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Source: DICOBE-00622 – Johnnie H – GOPHER STATE RNDP II – 1975-05-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00622-johnnie-h-gopher-state-rndp-ii-1975-05-15.mp3 Duration: 01:06:44
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Hi, everybody. My name's Johnny, and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm glad to be here tonight. I'm glad to be anywhere. You know, I've been wanting to do something all weekend, and I guess being that I got the spotlight, I can do it. I've been sitting around blessed by the presence of all the dignitaries, and I really feel blessed. But I wonder if there are any coffee makers in the group tonight, because I kind of feel personally that the coffee makers are the backbone of Alcoholics Anonymous.
You see, I'm a member of the Big Book Group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Bellflower, which just happens to be the best group of Alcoholics Anonymous in the world. And it's an offshoot of the Big Book Group in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. And we've got a little guy there who's been making coffee in our group two and a half years. And that's amazing, because he's only been sober two and a half years. But a little guy came into our group one night, and he was shaking.
He was one of them little drunks that I just loved the pieces. He wouldn't say boo no matter what was happening to him. And he walked up to me, and I said to him, I just happened to be secretary that year. And I said to him, Warren, I'd like for you to read the fifth chapter at the meeting next week. Warren didn't say anything. The next week he came back, Warren didn't show up. And so I called Warren up, and I said, Warren, how come you didn't come to the meeting?
He said, those people scare me. And I said, well, would you like to help me make the coffee? He said, how many will be in the kitchen? I said, me and you. He said, I'll be there. And little Warren had been making that coffee, and why clowns like me get the privilege to run all over the country and stand in front of huge audiences and look down and see all the glamorous things in Alcoholics Anonymous.
The backbone of Alcoholics Anonymous, my group, stays home and makes coffee on Monday night. And I'm grateful for those people. Because if it wasn't for those people, there wouldn't be the AA. Because somebody's got to keep the doors open. And that's the way I feel about it. Another thing I'm kind of interested in, I'm kind of interested in if there's any drunks here in their first 30 to 60 days of sobriety.
And if you would, I'd like for you to stand up so I could see you. There's a lady. We've got a clock up. Look at that. I want you to know that next to me, you're the most important person in this room. And that's the way I feel about it. You see, I'm very, very personal about Alcoholics Anonymous, because Alcoholics Anonymous gave me life. It didn't restore me to anything, because you can't be restored to something you ain't never been.
I'd like to tell you a story tonight about the thing in me. And I don't know of a better way to say it than the thing in me. I, uh… I love Alcoholics Anonymous, and I love its people. Because, you see, whatever you see standing here tonight is a product of you. Because all I've ever done since I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous is copy what you do, mimic some of the people in Alcoholics Anonymous, and try to follow along behind them in their shadow.
You see, I never knew that when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, that I was going to be able to do things like that. Because, you see, I came to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous 15 years ago last November, on the first Sunday in November. And if I'd have known where I was coming to 15 years ago on the first Sunday of November, I wouldn't have come. Because it wasn't in my whole problems and plans in life to come to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Because alcohol was not my problem. Alcohol was my daddy's problem. And alcohol was my mama's problem, and my uncle's, and my aunt's, and my grandfather's problem. And I hated alcohol and everything that it entailed.
[00:05:01]
And I hated it as far back as I could ever possibly remember, and I hated the people who drank it. Because I was born with the idea that it kind of robbed me of something. I was born in a little town in Kansas, and I remember growing up in a little town in Kansas. And most of you who live in little towns know what it's like to live in little towns where everybody points their fingers at you. And my very earliest recollection of feeling anything is to feel like people were always pointing their finger at me.
And God, I hated that. I hated it because I was ashamed of these people that I'd been born into. And I had an idea in the back of my mind that I was born beneath my station. And I didn't understand that. I always had an idea in life that things were supposed to be better. The best way I could possibly ever explain my first feeling in life was it seemed like to me that I was always standing in the shadows of life.
Looking out at the sunshine and knowing I'd never be warm there like the rest of the people. Because I knew I was so unworthy in life. And then I was born with high ideas and high principles on how things were supposed to be. And I'd look out on life and I'd see the corruption and the things that I didn't understand, and the hatred and the bitterness and the resentments in life, and I didn't understand what was going on.
And I'd try to put those with my principles and I'd say, what is it about me with this terrible conflict inside of me? And right behind that thing I'd start to hate everything that I saw. I used to run around with a knowing and a knowing inside of me that somewhere along the line I'm going to show up and find this thing called life. I'm going to show up somewhere and somebody's going to give me the secret to this magic that will put me out of the shadows into the sunshine.
And let me be warm by the brilliance of it. And I didn't understand what was going on, so I used to look for things. I'd go to church with my grandmother on Sunday. And we'd sit in the church and the guy who was the epitome of authority would stand there and say, you're supposed to love and honor and respect your parents. He'd say, you're supposed to love your brothers. And I didn't. And I hated them.
God, I felt guilty about that. I'd become frightened to death inside that people were going to find out I was hating when I was supposed to be loving. And I didn't know what was going on about that. I thought people could see these things. And then we'd turn around and we'd walk outside of this church on a Sunday morning, my grandmother and my older brother and I. And my father and mother would be sitting there and my old dad would reach over and tap me on the head and say, son, if you continue to go to church, you're going to grow up to be just like me.
If there was anything God willed, I didn't want to be. It was my old man. Because I hated him. And I hated him for reasons I didn't even understand. And I used to have all kinds of crazy things going on inside of myself. You know, I hated all these people. My uncles made booze and sold it. And my aunt sold anything they could get a dollar for. You know. And I used to hate them. And I had these high principles in life.
I told myself, if I grow up, I'm not going to be like them people. I'm going to be better than them. Because I thought I was better than they were. But then I found out very early in life how cheap I would sell out. I found out I'd start to sacrifice my principles which brought about guilt and remorse and loneliness and put me back out there in the darkness. You see, I was born in the shadows and I started to sacrifice principles and it stuck me in the darkness.
And I found out very early in life I hated these people, my uncles and my aunt, because they made me ashamed of them. But on Saturday night in this little town that we lived in, I sold out. I'd put my hand in my uncle's hand and my hand in my aunt's hand. I'd walk downtown and I'd sell out for a nickel ice cream cone. God, the ice cream tasted good, but it wasn't like the bitterness that I felt inside because I'd sacrificed something I didn't understand.
I didn't even understand I was doing things like that. I just knew that I was going against the things, that I hated these people, but I just turned in my principles and went along with them because I just was going to sacrifice things. God hated me for that. And I didn't understand what was going on. Then I hated this old man of mine. Then my grandmother came along with her brilliance and gave me the thing that scared me to death.
My grandmother gave me her God. She said to me, Johnny, God punishes little boys who are bad. I remember sitting alone and I was asking myself questions like, I wonder why God was punishing me. I hadn't done anything. So sometime along the line I kind of got the idea God didn't like me too much. And I got it confused. Instead of Our Father God, I built up a conception of the Godfather. That's the way I thought about it.
If you ever had anybody you just didn't like, every time you think about them you want to spit or worse. That's the way I thought God thought about me. I thought everybody's got to have somebody that they spit on when they got a bad day. Everybody's got to have an old dog they kick when things ain't going too good. And I thought that's what God did with me. I was born so unworthy and God just said, I'm going to put that thing down there and every time I have a bad day with Mama God, I'm going to kick it.
And that's the way I felt about it. I didn't know any better. So I made up my mind I wasn't going to like God. You know what it did for me? It gave me a perfect cop-out all the rest of my life. It gave me something to blame all my life, you see, because I couldn't blame people, places, things, and circumstances and conditions because I was better than they were. So I had to have something more to blame on what was going on.
Every time I got in the jackpot, I'd say, well, what did you expect? Look at what's laying out there. I'm in disfavor with the Godfather.
[00:10:00]
And that's the way it was. And I remember sitting along and being confused the second time I sacrificed my principles, hating booze. One day I got into my own man's bootleg coochie and took a drink of alcohol. And God, that was the most fantastic thing that ever happened to me in my life. Well, that went down inside of me and blew all that madness out from inside me I didn't understand. And it just put me together, I guess, the way it was.
And what alcohol really did for me, it took me out of the shadows and moved me onto the gray fringes, the business of living. And I could still sit on the gray and look in the sunshine and feel, well, I'm not worthy enough, I'll never get out there anyhow. But being so unworthy in life and sacrificing all my principles and being so guilty for it, I'll settle for the grayness. Because that's better than the blackness.
And it triggered a pattern for drinking that had followed for 20 years of my life. It never varied, it was always the same. I took a drink of alcohol and three days later I was stood in front of a judge and sentenced to the Hutchinson State Reform School. I was placed in a foster home out of that reform school. And one day I was knocked on the door and my mother showed up with a piece of paper and she was given privilege or permission to take me and my two brothers to the state of California.
We loaded in an old car one day, my mother and my two brothers and I, and we started in California. And my mother said to me, when we get to California, things are going to be different, kid. Now, I don't know whether it made any sense to my brothers or not, but it made a lot of sense to me, because I wanted it to be different. See, I'm one of them type of people who also believed, who was born with a picture in his head that when it got to this way, this was going to be all right.
I just figured if I get over there and get a hold of this thing, if I get that little house on a hill with a white picket fence and my mother straightens up with that crispy apron and that tray full of cookies and milk, then things ain't going to be so bad. I ain't going to be so scared no more. I'm not going to have to sacrifice my principles anymore. I'm not going to have to like the people I don't like.
I'm not going to have to smile at the people I clearly hate. I'm not going to have to do all these things if I could just get it that way. And so automatically when somebody told me, when we get to California, things are going to be different, up comes the white house with the picket fence, mom with the tray full of cookies and milk and a crispy apron. But after a one-room shack in Kansas went to California and got us a one-room shack with a bathroom.
My mother got me a couple of new uncles and introduced them to me. And I went out on the street corner and got drunk. And I made a fantastic discovery. I found out alcohol would do the same thing to me in California that it did in Kansas. And in my way of thinking, it was the only thing that I'd ever found in my life that ever did the same thing twice in succession. You see, I was also at a point in my life where I was tired of people telling me things they weren't going to do.
I was tired of getting my hopes and dreams and aspirations that high off the ground, having somebody kick the stool out from underneath me. But I made a fantastic discovery. I found out if I threw a brick through a window and got me a bottle of Marco Petri red wine and drank it, it never lied. It always did exactly what I anticipated it doing. It took me out of the blackness and moved me onto the gray, and that was all right with me because it's all I wanted.
And I got drunk and went to Juvenile Hall. And a strange thing happened to me in Juvenile Hall. My mother came uttering strange words. She said to me, I love you, and I miss you, and when you come home, things are going to be different. And I wasn't buying it. Two weeks later, we went in front of the judge, and he sent me to the Whittier State Reform School, and my mother stood up with a lawyer and appealed to him.
And I thought about that, and I went back, and my mother comes to visit me two weeks later. She's sober. She said to me, I love you, and I miss you, and when you come home, things are going to be different. And I wanted to believe her. By God, I wanted her to believe her because I wanted that thing to happen. All my life, I wanted that thing to happen because if I knew, if I just get inside that picket fence, I'd be in safety.
You know, I'd never have to live in the darkness any longer. I could stand in the sunshine and the warmth with all the rest of the people. That's all I ever wanted in life. And every other week, my mother comes to visit me, and every other week after that, we went in front of a judge, and my mother stood up there and fought my thing. And God, I was ready. Three and a half years, we went through that madness of that court battle, and we finally got put into a boy's home in San Fernando Valley.
When I got there, the superintendent said, if you're a good kid, you can go home on a home trip. God, I was good. Thirty days came and went. They put us on a truck and took us out of the valley and they dropped us off downtown Hollywood. Had to run a few blocks to catch the old subway car. Drive downtown to catch the old red car off to where I live in Willowbrook. Broke the ground running. The excitement and the anticipation about me.
The thing that's going to happen to me is going to happen down the corner and around the corner. The thing I've waited all my life to get to is going to be there. That's the thing we've looked for. Around the corner and into the fence and up to the back door into my mother's house there was a drunken party going on there. Nothing had changed, except me. I spent three and a half years in juvenile law and I'd heard a lot of strange things.
I'd heard things like everybody's a liar and everybody's a cheat. Never believe anybody each time because the minute you start to believe them, they start to use you. Never show anybody that you care for them each time because that's a sign of weakness. And anytime anybody knows you've got a weakness, they use you. And more important than anything else, never reach your hand up out of the gutter because the minute you do that, somebody comes along and kicks you in the teeth.
Now, I didn't want to believe that, but that thing way down deep inside of me told me, no, no, no, that's not true. But I walked out of my mother's house that day and made a vow to myself if I lived to be 500, I'd never show anybody any human emotions again. I went down the street corner and got drunk and went back to school. I went out on the street corner and got drunk, went back to school and come home next month and got drunk again.
[00:15:02]
Long about that period of my life I was a periodic. I guess. They only let me out once a month so I could only get drunk once a month. You know, I'm not one of them type of guys who knows about sobering up. I just figured if you get locked up, they'll sober you up sooner or later. The best way I know it, if you don't know how to get sober, keep drinking. The best way I know it, really. I told a guy that one night on the phone and my wife thought I was very cruel.
And she said, I said, what do you want me to tell him? Go take the pledge? I never took one. And I can't tell anybody that I'm working with anything I ain't done. I might speculate on somebody else's brilliant intelligence or wander around a life on somebody else's knowledge, but they're not my truth. I don't know anything about it. The only way I know how to treat another drunk is the way I was treated.
You see, I was treated with love and kindness. And truth. Not somebody else's truth. The people's truth who were telling me the truth. And that's what I carry with me. My truth. Not anybody else's. Anytime I get to talking about somebody else's truth, I get out of whack. You know, I just don't understand that. Just don't. But I'd go come home once a month, I'd get drunk. And I'd go back to school. And I don't know if you were periodic or not.
That's a frightening thing. You ever stop to think about how frightening being a periodic is? Well, I'd go back to school and I'd get drunk. That's all right, because I'd go back my first week as an athlete. I took strenuous exercises. My third week was fine because I was a scholar. I read inspirational books. But my third week, the madness crept in because I started to think. I started to think about getting down there in the neighborhood.
And I'm trying to think about walking up to the gang. A blob of nothingness sitting in the darkness. And I'm trying to walk up to the gang. And the gang are saying to me, we want you to be our leader. I don't want to be their leader. I was saying to myself, geez, I wonder what the gang would say if I'd go up and tell them, let's not go out and hit people in the head tonight. Let's go play baseball.
I wonder what the gang would say to me if I would tell them, gee, I don't want to be a gangster. I want to be a doctor or a lawyer or an architect. I want to build things. I wonder what they would say to that. But then if you're a guy like me, you see, and the only place in God's world that you've ever been allowed to move out of that blackness to the gray fringes to a group of these people on the street corner.
And so you start to calculate and think. And you start to say, what is it that moves me out of the blackness onto the gray fringes? And the answer comes. It's a bottle of Marco Petri red wine. So one day I'm running down the street, I got my wine, and I sit down in the street corner and drink it. And I drank the whole gallon and nothing happened. God, I was terrified because I'm sitting in the darkness, and my magic's not moving me out anymore.
And I don't know what to do with it. And a guy come along and tapped me on the shoulder and said, try these, and he gave me some pills. I found out if I ate pills and drank wine, I could make the madness go away for a little while. It wasn't very much longer after that on the same street corner with a sack of pills and a gallon of wine, nothing was working. And a guy come along and tapped me on the shoulder and said, why don't you try this, and he gave me some morphine.
I found out if I put morphine in my arms and swallowed pills and drank wine, that I had a combination of things that sustained me for the next 14 years of my life. It was never one or it was never two. It was a combination of everything. I became too old to stay in that school, so I came out of my neighborhood and become a gangster. It was my ambition in life. I wanted to be the Irish Lucky Luciano of Willowbrook.
But I had a problem. I didn't stand up too often. And that's not conducive for being a gangster. You've got to look alert out there. You just can't run in there and say, pick them up and throw up on people. My problem always has been that by the time I ever got around to doing it, I was too far gone to get it done. I wasn't having too much success with being a gangster. You know, being smart and intelligent like I was, you just try to figure things out.
And I try to say, well, you know, if you want to have something to talk about. And the big thing about being a gangster was you could have something to talk about when you got down in the neighborhood. So I remember this one instance. It just came up the other day and it almost scared me to death. I was starting to put two and two together. I figured, you know, if I just didn't drink so much and eat so many of them pills, I could go and rob somebody and have something to talk about the next day.
Because I wanted something to talk about, you know, besides throwing up on folks or falling down on the way in or something, you know. Or going to sleep on the curb when you're serving lookout and them kind of deals, you know. I used to do things like that, you know. One time they were going to let me drive a getaway car and I went to sleep in there with the doors locked. I don't know. I used to have all kinds of little experiences like that, you know.
And being an alcoholic, the type of guy I was, I used to try to figure out what was wrong. You see, I knew, you know, I knew that I was out of control. And I knew that I could never predict my behavior once it got started because I never knew where the 11-out period was. You know, I was either going up or down. And so I put this thing together one day and I said,
[00:20:00]
well, now I'm going to go out and I'm going to rob this guy and I'm going to have something to talk about in the neighborhood tomorrow, but I ain't going to drink until afterwards. I'm not going to swallow any of them goofballs until afterwards. Well, I didn't. But I didn't rob anybody either. Because I stood outside the liquor store scared to death and trembling so bad I just stood there and wet my pants.
You know, and that's not a very nice thing to talk about. And that's the type, that gives you my whole story before I come to Alcoholics Now. I was just so frightened of everything in the world and I felt so unworthy and so far apart from everything in life that without a drink of alcohol or a civilian or a mood-changing chemical in my system, I never moved out of the darkness. I just stood there and trembled.
And that was my life, the four-pound juice. I was sentenced to the United States Army for a stretch. And I was the biggest disgrace the United States Army had ever seen. They finally got tired of telling me things and me leaving them. You just don't quit the Army overnight. I used to think like that. I'd disappear from time to time. I came out of the Army and resumed a gangster career. Didn't do bad for a while because I came out with a lot of money and invested it very wisely.
And I used to think it was a great thing. Before I came to you people, another thing I used to have in the back of my mind, I used to think if I had a power. You see, I always knew the lack of power was my dilemma. But I thought you put power in a money clip. And I always figured if you got enough of that, you can't get touched. Because I knew people who had that kind of power and they couldn't get touched.
So the big man set about in the late 40s to make his mark on the world to achieve some power. And he got a little. He got him a big car and he got him a fancy suit or two. And he got a big pocket full of money and he got him a nice apartment. And by the time he got there, he was so frightened he couldn't leave that apartment. He just sat up there and cringed and in terror all the time. And the only time the big man ever felt safe was when he got out into his big car at 5 o'clock in the afternoon when the rest of the people were going home.
And then the big man who had nobody else to impress would ask himself such fantastic questions as when he pulled up alongside of a little old guy in a pickup truck with a hard hat on. And he's sitting there in his big suit in his big car with his pocket full of money. And he'd say to himself, I wonder why I'm not like that guy next to me. I wonder what there is about me that makes me different from everybody else.
And the answer comes, it's the Godfather. He just don't like me. I guess the thing that really set me to reeling was in 1951, I was in the Los Angeles County Jail and my mother came to visit me. And she screamed at me, she screamed that I was a murderer. It seemed that my baby brother had gotten into some of my poison and taken an overdose of it and died. And I really didn't know how to handle that.
Three days later, I remember standing outside a grave handcuffed between two detectives while they buried my baby brother. I had all the guilt and shame and humiliation and degradation of a lifetime hanging on my shoulders. And I wanted to cry and I didn't know how. I won't forget the look my family gave me that day as they walked by me. They strolled past the family and they said to me with their eyes, now look what you've done.
You've killed our baby. God, I wanted to jump in that coffin and throw my baby brother out there and say, no, Jackie, you go and live. Because I don't deserve to live. You see, you've got a life going because I knew then that I was through. But you see, it wasn't for me because I had to go and spend the next four and a half years of my life in a maximum security penitentiary. I came out of there and I spent the next two and a half or three years of my life in and out of some of the finest nuthouses in the world interviewing psychiatrists.
I'm a psychiatrist interviewer by profession. I adopted that somewhere along the line in my insanity because I was trying to prove what a psychiatrist in San Quentin told me wasn't true. He told me that people like me don't change. He said I was doomed to die in an institution. He took me down to the losing room one day and said I may even end up there and I gave him my stock answer in trade. Not me, I'm different.
I'll come off now that institution bound term and I had that thing beat six months later I was laying in a nuthouse kicking and screaming. And that's when I started to interview psychiatrists. Can you picture me interviewing psychiatrists with my wraparound overcoat? We used to have a running battle, the psychiatrists and me. They would talk about my mother. Then I talked about their mother and that ended the interview.
I uh I used to figure that they were about two, three feet away from the problem because they used to talk to me about something was going on up here. My problem was that something was going on in here. And I couldn't put the thing together. See how do you explain to anybody that you don't belong anywhere in the world and you live in the fringes of the darkness of life and you take a few things and they move you out of the blackness and put you on the grave.
And then the guy sits there and tells you that the thing that's wrong with you is the thing that's getting you out of the blackness. Well you gotta look at him like he fell out of a tree.
[00:25:01]
You gotta look at anybody like they fall out of a tree if they try to tell you the thing that's surviving and making you live in the world it's the thing that's killing you. Not me as you can tell. I sit down across the table from some of the finest minds in the field of psychiatry that the world has ever known. And not one time did I ever utter one word of the truth because I didn't know it. You know I sit there across the table and they would say things to me and I wanted to scream out at them across the table my God take the madness from inside of me I won't put those other things in me.
But I never said that. Because I didn't know how. I didn't know how to tell them these things. How do you sit there and tell somebody you're afraid? It's a doctor I'm afraid. Doctors say what are you afraid of? I say I don't know. Just afraid. Always been afraid. And I just went along with my dilemma. I'm coming back from a place in Fort Worth, Texas with my nose up against the window and a dog on me.
And what they've been telling me all these years is true. People like me are doomed. And I came back and I tried to do away with me. And I ended up 17 years ago last February. Strapped down in a bed in Los Angeles County Jail with a doctor standing over me telling me I was going to die. I weighed 128 pounds and I was yellow and had my left arm and my right leg tied down. The thing laid there. And the doctor come to the thing.
He said the thing is going to die and there's nothing we can do for it. And the thing said okay. It laid there with a terror about me I didn't understand. That I was going to die and not do the thing I'd look for and find the thing that I knew existed. You've got to feel cheated about that. But then I lived with a madness about me that maybe I'd live and have to get up out of that bed and go to the penitentiary and come back out and start that rat race all over again.
God knows I didn't want to do that. I laid there in that bed for 18 days and 18 nights and I didn't eat, sleep, drink or do anything. I just laid there. And one night because I didn't know anything better to do I screamed out the only prayer I'd ever said in my life. I don't know whether I screamed it or said it. I said oh God help me. And I thought for a long, long time nothing happened. Something happened.
Because you see the thing went to sleep. And I woke up. Because from that day to this day my life had been in a different direction. There was no blinding flash of light and the burning letters of A.A. weren't etched on the walls of the ward. No little guy come running in there with a bunch of donuts and saying we've got an A.A. meeting down hall. Nothing like that happened to me. You see I was doomed to live in madness for another year and a half.
Almost two years. The only thing that happened to me is that I got up out of that bed and went out about in the world and the world was different. It wasn't the same world that I'd left. The filth was there and the degradation was there and the loneliness and the remorse and the guilt was there and the pain was so unbearable I couldn't stand it. No matter what I did I couldn't run it out of me anymore.
As long as I was awake I was dying. I couldn't put enough in me to keep me awake. I didn't know what to do with it. You see I wasn't one of them people who were ever blessed with blackouts. I was never blessed with a blackout and I think blackouts are blessings. I had to live with the madness and the memories of the madness that I created all my life. And I carried that thing into you in Alcoholics Now.
It's the most frightening thing to know about. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Because I spent a little more time in the penitentiary. I went to a maximum security penitentiary from that bed. It was different in the penitentiary. So I spent the next nine months in the maximum security penitentiary and I was in solitary confinement because I couldn't stay sober. I got a kick out of people who say if you're locked up you can't get nothing.
They gave me 30 days in the shelf in San Quentin for being drunk and disorderly in the yard. And they come to get me. And you do 30 days in San Quentin and you get out of 29. And they come to get me 29 days later and I'm drunk as I was when they put me in there. I mean I was the type of guy if I didn't have nothing else to do I'd lay down and let you kick me in the head. This type of guy I was. I just don't know why that was.
They finally dumped me out of that place and they sent me to a little place in the southern part of the state called The Hatch. And there on a Sunday morning a little girl came up to me and said, there on a Sunday morning a little over 15 years ago, my God an answer to my prayer led me to you. Now God's a very smart fella, my God. Because he knows what gets me. And guess what he sent? He sent women.
And I was sitting in this institution one Sunday and I saw some gals walk across the yard and I followed them. I followed them into a big ol' Quonset hud of a building and I sat down in the back row with my coat collar up and my shades on because I was cool. And you see I'm one of them people who came to see me. And you see, I'm one of them people who came to the first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting over 15 years ago to smell perfume, and I've been here ever since.
[00:30:03]
You know, I, uh, I don't really care who brings them, as long as they get drunk. I don't think that God, as I understand Him, really cares what donkey pulls the wagon. I only think that God is worried about the wagon being pulled. And I'm very proud to say, from where I sit, from where I sit, I can't find a thing wrong with Alcoholics Anonymous. Not a thing. And I think that anything that was created by God and given to His children is beautiful beyond description.
It's to be nurtured and coddled and fond and loved and nurtured and coddled and fond and pushed on. That's what I felt about it. I didn't feel that way when I first came to the meeting. I sat in the back row and looked upon the back row and saw two big A's and said to myself, my God, I've wandered into an anti-aircraft brigade. And I said to this clown sitting next to me, what is this? He said, it's Alcoholics Anonymous. I sunk down to my seat.
Gangsters weren't supposed to be in there with them wine openers. If it had been Gangsters Anonymous, I'd have been there. Like, yeah. But I thought, they got me, so I'll sit down and wait for these women to get up and tell their racist stories. See, I knew about women drunks. And they got up and they threw me a curve. Because there was a twinkle about them and a smile about them. And they radiated to something I didn't understand.
And even in my madness, I could see it. You see, if you sit in the dark long enough, you can recognize sunshine. Particularly if you've never been there. And I saw this in the people of Alcoholics Anonymous. Then they ruined it. They talked to me about God. I got ran out of the room when I came to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. They talked to me about God. Because God was the reason I was.
And who wanted anything to do with a God who had made me what I was? You talk to me about God all day. But I kept coming back to the meetings to see you. And I still come back to meetings to see you. Because I love you so much, you see. Finally, there was a little guy in there at this meeting one Sunday morning and they stood him at the podium. This little guy was my baseball coach in San Quentin. And I played for the San Quentin Pirates.
I'd like to let you know I played a little pro ball. Everybody's got to have something to brag about, you know. I'll tell you a story about that. One time after I got married to Bubbles. She's got a brother who's got a bunch of kids and they were in Little League. And I was going to be the coach. And I was digging through some of my stuff and I found one of my old baseball shirts. It said Pirates on it.
And Dottie was afraid for me to wear that down there. She was afraid there was San Quentin on the back of it. She didn't want to blow the whole image out the door down there likewise, you know. But they brought this little guy in there on a Sunday morning. And I know today he's a messenger of God. I have no doubt about that whatsoever. You see, he's just one of those little fellas that's been dropped along the line.
He gave me the message of Alcoholics Anonymous. He stood at the podium one Sunday morning and he told me I didn't have to live the way I'd been living anymore. He says, you just don't have to do it like this no more. God, nobody ever told me that. People have been telling me all my life that I had not to drink these things, swallow these things, shoot these things, do these things. I knew that. But I know how you live without doing it.
And how you live in a world that you don't belong to, that wants no part of you and you want no part of it. And the only thing that puts you out of the blackness into the gray is these things. When the meeting was over, I went up to my little friend and I said to him, my God bless how you learned how to live. And he looked down at me and he smiled, the little fella, and he said to me, Johnny, there's a book called Alcoholics Anonymous over in the library.
If you go over and get it, I'll go home and pray that you find some part of you in that book. And I guess he prayed real hard, this fella. Because I ain't never found nothing in the book Alcoholics Anonymous but me. I found me on every page I've ever read, in every sentence that I've ever absorbed, every story that I took into my own heart. Not that one, or the yeah one, but me. The little guy I lay down with at night, you see.
Ain't impressing anybody but the big man. The little guy. The little Johnny's always wanted to be. The guy who loves his wife and his children and his God.
[00:35:03]
Who loves the people who love him. Who just wants to go along in the world doing anything he wants to do. Who just wants to go along in the world doing his father's business. Trying to the best of his ability. That's what I found in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And if that's what you're looking for, my friend, it's here. There isn't anybody in this thing got a market on anything called living. Oh my God, how I fought you.
How I fought you because I felt so unworthy when I came here. I felt so unworthy I thought I'd gone so far I'd never had this thing, so I fought you tooth and nail. I used to do things, you know, I'd sit around and watch people and I'd say things to them. And I'm a great watcher and observer. You say that the guy, I snuck up to the secretary one day and I said to him, I heard people saying things like, you got to get active.
And I tried to put that through my mind and I couldn't understand what active meant. So I went up to the secretary when nobody was around one day and I whispered at him and I said, how do you get active? He says, once you go down to the gate on Sunday and greet the guests. I told him, okay. I said, I don't know how you do that. He said, well, watch us. So I watched him and some other pony. We're pony spotters, aren't we ponies?
I watched these two ponies walk down to the gate and he walked up to the people and he welcomed out. How exonimous, that's a wonderful way to get sober, why don't you come in and join our happy fellowship. Next Sunday, a little bubble slick of nickel cool went down there. I got this thing down to the science now, so I'm in my frown. Welcome to our college mountains. Welcome to our happy way of life.
Why don't you come join our wonderful fellowship. They wouldn't come in. And I turned to my friend and I said, what's the matter? He said, dummy, you got to smile at me. And I said, what's that? He said, that's a frown turned upside down. So next Sunday, I went down to the gate. Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. Why don't you come in and join our happy fellowship. It's a wonderful way of life. And I smiled at them and I took them down and set them in their dumb seats.
And I poured their dumb coffee and I emptied their dumb cups. And I washed their dumb cups all the time. I smiled at them. All the time I smiled at them. And the second I sat back in the corner, I turned and smiled at them and died inside. Because I didn't understand, you see. Because I was doing everything they told me to do. And I was lost. I didn't have any freedom inside of me. I still had that football that they were talking about.
And my hole in my gut wasn't being sewed up anymore. And I was scared to death. And I was lonely and I was fearful. And I didn't know what was going on. And I was sitting on the groceries at Alcoholics Anonymous saying to myself, my God, I can't even walk in that sunshine. I've gone so far down and I'm so unworthy. I'm so different from them. I can't have that sunshine. And then some more things happened to me.
Strange things started to happen to me. I went in front of a parole board. They told me I couldn't go home. I went in front of a man. He gave me some divorce papers from a woman I was married to. He gave me another piece of paper. He said I was never going to be allowed to see the daughter that had been born to me in San Quentin. I was never supposed to do a lot of things, you see. And then they brought in a little old lady by the name of Myrtle Snyder.
And I guess if there's any reason in God's world that I'm alive today, it's because I love Myrtle so much. Myrtle is the first thing in life that I ever loved. And I don't think since or after I've ever loved anything as much. I love her so much, you see, that I try to carry on the legacy that she gave me. She never loved me. I have no doubt about that. She loved me when I had no ability to love anything, when I was a frightened, fearful animal, or ready to explode on things.
Myrtle loved me. She held my hand one day in the darkest hour of my life, and she said to me, everything's going to be okay. And I believed her. And then she told me that day that the answer to any question I may ever have in my life lies between the covers of a book called Alcoholics Anonymous, and I believed her there, too. So I started to do the things that it says to do in my book called Alcoholics Anonymous, just to prove to you it wouldn't work for me.
And I started to feel good. One day I was sitting down underneath a tree, choking back a tear. I'd just spent three and a half hours with a man talking to him about me. And I encouraged him, and I talked to him about me. And I incorporated freedom inside of me that day I carry with me to this day. And it never quite left me. Well, sometimes I find it hard to find,
[00:40:01]
but it's never left me. It took me out of the fringes and the blackness and moved me onto the gray fringes. And then God, in his infinite wisdom, brought people into my life. I guess one of the greatest things that ever happened to me and I guess one of the reasons I love that little Jewish dentist so much is because of a little dentist in that institution. A non-alcoholic dentist, that's all it was.
See, I was a barber at this institution, and at that particular time, my language consisted of four-letter words. Godmother had two words attached to it. I didn't know any better. It's the way they always talked. And so the little dentist was there one day, and I was cutting his hair, and I said to him, he said to me, Johnny, what are you going to do if you ever get out of here? And I gave him three or four mothers and talked to him with some more of that garbage that came out of me.
He shook his head and he said, he was either the smartest or the dumbest man I've ever met in my life. Well, I had a straight razor in my hand when he was talking to me. He says, you'll never make it. And I jumped back and said, what do you mean I'll never make it? He says, the minute you open your mouth, I said, what's the matter with my mouth? He says, you open it. And I still didn't understand him, and I kept asking him about these things.
And he said to me, Johnny, do you know what cussing is? And I said, no, what is it? And he said, it's a crutch for conversational cripples. And I looked at him and I said, what am I supposed to do? I don't know anything else. I've always talked this way. And he said, would you really like to go? I said, yep. He says, on Tuesday night, the businessmen of town and I gather up across the compound in the mess hall over there and we have a little thing called the gavel club.
And if you come over and sit with us, we'll try to help you. So I went over on Tuesday night for I don't know how long, and I sit down with the businessmen of town and word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, phrase by phrase fed me the English language. They corrected me. They loved me enough to correct me when I was wrong. They knew I was wrong and they corrected me. And God, I sometimes wonder if I could only get that much love inside of me, I'd be all right.
And one day the little man would sit down in my barber chair and he said to me, Johnny, tonight you get to give the talk. And I said, not me. He said, well, these things. He said, that program you go to called Alcoholics Anonymous, what do they do? And I said, well, that's simple. They just sit around and tell you what it was like and what happened and what it's like now. He said, try that. That night I went over and told them what I was like and what happened to me and what I'm like now.
And cried a great deal and they gave me a little statue. God, I loved that little statue. And that's the first thing I ever remembered caring anything about besides murder was my statue. Then next Tuesday we went over to the little gavel club. Another guy got up and gave the talk and they gave him my statue. I hated him. I used to think about ways to break his legs so I'd get my statue back. I used to walk by and look at his statue on his desk and I'd say, that belongs to me.
But that little statue taught me a great lesson. You see, that anything you can hold out in your hand and look at is only a temporary thing. It has no earthly value at all except to nurture a sick ego. That the real hidden joys and secret magics of life are the little things you share with your God in silence. It's a great beautiful thing that you have when you sit out underneath the trees some day and you hear birds chirping in the grass under your arm.
It's the kind of thing that a guy has when he lays down alongside of that woman that he's married to that he knows loves him. It's the kind of feeling you got inside of you when you lay down in that house at night and you think about that little 13 year old girl of yours that's laying down there in the other hall in another room and you know that that little thing is not going to show up in her house any longer.
Then you think about things like a little 16 year old daughter who's getting ready to graduate from high school that I was never supposed to see.
[00:45:22]
That's the woman who brought me into the world. We share a common thing now, it's called Alcoholics Anonymous. She talked about her meetings, and I talk about my meetings. I had nothing to do with my mother getting sober, thank God. I learned a long time ago, probably the greatest lesson from my mother that I know, that I have no power to get anybody sober. I don't have any power to get them drunk, either.
I have no power of my own. I show up and do things, and I get power. I tapped the source of power on a deathbed a little over 17 years ago, and that power sustains me to this very moment. It's my power borne out of desperation and a complete surrendered life. When I thought I would never find the thing that had been so elusive to me in life, I gave up, and there it was, dropped to me on a silver platter.
I came out of that penitentiary, and I went to meetings. I didn't ask anybody to take me to meetings, I just wanted to go where they were, I just went. I rode bicycles and walked because I couldn't drive a car. One day I went home from a meeting, and my wife was down there, my ex-wife. The next thing I knew, she put on a train and went to get our daughter. Then I figured, she got pregnant, and I figured, I better go to work.
What do you do if you're a high roller? What do you do if you're a high roller? They weren't paying you for standing out there being hip on the street corners. There's no call out there. I've never read any one ad for any worn-out hipsters. So I got a job in oil fields. During the least, I forget about the fat cat who was standing up with a ring on his finger and a watch on his arm, with a little money in his pocket and a nice pretty sport coat and a necktie on.
I remember one day I was working in oil fields, and we were breaking pipe out of a well with wrenches all day long, and I had no money to buy gloves. And I went to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that night, and I stood up and I looked down at my hands, and they were cracked and bleeding and bloody, and I broke down and I started to cry because I'd never seen my hands like that before. Because of God's grace and a program called Alcoholics Anonymous, I was fulfilling my obligation in the world as a human being.
That I had taken my place in the sunshine and was doing the things I was supposed to do. And sometimes I forget that, you see, because I get so caught up in my own importance about the things I don't have. Because I seem to forget the things I do have. And I'm very prone to do things like that, and I lived for six years in Alcoholics Anonymous sober, and I thought I had it going pretty good, only there was a war going on, and I didn't understand that.
You know, I was running around with a pair of blinders on, doing things. I didn't understand it, and I was living, I know it out today, with a practicing alcoholic. A hidden one, but a practicing one. And one day I couldn't last any longer, and I didn't know what to do about it. So I woke up one morning, on a Sunday morning, and I told this woman, who was the mother of my children and the woman that I was living with, that something in my house had to happen.
That she was going to leave or I was going to leave, but I couldn't live the way I was living anymore. An hour later, they put me in the hospital, and I was in the hospital. I couldn't live the way I was living anymore. An hour later, they pulled me off my job and told me she committed suicide. I didn't know how to handle that very well. Like, I don't know how to handle anything very well, you see.
I'm a reactor to reactions. When I'm fearful and frightened, I react, and I don't know how to do things, and so I run and hide. The only thing I knew I was supposed to do was go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, so I went to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I'm one of the type of guys who pray for answers, and then when the answers come, I say, couldn't you do it a little easier, God?
Why'd he give like that? He didn't understand me, and I figured the Godfather had rode back into town again with a new gang, and he's after me. I kept going to meetings, and I'd go to meetings, and I'd hate speakers, and I'd hate the people who'd stand at podiums of Alcoholics Anonymous and tell me how wonderful things were. And I'd stand there, and I'd take their inventory and say, why has he got it so good?
I'm doing more than he is, and damn it, he's got it better than I have. Look how spiritual I am, and he's got it better than me. God, I hated him. And I took their inventories, and I'd mess with them. And so one night I went to a meeting, and the guy who's now my sponsor was talking. And they blocked me in, and I couldn't get out. And the guy was talking about his wife and his kids and his job, and blah, blah, blah.
All the things I'd just lost, and I hated him. And I was trying to leave, and couldn't. I was glued to the seat. And after the meeting, I went up to shake this guy's hand,
[00:50:01]
just because I was supposed to, and a miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous happened to me. Because I couldn't get to him. There was a crowd there, you see. I was feeling so sorry for myself, and so apart from everything, I put my hands in my pocket and turned to walk out the door to God only knows where. But the miracle happened because Norm saw me. And Norm left the pats on the back to lead right through a crowd of people where he was getting welcomed.
And he come over, and he put his arms around me and waltzed me off into the corner, which is the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he said to me, and I pushed him away and said, Norm, I don't understand you. Leave me alone. God don't love me. He said, yes, he does, my friend. He never gives any of us any more than we can handle, and those who have the biggest load surely must be the blessed. And I pushed him away from me, and I said, I don't understand.
Leave me alone, Norm. And then he said to me, remember this, my friend. He gives the big crosses to the big hostas, and he gives the little crosses to the little crosses. And he said, I was sober. See? And I was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And if I would stay sober and go to these meetings associated with these people and try to find my way back to my father's house, I'd be all right. So that night, for the first time in a long, long time, I got down on my hands and knees, and I said the prayer I say with me today.
God, relieve me from the bondage itself that I may witness to those who see of your undying mercy and love. I mean, I say that prayer every day of my life. God, things got good to me. It's funny. The day that David got sober was the day I buried my wife. Amazingly. How you're so close and bound together so close in Alcoholics Anonymous that dates just jump up and try to scare you. Eight years ago, come the Fourth of July, when you're going to have the International Convention in Denver, I went to a picnic, alone and lost, standing out like a sore thumb, dejected and not really recovered from my bout with my spouse.
And a little blue-eyed gal that's five foot two and just bubbly as hell walked up and offered me a piece of chicken. And she led me down to Promised Land and took advantage of me. And she got me to do a strange thing. She got me to go down there about seven, eight months later to where her dad worked and walk up to this great big old Norwegian that's about six foot six and say to him, you know what, I'd like to marry your only daughter.
You know what he said to me? If she'll have you, it's okay with us. And then I think the thing that stands out in my memory, and I guess it tells you more about me than anything I know of, was the day Dottie and I got married. See, Dottie had never been married before. She was the only girl in a very large family, so they come from all over the world to see her. And we went into this big old church and you know how they have weddings.
I went to a wedding that long. And I said, I got that from my family long ago and it brought the memory back. The groom's people sit on one side and the bride's people sit on the other side. My people were on my side. There were two little girls. And on the side was my mother and father Chuck and Elsa. And all else-said, the only people that sat on my side of the church were members of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And nobody else. Because I didn't have anything else. And from that day to this day I've been living in such a fairy tale that sometimes I don't even believe it. Sometimes I get to thinking, my God, is it really true? And it is. You see, I know what it's like to live with a practicing alcoholic. I know what it's like to live with alcoholic parents before there was an allotine. And I know all the degradation and the shame and the hatred and the bitterness that you have in those things.
I know what it's like to live a lie in Alcoholics Anonymous. A big lie. And I think that's the most damning thing I know of. To walk around you with a football in my gut. To be completely and totally alone and not be alone and not know what's going on. Frightened to death to sit down and tell somebody how it really is. Because they might say to you that's a lie. And live in a lie in Alcoholics Anonymous and hear things like war going on when I go home.
[00:55:00]
I don't believe that story, you see. We're all in the same boat. I believe we're in little canoes in the same stream of life. And I know what it's like to sit in that canoe and watch somebody drift off into the rapids of death and destruction. But by the same token, it reminds me of the privilege of riding that stream in a little boat and to be struggling against the current and to drop my oars and have somebody reach over and steady my boat.
And look over and there smiles my little bubbles. We go on up the stream a little bit later and then the current gets swift and she drops her oars and I reach over and steady her boat and together we row up that stream of life together and my kids or our kids or her kids they're not her kids now, I guess. And I gotta tell you about it. I gotta tell you what happened to me and my oldest daughter sober in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I almost run her out of my home because I was frightened. She acted like me and I became frightened and when I'm frightened I react to it with my brave bravado. I screamed at her and I yelled at her and I abused her and humiliated her and cursed her and talked down to her and they got to such a point that my daughter wouldn't sit at the same table I would have any dinner with me. And one day I'm going home from work and I said to my daughter, myself, God I owe her an apology and I sit down at the table at night with her and her mother and her sister and I say to her, I'm just going to love you and you go on out in that world and you become anything you want to be but know this, you can't do enough bad things to make me love you any less.
You can't do enough good things to make me love you anymore. I'm just going to love you. And I watched the wall tumble down between that child and I it's a thing of beauty to see. Not very long ago I was asked to go talk at a meeting in San Diego at my home on a Saturday night and the newcomer who was going to ride down there with me couldn't go and he came down ill I think and he called up and said he couldn't go and one of those little incidents in life that God kind of sticks in there.
And so I got ready about 2 o'clock in the afternoon to leave and I turned to my wife and I said, Daddy I've got to go, I've got to get down there and she said, Karen would like to ride down there with you. She's in high school, she doesn't want to give up her football games and her dances and all that stuff to ride down there in a dumb old meeting with a dumb old dad. Do you? God always just bubbled inside hoping she'll say yes.
And she said, well Daddy I'd love to spend the day with you. I said go get dressed. She went in and put on her finery my oldest daughter and I and we got in that car and we drove down to San Diego and we're driving down the road and I don't say much to her and I said, how did you enjoy your day baby? She said, I thought it was fine Daddy. Did you enjoy your dinner? It was fantastic. I said, what do you think of the AA meeting?
She said, I thought it was fine Dan. Golly they sure had a fantastic speaker. And we had to pull over there inside the road and cry a bit. You see I almost lost things like that sober and alcoholic snobs. I almost run that right out of my life sober here. Walking around in this thing supposedly like a peacock frightened to death of my own fears but not knowing what I was scared of. And then another thing my 13 year old taught me she taught me you see my 13 year old doesn't know about our traditions she'd never heard of that word anonymity.
She'd never known anybody but AA people. One day I took her to the doctor to get a shot because she was poorly. The doctor was having trouble with the hypodermic needle and she looked up to the doctor with those big brown eyes and she said to him, doctor are you having trouble with those needles? And he says, yes I am. She said, you want my daddy to help you? And he said, no. And the doctor looked down at me and said, oh.
[01:00:01]
So he got me and I said yes. He didn't say anything. A couple weeks later I'm sitting home about six o'clock in the evening, there's a phone call. And you know, there in the line is the doctor. And the doctor's saying to me, Johnny, I have a 17-year-old son who's having trouble with those needles. And if I brought him over to your house, would you talk to him about it and see if you could get him to a meeting of AA?
I told him, bring him along, Doctor. So the doctor brought his 17-year-old son over to my house and he sat him down in my den and I talked to him a while and we went to an AA meeting and he left and he's never been back to another one. But you see, somewhere out there floating around is a 17 or 18-year-old kid who knows about you. He knows about you. And he's seen you. If he lives long enough, he'll come find you. That I believe. You see, that I believe.
And when he does, that's between him and his God. When he finds you is when he'll find his God. Every time I've had my anonymity broken, and it's never been at the level of the press, radio, and film. Every time I've had my anonymity broken in my neighborhood with my neighbors or with my doctor or with my lawyer or with my priest, church, as a result of that, somebody has come into Alcoholics Anonymous.
So I sometimes wonder about Alcoholics Anonymous and the people who sit in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous who say how wonderful and happy and grateful we are to be Alcoholics Anonymous members. And nobody in our neighborhood knows it. Our tradition says at the level of press, radio, and film. And I'm not going to give you a lecture on tradition. I want you to search your soul for that and find out if everybody who knows you're a member of Alcoholics Anonymous should know knows.
Because you see, in the beginning of this thing, we didn't have the things that we have today. They weren't shooting drunks in here by the truckloads. We had to go out and find them, and we had to find them in the hospital wards, and we had to talk to our doctors and our lawyers and our priests and our neighbors. And we had to get out, and we had to practice the principles of carrying the message of Alcoholics Anonymous.
We had to knock on doors and say, have you got any drunks? I need one. And if you ain't done it, go down to the psycho ward some night and do it, and you'll get a hell of a spiritual experience. We got one down in our house where they got one of them old boys every once in a while that gets in there in one of them wrap-around overcoats. And I go down and see them people. I get to look through the door at them, and they spit at me, and I smile at them.
And they spit back, and I smile at them. You see, but me, for the grace of God, I've been there, you see. I've been that animal spitting back. Fantastic things have happened to me in Alcoholics Anonymous. I could stand here and talk to you all night about it. But I guess what I really want to say to you is that I love you. I don't know what else to say to you. See, I don't know how you're supposed to stand around and look at people and thank them for what you are.
I don't know how you're supposed to sit around and look at a bunch of people and say thank you for the way I feel inside. Thank you for the comfort that I have when I'm living with me and my God. I don't know how you're supposed to do that. My little girl told me. She told me on the telephone this afternoon to tell you this, so I have to tell you. Because it's Jackie's birthday time. One time, in my inconsistent, inconsiderable way, I was going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on a Sunday morning.
And I neglected to look at the calendar and see it was my little girl's birthday. And when she told me, I felt humiliated about it and very guilty about it, and I tried to speak out to my car. My little girl broke and ran away from me, and God had torn me up inside because I was such an inconsiderate ass. About the time I got to my car, my little girl showed up at the door and come running to me, tears streaming from her eyes.
And she threw her arms around my neck and she kissed me. She said, Daddy, when you get to that meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, will you do something for me? She said, Will you thank the people of Alcoholics Anonymous for my daddy? You see, if it hadn't been for people like you taking time out of your life to come to me unsolicited, that little girl wouldn't even be here. And if she was here, I wouldn't be here to take care of her.
So I'd like to stand here tonight, and I'd like to thank you for jacking your daddy. You see, because I love you, and my children love you, and my children's children's going to love you. And I want to tell you something that I learned when I was down there with my friend not long ago from a guy I love very much.
[01:05:02]
And I stole this from him, but I'd like to pass it on to you because I'm sure he doesn't mind if I tell you. I hope and pray to God that my children or my grandchildren never have to come to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Oh, it's not that I don't want them to see you and to know you or to feel you and to be a part of you. I just don't want them to have to go through that kind of hell that I went through to get here.
But if, if, one of my children or one of my children's children's children ever need to come to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in the Lakewood or the Bellflower area of California, I want them to know that I done my part on Monday night to keep the meetings of my home group open. And I want them to know that I left Alcoholics Anonymous the same way I found it. A gift from God to his children to pass on to his children and to his children's children forever and ever.
I'd like to stand here tonight and I'd like to thank you. I'd like to thank God for Alcoholics Anonymous, but I think more important than anything than anyone. I'd like to thank Alcoholics Anonymous for my God. Thank you.