I had that beautiful blonde wife, I had a couple cars, money in the bank, a little bit, three-bedroom brick later on. I think that some of y'all, and almost any earth person, if you'd have looked at me then, about 25 years old, 26, 27, if you'd have looked at me, you'd have said, there's a young man who has absolutely everything.
And you would have been correct. But you wouldn't have been thinking about one thing that I had, and that was alcoholism. Cunning, baffling, powerful, terminal, and progressive. You wouldn't have been thinking about that. And I had it. And with all that beautiful thing that I had later on, over at St. John's, my wife made the mistake of getting me a little girl when it's supposed to be a little boy.
But I love that little girl. And then we got a little boy a little bit later on. We moved over into a nicer home, the classic three-bedroom brick I talk about. And I had alcoholism. Let me tell you what this beautiful life pattern was like. Some days I'd get off at six, and some days I'd get off at nine. About a half hour, whichever, six or nine, about a half hour before I got off, I'd get this strange little feeling in my stomach, kind of butterflies like I used to get before the big high school football games or before the wrestling matches when I wrestled at Auburn.
Kind of fluttering in there. I'd get a little sort of cool film, perspiration film, right there on my forehead. My hands would get a little itchy and a little wet and a little dry at the same time. And I'd get in my car at 21st and Yale, and I would go down Yale to 11th Street, and then I'd go down 11th Street to my own whiskey store. You see? There was a whiskey store there. Some of you all might know where it is because it had a car wash built in the back of it.
But I had status in that whiskey store because when I'd walk in the door, that guy would say, hi, Tom, like he was really glad to see me. And you know, when I would walk up and I'd put my hand on that pint bottle of Seagram 7, that butterflies would go away. That nervousness would go away. The perspiration would dry up. I'd feel good and calm and peaceful even before I opened the bottle. And then I'd go home, and this is the way it would go.
I would take my straight shot while mixing my mixed drink, and I'd put on my Bermuda shorts and I'd sit down in my big chair in my living room in my castle, and I'd turn on my TV set, and I'd put my drink over on my side table there and kick my feet up on my ottoman, and I'd order my wife around. That's what I did every evening. Now lots of evenings I'd also go to a most romantic place, probably the most romantic place in these United States, and I've been to a lot of them.
It had dark light. It had atmosphere. It had two pool tables, and it was called Joe Ed's Bar. And when I'd come in the door, when I'd come in the door, they would greet me with joy. They loved me. They'd say, Alabama, because they knew they was going to win all my money shooting pool. But no, because they loved me. They loved me. But let's get back to sitting at the nights when I was just sitting there, because I'd mix my drinks, and then sometime far into the night, maybe two o'clock in the morning, I'd wake up in my big chair, and my TV set over there all gray and squiggly going, shh, just looking at me, you know.
And I'd say to myself, self, you poor young overworked executive, you're so tired you've fallen asleep in your big chair. And you hadn't even gone to bed with your pretty wife, and you even forgot to eat your supper. You're just working too hard. And I'd go on back to bed, and somewhere along in that time frame, and this was every day. This didn't count three-day weekends and parties and things, but somewhere along in this period, I was drinking, not counting the pool shooting and all the beer I drank during that, but
[00:35:02]
I was drinking one pint every single night, buying one at a time, lots of times I thought it'd be the last one. In fact, every night, I'd say, Julie, I'm going to quit. I'm not going to get sick. I'm going to get V.O. of Canadian Club, drink tonight, celebrate, quit tomorrow. But I knew there was something wrong with my drinking. I knew there was something missing in my life. And then I developed the allergy.
It's not the allergy that the big book talks about, the allergy of the body. For some reason, I developed this extremely acute and chronic allergy to toothpaste. Because every morning when I'd wake up and go in to brush my teeth, my head would start hurting, and my eyes would water, and my mouth would be dry, and my stomach would be sick. And I'd change toothpaste brands time and time again. And it's the darndest thing I ever saw.
I don't self-perceive myself as a woman beater. And the reason I said that is because I never was big on hitting Julie or anything like that. But I had learned what the Army calls psychological warfare. Al-Anon may be familiar with this. But I had learned how to absolutely drive her up the wall just with threat and innuendo. And so we had had a few incidences and whatnot, and I don't know exactly how this happened.
But things got a little bit bad, and I, oh, I know what happened, yes I did. Julie made contact with some weird bunch of ladies called Al-Anon. Now I'm going to tell you right now, I love Al-Anon. My hat is off to Al-Anon's, and you can ask Julie or you can hear her story tomorrow morning. But I love Al-Anon's now. But there was a time in my life when I would have described y'all as a bunch of nosy nagging bitches if you want to know the truth.
And this was the time of my life I'm talking about. Because she tripped off to these weird dudes, and they taught her something called detach with love. Now I loved detach with love, you see, because we had already detached and I wasn't getting any love. But this detach with love was my kind of thing, you know. And they taught her what you call, what is it, acceptance. You know, don't pour his booze out and that kind of stuff, you know, I liked acceptance.
But then they taught her the most evil thing that the mind of man and woman together had come up with, and that is where they say, don't make excuses for your alcoholic. Don't take up for your alcoholic's behavior. Don't pick up his bad checks and bail him out. Quit making excuses. And his problem arise and surface. Uh-huh. The store manager called up one morning about ten o'clock, and he says, where's Tom?
Is he sick? And she said, no sir, he's drunk. My problem arose. But you know, so the outcome of that was, and I hope he isn't here, because I, and I was talking about another dude, because what I did, I condescended to interview a psychologist after that. And I did have a word or two with the store manager and I didn't want nothing to do with that bunch of drunks I read about in that abnormal psych book, so I interviewed this psychologist.
And his office really wasn't too far from here. And I don't know what to say about that boy, so I interviewed him and I'd go to his office, I went that far, and I'd interview him for about an hour a week. And you know what? A lot of us sometimes make fun of the medical profession, and I do, and I studied a little psychology and later on studied some more, and I just have verbal battles with that guy.
But in the big book, right in the very, very first, in Bill's story or in the preface really, it says that AA is never going to be the answer for everybody. In about two pages over, in Dr. Silksworth's opinion, it says that medical science is not ever going to be the answer for everybody. So I laugh about the doctors and whatnot, and this doctor, he had me take little tests and draw pictures, and then he basically, listen now carefully, carefully, you are looking at a person who is basically an angry, hostile, caustic, aggressive, and rebellious young man.
Angry, hostile, caustic, aggressive, and rebellious. It cost me $100 a word, I hope you listen. But anyhow, you see, that guy had no chance to help me though, because I looked him dead in the eye and I said, Doctor, we're not going to do anything about my drinking. What we're going to do is we're going to make me a more well-adjusted drinker, which was kind of academic language for teach me to drink like a gentleman, you see?
The same thing the big book told me that I always sought after. And I would leave his office and go straight to the whiskey store and go right home.
[00:40:01]
Well, the next thing that happened was that the Al-Anons got Julie hooked up with this organization called AA Somehow or Other, I don't understand this, remember it too good. And other than what I learned in that abnormal psych book, the first thing I learned about AA was that here was an institution that had an unlimited printing budget and probably the largest printing press in America. Because around my little castle, well let me tell you, there was a Mogan David, a gallon Mogan David wine bottle in my refrigerator, always full of ice water, because I drank a lot of ice water early in the mornings, it helped with my toothpaste allergy.
And one morning I opened the ice box to get my Mogan David wine bottle full of ice water and stuck right on the side of it, 44 questions, you wouldn't believe it. So I went into the bathroom, I was having my toothpaste allergy and my eyes were kind of bleeding, you know, and I opened the mirror up here to get my razor and the 12 steps flooded down into the water. And Julie don't remember it the way I do but remembering it's a family illness, what was it, a way of life popped out of the toaster one morning, just leaped out of there.
So somewhere in that time frame while I was taking my straight shot while having my mixed drink, I condescended to interview Alcoholics Anonymous. And I don't know how we got there, but I got drug off, I guess it was on Harvard, I don't remember it, I remember it as Yale but I think it's on Harvard, I went to the oil capital group, wherever that is, about 41st or 51st or somewhere, a little real estate office at that time, and I couldn't have been taken to a better AA group.
I was such a terribly sick, confused, conceited, vain, proud, stuck up young executive drunk at that time, and then, I don't know how it is now, and in Montgomery we got two main groups and when I came into AA in Montgomery we only had two groups, the downtown group and the capital city group, and now we've got about 13. But anyway, in Montgomery there was the low bottom group and the high bottom group, and as I remember this oil capital group of what I call a real high bottom AA group, I drove up there and I saw all these Cadillacs and Continentals, and I went in there and I looked at all these folks and they were all big wheels with oil companies and pipeline companies and all of them had diamond rings on and all the ladies were pretty, and I said, wow, this is just where I belong, these are my kind of folks.
And I sat back and I commenced to observe y'all in a basic laboratory situation, and I said, isn't this the most amazing non-directed informal group therapy and action that you've ever seen? And I said, isn't it good for y'all, helping those poor sick souls, getting up there and telling them about all that wild drinking with Bonnie and Clyde back during prohibition, going to Arkansas and getting the moonshine, and I memorized the serenity prayer, I read the little soap operas in the back of the big book, and I had great pride, great pride in the fact that the meetings were over at nine, but the whiskey stores didn't close till ten, and I never drank before the meeting, I always drank after the meeting.
And just like the doctor didn't have a chance with me, as I see it now, there was probably a few old-timers in that all-capital group, it seemed like I remember one of them, they always have a potbelly and a pinstripe suit and a cigar and they sit over in the back, and he probably said, he's just not ready yet, you know? And I wasn't ready, of course I wasn't ready, that's the way our program works.
I wish I was ready, and although I told you about those going to jails and whatnot, at that time in my life I had the big job with the corporate structure and I was rising unerringly to the top, I had the wife, I had the children, I still had some credit, I still had everything, and they told me, and by the way, the psychiatrist told me too, they said, if you don't stop, it's progressive, it always gets worse, and if you still got all those things, you're going to lose every one of them, and I said, uh-uh, you're wrong.
Within two years' time, I lost every single thing that a man can lose, except my life, and I wished many a time that I had lost it. Let me get out of Oklahoma real quick, because this is important in my story. We had a three-day weekend, I don't know, it was in the spring, it might have been Memorial Day, I don't remember, but anyway, three-day weekends were always bad on me, because I'd try to drink Friday night, drink Saturday, drink all day Sunday, and taper off on Monday and go to work on Tuesday, and it got hard, I just couldn't hardly do it.
And this particular Monday, we had guests coming over for steaks at about 7 o'clock, and I started drinking right heavily about 6 o'clock, you know, that morning, and somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, I became very verbally abusive with my wife. Let me tell you the type of things that I would do, if I remember them right. I think in this occasion our little boy was, oh, two or three months old, four months old, I don't know.
[00:45:03]
I said something to Julie about like I was going to take T3 and bang him up against the wall until his brains ran down the side of the wall. And I took a bottle of Heinz 57 sauce and busted it in the middle of the floor to demonstrate graphically and living color what it would look like, and then I ordered her to clean it up. That's the sort of thing I was doing. And, I don't know, I was sitting there on the couch.
Now I tell people when I talk to other places, don't ever go to Oklahoma. I say they got some strange laws in Oklahoma. Because I had been picked up for public drunk, I had been picked up for common drunk, but they got something out here that beats them all. It's called private drunk. And that's where they come in and arrest you in your own big chair in your own living room. And that's what the boys did.
But I was sitting there, and they knocked on the door, and they said, Tom, we're going to have to take you to jail. Julie had worked with the police department, and she knew these folks, I think. But I told them, I said, look, I observed that you don't ever want to go to jail in Bermuda shorts and shower shoes, you know. I said, let me put my suit on. And they said, okay. And I went back, and in my room, as I was looking in my sock drawer, I discovered my reserve pint, and I had me a shot.
And then I looked up in the closet, and there was my shotgun. And I got my shotgun down, and I held it around the corner. That was down on New Haven, I think. I held it around the corner, and I said, hey. And the cops looked down the hall, and they said, hey. I said, I got my loaded shotgun back here. And they said, uh-huh. Anyway, I put it back in the case, and I let their imaginations work on them, you know.
Anyway, about the time my reserve pint ran out, I decided, and I did, I cut my screen out, and I was going to escape out the back window there. And in my front yard, behind my big elm tree, was a SWAT trooper with his shotgun. And those dudes had done wrong in SWAT. And the emergency ambulances, and the mobile TV cameras. And you may have seen me on the evening news that night. And a lot of people think that I got fired by Sears and Roebuck.
But they are wrong, because I called up from the sixth floor of the Tulsa County Jail and resigned. Anyway, I ended up with a choice of going to jail for an awful long, long time for holding off the Tulsa Police Department with the loaded shotgun charge, or voluntarily being incarcerated by court decree in the insane asylum at Veneta. And I elected Veneta. And I went up there, and at the time, I didn't like that place.
But in later events, looking back, it wasn't all that bad. I met some nice friends there. There's one here. We shook hands in Little Rock. He ran up, I mean, in Hot Springs. He said, hello, I was there when you were there. In fact, he's the one who taught me how to, I don't have it on. I was going to show you my Veneta belt. I got Veneta belts and billfolds. Anyway, y'all, I had some Veneta watch bands, you know.
I never did weave a basket, though. Anyway, the funny thing about it is this, and this classically shows the pattern of insanity in an alcoholic. I was there for five weeks. I was supposed to be bona fide discharged at the end of six weeks. And there's probably some other people that have been there. We had good food, relatively good food. We slept regular hours. We had some AA meetings. We did physical therapy, played softball and things.
I was as dry and, medically speaking, as sober as you could possibly get. In fact, I started doing calisthenics and running a little bit, and I was in better physical condition than I had been since back in high school. Yet, about the middle of the fifth week, and remember, I'm being discharged in six weeks, at the middle of the fifth week, the craving was flung on me to escape. And I told you about my cravings.
And in case any of y'all ever go up there, I'm going to tell you how we did it. I was on this open ward, and I have observed that if you'll dress up in a suit and get a clipboard and a pencil and walk fast and look down, you can go anywhere, see? And if you can't come up with a suit, you get you a mop or a broom, and I could go through the Pentagon building, I promise you. But I just dressed up in my Sunday visiting clothes and went over to the administration building and started up the steps.
I was going to call a cab to get me, and it was raining a little bit, and this man came walking down the steps, and I said, hey, and he said, hey. And I said, sir, I am a graduate student at the University of Tulsa. I said, I'm out here, I'm majoring in psychology and social work, and I'm out here trying to get a summertime job helping these poor, sick people. And as you can see, sir, it's raining.
Would you mind giving me a ride into town so I don't have to wait for the bus? And he said, sure, son, hop right in. And as we went through the gate, I observed over his sun visor there, that dude was a Tulsa County deputy sheriff.
[00:50:00]
He took somebody in, but he took me out. Well, now here's the insanity of alcoholism. Here's the insanity of alcoholism. That guy let me out, and on one side of the street in Veneta was the Greyhound bus station, and on the other side was this quaint little building with log walls and a big, beautiful sign that said Coors on draft. And I said to myself, self, you've been in insane asylum for five weeks.
You deserve one draft beer. And I was plum drunk before I finished escaping to Tulsa. I went by that favorite whiskey store and told that guy I'd been out on town on business, lost my billfold. He gave me a $20 bill and a fifth of a cigum seven. I ain't never paid him either. I'm going to have to do that. Well, I fled to Alabama. Then I had to come back here and surrender so I could be properly discharged.
And then I kind of halfway kidnapped my little boy and took him back to Alabama. He's about four months old. And later on, Julie followed. And I taught school for two years. And I reached that point that I reached the point where I'd go back in that mobile home we had and I had taken the screens out and covered them with aluminum and put them back in so that it was absolutely completely dark. And I would get me a half a gallon of I.W. Harper because it had a big handle on it and a pitcher of water, and I'd go back in that room.
And sometime I'd stay in there for three or four days and not come out. I wouldn't go to the bathroom. I wouldn't bathe. I wouldn't shave. I wouldn't do nothing. If I could manage to come out, I would come out and go get me another bottle. It was a bootlegger about a quarter of a mile away. And if I could, some days I'd lay in that bed all day long, building up enough energy and courage to get that quarter of a mile and get me another pint and get back in there.
I learned how to go to hospitals. I learned that if you have a bad enough hangover on Monday and you don't want to go to work, you get your family to put you in a hospital. And I was hospitalized time after time after time, from Monday to Thursday. And they'd give me Thorazine and Peraldehyde and vitamin A and vitamin E and vitamin B12 and they'd feed me some food and they'd turn me loose on Thursday feeling great so that I could drink again on Friday.
And life got absolutely terrible. And this is a period of time that makes me appreciate Al-Anon so much because Julie found Al-Anon again in Alabama. And there's not a doubt in my mind right now that as sick as I have been and as much as I have hurt, that Al-Anon suffered much, much, much more than I ever suffered. Because in this period of time when everything was going down the drain, when none of the bills were paid, when we were so embarrassed I wouldn't go to the Hainville Post Office to pick up the mail, when one car was wrecked and the other one was two notes behind, when people were suing us, when everybody was after us, I could just take that I.W. Harper and pass back out.
And Julie had to stay awake and face every bit of it. When I would spend all the grocery money and go over in my daddy's back door in the middle of the night and go in there and take all the groceries out of daddy's pantry, put them in a sack and bring them over so that my kids could have something to eat, the next morning while I was passed out, Julie would take all that food and put it back in there.
I didn't know that. But life was bad. I reached that point in there that I think every alcoholic has to reach if you want to, and I had to. It's where I was 100% absolutely, completely miserable when I wasn't drinking. And I tried that. And I was 100% completely, absolutely miserable when I was drinking. And I tried that. And that left me one place to go, passed out. And unfortunately, I always woke back up, at least the way I looked at it.
Somebody that loved me scooped me up and hauled me off to the hospital. I was fired from one job. I was teaching school and more or less just quit that on mutual agreement with my cousin, who was the superintendent of education, my friend. My sister was my boss, and she didn't even want me to work for her anymore. And then I got a job with another big retailer, and it was the biggest joke I've ever seen looking back.
I was drunk when they interviewed me, drunk when they hired me, drunk when they sent me off to train me, drunk the entire six or eight weeks I worked for them, and drunk the day they fired me. I had a big job. I managed almost half of a huge department store, almost as big as that Sears store I was telling you about, except it was a different company, a different big retailer. And I got so doggone bad, one of my departments was what they call white goods, refrigerators and whatnot.
And we had a demonstration refrigerator in the store hooked up to demonstrate. I kept a quart bottle of orange juice. It was half orange juice and half vodka right in that refrigerator. I told everybody I had a strange asthma condition and had to sip this throughout the day to keep my bronco tubes open. And that's the kind of life I was living. Let me tell you what happened. I'd been to all these hospitals.
Julie was going to Al-Anon and I didn't.
[00:55:02]
Oh, I love Al-Anon now because Al-Anon, see, led to my recovery. But at this time it was bad because, see, Julie would go to Al-Anon meetings and the only thing I had against her then was that she didn't get home from Al-Anon until ten o'clock at night. And I had to babysit and I couldn't pass out until after she got home. That's okay. But finally, this hospitalization, they took me off to a different hospital.
And in this hospital there was an AA type doctor. And he didn't believe in Thorazine and pills and getting off it without having to hang over. That sadistic rascal thought she needed to shake and sweat a little bit, you know. Anyhow, so I went up there. So I went up to this hospital and he kept me about four days. And it was Christmas Eve seven years ago. He kept me about four days and Christmas Eve came and I said, Doctor, I'm going home on Christmas because my children deserve me.
You know, they can't have Christmas without me. He said, You'll be drunk the day you get home. And he was a liar because I was drunk the next day. But I went back to the hospital the next day and then I spent most all of December and later on almost all of January seven years ago in that place. But let me tell you this last little thing. I was in that hospital and it was about the third day of the third hospitalization in that little hospital because I'd go there and I'd get out and get drunk and get fired from another job, get a job, get fired and go back in.
And it was that third day where you're shaking and sweating and hurting. And my daddy came up to visit. Now, my daddy is a stereotype Army colonel. I love him to death, but he's one of these fellas, you know, stands straight and tall. And he had a favorite statement in those days that I detested, but I endorse it now. I like it, in fact. He used to look at me and he'd say, I love you, son, because you're my son.
But I don't like you. Well, he came up to visit and that was unusual. And then he had the unmitigating gall and audacity to say, Son, I've got some bad news. Now, here I was, third day to third hospitalization, and I ain't got a job and they got bad checks out everywhere and didn't know what I'd been shooting up, you know. And everything, that one car was wrecked and the other car was being repossessed and all the bills were behind.
And the little old ladies in the Hamel Baptist Church did not like me anymore. And I didn't have a friend in the world. I didn't have a hope. I didn't have a prayer. You see, alcoholism, I had grown used to not having a career, to not having a large corporate structure, to not having a three-bedroom brick, to not having any credit cards, to not having any bank accounts, to not having any reputation, to not having any self-respect and not having any hope, to going to jails and insane asylums.
Alcoholism got me used to that. It was everyday behavior. But when he came in, he said, Son, I've got some bad news. And the bad news was that Julie has taken the children and gone home to Oklahoma to Mama and probably won't be back. And she's called the finance company, Son, and told them to come get that mobile home that you're all behind on it anyway. And he says, They've taken it, and I've got your stuff in the garage packed up.
See, when I lost my home, I lost it, I mean, completely. It was nothing but concrete blocks when I got back. But he says, Son, I love you because you're my son, but I don't like you, and I don't know how to help you. And he left. I walked over the door of that hospital. I was ambulatory. And there's a big lake sitting down in front. Now, I want you to listen carefully to what I share with you here.
This is a little bitty town. It's called Tuskegee, Alabama. It's where the Tuskegee Institute is. And I looked out at that lake, and I resolved to kill myself. I was going to run down and drown myself in that lake. And I know that I could have done it. I know that I could have done it because I had the proper motivation. I was going to kill myself not to get poor little old me out of the troubles that poor little old me was in, but I was going to kill myself to get the millstone that I was out from around the neck of the three or four people that still love me, my daughter, my sister, my mother, and one little old lady at the Baptist church.
And notice I didn't mention Julie in that four, you see? But I was going to do that. I had thought about suicide many a time, but I was always the kind of suicide before who would fling themselves in front of a parked car, you know? Or you know the dude who'd cast himself out of the basement window? Three. Three different houses. Two of them in Tulsa. I sat on the side of my bed with my shotgun, was going to kill myself, and Julie went to sleep.
So I shot it through the ceiling to wake her up, you know? But anyhow, I would have done it. Except some little voice, not a real live voice, but something told me to touch base with a Baptist minister before I did this thing. And I looked in the phone book. Before I did this thing, and I looked in the phone book, and I'd be in that phone book in Tuskegee, Alabama, there were two Baptist churches. And I knew that one of them was the white Baptist preacher, and one of them was the black Baptist preacher.
[01:00:00]
And darn if I was gonna have the black Baptist preacher save my soul before I committed suicide. And I was too crazy and too proud and too vain to go ask all those black attendants which one was which. And I stood back and opened the door out of force of habit for a gentleman to walk in and down the hall he went, and a little old black lady had been sitting there for a half hour and he said nothing.
She said, isn't that Reverend Butler, the Baptist minister? Well, I followed him down the hall and I found out that indeed it was. And looking back on that, I have learned something that was very important to my program. All my life I have been taught and I have heard that God helps those who help themselves. It ain't true. It is not New Testament scriptural and it ain't in the Big Book. It says, came to believe that no human power could have relieved alcoholism.
No human power includes self. God helps those friends who admit they are helpless. In other words, when a drunk cries out in utter desperation, he will receive help. And I did. And I got out of there and I went to AA. I just became willing to give anything to get what you have. I ran into a sponsor. And this old sponsor, he had nothing in common with me. He was in his 16th year of sobriety. And as you all know, that is a very dangerous year.
And he told me, he said, Tom, your 16th year is a dangerous year. And he had a craven flung on him to go to meetings every night all over the area. And I took him. And do you know, do you know practically, practically single-handedly I got that old man through that dangerous 16th year, he is still sober today. But… One of the things I got lucky with, and if you are new in this program, you get lucky with, pick you out a good solid old pro, pick out a winner, pick out somebody that reads that big book and anytime there is a discussion, they don't argue about it, they look it up in the book and stick with them and that's all I did.
I didn't do nothing. I didn't do nothing. About six months later, I got my family back. And I want to close this out now because a little red eyeball came on up here. But I want to tell you something that AA has done for me. It's the darndest thing. I don't know how to understand it or how to share it. But from the very word go, there were always those things I wanted and the type of person I wanted to be.
But I'm glad I'm an alcoholic now for true because I would have never been able to get them. But now I can. And I know people in the church that can get what maybe we have. But with them, it's mostly voluntary. You see, AA is a discipline factor for me because I don't have to go all over the country and speak at meetings and get up in the middle of the night and drive across town so that some guy can throw up in my lap, you know.
And I don't have to do all of these things, but I don't have to stay sober. But the way of life that you have given me in order to stay alive makes me become the type of person that I always wanted to be anyhow. And I'm going to say this. Right now, I have a three-bedroom brick. I got two nice cars. I got a pretty blonde wife. I got two beautiful children that maybe you'd be lucky enough to run into around here tomorrow if my little boy doesn't run into you first.
I've got a bunch of credit cards in my pocket. Some of them got Julie's name on them. But I've still got some credit cards in my pocket. There's two banks in Lowndes County, Alabama that will loan me money. There are a lot of others that won't, but those two will. I have a large, I have a job with a large corporate structure, the state of Alabama by name. And since I see that Governor George is retiring, I know I will rise unerringly to the top.
You see? And I have been nominated, was about six months ago, didn't make it at the time, but I was nominated by that little Hamel Baptist Church to be a deacon. And I owe you every one of those things because I ought to be dead. I got to share this last little story and then I'll quit. It's a story about, that explains what we have here, at least to me. It's a story about a man walking by this park and he saw all these kids running around out there in that park and they were all flying kites.
And it was a beautiful spring day like we had here. And the kites were up in the blue sky with the clouds and the little boys were all running and jumping and hopping and playing and having such a good time. And he saw one little boy sitting there and that little boy was just sitting there. And so he walked over and he said, kid, he said, why aren't you running around and jumping and hopping and screaming like all the other kids?
And the little boy said, Mr. Icane, I'm blind. And that really took the man back. And the man said, well, son, if you're blind and you can't see all those beautiful clouds
[01:05:01]
and those blue and yellow and green kites in the tails, he said, why are you flying the kites, son? And the little boy said, because, Mr., I can feel the tug on the string. And that's what I feel. I don't know what the group conscience is and I don't know what we have, but I know when I come in a meeting like this or any little group anywhere, I feel some tug on my string. And it lets me know that I have help.
And it lets me know something else, that when the carpenter, when the master walked those rocky shores and he said, I have come, that you might have life and have it more abundantly. Indeed, he was talking about what we have tonight. Thank you. I don't know how much time I got in this time. I know how much I had at first, that's why I had to rush. And that's the first time in AA I've been mitocized in three minutes.
Because I got my whole group here cheering for me tonight and I've been looking right at them all night. And they know that. But Tom, that was real wonderful. It couldn't be put any better. And that's what it's all about. It's amazing. The last words you said there, that's what that little fella said, he said, I'll make the way so clear for you that any fool wouldn't err along the way. No way. You cannot do it.
We have the people that fall off, we look at them and we're guided. And just like you were saying, I always did like to quote something I read that I use in this program. This program, to me, right in line with what you said, offers a freedom that you never dreamed of before. Not the one that Jefferson wrote about, the Declaration of Independence. Not even the one that Martin Luther King was marching about.
The individual freedom that you have, freedom from hate, freedom from wanting, freedom from envy, freedom from selfishness, it's real wonderful. And Tom, man, you are a brother. You are from Alabama. Thank you. The Owl Session will be here at 1030. Another wonderful talk. Tom, I want to say thank you, too.