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Source: Joe M – Youngstown AA – St. Patrick's Day Banquet 1966 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: joe-m-youngstown-aa-st-patricks-day-banquet-1966-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:08:13
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Tonight is March 16th, 1966, and this is our St. Patrick's Celebration, and we have our, Bob Vance, a member of our group, his first anniversary, Kenny Latey, from the clinic, his fourth anniversary, and the chairman tonight is Matt Mack. Bob V. is celebrating one year. Bob, get up and take a little bow here. Next we have Kenny L. with four years. Next we have Lloyd L. from New Castle with 14 years.
Lloyd. We're not through yet. Paul R. from Warren, 18 years. Now, does anyone else have an anniversary? Yours has passed. Well, I've been sober today, I suppose that's some sort of an anniversary, isn't it? 18 months. 18 months. 18 who? Months. 18 months? How about my kid then? We have some Shamrock Center ice cream out there too, if it doesn't all melt before Joe McGinnie gets through talking, Joe, I hope you can take a hint.
Remember, the ice cream is melting. I was only kidding, Joe, really I was. You're allowed up to an hour and 20 minutes each only. Yeah, take all the time you want. So without any more ado, I'll introduce our speaker tonight. He didn't even wear his green necktie, but I know he's an Irishman just by his name, Joseph P. McGinnie. Joe, take over. I'll take over. Would you all care to join me in a serenity prayer and then I'll say a prayer that I use before talking with anybody.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen. This is one of Sister Ignatia's favorites and they had it at Founders Day at St. Thomas Hospital over in Akron. I picked one up and I liked it and it applies to us in AA and I've used it ever since and it helps me. Lord, make me an instrument of your peace where there is hatred, let me sow love, where there is injury, pardon, where there is doubt, faith, where there is despair, hope, where there is darkness, light, and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love, for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. I'm here through the grace of God and Freddie Miller. An hour and a half ago he called me at the house and I was taking a little cat nap and I'm afraid if he didn't call me I might be still sleeping.
And maybe after you hear me you'd say it was a good idea anyways. In fact, I'd rather go three rounds with Jimmy Sanders than stand up in front of a bunch of people and talk. I'm not, I wasn't accustomed to talking when I was in school, I never would get in front of a class and certainly this is something AA has did for me and many others to be able to stand up and not be afraid of people who understand you.
First off, I want to especially congratulate Bob V because of his first anniversary which I think is the most important anniversary in AA and after your one year sober and beyond there, people say, so what? So be thankful you got the one year and these other men that got many years, they've earned it and I'm within about three weeks of six years myself and that is a miracle in itself. Most people feel that way that they are a miracle of AA and Sister Ignatia used to say that any alcoholic that could stay sober one day in their life, that's a successful day in his life.
[00:05:01]
Like Matt Matthews said, my name is Giuseppe Pasquale-Magentino and I am suffering from the sickness known as ethylism. Some of you people sort of shy away from the word alcoholic and I don't particularly care what anybody calls me but there are people who have to protect themselves and that's the polite word for it. It's ethyl alcohol that we drink and so the doctor will write on your work slip or something like that, ethylism, and you take it from there.
You tell people that if I drink, I'm going to die, the doctor tells me so. This is the way I firmly believe that if I should take one drink, I'm dead in all departments and it's only a matter of time that I'm dead period because it took me some 25 years to get here and I had to go all the way. I come off of Skid Row in Youngstown a little over 6 years ago. Fortunately, I only spent 7 months, approximately 7 months down there and that was 7 months of hell, hell on earth.
So when I come to A.A., my journey is heading for the eternal life. This mortal life that we live here is only temporary anyways and what I make of myself from here on out is the important thing that certainly if there is a place hereafter, I want to be there and I want to see my friends there. And I think the people in the Alcoholics Anonymous program have as good or better chance than anybody because they learn to really live up to life as it is, face reality, and quit hiding behind the curtains and things like that like we for many years hidden the bottom of the bottle.
Like I said, if I live to the 13th of April, I'll have 6 years of solid sobriety behind me and that means when we talk about sobriety in A.A., there's no in between or anything like that, that's total abstinence from alcohol. And myself, I never was addicted to pills or dope because I learned my lesson early in life from fellows who hung around with my brother, older brother, that many of them are in a penitentiary or in some grave today because they got on this dope and they did things that they certainly didn't want to but dope made you do them.
Just like alcohol would make a giant out of you. Some people, it didn't disturb too much, they were happy-go-lucky all the time but me, I wanted to fight one time and another time, I would be happy-go-lucky the life of the party. But I could just change like the snap of a finger. My father died in my arms in 1938, an alcoholic as I see it. I can't call anybody one but I knew my dad pretty well and he was as bad or worse than I was.
And I hated my dad until I got into A.A. and learned to forgive him and also to forgive myself for the many rotten things I did through my life. For 20 some years I really hated my dad and I didn't want to be like him. I swore off of booze at that particular time, I says I'll never drink as long as I live to see what alcohol did to that man that took him too young, left a big family and he died too young, too long before his time.
In three months I was swinging myself and I started out, I was drinking early, it was 1935 but from a poor family and I couldn't get the money and the only time I got drunk is when the opportunity presented itself. But I found out when I did drink, I wanted to go all the way right from the beginning. People have different thoughts on this line that I believe there are some people who are born alcoholic and in my case the way I like to look at it is I wasn't an alcoholic in the beginning but by degrees I became one.
Because I could shut it off at times in the early days and it didn't become necessary in my life but then it come to a point where I had to have it, I had to drink to live and live to drink.
[00:10:12]
A year after my father died my mother just as well as kicked me in the face, she says you're an exact duplicate of your father and I didn't want to be like him. So I'll point out a few times that I got in trouble with alcohol in the beginning, I had a lot of fun with the bottle or it wouldn't have took me so long to get here and I abused the use of it and I lost the right to use it, that's the way I look at it.
First off, the first good trouble I got into I was out at an amusement park one night with a bunch of fellows and we're drinking whiskey up at a Coke concession stand and there was no alcohol allowed on the place anyways, somebody told us the state troopers were coming and I got caught anyways and I was in handcuffs. In a car on the way to the station house and I'm told this, I had my first blackout right there that I was going to throw the handcuffs over this troopers neck and I told this other guy to grab the wheel and we'll get rid of this guy.
Now that man could have killed me that night or they could have sent me up for a year or so in a penitentiary right from the beginning with alcohol. But I had to go on and on and run into a lot of trouble all along the line before I finally got convinced. I got out of that mess through my mother, a little influence and then later on I again woke up in a jail house and this was beginning to become a habit with me that I'd wake up and I'd just take it for granted.
I did something last night but it couldn't have been too bad, I was just drunk, that's all. So this police lieutenant said to me, he says, I guess you're proud of yourself, you hit somebody last night and he took off and we were supposed to go to court the same day and they held me over a day and wouldn't tell me nothing. And I found out that later on I didn't sleep at all that night and I was certain that I killed somebody, run over somebody or something like that.
I found out I was driving a car and to this day I don't know whether I was or not but they tell me I was. So my older brother come down and he raised a little cane with me and finally I went to court and my mother was in the center and my brother on one side and me on the other side and they says call John McGinty up and my brother got up and started up there. And right away I'm thinking, hell this is pretty good, big brother is going to take the rap for me.
And it was my brother though, he got into an accident an hour and a half before me on the west side of Detroit and I was on the east side and we're both driving somebody else's car. So I got 20 days out of that, a year probation, my license taken away for a year. And you'd think I would simmer down and start thinking this situation over about drinking at that time but no, I kept quiet for a few weeks and then I start rolling again.
And it was one mess after another, I was getting arrested for drunken disorderly, disturbing the peace, fighting on street corners and in bars and things like that and I wasn't that type of guy. I wasn't a tough guy but that alcohol made me just as tough as Jim Sanders, that's right. And put some of that in me and I didn't give a damn who I tackled with and a lot of times I ended up on the bottom but it gave me the courage and it made me just as smart as the college professor or the doctor or anybody else.
So I thought anyways and I'd be a millionaire today if I ever went through with some of these bright ideas I had when I was drinking. I'd buy Jim Sanders one of these big buses so he could take everybody to these anniversaries that he goes to all the time. I'm going to lay off you from here on out. I, uh, this is how you get a fight started. So, uh, Jim knows I'm kidding. So, uh, one other time, uh, I, uh, we went to a dance. I was president of a social club at that time, and, uh, we took the girls out to dances and hay rides and wienie roast and ice skating and roller skating, swimming, all that stuff, and we stayed sober.
[00:15:26]
We took the good, good girls out, or we be, we be, uh, behaved ourselves, let's put it that way, until we took them home about 11 o'clock at night, and then we went out and raised hell all night. Uh, well, this, uh, New Year's dance I went to, uh, we went in there and there was the, everybody was drinking and the girls went to the powder room and we all had a bottle in our pocket, uh, piped, and, uh, well, we went into our powder room and we got powdered.
Everybody was passing a bottle around and I come out and, uh, I think I danced with myself because I only had one dance and I passed out in the middle of dance floor and they thought I was dead. Took me outside for some air and these cops and I got into a little argument after I come around, and I, I got to hate cops, uh, from about that point on. Uh, because, uh, they threw me in a police car with another guy. I, I like to take company with me and I get everybody into the argument and, uh, this buddy of mine, he, they almost threw him through the other side of the car and I bounced back and I locked the door on him.
And they threatened us with their guns and I still, uh, I wouldn't move or budge. Alcohol was doing my talking and standing up for me at that point. Finally, they told him that he could go, just get out of the car and they wanted me and I told him he might as well go because, uh, why both of us get in trouble. And this big slob got in there and, uh, him and I started to wrestle around and I busted him one on the chin and he split my head wide open with a blackjack. And, uh, I got this gray hair to prove it all through my drinking career. And, uh, I woke up on the way to the station and I bellied him again and he split my head again.
And I got to the station house, uh, they had me listed as John Doe. I didn't even know my name that night. And, uh, they threw me in. I had an overcoat on, the sleeve was completely tore off. And, uh, I was laying on the floor the next morning so I think they just slid me right in there and that was it. Well, that's the type of guy I was in the early beginning of my drinking. And I had a young couple that I hung around with and, uh, they burnt to death one night. This guy smoked cigars and I guess they, we all got powdered all the time and he fell asleep in the bed with the cigar, I guess, and that was it.
I had a lot of warning signals in the beginning, plus an older fellow, he was about 10, 15 older, years older than me, and he introduced me to the morning drink. And I thought, this is pretty good, hell, I can raise hell all night long, have a few hours sleep, and then go get a couple of eye openers and I'm on my way again. I liked that in the beginning because it did something for me, but then again later on it got to a point that it did nothing for me. Using alcohol for medicinal purposes is the best thing that ever happened to anybody. Hell, I'd like to have a double header every morning just to wake up, but I'd never stop there.
So, Uncle Sam come along and it took me about this time and I spent three years in the infantry. I'm not going into any detail on that except that every time I was put up for stripes, I was an infantry scout and I was put up for stripes several times. They wanted to make a leader out of me and I rejected authority at that time and I still do today. I don't know what it is, I got a quirk about me someplace, but I always reject authority.
And every time I went to get these stripes, I would foul up, either on purpose or I'd go out and get drunk and celebrate ahead of time, I don't know what, but I never made it. I went in a private and come out the same way. And yet in battle I could have been a company commander, a captain at least. I could have had a battlefield commission and I was one of about seven out of about 27 scouts that come back alive in our company.
[00:20:13]
Well, I didn't drink up front because I think everybody wants to live and I seen the first few days of action or the first day of action, as a matter of fact, where I'm a scout, I'm the first one in the village or town or wherever you go and we got to go at anything, whiskey or anything else that's around there. And some of these guys, the minute they get a hold of a jug, they started getting loaded up and when the enemy leaves, you can bank on about a half hour, 20 minutes or a half hour later, they're going to throw the bathroom zinc at you, everything they got and you better be hiding someplace.
These guys are already counter-attacked. They're up there shooting at these Tiger tanks with a lousy gun, a rifle. We couldn't even knock them out with anti-tank grenades. So I just thought it over and it made sense to me, if I want to make my chances a little better coming out of there, I better lay off the booths. So I did, I took it easy. And I got taken out at the Rhine River. And just to point out, Hitler fed his troops booths. He wanted to make sure they had all the ammunition all the way around to fight and he knew, probably knew they would take a lot more chances with that booths in them.
And they did because it was Christmas Eve of 44, I think it was, and we had orders to stay in our foxholes and throw grenades out. Absolutely nobody was allowed out of the foxhole and any noise we heard out there, we just pull a pin on the grenade and throw it. There was dead Germans all over that place the next morning. And they're drunk, you could smell booze all through that woods. And then there's three or four hundred of them come charging at us. We had orders to take no prisoners, shoot to kill.
And I'd say about half of them didn't even have their guns, they were loaded. Couldn't find their guns, they grabbed a whole lot of broken bottles and sticks and they were charging us. So you could see how goofy alcohol can make you. I got taken out to the Rhine River and of all places they put me in the military police afterwards. My brotherly love outfit. So I got into a few little situations in there with people in my own company.
I drove these officers to this cave in Hardheim, Germany and they had enough alcohol to supply the entire world for about five years. They had alcohol from all over the world. And I got a hold of some Greek artillerama case of it there. I never tasted it before in my life or neither have I since. I passed it around to this Sergeant Flanagan who was a buddy of mine and give a few bottles out here and there. We got real good and stoned on this and we pull up to the company commander's office and he's standing on the sidewalk and Flanagan is sitting in the Jeep saluting him about a dozen times.
And finally he told Flanagan to get out of the Jeep and he fell flat on his face and he got busted right on the spot. I went back to the outfit and they wanted to see me the next day I think it was and for four days I couldn't get out of that bed. Under threat of General Port Marshall I couldn't get out of that bed. I was sick, I couldn't eat and I thought I was going to die. This stuff was 180 proof cut down with grapefruit juice. You take a drink of that and water just starts coming out of your nose, eyes and ears and every place else.
If you ever wanted to feel a mule kicking you, I think that would be the closest, one of the closest. I got transferred out of that company and they put me with 7th Army Headquarters Military Police and this was a regular situation the same as the police officers here in the states. One of my jobs was to guard Wernher von Braun, the chief scientist down at Cape Kennedy, Florida here. There was 11 other scientists with him at this particular time and they're having a party up in the hills of Heidelberg, Germany in this Hacienda.
[00:25:10]
Myself and two other fellas were on duty and we get half stoned, everybody in the company was doing it. We were getting half stoned before going on duty and then we throw a couple jugs of cognac in our belt. We started feeling sorry for ourselves. We thought that here these bums are in there, who won the war anyways? And they're in there having a party and a ball and they took us away from our homes and made us quit school, come over here and straighten things out.
We're not making the big money and the more we talked about it, we were going in there and we were going to kill every damn one of them. And why it didn't happen, I don't know. You know, alcohol is funny too. One minute you're ready to murder somebody, another one you're throwing your arms around somebody, you want to love them. So, I don't know. Well, from there I didn't get in too much trouble until I got back to the States and when they tell you to stay away from that first drink, I know what it is because when I got back I just continued where I left off at, only it was worse.
I fooled around for about three months. I had a lot of money I made in Black Market over there. I was in with the rest of them and brought home a pocket full of dough. For three months I just went out night clubbing and raising all kinds of hell. Then I decided I better get myself a job and better settle down a little bit. So I sobered up for maybe a month. Three months is about the limit I could ever stay sober. This time I met my wife and we went together for about a year and finally everybody says we should get married because we act like married people.
Fighting all the time, so we did. Well, that was one of the sorriest days of our life and I'll tell you why. Because up in that foxhole I used to dream I'm going to meet a nice gal and I'm going to have a church wedding and all the trimmings. It was happening this way. We had these white jackets on and the black pants. My wife asked me not to drink that particular day and the day before I got a quart, I think it was a quart of four roses instead of a fifth.
I was nervous that morning. I had a few drinks and I met the best man who was my best friend for years and we had a couple and these other two guys that stood up, they come over and we got started right there. Well, my wife, she had her roses in her hand going up to the altar and I had mine in my belly and she probably could have used a few of those because I could hear those flowers shake today. Later on, I continued. Hell, this was just like an ordinary day in my life. How goofy can you get? I continued drinking all day and raising a little hell here and there.
Come time for the reception in the evening, we had over 200 people at this reception and we had music and everything and about five minutes before the cutting of the cake, my best man and myself, we got into one hell of a fight and I had blood all over this white coat of mine and it was my blood mostly. And then you talk about return to sanity. I said to him at that time, they tell me later that when I get back from my honeymoon, I'm going to kill you, you SOB.
Well, if I'd been June, there wouldn't have been no honeymoon at all. That would have been it right there. I would have just went down and had the whole damn mess nulled and let it go at that. But for some reason, this gal stuck with me and today in AA, I think that somehow the both of us were pushed together by a power greater than ourself. Because I certainly, she's not from Detroit, she's from Kentucky and I had my opportunities in Detroit, I had my opportunities in Germany, I was going to marry a school teacher over there, but I think we were meant to meet each other someplace along the line.
Meet each other someplace along the line, and all these things that happen in AA, I don't think they're just accidental either. I think they're meant to be. I never used to think that way, but I do today.
[00:30:08]
So, anyways, that was, and to top everything off, my brother-in-law went and got a hotel room for us, and don't you know he's got twin beds. So, since I've been in AA, I thought that, you know, if you could ever have one day back in your life, well that'd be the day that I'd want it. If you could only have it back, but I don't meditate or try to think about those things anymore, because AA has taught me to forget about yesterday, and don't worry about tomorrow until it gets here. I got today, and that's the only day I got. But it used to contribute to my drinking, because I'd be drinking, and maybe I'd be having a good time, and all of a sudden some of these rotten things that I did had flashed before me, and it made me drink more and more. I hated myself for the things that I did.
My wife and I, we went up to Mackinac Island for a week, and then we went down to Kentucky for a week, Mackinac Island, up in Michigan, and they knew we were coming up on a honeymoon, and I arrived up there with a patch on my nose and a black eye. That's one hell of a way to be starting out on a honeymoon. So by the time I got down to Kentucky, I was in good shape, and I sobered up for a while. I was working fairly regular at that time, and I was manager of a baseball team, and for seven years there, I lasted at this place, and I think I held on to managing this baseball team because I knew the union would protect my job for me, and they did many times.
I had an opportunity at this time to become a ball player for the Detroit Tigers. Twice the Tiger-Scots were out, and they were out chiefly for my pitcher. This guy would strike out 17 men a game, and we're both Elkies. But we'd go out there, and I had a 478 average for seven years, and we played in two leagues, but we were wildcats. We'd lay down a bun to either one of us and get ourselves a base hit, and these other guys had the butterflies for two or three innings.
We went up there, and we were ready. You know what alcohol will do for you. At a certain point, you're ready for anything. So they went away, and they come back once again, and they asked us if we think it was necessary to drink and play baseball, and we were young, and we didn't think too straight, I guess, and we thought in a way it was none of their damn business whether we drank or not as long as we played good baseball.
And they told us that hell, guys like you, we can get a dime a dozen, and that's the last time they came around. So that was a golden opportunity I passed up. That's one of many I could have had. I was in a position several times to make something out of my life, and I didn't do it. Plus, my uncle was superintendent of police at Detroit when I come out of service, and that's the head man, and I was going into the police department, and I chickened out at the last minute.
All I had to do was go down and get a high school diploma through the Board of Education, which was a matter of about four hours, they told me, and I thought it over, and I figured some night I might pull that gun and kill somebody that didn't have it coming to them, and I know I would have the booze, and I figured I'd have to make a decision whether I want to be a police officer or I want to drink, and I took to the drinking.
And I probably saved some people's lives that way, I don't know, maybe my own. So the wife and I, we had a few fights, and she don't like me telling this, but I've hit her a few different times, and I'm not proud of it, and sorry the minute I did it, but when you do something, it's done, that's all. So she searched around for help for me, and she was told by some organization, I don't know who they were, she don't recall either, but they told her that she was nuts to even be living with a guy like me.
[00:35:00]
And she went to a police psychiatrist one time, and he told her the same damn thing, but she still clung on, she thought there was hope for Joe someplace. And one time I went to the police myself, and they took me downtown, Detroit, receiving hospital, and they took me up to the psycho ward, and I was asking for help. And they turned me loose, and within two hours they said I had a nervous breakdown.
You know if I had a nervous breakdown, they wasn't going to turn me loose from that hospital for two months, not two hours. I got lost for about a week, I just drank up and didn't go to work, didn't call or nothing. So, one time I told the wife I misbehaved myself the night before pretty badly, and I says, honey, why the hell don't you belt me one? And I kept sticking my chin out, and finally she let me have one, and I sat on the floor.
And I says, I'll never tell that woman anything like that again, but I did. I turned around not long after that, and I says, look baby, I wouldn't have a gal that wouldn't stand up for her rights, and I've had a straight armor ever since. Like, man, don't ever get that way with the gals, I don't know. So, one time during the drinking, my wife decided that she'll drink along with me, and she did do a little bit here and there and didn't care for it, but she says, well, I'll just see what happens.
I've tried everything else, I'll drink along with them, and she did, and we had a lot of fun for a while. Pretty soon, that alcohol, she was a little lamb, and that alcohol made a tigress out of her. And these little arguments we used to have turned into a vicious battle, and the police were called in at certain times to settle things down. And the caretakers were knocking on the door, and they says, June, you're a nice gal, but this guy gotta go.
He's gotta go. We were moving like a couple gypsies. We'd be six months here, and I'd raise so much hell on one drunk or a good one on a night, and I drank almost every day, but I just toyed around with it, and I'd get drunk mostly on the weekends. So, it was a matter of moving, and I was taking it into stride at this time, and then it come down to the end of the line, where the wife, I come home this one day, I was driving a taxi in the city of Detroit for a couple years at that time.
The only thing left in the house, I guess, was the kitchen. And it didn't shock me any. I said, well, where are we going this time? She said, you're not going no place. So, she put all the furniture into storage, come down to Youngstown, and lived with a sister of hers, and I continued to drink for a while, and then I run out of ammunition. And my people weren't giving it to me anymore, and bartenders weren't trusting me, and they said, wouldn't we get it back, and all that.
And they all told me, they were concerned, and they said, Joe, you're killing yourself with that stuff. But I would never blame alcohol for none of my troubles. It was always the other guy, the boss, or the woman, or if that guy didn't look at me like that, or something like that. I was blaming everything but the bottle. Well, I came down to make peace with June, and I had the right idea. But AA has taught me since that no matter where I went, if I ended up in Australia, I'd still have to face me at the end of the road.
So, I come down, and I figured a fresh start, and I give her the same old malarkey. Snow jobbed her. I used to say to myself, boy, is this kid dumb. Everything I tell her, she believes me. So, she didn't believe me, but she just went along with me. That's the difference. So, I come down, and I made peace with her, and I got a job, amical turnpike service through one of the brother-in-laws, and I become foreman after a short time out there.
And come Christmas Eve, I went out to work dressed up with what clothes I had left,
[00:40:03]
and I had a fifth, or a couple fifths with me, and I took the whole crew into the restaurant next door, which belonged, and we danced with the waitresses and raised all kinds of hell, and a couple of boys just started there, and I give them a couple turkeys to take home for Christmas, because I want to see they had a jolly time. But the boss found out about it, and I didn't come to work the following night, and I was fired.
He just didn't have a sense of humor at all about it. Trying to help out mankind a little bit. Well, I lost that job and about a dozen more in Youngstown. I'll tell you this one about the bakery, and that'll be it. I was with Nichols Bakery at that time, and on the route, and I was drinking every night, and I was taking it easy during the daytime. I mean, I wouldn't drink while I was driving the truck, and then pretty soon I would drink when I was driving the truck.
But all through my drinking career, that didn't make a damn bit of difference. When I worked at Murray Corporation of Detroit, I would leave work at 10.30 in the morning. I'd start at 7 and leave at 10.30. Tell them it's personal business, and I don't have to tell you nothing. Give me a pass and let me out of here. I was like a tiger in a cage. And I left, and that's the way I was. I'd drink right on the job.
I'd drink before going to work, lunchtime, and I could hardly wait till that whistle blew so I could run to the nearest joint and get a few hypes in me. Well, anyways, this one day I had a junior supervisor with me, and I didn't know it on this bakery route, and I had one hell of a night the night before, and I'm just floating around that truck. If somebody had given me a push, I think I would have exploded.
And we stopped at the Indian Head Tavern out here by the Hubbard Road in Tolong. I had convinced him that's the only place they got any food out around on this north side anyways, and he ordered a glass of milk and a couple of hamburgers, and I ordered a double-header. I told the woman, I says, don't put that bottle down. She poured about seven of them for me, and I put one down right after he had her.
No chaser, and that damn thing, I didn't even blink my eyes. That guy looked at me, and I thought he was going to faint or something. He said, what the hell's the matter with you? I said, I'm sick. Well, he says, let's go to a doctor. I says, it's not that kind of sick, buddy. I could see that he didn't know anything about alcohol. So, anyways, he turned me in, and the supervisor called me the next morning.
Naturally, I didn't even show up for work. And he says, why didn't you go to a doctor instead of a bar? He says, there's a doctor just as close as there is a bar, and I know that today. But he didn't understand. I says, I was sick. It's not that kind of sick. I says, unless you drink, you wouldn't know. And, yeah, maybe the doctor could have did me some good. I don't know, but I had all my faith in that bottle.
That could save me, and it did. It picked me right up off the floor a lot of times. Well, we were staying at a place out in Boardman. We were taking care of it for an older couple that went down to Florida. And they were due back, and I lost this job. And the wife says, let's get an apartment. And I says, we're paid up to the first of the month. I says, we're not moving until that day is up. And these people got home a little ahead of time.
They wanted us to stay with them for a while. And June was mad, and she says, let's get our things. And we threw, didn't pack or nothing, just threw everything in the backseat of the car and had a collie dog at that time, a little dog we loved pretty well. And we drove down the street and decided our destiny. Within a couple of miles, we parked, and the old wheels are turning, and this Irish head of mine, and I says, why don't we take you in for a ride?
[00:45:20]
And I think when we were, we talk like this, that we mean it at the time, but we don't just follow through. We don't follow through on it. We make a lot of promises and everything else, but we just don't follow through. Anyways, I went up to Detroit and I did try to find some work and I couldn't find or buy a job or borrow one and my people wouldn't give me any money and I couldn't get any credit and a lot of the bars I used to hang around and all that.
Hell, this made me mad and made me, it was the best thing that ever happened in my life because I had to stop and think. Nobody loves Joe anymore, you know. And I was feeling real sorry for myself and it made me stop and wonder, what the hell are you doing? Where are you going? What is this? What did you do to these people? I didn't hurt anybody but myself, so I thought. Well, the wheels start turning again and I call Youngstown Collect naturally and I tell her that, look, things are tough up here. I says, why don't we sell a furniture and we'll go out to Colorado.
And she says, well, that's all right. So she says, put an ad in the paper and she was always wanting me to use up my money so I wouldn't drink on it. And I was quicker on my thoughts than she was because I, and she probably knew I wouldn't do it anyway, so I kept what little change I had left and drank on it. I went around to three or four auction houses and I got 400 and a quarter offered for that furniture and we had about $3,600 worth of furniture in there. We didn't have any kids and it was all good stuff. She just spent $360 for a bedroom suite before we put it in the store.
The guy told me I was crazy and I said, never mind the lecture. Give me my money and let me go. I come back to Youngstown and she asked me if I had seen the notice in the paper and I said, you know I don't read. I said, what are you talking about? And she says, our divorce is in the paper. And boy, the old steam started to come out then. I said, you got a hell of a lot of nerve. You're going to divorce a nice guy like me after all the things I did for you. You know, instead of to you, for you.
Geez, how crazy can you get? Anyways, it was shortly after that that I spent most of my time on Skid Row and finally I got a couple dollars together and I got a room for $7 a week and I was living in a car half the time. And she's seen me a couple times and she says, she quit the divorce and she says, Joe, are you ever going to straighten out? And at this time I really was trying and I said, I'm trying to get off of it now but I said, somehow it isn't working like it used to be.
I said, I used to be able to taper off and quit just like that but I could never just quit like that. I'd have to taper off. So, it was a year from that day that she stopped the divorce before I ended up in the clinic. And one night I'm on, I had a few bucks together and I was on a good tear and I'm out in the backyard from this rooming house and I'm looking up at the sky shaking my fist and I says, God, I says, give me a break.
I says, get off my back, haven't I suffered long enough and stuff like that. I'm just talking like a, and I think he understood me because I choose to believe he's the, he's my sponsor, he's the one that pushed me right in, right into AA. Within 10 days I was in that clinic, from that point. But I heard on the radio a couple times, I didn't know where help was and they said, if you got a drinking problem, go to the Lincoln Avenue Clinic.
Well, I got the address and I walked by the place several times and I just couldn't get up the courage to go in the place. I thought it was something like a bug house or something like that. I figured people being there unshaven and laying in their own puke and locked up in the damn closets and chains and everything else. I had all kinds of imaginations.
[00:50:10]
But I got to the point, I said, I don't give a damn. If that's the way I got to sober up and get away from this bottle, I'm going to have to do it that way. So I was going to bingo at this time and I figured if I won the jackpot, I'd give it to mama and everything would be alright. But if I won that 700 and some dollars, she probably wouldn't have seen me. I'd probably end up in California or someplace. That was me all the time. It was always, give me prayers, give me prayers. You do this for me and I'll do that for you.
Well, this last night I was at this bingo that I went into the clinic. I went to the Elms Gardens. I had my last drink and I was in there and everything just started to get the way I like it. The boys were singing songs and raising hell and I was beginning to feel alright myself a little bit. Then some thought just come to me like a ball of lightning or something like that. It says, Joe, if you're ever going to do anything, you better get the hell out that door now.
I went and I left the car up there on a side street and I damn near run down to the clinic. It was only a couple blocks away or three blocks. Mabel, who I call my co-sponsor, a lot of you know her, the Georgia peach or the rebel, she answered the door and I made no preparation to get into that clinic at all. She had the night lock on and she told me, come back tomorrow. I practically pleaded with her and I told her, I need help tonight. I said, if I don't get help, something's going to happen to me tonight and I know it.
Because up to this point, within about a month or two, this suicide bit was in my mind all the time and I figured I'd go across Market Street Bridge, pull up the car and I'm not even going to look over that rail. I'm going to take a run and dive over it down on the railroad tracks to make sure everything's taken care of, you know. And I think one night, if I got enough booze in me and give me the guts to do it, I would have did it. And nobody wants to kill themselves, so anyways, Mabel says, I could lose my job, but I'll take a chance. I'll let you in.
And that's why I always refer to her as my co-sponsor. Those nurses at the clinic did a wonderful job on me to begin with. We had little chats day by day, plus Steve Mowry come in and he's one of the oldest active members in the valley here. And I chose to believe everything he said. It was hard to, but I says, man, this guy was on skid row and look at him today, he's immaculate. He looks like a preacher or something.
And then it started to work. Everybody come in there, I listened to everything they said. But I wasn't quite as dumb as people think I am. The people in the pajamas had more answers than the guys on the outside had. And with a little common sense, I sat back and I said, if they got all the answers, what the hell are they doing in pajamas too? So I didn't pay too much heat to the guys in the pajamas, but I listened to everybody and if they made sense, I kept it with me.
And so I went to meetings. I started and I take a rough guess to this day I've hit 2,000 meetings in almost six years. And I'm not bragging or saying that for any other reason than for me. That's how much medicine maybe I need. Not that I'm going to get drunk. If I don't go to a meeting every night of the week, I'm going to get drunk, but I love the association and I know by going to this classroom of sobriety that I'm going to learn something every night.
And perhaps my being there, there might be just somebody there that I could help besides helping myself. And I know by helping other people, and I was a very weak character myself, that I'm going to get stronger. If I was to tell you that alcohol was my only problem and then everything else I said was a damn lie, because we've got defects of character and a lot of things that we got to work on, and we work on one at a time.
And some of them they don't get taken care of in some time, but we do work on them. I do. Getting sober physically is not enough. We got to clean out the cobwebs of our mind, the garden of our mind has to be conditioned like Jimmy here used to condition himself for a fight.
[00:55:23]
We have to condition ourself against that first drink. And there's no better place on earth than right at an AA meeting to learn more ways of staying sober. We've got a half a million people staying sober throughout the world and we got a half a million different ways of staying sober. How I stay sober might not keep the next guy sober or help him stay sober, but I learned from Howard Benhoff and a lot of other people that we got to build these barriers up in front of us.
Everything that we learn in AA and before we can take a drink we have to knock a lot of barriers over. That's the way I see it. A guy comes into AA and people are patting him on the back, they're shaking his hand and treating him like a king and all of a sudden they drop him like a hot potato and he wonders what the hell's wrong, what did I do? The trouble is he didn't do nothing probably, he's just existing, just being there. And then he sits back a while and pretty soon he finds out he starts getting busy with somebody else and then the bells start ringing again and he gets into the inner circle of AA.
These people didn't just drop him, they got busy with somebody else. They couldn't afford to spend all their time with a couple individuals and when you get busy with somebody else and it works that way all the way around, that's the way I understand it. AA will work for anybody who wants it to work for them. I think I'm one of the best examples to prove that because I had to go all the way and I didn't have much to go on when I did get into AA at that point and I think I got a chance today and it's you people who give me that chance and I'll forever be grateful for it.
I was ten years away from my church. The way I was thinking during those years was I never did quit believing in God but I didn't want no part of him. I figured he ought to mind his own business and I'll take care of my business. Getting to that point, I think the third step in AA is the most important step of all and this is the way I think that don't necessarily mean that you have to believe that way is to turn your will and your life over to God as you understand him and I did that before I even hit AA unconsciously and I felt better for it.
After five months in the program and sitting on my hands, five days didn't stop my shakes. I still shake today and Kenny shakes over there. We shake each other up a little bit but I sat on my hands and I didn't say nothing. It isn't that the older, old timers and I thank God for them, I was the type of guy that I wanted to know if this program worked, you know, not 24 hours but I want to know is there anybody around that stayed sober any length of time and it was Lloyd Lovell and Worth over here and Matt and several others plus Steve Murray who gave me my first inoculation of AA and I says, I thought, well, hell, it does work but I got to work it the way they tell me, one day at a time. So that's why I got drunk one day at a time so I stay sober one day at a time.
Like the fellow from Erie says, if you look at yesterday as history and tomorrow as a mystery so therefore we got only today to work on or if you look at yesterday out of your right eye and tomorrow out of your left eye, you're cockeyed. There are so many, there's a thousand sayings, I wrote some of them down and I just don't have them with me anymore. I loaned my book out and there's a big resentment there to a guy in AA who was in the hospital and the book got back somehow through somebody else but I had all kinds of notes in the early days of AA.
I had all kinds of notes in the early days of AA I wanted to keep, and that bootlegger got rid of all of them, but maybe that's the way it was supposed to be, because I like them for myself, everything I hear in AA, especially this one guy, he's dead today, but he made a terrific talk at the Westside in Youngstown on positive thinking, and man, I believed him, and I says, boy, now there's a talk, somebody
[01:00:18]
should have talked to me years ago on positive thinking, absolutely no negative thinking at all, no ands, ifs, maybe, or butters, anything like that, and yet this guy didn't believe what he said, he got drunk and he's dead today, but that didn't get me drunk, or it didn't make me change my way of thinking about positive thinking, and I think sometimes you got to look at the guy up front as, don't do as he does, but do as he says, because I think God uses us as an instrument, and you say things that even surprise yourself, he puts the words there, you ask for the help, and certainly we all ask for the help to help somebody else out besides yourself, and I don't take any, I don't tell anybody to reject anything they hear in AA. One time I was on a 12-step call, and I, this guy had nothing in common with me outside of drinking, but he started talking a little bit, and hell, I recall a lead in AA, and I knew the guy, and I put him in his direction, the guy's still sober today, about four years ago, and had I not remembered that, maybe the guy wouldn't have been here, I don't know. So I think we got a good storage house up there in our mind or subconscious or someplace, and I think everything we hear in AA, we better keep it for a while at least and hash it out a little bit, and if it don't help you, it certainly might help somebody else out.
It's a life and death proposition with me, and it should be with most of us. The best thing I, AA in general makes you feel like you're a man again. I think this is where you become an adult, so to speak. 21 years old, legally, you're an adult. But I think sometimes we're 40 or 50 or 60 years old before we become an adult. People, in this program, the philosophy of AA teaches us how to face up to reality and live life the best way we know how.
Christ himself, when he was on earth here, he pointed out to us that help each other out, and what you do for the least of my brethren, you do also unto me, for me. So I think we practice the principles that were set out in the beginning from our Lord himself in AA. If you're new in the program, there's no religion in AA. It's a spiritual program as I see it. It's a combination of all nationalities working together through group therapy mostly that we get sober and we stay sober and we have a happy sobriety.
And if you don't have a happy sobriety, then you better start working for it. And by doing that, you get active in AA, whatever you do. We're active in AA just by sitting at a chair. If we don't make a comment or don't do anything else, that's activity. Because old Jim Henderson pointed out to me, I used to say, oh hell, I heard that guy half a dozen times. And he says, Joe, do you ever think that somebody might be using you as a Bible? That your presence, I'm just using myself as an example, your presence at a meeting might make the difference between life and death with somebody else.
A guy might just come here just to see if you're sober and he goes home and he sleeps well and he says he's sober and so am I. So after that day, I didn't care whether I heard a guy a couple dozen times. I listened to everybody and I tried to apply it to my life the best I can. And I practice AA to the best of my ability. That means to the best of my ability. And wherever you draw the line there, I don't know. But I got a happy sobriety and I know I can have it the rest of my life if I so desire.
I started to tell you how I got back in my church and then I'm going to quit. I went to a retreat out here in Logan Avenue. And up to that point, I never, I was quite as a church mouse. And at this retreat, you don't talk from Friday night to Sunday afternoon.
[01:05:09]
But it was there that I, first time in my life I ever talked over my problem face to face with a man. And I told him everything that happened to me since I was knee high. I walked out of there on a cloud and I felt that way for a couple years after. I felt that anything happened to me, I just, wouldn't be no funeral. I'd just float off on a cloud someplace, you know. And that's a wonderful feeling. I've lost it and I don't know if I'll regain it. But it's the thing that started me back on my road to recovery and I was most happy about it.
I think you shouldn't look at anybody in AA when you first come in and they tell you flatly, keep your big mouth shut and your eyes and ears open. They don't mean no harm by that. They're telling you that for your own benefit because common sense will tell you whatever you tried up to when you got into AA didn't work for you. And certainly if they tell you this, maybe you do as they say and you're going to be sober.
I want to finish this with one little situation. First off, I want to wish each and every one of you many years of a happy sobriety. The only fellow you should try to get even with is the fellow who has done you some good. There's one other one here. No man is entirely useless. He can always serve as a bad example. So with this, this was in a Cleveland. I got it at one of the other meetings some time ago.
Advice for Drunks. The Eliminating Advice for Drunks, recently circulated by a Cleveland businessman, police association newsletter, and reads, Since you cannot refrain from drinking, why not start a saloon of your own in your own home? Be the only customer and you will not have to buy a license. Give your wife $55 to buy a case of whiskey. There are 240 drinks in a case. Buy all your drinks from your wife at 60 cents a drink.
In 12 days when the case is gone, your wife will have $89 to put in the bank and $55 to buy another case. If you live 10 years and continue to buy your whiskey from your wife and die in your boots, your widow will have $27,125.47 on deposit. That's enough to bring up your children, pay off the mortgage, marry a decent man, and forget she ever knew a bum like you. Thank you.