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Source: DICOBE-00606 – Kay T – COON SUPPER – 1979-01-27.mp3 File: dicobe-00606-kay-t-coon-supper-1979-01-27.mp3 Duration: 01:05:11
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Larry always being a friend's benefit. I wanted to get that straightened out in the beginning. Okay, tell you a little about myself. The Big Book tells me that I should tell you what happened, or how it was, what happened, and what it's like now. And as soon as I settle down a little bit, I'll try to do that. I was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and I was born into a home with beautiful parents, very loving, concerned, hardworking, fellows of the community kind of people that loved their children, had one brother, and they spent a lot of years trying to raise me to be exactly the kind of person that was supposed to come out of that air, a female type, which is someone that grows up to graduate from high school, gets married, goes to college, has a couple of kids, first a boy and then a girl, and takes care of the house in a perfect manner, and keeps everything clean, and entertains, and wears a pink pinafore, and just everything is storybook kind of thing.
And that's the message that I somehow got. I'm not sure it was there as I look back, but that's what I was hearing. And when I, age 14, ended up in jail, we all knew there was a problem somewhere, that the story wasn't going to end quite the way it was supposed to. And I kind of had forgot about that, you know, I was thinking about being in jail, and when I think back, I think I spent a lot more time there than I really realized I did.
I have, when I've told my story before, I've always talked about the first time I ever took a drink was back in the days when Pat Boone and White Bucks were really in, and I had on a brand new pair of White Bucks shoes, and I drank a half a can of warm beer, and pipped all over my White Bucks, and immediately threw them away, rather than cleaning them up. And I was thinking that that was pretty much how my life started out, was booze. But it really wasn't, puking wasn't a thing, I was in jail when I was 14 years old.
And I'd forgot about that. I had gone off to, from Lexington to Cincinnati, Ohio, to visit a girlfriend of mine there. And she and I went out that night to have a couple of drinks, and meet a couple of guys on the bar stool. And we did, one of them was her boyfriend, the one that I was with was a complete stranger, he was also about 40 years old. And I was 14. And we had gone across from Cincinnati, Ohio, into Louisville, Kentucky. Now that's the man act.
But I ended up in jail. We were going back across the river, and the police stopped us, and I'm not too sure just how that all went, because I was in a blackout, 14 years old. And we were going back across the river, and the next thing I knew I was in the police station, and they were saying, what is your name? And I said, Frances Blakeman. And with that I took out some identification to prove that I was Frances Blakeman, which was not my identification at all.
And they put me in a detention home and helped me over. Wouldn't let me go back home with my girlfriend, and I was there for several weeks. And in this detention home, and I forgot all about that. I really had forgot to remember that I started out my drinking career in a lot of trouble, in jail at the age of 14. And from there it got worse. It just got increasingly worse. At the age of 16 I decided that these parents that had caused me to end up in a lot of confusion.
You see, I wouldn't have done all the things I've done if my mom and dad let me do what I want to do. The reason I had to lie and steal and sneak around was because they were putting all these rules and regulations on me. And if they hadn't have done that, I wouldn't have been in the trouble I was. That was very clear to me. So at 16, just barely, I got married and got out of that situation so I could do what I wanted to do, and I wouldn't end up in so much trouble.
And of course what happened was that I ended up in more trouble. I married this guy that didn't drink and didn't smoke, and I don't know what in hell I married him for. I was really into drinking and doing a lot of things in those days, and here was this guy and I was living with him,
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and he didn't drink and he didn't smoke, and I was right away sneaking and hiding my booze.
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And we were in a lot of financial difficulty because I was 16 and he was 18. There wasn't a lot of money there, and I went to work nights in a factory. And so it became very easy. He worked in days and me working nights to start drinking around the house and letting things go and not taking care of my responsibilities. And these loving parents of mine decided that I had left to get away from all the pressure, decided that they would disown me when I married this guy.
And a year later when my daughter was born, they didn't want to disown her. So when I left the hospital, instead of going back to the little duplex that we had moved into when we got married, they had bought us a home and furnished it. And I went from the hospital having this child into this home that they had bought. And my father at that point retired and moved to Florida, and a year later I got a letter from him saying, you have 30 days, you've been evicted.
The payments on that house were $47 a month and we weren't paying them. And the reason that we weren't paying them was because every time we got a little bit ahead, I was taking that money and buying boots. I was 17 and 18 years old at this point. So when we went from there, I decided that the whole problem, of course, was this man I'd married. And if I didn't have all this pressure and all these rules and regulations that he had put upon me, I would be okay.
So I left him and I went back home to Mom and Dad. And of course there again were the rules and regulations, and I was getting in more and more trouble as far as physically is concerned. I was reaching a point where it wasn't as easy to function. And I was having some problems, and I would get up in the morning and I wouldn't be able to talk. I would be talking kind of like this. And I was having one hell of a time keeping my tongue in my mouth.
And I wasn't able to relate that to the drinking at all. I thought it was a very serious condition, and my mother thought I was playing games. And every morning when I would get up, I would have this real thick tongue. It was kind of like you just had a shot of Novocaine. And I couldn't talk clearly, and I felt my tongue felt very large, and it tried very hard to get out of my mouth. And I didn't want it to, and it was very painful.
My tongue was pulling this way, and I'm automatically trying to get it back in. And you know, after I was sober and in this program, I have found more people that had that same problem. It just never ceases to amaze me. I was talking to a gal one time. She was a nurse, and I thought maybe she could answer that problem for me, what that was. And she said, Kay, that has nothing to do with anything except your drinking.
She said it happened to a lot of us, and I have found a lot of us that went through that. But as a result of that, I got introduced to a little pill. And I got to taking these pills. The doctor said, now what you need to do is you need to go off and live in a little cabin by yourself for about a week and just take these pills and take it easy, and your nerves will get calmed down, and you'll be fine.
And I did, and I was. I was so fine, it's just amazing how fine I was. So from there, I decided that from that point forward, as I look back on it, I know that I knew that I could never take drugs. And I guess I'm very grateful for that, because I'm sure I would have, because as the years passed, I never did have to experiment a lot with drugs because I was terrified of them. I knew that booze did enough for me, and that was the drug of my choice, and I was very scared of getting involved with other drugs.
But I continued to drink, and as I was living there with my folks, I noticed that there was a lot of pressure there and that I was very uncomfortable because of the rules and regulations. So once again, I moved. This time, I took a look at a map, and I said, I'm going to just point my finger on this map, and the nearest city, I'm going to move there. And I did. And I left my little family home with my parents to take care of, and I moved off to St. Louis, Missouri, geographical care.
And I went to St. Louis, and I got a job, and I got me a little car, and I went to work, and everything was going fine, and I was doing good, and I sent for my kids, and they came up and joined me. And there was this minister there that took a liking to me,
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and he decided that he would try very hard to help me. And this man was a very honest, caring person, as was the rest of his family, and they really wanted to help me. And they knew that I had a drinking problem because my folks had told them that I had a drinking problem. So they set out to help me, and I spent a year in this church, and I stayed sober that year. And I had lived with them, and they had loved me, and they had loved my children, and they were really working hard to help me.
And at the end of the year, which is the date that I had set for myself, I took my kids to this minister's house, and I said, Watch the kids. I've got a couple of things I need to pick up at the grocery store. And I borrowed his car, and I took off, and I was gone for 10 days. And I can't tell you what happened during those 10 days because I really don't know. I was just kind of in and out of that.
And I remember coming to out of a blackout, driving around this man's house, thinking that what I really needed to do was get my kids and get back in line and get to work and get off of the bus. But the fear that was there, I couldn't go get the kids. I couldn't face this man and say, Look, here it is. It's been bad, but I want my kids, and I want to give you your car, and I want to get all this treatment.
I was terrified. It was a fear that came to be something that I lived with every day from about that point on. Any kind of confrontation with anybody, whether it was to be good or bad, any kind of anything that had to do with my fellow human beings was totally terrifying for me from that point on. I finally stopped and picked up my children because he finally saw me driving around outside and stopped me.
And I got the kids and I left there and went back to work. I was good at getting jobs. I just could get jobs. I lied a lot. I got a job as an office manager and certified public accountant for an advertising firm out of St. Louis. I wasn't a high school graduate. Certified public accountant. We learned to lie, we learned to con, and we learned to cheat. And the amazing thing is that we do it real well.
Once we get in, we can handle it. And I worked for about a year for this company, and the guy that I was working for was an extremely caring person. He was a nice guy to work for. And he had a cabin up in the Ozarks. And periodically he would let his employees go up and use the cabin. So I went up one weekend with my kids and some of their friends, and after I'd sunk his sailboat and tore up his cabin and lost his scuba diving equipment, he put an ad in the paper for my job.
And I was highly insulted that he would do this kind of thing, and so I called and answered to the ad. And told him that I was a qualified, certified public accountant and that I had had about a year's experience at managing a small office and would he be interested in an interview. And he said, okay, come along. And this man let me go back to work for him. One of the things that he told me, which again comes back to me, was hindsight.
He called me in his office and I was shaky and trembling, and he sat me down and he said, Kay, I have a friend who's a member of a program called Alcoholics Normal. And he said, I think this is the problem, and I think that if you get a hold of this man, maybe he can help you. I was so insulted, how dare that man. I said, this is not the kind of job that I want. I don't want to work for you if you're going to insult me.
And I didn't see that as the problem. I saw the problem, the kids that I had to take care of alone. I saw the problem as nervousness. I saw the problem as inability to socialize with people without a few drinks. I saw the problem as being self-conscious. I saw the problem as being very sensitive, artistic, kind of human being that needed a couple of drinks in order to function normally around people that were there, whether it was my family, my fellow employees, the people at the corner tavern, whoever it was.
Whoever it was, when I had a couple of drinks in me, I became what I wanted to be.
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My problem was I always overshot that and ended up drunk. So booze wasn't the problem, booze was the solution. The problem was how to control the amount of booze that I put into my system. And I had no idea what an alcoholic was, but it certainly wasn't a lady that was born in Lexington, Kentucky. And it certainly wasn't a woman of my background. After all, I was a certified public accountant, for heaven's sake.
So I continued to drink and I continued to hide from my illness, which is kind of crazy. But I lost apartments, I lost jobs, I lost friends, family. And finally, I got fired off of one job and I had been doing some drinking in some of the nicer places in East St. Louis, which is across the river, they stay open all night over there and everybody would go across the river over there. They suggested to me that my problem was that working was interfering with my drinking.
And that if I would move to Illinois, the public aid there was very generous and I could live on public aid probably better than I was living on the wages that I was earning and why didn't I try that? And that sounded like a good idea to me, so I moved to Illinois and I went on welfare. And while I was on welfare, they kept sending me these cards each month that I later found out were food stamp cards.
And I wasn't interested in any way in these cards they were sending me, all I was interested in was the check. So I'd cash the check and I'd pay my rent and I'd buy my booze. Meanwhile, I've got kids at home, a collie dog that had just had 11 pups, and a house that I've been living in now for three months and nothing's been washed, clothes, linens, nothing. And if you take things off or whatever it is, you just leave it there.
I've got stacks and stacks of dirty dishes, I've got clothes, you can't get in the bedroom for all the stuff that's laying around. It's filthy, there's roaches, there's mice, there's rats. I have made no attempt since I've been in this place to clean it up in any way. And my kids are there and on top of all the filth, there's 11 collie pups running around that I take turns crying on each one of their shoulders.
Because he was right. Work was interfering with my drinking. And when I quit work, it no longer interfered and I drank around the clock except when I was asleep. And I found people that drank like I did. It wasn't hard, they're just there. And there was this girl and she drank like I did and we ran around together a lot and she had kids too. She also was a kleptomaniac. She liked to steal. Now she was a first class thief.
The gal never, when she'd steal coffee, she'd steal you band. There was just no question about it. And as I got to running with her, I got to driving the getaway car. And we'd pull out to Penny's and she'd run in and get what we needed and come back out and off we'd go. And we were doing this for a while and it was working real well. My kids didn't have anything to eat but they were wearing the best clothes in town.
And it finally occurred to me, my kids were saying, Mom, we need something to eat and I was feeling pressure again. Once more it was all that pressure. And so I decided that if it worked for clothes, it would surely work for food. So we were going to go out and we were going to get some food for the kids. Now everybody knows if you don't have any money, your kids have got to eat. So you're going to get some food.
So we went back over to St. Louis and I'll never know why we did that. And I had on a green suede coat. Again, I wore the best clothes. And I had been drinking Mogan David wine the night before. And the whole front of that green suede coat was purple. And we went into a grocery store over there and we got our baskets and we ran around and picked up whatever we wanted, hams, roast, coffee, vegetables, and put them in this sack that we had in the cart.
And I walked out the door. And when I got on the other side of the door, the manager was standing there. And he said, Lady, step back inside please. And in a short time, the police were there, the county police and the local Brentwood police were there. And they took me in and they put me in jail. And this was quite an experience.
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There was three of us ladies that were into that. And one of them was about seven months pregnant. And they arrested us and they found in the back of the car, we had hit a liquor store before we got there, and they found all the booze, sacks and sacks of booze that we had walked out of this liquor store with. And all three of us fine upstanding ladies began telling the officers individually that we really didn't do it, it was them.
And then they'd get us together and we'd, you know, cover up that we had told on each other. As a result of that, they put me in county jail. The other two ladies got out and I stayed because I didn't have anyone to go my bond. And while I was in the jail, I learned a lot about myself. Number one, I'm terrified of jails. It scared me to death. I just knew I was going to be raped by all these other ladies.
I knew that I was going to be beat up. I knew that all these terrible things were going to happen to me. And none of them did. None of them did. But one thing did happen that impressed me. During visiting hours in that jail, they put you in a little room that looks kind of like a Catholic confessional, I think. I've never been in one of those. But it's a real small room and there's a little window there with a little screen on it.
And through this little window, you get to see whoever is visiting you. And one at a time, I saw my children through that window. And I thought, maybe the time had come for me to take a look at what was going on in my life. And there was a lady there that was the matron of that jail, and she was very kind. And one of the things that she tried to do for me when I went before the judge was to have them leave the handcuffs off me because you had to walk about three blocks up the street in handcuffs to go before the judge.
And she couldn't do that, and she was real upset. And I walked up the street for three blocks, handcuffed to the guard with my children sitting in a car across the street. And when I got to the judge's office, he very graciously told me that I had already spent time, and if he added to that discount for good time, I would be eligible to go home in the morning. So I thought that if I got out of that jail, the first thing I was going to do was go home, and I was going to clean my clothes and wash my dishes and pack them up, and I was going to get out of that neighborhood, and I was going to get my kids actively involved with their mother, and I was going to start going back to church, and I was going to take care of my life and clean my act up.
And I left that jail the next morning, and three days later I got home. Meanwhile, while I had been in that jail, I had called my mother and told her that I was in a situation that I had no control over, and would she please take care of the children because I had no one to take care of them for me while I was in this terrible misfortune that I was in. And my mother said, No, I will not take care of your children for you again.
It's time for you to take care of your own responsibilities. Send them to their father or send them to a foster home, but don't send them to me. And one of the things that I got in that jail was the most overwhelming, consuming resentment that I'd had in my lifetime. I hated my mother. How dare that woman refuse her only daughter and her only grandchildren, the very necessities of life. What kind of woman was that?
So I nurtured that for a long time, and Mother would write, and I would send her letters back unopened, return to send her. And I punished her for a long time for that. As I look back on it now, I know that probably that was the best thing that she could have done. It's amazing that she'd never been to an Illinois meeting, but she did. And I hated her, and I nurtured that, which I think was another reason to stay drunk for a while.
And then I did move, and I packed my stuff up, and I washed my stuff, and I moved into another little house, and I'm still on welfare, but I'm making some sort of an effort to get my life together. At least my house now is halfway clean, and at least the kids are going to school on a regular basis.
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But it was during this period of time that I started having things like DTs. I didn't know what they were, and I thought they were real, and they scared me. And I would say to my daughter, Honey, do you see these things? They're going to eat me up. And she would say, Yeah, Mom, I see them. Scared to death. Afraid to tell me that they weren't really there. Because she knew that she could do something like burn the popcorn, and Mother would smack her clear across the room.
She knew that. And it was about that time that once again I decided that something needed to be done. And what I decided to do was attempt suicide. And I ended up in county hospital having had about 12 stitches across my wrist. And I did a good job. But there was two of us that came into that hospital then that night that had tried the same thing. One gal just had some scratches, and I had this very severe cut.
And the doctor, the psychiatrist, got us confused. And so he let me go and kept her. She may still be there. I don't know. But that was my first experience in a psych unit in a hospital. And that scared me. So once again I decided, I always decided, You see, I didn't want to be like that. I didn't want to hurt. I didn't want my kids to hurt. I didn't want anybody to hurt. I wanted the plan that my parents had had for me as a child very much.
I just couldn't seem to have it, no matter how hard I tried. So it was during that period that I decided to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I need to share with you that was not a decision that I made. I came to, you know, out of a blackout, came to, found myself talking on the phone to a little lady, and I had evidently been talking to her for quite a while. Now that wasn't a new experience for me.
When you come to in a situation like that, you just pretend that you've been there all the time. So I was talking to this lady, and as the conversation went on, I found out that she was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had no idea what in the world I was doing talking to her. I assumed that somewhere along the line, I had looked the number up in the phone book and made the phone call. Two years sober, my daughter told me she did that.
So this lady wanted to come over to my house, and her and another gentleman came to my house that night, and I was really sick. I was coming off the booze, and the last thing I wanted in the world was this damn lady at my house. Get away, kind of thing. But she insisted on helping me, and I never was one that could say no. And I also was one to keep score and keep things in balance. If you do me a favor, I owe you one.
If I do you one, you owe me two. We've got to keep it in balance. So here she was, and she was being very kind, and she was talking to me, and she was fixing me toast with honey on it and orange juice with honey in it, and then she'd hold my head when I went to puke it up. Now that was a biggie. Anybody would do that, you owe them two. So I kind of kept getting in with this woman. She had to hammer over me because I owed her these things.
I didn't want her program. I didn't want any part of her. I just wanted to get the score even so I could get away from her. And she stayed there all night, and she was a lady that had a lot of back trouble, and she sat up there all night talking to me, and she got out one of the little wallet cards, and she was reading the steps and kind of telling me about what the steps meant, and the only thing I could think about was, get out of here. Go away.
And she stayed, and she stayed, and she stayed, and she started doing things like straightening up my house and washing my dishes, and breakfast time rolled around, and she fixed my kids probably the first decent breakfast they'd had in a long time, and she kept telling me she loved me. And she started telling me about her own drinking, and I thought, this is a crazy lady. She was a retired nurse from the Alton State Hospital in our area, and she hadn't started drinking until after she retired, and she referred to herself as a closet drinker.
And that was kind of strange, you know. And that was kind of strange, you know, you go in the closet and you have a drink, and come back out.
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You know, I stood on the end of the bar. What is this closet drinker? And she had only drank for a few years, and right away she was, she was this blooming alcoholic, and I thought, this lady is nuts, and I've got to get her away from me. So I told her I was fine, and I would go to her meeting, and why didn't she go home and get some rest? It was very obvious her back was tired, and I really cared about her, and she left, and she called me.
Now you have to know that I owe the lady, and I'm always the one to pay my debts. So she called me then and said, get ready, we're going to the meeting, and I said, look, I really would love to go with you, but nobody is here to watch my children, and I really have to watch my children tonight. She said, Kay, you haven't watched those children for years, you don't need to start today. I went to the meeting with her, and put on my best red dress, and did my hair up, and I went to this meeting, and at this meeting there was, I don't know, maybe seven or eight men, at least as old as Franklin, maybe older.
And this one little lady, and I thought, I put on my red dress for this, and they were trying to pour this coffee down me, and I'm like this, and I'm trying to figure out how I can drink the coffee without them seeing me shake. And the whole meeting I was sweaty, and it was in the upstairs building of a church, and it was hot, and I thought, what am I doing here? And finally I got out of that meeting, and that night, that later, or the next morning, this little lady comes over to my house, and she picks up my laundry and takes it to her house and washes my laundry.
Now once again I owe her. I just wish this lady would leave me alone. She come over that night carrying a basket of chicken and some french fries, and she sat down at my table and she fixed me some more orange juice, just took over my kitchen. And she said, okay, get ready, we're going to a meeting. And it's important for you all to know that if that woman hadn't kept ahead of me, I probably wouldn't have kept going to meetings.
But she just kept it up and kept it up, and I kept trying to get this thing balanced out. I didn't like her meetings, I didn't like the people there. They kept talking about booze and God, and I didn't understand any of it, and I just wanted them to leave me alone. And it wasn't but about three or four weeks that she multiplied, this lady. And now there was four or five of them calling me, and I just couldn't seem to get ahead of that.
So about three months later I was now going regularly to three or four meetings a week on my own, and I was deciding that probably what I could do was I could stay sober and I could go to these meetings and I could go to church maybe once or twice a week. And we had what Franklin and Eloise refer to as the eating meeting, eating meeting, pardon me, in our area. It was called potluck there, and I took along my kids because I was always trying to use my kids as an excuse to not go.
But they kept saying, now these open meetings, these potlucks bring you kids. So I took the kids along, and I had gotten physically well enough that I even took a dish along, and I was trying to do some things about this program. I could see you all were sober. I could see that you were ancient but sober. And I was trying to get some semblance of normal living going in my life. And I figured if I got better I could then go back to controlling my drinking, but in the meantime I had to get better.
So that particular night I went to this potluck, and it was the first time I had ever been to a meeting where one person kind of spoke the whole night. And I was about three months sober at that point, and the speaker that night was Larry, and I thought, wow, okay, stand up honey, and let's let him take another look at you. Now after sitting around a meeting with a bunch of Franklins, it's needless to say that at about this point I decided that what this man needed to help him work his program was me.
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And that maybe this AA business wouldn't be too bad after all. So I set about setting out to capture Larry. And now sobriety got worthwhile. The game is on. But unbeknownst to me, about the same time, Larry was thinking about the same thing. You see, there wasn't any young chicks around these meetings either. So he came over and he sat down and we ate potluck, and he just raved about my dish and how marvelous the kids were, and we're back into Gracie, he loved my kids kind of stuff, he said.
So I started playing the game. As I started playing the game, he kept calling and asking me to go out, and I kept saying I can't go, I'm washing my hair, I've got a funeral to go to. And finally the grapevine started working and somebody said, okay, Larry said that if you didn't talk to him on the phone and go out with him, he was going to quit calling you. So I got my red dress back out. And he called and he said, well, where would you like to go?
And I said, well, anywhere you want to take me, where are we going to go? We were going out to dinner and to an AA meeting. I thought, well, you know, I'll go along with that for a while. And we did. We went out to dinner and to an AA meeting for the next couple of months. We never went to a movie, we never went anywhere except to AA meetings, and we ate occasionally. And he proposed and we decided to get married, and on March, no, I went into AA in December of 71, and in March of 72, Larry and I got married.
He was sober a month or six weeks longer than I was. So here we go, we're off and running, and I was beginning to hear some things in the program. I was beginning to hear that you need to work the steps, and I was beginning to do that. I really was making an effort to kind of try to do that. And when Larry came into my life, what I did was I took the steps that you gave me and I saw the word higher power, and this is at a subconscious level, and Larry became my higher power.
I willingly turned my will and my life over to the care of Larry. And in July, Larry came home one day and he said, Honey, I have decided that I'm not alcoholic and I probably can drink. Now, I don't know about you, you do whatever you want to do, but when I get off from work tonight, I'm going to go out and have a few beers. And I thought about that and I thought, Gee, you know, I really do get in a lot of trouble when I drink.
I know what I'll do, I'll call my sponsor. And I called my sponsor and my sponsor said all of the right things. And the minute I hung up the phone, I went and put my hair up in rollers and got out my red dress. Because you see, the big book tells us that there are times when no human power can keep us from taking that drink. And for me, that's very true. So I went out with Larry that night. And before the night was over, I was in a blackout.
And I think he was too, I'm not sure. But from that point for the next six months, it was a vicious merry-go-round of state hospitals, hospitals, guns, fights, knives. The kids during that time were placed in a foster home. Family and Children's Service came in and said, Uh-uh, you are not a fit parent, you are not a fit mother, and you may not have these children in your home. And removed them, and I drank to that.
It's a terrible way to treat me, a loving mother, and I drank to that for a long time. And finally it reached a point where Larry couldn't work anymore, and I went back out and got on welfare once more. And while we were waiting for the check to come in, he went out and got what little booze he could and brought it in the house. And finally the check came in and I signed it, and he went out and he bought, I don't know, eight cases of some kind of bourbon or brandy or something, I don't know what it was, eight cases of Quartz, five cases of beer, two cartons of cigarettes, and three packages of peanuts.
And he came home and we drank and we drank and we drank, and I was laying on the couch and he was laying in the bed, and things just were unreal.
[00:40:00]
I was in DTs, in and out of them, on and off, and Larry ended up in the state hospital again, and I decided to go rescue him. We had a fight in there and he shot at me and I stabbed at him. We didn't play around with fights, you know. And I decided that when I'm drinking I can't get out and get the booze, I'd get too sick, so I needed him, so I was going to bust him out of the state hospital. He was in a locked ward and I got me a drunk, and I said, come on, this is what we're going to do, and so we took off to get Larry.
Now this guy is driving the getaway car, I'm familiar with getaway cars, and I told him, keep the car running, and don't let anybody in it, and we'll be out, and as soon as we get in the car, go. So I go in and I'm so drunk going into state hospital, where what they've got there is drunks, I don't know why they let me out, but there's Larry and unbeknownst to me, he's sober, see, he's been there a few days, and I said to him, before I went there, I had taken the two or three one dollar bills I had and rolled them up on a bunch of newspaper and put a rubber band around them so it looked like a big roll, and I stuck the gun in my pocket, and it never occurred to me to tell the man the truth, see.
I didn't think to say, look, what I need you to do is bust out of here, I was going to convince him he had to, see. So I opened my purse when I saw him, and I said, Larry, you've got to get out of here quick, I've just knocked over a liquor store, the cops are after me. So he said, oh my God, he said, I can't let that happen and he's going to save me, right? So he told the guard, he said, just let me walk her out on the step there, and I want to kiss her goodnight, it's right at Christmas, and I want to wish her a Merry Christmas, and the guard being a nice guy, let him do that, and when we hit the steps, we ran like hell.
We got to the getaway car and the guy was passed out. So we couldn't get in, and here comes this guard, lickety-split, and by this time he's called out two or three more guards, and Larry just decked him one, and we took off down the hill and got to the nearest tavern and called a cab and went home. And we started off and running again. On January the 21st, 1973, we had no booze in the house other than beer, and I was trying very hard to drink that beer.
I was down to far less than 100 pounds. I didn't know day from night, and I was in and out of DTs. I'm not sure I didn't convulse in there, and I was one sick chick, and I knew if I could just get the beer down that I could feel a little bit better, and I was terrified. The fear was just terrible, and I was trying so hard, and the beer would just go to here and it would come back up in foam, and I tried and tried, and I went through three or four cans of beer just getting it back up in foam.
It wouldn't go. It just wouldn't go, and about that time, there was a knock on my door, and I was incapable of answering the door. I couldn't move, and who's at the door but my sponsor. Six months later, about 30 pounds later, children in foster homes and me probably at death's door. There's my sponsor. Looks at me and grins and says, How you feeling, honey? And there was something that I saw there in this man that I wanted.
For the first time, I saw something there that I wanted, and it wasn't the smile on his face. It wasn't even the brightness in his eyes. It was life. He was living, and certainly what I had going for me was not life, and it took me about six weeks just to be able to walk. I shuffled. I couldn't walk through a door without hitting it. Larry would help me by walking me up and down the driveway, and in six weeks' time, I was able to go to a meeting, and in that meeting that I went to, I heard what you had to say to me.
I no longer saw you as a bunch of And that if I was willing to do whatever it was you told me to do, I might be able to hook on to at least one or two of those answers.
[00:45:09]
And what you told me was that no human power. And I had a hard time with that and I had to swallow real hard because I'd had that year in the church and I didn't see God as an answer. And you told me that was okay, that all I needed was a power that was greater than myself. And it could be any way that I understood it to be, and in the beginning it was just a little bit of hope. And I took that hope and my God, as I understand Him today, has increased that hope to the point where I know that this one day I won't take a drink.
Just for today. And beyond that, the benefits and the blessings that He has bestowed upon me are uncountable. It started with a lot of things like the children coming home. People like yourselves that stood up in that courtroom and said, She's sober and she's a good mother and the kid's coming home. It started with things like being able to function. It started with things like not wetting the couch anymore.
I heard a speaker say one time that one of the greatest benefits of this program is not having a rusty zipper, and I can identify with that. Not having black and blue marks all over me. Not having Larry shoot at me anymore. Not having the vomits when you eat. Not having the nervous willies 24 hours a day. Not waking up in the middle of the night with cold sweats on the back of your neck, scared to death.
Those are just kinds of basic things. In addition to that, there's been a lot else. People, people, people, people. You see, my problem was, and it talks about it in the big book, that our interpersonal relationships are shot. Today, I have relationships with people that are warm and wonderful. People I've never met before in my life that walk up to me and say, I love you. To hell for, you don't know me.
People that care. So I decided that I wanted it. Whatever it was, I wanted to live, and I wanted to be a part of whatever it was you had going. So I began to look seriously at the program, and I took the first step. And I was able to see that the unmanageability had nothing to do with being drunk. The unmanageability was when I was sober. And I was able to move on to the second step. And I was able to believe, because I saw it, that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, to some sort of semblance of manageability in my life.
And I made a decision to turn my will in my life over to the care of that God, as I understand it. And it had nothing to do with any other human being. I did not turn my will in life over to Larry, or my sponsor, or AA as a whole, or a doorknob, or a tree. I turned my will in my life over to the care of God as I understood it. And I took a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself, and things that cropped up in my life were, one, my mother.
And I decided that it was time, that something needed to be done. But still being the self-centered person that I was, I saw it that she needed to apologize to me. Sure, I resented her, but I would not have resented her had she not said no. So it was her fault. And you lovely people pointed out to me that if I had not put myself in that position, she would not have been able to say no. It had something to do with me.
So I was able to call my mother up. Well, the love that my mom and I have today is unreal.
[00:50:19]
So we're back together, and she's had a lot of things going in her life. My stepfather recently died, which means that somewhere along the line, my father died, and he never had an opportunity to see his daughters again. And the other things, as I moved on down the steps, that began to crop up in my life, that needed to be dealt with, and needed to be taken care of, began to happen. Because I was making an effort to turn my wheel in my life over to the care of God.
At whatever degree I could do that, on whatever day it happened to be. So some time went by, and I got some sobriety under my belt, and I was feeling better physically, and I had my kids at home, and things were going okay, except for one thing. My friend's benefit over there was crazier than hell. And I'm not sure that's true today. I thought it was at the time, but I'm not sure he was crazy at all. He tells me he was on a monumental dry drop.
But I think what was really going on at that particular time is I did not know how to have an open, honest, loving, caring relationship with this man. And whatever he did, I saw it as he doing it to me. And whatever he said, I reacted badly, and I hurt, and I had a lot of pain as pertained to my relationship with this man. The rest of my life was really coming together for me. And I went to a meeting one night, and there was a lady there, and she said, I was complaining about Larry after the meeting.
And she said to me, Kay, what you need to do is go to an Al-Anon meeting. And I really didn't want to be a part of these cookie-baking bitches. You see, I never thought of an Al-Anon as sitting on the end of the bar stool. I saw the Al-Anons as the people that were supposed to keep the cookies turning over. And I really didn't know, and that's another thing, you know, I didn't like women. I really, I couldn't have, I was fine with all these Franklins, you know, I was fine with the men in the group.
But when there was a woman there, it terrified me, and I hated her. And the reason for that was simply I hated me, and I was a woman. So I couldn't, I couldn't relate. I had no earthly idea what it meant to be a woman, so how could I relate to you? But I went, because I had gotten used to doing what I was told in this program. And I went, and in these meetings, these Al-Anon meetings, I learned how to love and to care openly.
How to relate my feelings to Larry. How to tell him what I needed and what I wanted, and then to know that what he did with that information was up to him without being hurt if he didn't do what I wanted. I was able to learn how to love him, and just accept on face that he loved me too. And then when he came home two years after I was sober, and said I'm going out to get drunk tonight, I didn't have to go with him.
He went out, and he drank, and my higher power was God and not Larry, and I had my Al-Anon group to help me to keep my sanity during that period. And it was one of the most growing experiences I have ever been exposed to. It was really, really comfortable for me, as you can be in that kind of a situation. And it was okay. And he was upstairs in bed being a hermit, and drinking his booze, and I was downstairs carrying on my life with him.
And they were having their friends over, and things were going on in a normal fashion in my home. And he called me up there one time, and I went up there, and he got up, and he fell in the closet.
[00:55:04]
And I just shut the door. And it was okay. And I laughed, and I called my Al-Anon friends, and I said, Larry's a closet drinker. And because of that, poor Larry couldn't drink comfortably for too long. And once again, he's sober. Now, time continues to pass, and I was doing some, a lot, I was trying to stay active and do things in my program, because I knew that if I didn't do things in my program, I'm going to hurt.
And I also know that if I hurt for too long, the thing that I do best is drink. So I don't want to hurt. And I know that if I stay active with people, I don't have to hurt. So there was a friend of mine, and she said, Kay, there's a treatment center over in St. Louis, and we have a treatment center, and we're going to have a treatment center, and we're going to have a treatment center, and we're going to have a treatment center, and she said, Kay, there's a treatment center over in St. Louis, and we have outside AA speakers come in once a week and talk, and we try to set it up on a monthly basis.
Could you come in on a once-a-month basis and talk to the patients? I said, sure, I'd like to do that. And it was the first time that I'd ever talked to a group of people. And I was scared. And the warmth and the love that was among those people just made it real easy for me to talk. And after the meeting was over, the chief counselor in that unit cornered me, and he said, Kay, we'd like to offer you a job.
Now, the last thing I was looking for was a job, because I had figured out it was time for Larry to take care of me. My public aid check had took care of him long enough. And I really wasn't interested in a job, and it was a 60-mile trip one way. And by this time, Larry and I had a new AA baby. He was only about six months old at that time. And I didn't want to go to work. But as a result of that, I went to work.
I know that it was God's will that I take that job. And I went to work, and I traveled those 60 miles each way twice a day and took care of my kids and kept my home to the best of my ability and stayed actively involved in alcoholics and alcoholics, as well as Al and I. Today, I am chief counselor for one of the treatment centers in St. Louis. And I love my work, and I've never told this from the podium before.
I try not to double-hat it, you know. But I am sure, and there's no doubt in my mind, that that's what I'm supposed to be doing today. Last August, when we went to Hot Springs, we like to go to Hot Springs every year, we took a little gal with us that was 22 years old. And this is a little gal that I've been working with since she was 18. I met her originally in the treatment center. And I've learned to love her a lot.
You see, she's my daughter's age. Tuesday morning, I woke up and I looked outside to see what kind of weather I was going to have to travel to work in. And I saw a car out there, and I thought, Mary's here. And I knew she'd been drinking. But she tends to come over and flop in my house. So I looked around, and she wasn't anywhere to be found. So I thought, oh, Lord, she's passed out in that car. So I went out to get her out of the car.
And she wasn't in the car. And as I turned around and was walking back towards the house, and trying to figure out where this young gal was, I saw her face down in the snow. And I cried, and I ran. And I just knew that she was dead. And the neighbors came out, and Larry came out, and we carried her in the house. And for a reason that's totally beyond me, God protected that young lady, and she doesn't even have friends.
She's a frostbite. And I shipped her off, and the miracles continued to work that day. And she was off and on a plane that night, and I sent her in to the coast of Chicago, to a halfway house there. I'm very hopeful that things will work out for her. The other thing that you need to know about me is that my daughter is a tremendous little gal. And July, a year ago, A year ago, I was able to have a wedding for that gal.
She got married in a white dress and in a church, and we had a lot of caring people there.
[01:00:07]
And one of the things that has meant the most to me in my sobriety is, after the vows were said, and it was planned in advance, that she would have a rose, and she would present the groom's mother and her mother with a rose before she left the church. And she gave the groom's mother a rose, and then she came over and handed me one. She grabbed me around the neck, and for the next ten minutes, she helped me.
There wasn't a dry eye in that church. She said, Mother, I love you, and the hardest thing I have to do is to be away from you. This is the lady that smacked her across the room for burning the popcorn. She'll be home the 7th of February. This was my first Christmas without her. She's in Germany. Her and her husband are in the service, and she's coming home, and we're going to visit France. And from there, we're going down to see my mother, and the three of us are going to have some time together.
My son, who's 13 now, is actively involved in L&T. He's probably the one that suffered the blunt emotionally from my drunkenness, and I love him a lot, and sometimes it's not easy. But he's growing, and he's learning, and he's caring. My little I.A. baby, who's never seen his mother drunk, is four and a half years old. And I'd like to close this with a story that I like to tell, because it's important to me, and I read it in a book that I try to read in the mornings, along with a lot of other literature that I read.
And it's the story of the king who had a garden. And the reason I can relate so well with this story is because all of my life, from the time as far back as I can remember, I always thought if I had their looks, their brains, their money, or if I was her or could be like him, I would be okay. So the king had this garden, and he loved his garden, and he would not allow anyone but himself to attend his garden.
And he had acres of it. And he would go out every day and work in his garden, and he had all kinds of beautiful flowers and trees and shrubs. Edna made me think about it when she was talking about her yard. And one day he went out in the garden, and everything in his garden was either dripping or dying. And he went up to the oak tree, and he said, And he said, Why are you dripping so? And the oak tree said, I want to be like the pine and be green all year round.
And he went to the pine, and the pine said, I want to be like the orange tree and have a beautiful, fragrant blossom. And the orange tree wanted to be like the rose, and the rose wanted to be like the honeysuckle. And he went on down the line until he came to the heartsies. Now, in case you don't know, heartsies is a little, bitty, ugly flower that has no leaves, just a stem. They put it in bouquets a lot.
It's a white little flower on the stem. It looks kind of dead. But the heartsies was standing there in full bloom, with all of itself reaching towards the sun, and very much full of life. And the king said, Heartsies, everything else in the garden is drooping and dying. Why on earth are you so full of life? And the heartsies said, King, if you'd have wanted a rose, you'd have planted a rose. If you'd have wanted a pine, you'd have planted a pine.
But since you planted a heartsies, I'm going to be the very best heartsies that I can be. Since God planted a K, I'm going to try, with the help of this program and you people, just for today, to be the very best K that I can be. Thank you. Thank you.