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Source: Frank R. with Frank C. – Recovery and Service at the 16th General Service Conference (1966).mp3 File: frank-r-with-frank-c-recovery-and-service-16th-general-service-conference-1966.mp3 Duration: 00:32:27
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So, uh, I am opening this, as I would any regular opening meeting, by merely saying I'm an alcoholic, my name is Frank C., hi, and it's a wonderful feeling to be up here, uh, I'm beginning to wonder about that wonderful feeling, too, right now, but it, it certainly, to me, is a privilege and a pleasure to be able to lead this AA meeting. Uh, I don't intend to go into a long story tonight, uh, I'd be afraid to get started because we have a long conference ahead of us, and, uh, I'm sure none of you want to go home tomorrow morning, but, uh, I would like to tell you a story that, uh, strangely enough, was told by a waiter at our table when we were having dinner this evening, and, uh, to me, it, uh, it, uh, pretty much illustrates a lot that goes on here, uh, he said that he and his wife were down in Chinatown in a restaurant the other night, they were having dinner there, and there were a group of Chinese businessmen in the back of the room, also dining, and all of a sudden, the lights went out, and as soon as they did, all the Chinese businessmen began to wave their hands, and, uh, of course, he was quite puzzled about this, he called his waiter over, and he asked why they were doing this, and his waiter said that many hands make light work.
Now, I think that this illustrates beautifully the purpose of this conference, the reason that we're here, that if we all work together, many hands will make, as Dr. Jack said, our light work instead of heat. Uh, I think I can give you, uh, an illustration of my whole life, and I drank for 23 years, and drank alcoholically from the very beginning, by saying something else that's stolen from someone else, that I had a terrific capacity for alcohol, but I always got drunk before I reached it, and, uh, this would almost sum up probably the first 15 years of my drinking.
I, uh, gave up many, many things, and I attribute their loss today directly to the use and abuse of alcohol. Uh, I come from pretty much the same part of the country as Bill, I'm another New England Yankee, and, uh, in our circles, drinking wasn't particularly, uh, uh, the nicest thing. I think I can tell you that, uh, you'll agree when I tell you that I got drunk for the first time at an Epworth League meeting on a Sunday night at the age of 14 on homemade dandelion wine, and, uh, the Epworth League and the Methodist Church kind of frowned on this, so, uh, this indicates the normalcy of my drinking right from the beginning.
But I have tonight, uh, contrary to your program, uh, four speakers, and, uh, I love each and every one of them. Uh, my first speaker in particular, uh, we chased each other all over New England this summer. It seems that every convention, every conference, every meeting I went to, he was there. Uh, and in assembly this spring, I looked up, and Frank walked in that night, so as a consequence, he wound up as a speaker at our general service open house.
And, uh, it's a very great pleasure for me to introduce him tonight. He's one of the real hard workers in this fellowship. He's our Class B trustee for the Northeastern region, and I'll give him to you now, Frank R.. Frank? Thank you, Frank. Uh, nice to be here tonight, and, uh, I like to, uh, always, uh, identify the group I belong to when I speak in AA. Uh, it helps a small town, probably, and, uh, but I belong to the [group name unclear] up in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
Probably nobody ever heard of the place, and they got a group in Chelmsford, England, too, we have. But, uh, you know, uh, there's another fellow named Joe, and he was always bragging about his dog. So he was in the country store one afternoon, and bragging on what a smart dog he had, and so on and so forth. So somebody said to Joe, well, what kind of a dog is this Joe? He says, a pedigree dog? And Joe says, no, no, no pedigree.
Well, he says, what kind of a breed? Oh, he says, no, no breed, just a plain dog. And I like to think of myself as being just a plain drunk, that's what I was. No fancy trimmings. And, uh, when I, uh, was a young fellow, uh, uh, I was, uh, one of these precocious kids that, uh, skipped grades in school,
[00:05:07]
and I come out of high school, uh, at an age when I should have about been going into high school. And, uh, during this, uh, summer after I come out of high school, I was offered a job, uh, in a state house in Boston. I was still a young fellow, and my folks wanted me, of course, to further my education and so forth, but, uh, I was, uh, I guess a screwball from the start, even young, and I thought I was a smart aleck.
So I wanted to go to work, and, uh, state house looked, uh, like a big good attraction to me, so, uh, I went to work in the governor's office there, and I, uh, with a title as, uh, assistant executive messenger. This was the number two office, boy. And, you know, I loved that. Here I was, I was 16 years old, I was meeting all the big wheels in the state, and having a ball, I had a little cubby hole next to the lieutenant governor, and I was a swell guy, and, uh, I could all the dope on what was going on around the state, and I became a politician quite young.
And, uh, one summer day when things were quiet up in the executive department, the governor was out on, uh, state business. Incidentally, this was Calvin Coolidge. And, uh, his secretary sent me into Calvin's office to put some papers on his desk. And I sat down behind Cal's desk there, and I looked around, and I became governor. I signed a bill giving all the state employees a raise in pay. And I says, this is for me, I'm going to follow in Cal's footstep.
Well, you know what happened to Cal. He went to Washington, and so did I. And when Calvin was in the White House, I was in the nut house from both. But, you know, in politics, you know, administrations change. So when Cal went to become vice president, a new administration took over, and I was demoted down to the Fishing Game Department as a junior clerk, and I didn't like this. I lost all my great contacts and friends, and as I said, I was a smart young Alex.
So I joined the United States Navy, and this kind of caused a commotion in my home. But my father was, I had to be signed, he had to sign the papers, and so off I went. And I was a pharmacist mate in the Navy, and I went to a school in Virginia, and I got transferred up to the Naval Hospital in Chelsea, Mass., for my first tour of duty. And up there, Prohibition had just come in about this time in this country, and I found a little spot over on Hanover Street in Boston where they served a tag on wine, but you had to eat spaghetti.
They wouldn't serve you unless you ate spaghetti. I used to do this once a week. And every time I had the spaghetti and the wine, I'd go back to the hospital, I'd get in bed, and all the spaghetti and wine used to come up. Many years later, when I was standing over the hopper with the dry heaves, I wish I had a load of that spaghetti. But I didn't have too much of a naval career. The funny part was I liked the Navy, and I thought in my early days I'd stay in the Navy and make a career out of it because I liked it.
But I was sent down to the Virgin Islands and Santa Domingo for duty. Down when I was in Santa Domingo, I was with the 2nd Brigade of Marines down there, and all we had to do was drink. The duty was very soft, and I drank daily, and I drank hard, and I never had any trouble with booze. I got crew promotions down there. And when my tour of duty was up, I was sent to Washington, and I was in the naval dispensary.
Now, the type of patients in the naval dispensary is a little different than a bunch of Marines. These were the diplomatic corps, senators, congressmen, their wives and families. And one day my superior officer came up to me. He says, You're getting transferred to the Naval Hospital tomorrow. And I said, why? He said, because of the stuff I smell off you right now. So I hopped and skipped through the Navy just dodging court-martials and so on and so forth.
And I got another promotion while I was a heavy, and I was strictly an alcoholic then. And my last tour of duty, and I was on thin ground, was up in the Naval Ammunition Depot in Hingham, Massachusetts. This was a very easy, very easy duty. There was 40 Marines up there with a Marine captain, and they were just doing guard around this ammunition depot. And I was the pharmacist’s mate. We had a junior-grade lieutenant for a doctor there.
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And I got drunk one Sunday, and I ran out of booze, and I was drinking with a Marine, and there was no way I was on duty. And I figured out how we were going to get some booze here. So I told the Marine, I said, I'll send you to the hospital. I said, I'll diagnose you undetermined but suspected appendicitis. I said, we'll go in. I know a joint in Boston. I'll dig out the ambulance. I'll send you to Chelsea Naval Hospital.
I said, you won't have to go on duty tonight and get in trouble, and we'll be all set. So I break out of the old ambulance, no real speed wagon with a bell on it. Down we go. Well, I found a bootlegger joint over in Chelsea, and I bought a couple of jugs of Chine. I delivered my patient, and I come back. But the next day there was trouble. I had taken a government vehicle without permission. The captain who was a Naval Inspector of Ordnance in Chine was on leave, so before any disciplinary action was taken, they had to wait until the captain got back.
But when the captain came back, I was a lucky drunk. They took the guy's appendix out. He had acute appendicitis. So my diagnosis was confirmed, and I missed the court-martial. But my naval career ended shortly after that. I only had a couple of months left of duty, so now I went back to civilian life. So I went home, and I started to think about this education I'd missed, so I decided to be an accountant.
This time I had a pretty good mind on me. In spite of the booze I drank, I was still young. I took up accounting, and I got a job in a plant. And some of my friends were in this plant, and this was a good job for a drunk. I was in the cost department. I was doing time study work, and I knew some of the drunks out in the plant, and I made good rates for the piece weight workers so they'd have enough money to drink on.
And this was a real happy existence for quite a period of time. But something happened in the company, and they put in a new cost and production control system. They could have fired me, and maybe things would have been all right. And shortly after this, the company went out of existence. They folded up. And just before they folded up, I took off one day. I walked off the job, but I never said anything to anybody.
And for a good many years, then I run. And for the first year or so, it wasn't too bad. I had a little money when I started out, and I started, when I run out of money, I'd wire home for it or reverse the charges on the telephone. I always asked for nice round figures, and I got it. And the last figure I got was a big round zero. You know, somebody don't support a drunk forever, and there's drunks.
At this time, I was getting soft. You know, that big wall was getting harder, and I was getting softer. One time I was in New York here, and I thought of a man I'd met in the same field. And he offered me a job one time many years previously. If you're ever in New York and you want a job, come in and see me. Well, this day, for some reason, I got a clean shirt on, and I thought I'd approach Oscar. He's over in the French building here on Fifth Avenue.
Sure enough, I got a job. And I thought this was good, and I went on the cuff for some money because I had nothing. And I stayed there for five and a half months, and I stayed sober. And this was the longest time I'd been sober in many, many years. But I was afraid all the time. I knew sometime I was going to blow this, and I eventually did. I lived in Mount Vernon while I was working there. I thought I'd get away from the bright lights of the city.
And finally one day, as I say, I got drunk. In a short time, I got thrown out of the place where I was staying out in Mount Vernon. I moved into the Victoria Hotel here, and I stayed there a while. Then I went to the Mills Hotel. Then I went to the Lions Hotels down on Lower Third Avenue. They had three hotels down there, $0.25, $0.15. But they had another one, and I started in the $0.35 hotel, but I finally wound up in the $0.15 hotel.
You see, this was where I started to really hit the skids. And I did. I spent six months on the Bowery in New York down there. And it took me three years after I came in AA. It came to me one night coming from an AA meeting how I got off the Bowery. And I'd shipped out as a gandy dancer on the Pennsylvania Railroad to [town unclear], I went into horrors the first night, I was there, and they'd all come back to me, they threw me out of this [unclear] camp, and so, Frank went this way for a good number of years, I remember one time, after I'd been in AA for a short time, I picked up a magazine, and it was about alcohol, and it described an alcoholic thus, and it always stuck in my mind, because it, uh,
[00:15:27]
it hit me, and it was thus, it says, an alcoholic is a person of high intelligence, a driver, and a perfectionist, who once had a glimpse of eternity, and in trying for a re-glimpse, he drank himself into the gutter, for 25 years, I tried for that re-glimpse, and that's where I wound up, in the gutter, and when I came to my first AA meeting, I didn't come here looking for sobriety, they say I'd wound up in the gutter, and I was sitting, on a Sunday morning, with a blizzard raging outside, in the Worcester, Massachusetts, railroad station, because I had no place to go, and when I was sitting there, another guy that looked in about the same shape as I was, sighed alone, when he sat down next to me, he asked me if I had a cigarette, and of course I didn't, and there was a big cop over there, that had his eye on the both of us, but this fella, said to me, he says, I know a place we can go this morning, he says, there's an AA meeting up here, 414 Main Street, so we can go there, they got coffee there, and we can get in and out of the cold, and nobody will bother us, and so the two of us went to that meeting that morning, I, I didn't even have an overcoat, it was cold outside, so I was shaken both from the cold, and from the booze, and I didn't get much out of that first AA meeting, but I heard a fella say there was a new way of life there, and that stuck to me, and this night, there was two meetings there, this was on a Sunday, and the night, they had another meeting, so I stayed for that one, and I remember a fella speaking on that night too, and he said he was sober nine years, and in my state, I couldn't figure a drunk staying sober that long, but he's still sober, and so that night, I had no home, and at the same time, I'm only 45 miles from my own home, but I'd long lost contact with my family, I guess I had a little pride, or a shame to ever go near any of my folks again, so he took me down on a mission, he paid 50 cents this night for, for a bed for me, and he suggested that over the next day, I go over to a Salvation Army social center, and maybe I could get a little rehabilitation over there, well, I was in terrible shape, but they took me in, and I was busy trying to be an awful sick for a solid week, trying to bail up newspapers and so forth, and things looked awful bleak, one of these fellas from the group, though, remembered me, and he come over that Thursday night, just to keep tabs on me, and he says, don't forget, we have a meeting over there, Sunday morning again, and come on over, well, come Saturday, they paid the help off, I got a pay envelope, it was 95 cents in it, and I was awful proud the next day, when I went to that AA meeting, and I threw a quarter in the basket, that was one quarter of my week's pay, now, if everybody in AA would donate today, we'd have no money problems, and of course, that was my last donation of one quarter of my pay, so the rehabilitation process started, and I went to work back for the same age that I had left as a young fella, I went back to work for the state of Massachusetts in the Rutland State Sanitarium washing dishes, and this was good, but I had a little ego come back, I think, and I moved out, and I went to work in a Boston hotel, the pay was better, I was right next to the old 12-step house in Boston, AA was handy, and this was all right, so I learned of the things that were here around AA, I heard about amends and so forth, I had a mother and father living who were kind of elderly, and I had some sisters and a brother, and I thought it'd be good to go back to the family, so I did, and I went back there, and I saw my mother and father, of course, they were tickled to death to see me again, I had a brother who was having trouble with booze, and he heard I was sober, and he came to AA as a result of seeing his brother, he thought nothing would ever get me sober, and he used that old expression, if that bum could do it, I guess anybody could, and so I kept working there, and I heard my sister was sick, so I thought I'd go and see her, I didn't like this sister, I was in jail one time, and I put the bite on her, and she said, she said, they finally caught up, you're in jail, and that's where you should be, and stay there, and I didn't like her, but I heard that she was sick, and I was trying to do the right thing, and I went to see her one day,
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and I walked into the door, and she was sitting there in a wheelchair, and I'll never forget the first thing she said to me, she said, God sent you, and this struck me funny for a minute, and she had a husband dying from TB there, and here she was in a wheelchair, and there were three children in the house, and this was kind of a tough situation, and I stayed there, and the next day I called up my boss, and I'd walked off many jobs listening to me, and I told him I quit to get somebody else, and I stayed there and tried to pull this little outfit together, and it was a rough job, I was a bachelor, I haven't mentioned that, I knew nothing about families particularly, I'd been away from them too long, but I had many jobs during my alcoholic career, and I was kind of a handyman, so I said, I'll see what I can do with this outfit, so I did, I got my brother-in-law off to a sanitarium, we started to pick up from there on out, my sister had multiple sclerosis, so I looked at the situation, and I said, well, you led a pretty useless life, and here's a chance for you to do something, so I said, there were three children there, one of them was a sophomore in college, a girl, she was the oldest one, there was another kid there, he was a sophomore in high school, and the other fellow was five years old, and so things started to happen, I run a taut ship, everything had to be just so-so and so-so, and Frank took over with the alcoholic drive, you can't do this, you can't leave nothing around, you know, and all this stuff, but things were happening, you know, one day I decided to get drunk, I said, these people don't appreciate what I'm doing for them, when I did, I got drunk, and I moved into a hotel, and I started drinking, it was no fun, I was drinking AA out of a bottle, and one time about noon, and this was, I'd been on the drunk for two and a half days, and I went out to get some reinforcements, I come back to my hotel room, and I set two jugs down on the top of the bureau, something hit me, I run out of that hotel, I got in a cab, and I drove 70 miles to a drying out spot, see, I'd become a fresh drunk now, I went to a drying out spot, and I walked in there, and I had money in my pocket, of course I'd left my upper teeth in the hotel, my clothes, but I left the most important thing to me there, I left the booze, and the day after I wound up there, I wasn't too sick, for some strange reason, I'd had a shot of paraldehyde the night before, and I had one for breakfast, and while I was there, sitting there, I picked up the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, funny, Bill spoke this afternoon about Marty, reading a little line in the book, I read a little line that day, in chapter 5, and it hit me too, it says, those that probably won't make this program are those constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves, I'd heard of honesty, and that hit me, and that was my moment of truth in AA, so I stayed there a couple more days, and back I went over to take this inherited family, I became a real bachelor father from then on, I tried to understand some kids, I wound up some business with my father, it was quite a long in years, and I started to, as I say, become a useful person again, that was 13 years ago, this month, and I'm still there, and things happen, and a lot of good things happen, especially to Frank, the brother-in-law finally died, TB, the oldest daughter graduated from college, and I didn't know, see I'm learning, that young ladies went to college, probably to fall in love, and get married, so one day, she's sitting on the divan, she started to cry, she met a young fella, was a graduate student, fallen in love, and wanted to get married, so she told me, she says, I belong here, I'm the oldest one in the family, it's my responsibility to stay here, and I'll never be able to get married, and so forth,
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so I suppose, a little self-pity, but right then and there, I made the greatest decision for Frank I ever made, I says, Elaine, you go and get married, forget about taking care of your mother, your young brother, I says, I'll do it, and as I say, I've been there ever since, so here was an old bowery bum, and I gave this young girl away in marriage, and I walked down this church aisle in an October afternoon, and the sun was streaming through the church windows, and I looked at this radiant young girl on my arm, and I knew that the grace of God, in some way, it really came to me, this young girl today, is a research physicist in the United Aircraft Company, she was a brain too, and we were all brainy in my family, I think, because there's a couple of drunks around too, but then the oldest boy, well he wasn't the brain of the family, he just got by, it took him one point in high school to graduate, he got that for physical education, but he became an apprentice printer, and today he's a member of the Typographical Union, and I saw him through his hot rod years, juvenile years, and he was a wonderful boy, never no trouble, but my pride and joy was the young fella, because really, I think I'd been a mother and father to him, and I loved this little kid, I used to help with his homework, and see that he got off to school, and you know, it wasn't too many years, so he surpassed me, he was teaching me the homework, because he was a brain too, he won four scholarships as a senior in high school, and he's a freshman in college today, and he's on the dean's list, and you know, he's got a little ego too, and he was spreading around one day, and I told him, I said, kid, the only reason you're where you are is because you had a smart uncle, so he kind of pulled that off, and I don't blame him, but these are some of the things that happened to me, and this has all been wonderful, now during this time, my father died, I found him dead slumped over the wheel of his automobile when my mother called me in a frenzy one morning, that he'd gone out in the car, and he hasn't been back, and he don't usually do this, he was 83 at the time, nobody ever thought, I went down, and I found him in the garage, he'd never gone out of there, this was 1957, and when I found my father, the first thought that came to my mind was, thank God I'm sober, my mother was going to go to live with my sister, I had an older sister, she had a nice home, her family had grown up, and she was going to live with her sister, and all of a sudden she changed her mind, she said, Frank, I want to come and live with you and my two grandchildren, so for six years and a half I had my mother, and she died in her 91st year, and the last seven years of her life she spent in a rest home, and every day I went to see her, and about two months before she died, I told her I've got to leave a little early today mother, I said I've got to go to a meeting in Boston, and when she looked up at me, she said, I don't know much about that, about what you belong to, but it gave me back a son, so these are some of the things that have happened, as I said before, to an old skid row drunk, and it's been wonderful to me, to know, as I said before, that I became useful instead of useless, now the oldest boy, he's got a girl, and he's going to get married, so the family is down to one, my sister, as a result of a multiple sclerosis, she went to the hospital, and she's been in a chronic hospital for eight years, but These 2 Boys Go Out Every Other Sunday, Pick Her Up in Their Arms and Carry Her Home,
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This is the Girl, My Younger Sister, That Told Me One Time, You're in Jail and That's Where You Belong, Today She Thinks I'm the Grandest Person That Ever Walked on Earth, My Nephews and My Nieces All Love Me, and Every Father's Day I Get a Father's Day Card, This Was the New Life That Was to Come to Me, That I Heard Mentioned in My First Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting, If I'd Have Seen It Coming I'd Have Probably Ducked, but It's Certainly Been Wonderful All the Way Through, It Had Its Frustrations, It Took a Lot of Understanding on My Part and It Took a Lot of Understanding on Other People's Part, This Is What You The People of Alcoholics Anonymous Gave to Me, When I Came to Alcoholics Anonymous I Knew It Was the Grace of God That Sent Me Here, but I Didn't Know Too Much About God at the Time, Here I Found My Higher Power, and This Has Been a Tremendous Help to Me Too, I Never Have to Be Alone Again, I Was a Lonely Drunk, Some of My Early A.A. Meetings All the Speakers Used to Get Up and Say I Lost a Wife and Family, and I Hadn't Lost Any of Them Things, and I Used to Wonder Whether I Belonged, but You See I Hung Around and I Got a Family, I'm not too long winded as a general rule as a speaker, so at this time in closing I'd just like to say this, that it's a great privilege to be with you all here at this 16th General Service Conference, I know that we're all going to share in a very, very wonderful experience here, and I hope that when the conference is over and we all go our various ways that we don't forget to share this with our fellow members back home, thank you very much.
Thank you, Frank.