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Please help me open the meeting with a moment of silence, followed by a serenity prayer. God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Purge, change the things I can, and deliver me from all ignorance. Not to embarrass anyone, but to welcome them as there are many women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other, that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.

The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, or organization that opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. From the Hillbilly Group in Orchard Park. Good evening.

My name is Art, and I am an alcoholic. Paul makes a roundup every now and then. I went out to the Hillbilly Group there in Orchard Park about a month ago when he corralled me. I’ve been over here, I was over here probably five years ago. But to qualify myself, I attended my very first meeting, my entrance to AA, June 6, 1965. And two years later I picked up my last drink. I had gone back out. I won’t tell you about that now because it’s part of my story, as you will hear.

I was probably the type of individual… They tell me that Christopher Columbus was an alcoholic. And they said that the reason being that he had all the characteristics of alcoholism, like myself, was that when he left home, he didn’t know where he was going. And when he got there, he didn’t know where he was. When he got back, he hadn’t known where he had been. And a woman paid for the whole deal.

And that’s about the way I am. I was very fortunate, though, to find the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous when I did find it. And believe me, it wasn’t a day too soon. I was the type of individual… I come from a large Irish Catholic family down in Pennsylvania. There was never any mention, there was a lot of mention of drinking, but there was never any mention of alcoholism or alcoholics or dysfunctional individuals or anything else throughout the relationship.

In fact, a drop of a hat, you’d have a party. I mean, it was one of them deals. And I always said that I was the first one in in our family to come through the doors of AA. But believe me, I haven’t been the last one. There’s enough in there now to start our own group. And they’re all over. In fact, several of them are in my own family, a couple of my children. But my drinking didn’t originate or start that much down in Pennsylvania because you had to actually be 21 to take a drink.

And I had left there at age 20 to go into the military. I believe that I had… I must have sampled beer or something prior to that, but very little experience at it. There was very little drinking in the house as far as my mother and father. In fact, I would remember that they would get a quart of Budweiser every other Friday night and a little bit of sharp cheese and they’d split it. My dad would get sick.

That was about the extent of the alcohol drinking around the house. But there was numerous constant parties throughout the entire relationship. But I had left there and went into the military at, as I say, 20 years old, went into the Air Force. And I recall at that time, you know, it’s all in hindsight, but I look back since I’ve been in the fellowship of AA, although I hadn’t had any alcoholic beverages or drugs or anything else,

hell, I had problems.

I was a born problem. I was a natural for this whole thing. And I went into the military, went through basic training and routinely like everybody else and then got out of basic training. And, geez, I guess the first few nights I got out and started hitting the taverns and the gin mills. And, God, I got wiped out. You know, you’ve met a lot of people that have had social drinking and had gone on for years with, they were able to hold it and handle it.

Man, I couldn’t from day one. Man, this hit me like a ton of rocks. I knew, I know now that then there was something wrong because I, geez, I just didn’t drink like normal people drank. God, I drank to get drunk. And I got drunk and I got drunk fast. And I got screwed up. And they talk about blackout drinking apparently. And they taught me that in here. I must have had a lot of that. But I stayed in the military because I found it was quite a protector of an individual like myself.

I was able to do and get away with a lot of the things at that time that I don’t think I could have gotten away with out here in industry or anything of that nature. So I stayed in the military and proceeded to drink. About a year later, in 1951, I recall driving a car from down at Sampson Air Force Base. I wasn’t from this area. I was from down in Pennsylvania. I was driving a car from, I left Sampson.

And we’re 5 and 20 separate at Avon. Some of you know where the circle is. You come down the foot of the hill. That’s the last thing I remember. And I woke up in emergency hospital the next day. Now, they said I had an accident. I’m sure there was booze involved. But to this very day, I can’t even resurrect what did occur other than I had a medical in the hospital I was in nurses training at the time and later to become my wife and still my wife today after 39 years and seven children and 13 grandchildren later and still my wife.

But as a result of a. But that set me on a path right down. I guess probably the first accident associated in any way with my drinking or my performance or past performance or how I was acting. I got out of the hospital and actually the 10 days recuperation or whatever they back to the military. I went and this didn’t stop the drinking. The drinking proceeded. And of course, I made more frequent trips to Buffalo because my wife was from originally from South Buffalo.

And I continue to come up here. And two years later, we were married. But this again, then she didn’t know anything about this drinking deal, my drinking deal. And I didn’t know anything about it. Really, I didn’t know. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know. I didn’t know I had a problem. Oh, hell, I thought this was normal. So the drinking continued and the children started to come along and the government was transferring us all over hell’s half acre over Korea and back.

And in 59, I had contacted a disease and had to have some major surgery. Oh, and the military didn’t think they could use me anymore. So they retired me. I met the physical evaluation board and retired on a medical discharge. But I was retired at full benefits as if I would have stayed into the military because I had over eight at the time. And we decided to settle here in South and Buffalo. So we settled of all places for a name like Fitzpatrick to settle would be South Buffalo with.

Well, you all know the general from South Buffalo. Good God. So and I frequented, frequented all of them. I recall a couple incidents.

We bought a home on Norman Street down South Buffalo, right between a half a dozen taverns. And some of the incidents were to go on a Sunday morning to get a loaf of bread. It was almost noon. Mary wanted to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for some of the kids. And I come back the next day. Oh, I don’t even know if I had the bread. But this is the type of and slept over in Casanova Park in the car.

And this whole incident surrounding my physical condition with the military and the government, I know today was neglect of the body and boots that had an awful lot to do with it. But I was very fortunate that they didn’t attribute it to that. They didn’t attribute it to a self-inflicted deal, but they attributed it to a service connected disability. And they took a lung out at the time. Hell, I’ve been better off without it anyway.

It’s been well ever since. But a lot of that had to do with the way I was drinking and sleeping in cars and the type of life that I had been leading. I attribute a lot of it to that. The abuse that I was giving myself. But in 63, we moved out to from South Buffalo. We bought a house on East Aurora. And that’s going to give me a seat now. Being retired with 100 percent idle hours gave me a lot of time to drink.

And if I bought a house to remodel, it would keep me busy and wouldn’t have to drink as much. And the wife actually believes this. And I did too, I guess. So we bought a large old tourist home on East Aurora. They’re on 16 right in the village. Big six bedroom house. And for the next two years, I proceeded to remodel it. I recall some of the incidents. I got to the point where booze was no longer just a need for a drink or something or a pleasure.

God, it was needed. And what I would do, I’d tell Mary, look, I’ve got to run down to Tinney Lumber down the mill. Walla Wines gin mill was right on the corner there on Oakwood Avenue on one of the back streets in East Aurora. In fact, I’ll tell you how bad I was when I moved to East Aurora. I didn’t know Walla Wines was a tavern for five months. I was still going back into South Buffalo. But Walla Wines is right there on the corner.

And what I would do, I didn’t want to open a beer up or have a drink at the house that early in the morning. And the only other way I knew to do it would be to go out and have one. Because if I opened one at home, it would just start, you know, I’d be opening a can of worms and we’d be fussing the rest of the day. So I would run into Walla Wines. I’d tell her I was going to get panoing nails, you know, just to get out of the house.

I’d run down there, run into Walla Wines, have four quick doubles, run into Lumber Company, get the nails, run into Walla Wines, four quick doubles, get back home. Open a bottle of beer before she could smell the whiskey. Now, then the eight doubles hit me. Now, so many times I got blasted before noon, had to lay, you know, dead sick. Had to lay down for a couple hours, lay down at noon, get up at two o’clock and do the same damn thing.

And it went on and on and on through. And there’s a lot of incidents that I can recall and I won’t bring into the drunk alarm here tonight about time in the service. Flying, coming back from overseas, getting put off an airplane in Salt Lake City. I mean, who the hell are we going to put on? Some of the things that I had done and I’m not very proud of today, they’re good remember wins. I won’t get into, but to just highlight.

For example, there in East Aurora, I give you an example. The children were coming along and I was always saying that I wasn’t depriving you of anything. The kids have shoes. The kids are eaten. Oh God, you got a house. What more do you want? All you’re doing is complaining. And Mary really didn’t know. She really didn’t understand this alcoholism or anything about it. She had never heard of Al-Anon.

And it reminds me of an Al-Anon story I’ll tell you. It reminds me of an Al-Anon story I’ll tell you.

This Al-Anon story is that this woman couldn’t take any more of the husband, and he couldn’t take any more of the drink, and he couldn’t quit. So this morning he goes in the bathroom, and she says, Lance, what are you doing in there so long? He says, I’m committing suicide, I turned on the gas, and I’m going to sit in here until I die. She says, well, would you please put the rug or a towel by the door, you’re making the cat sick.

And that’s about the type of sympathy I had, or got, or received when Mary first went to Al-Anon. And I’m glad I did. But along in, through the winter, coming into the spring of 65, prior to my knowing anything of AA, and things were bad, I was in pretty tough shape. Hell, I came in here weighing 101 pounds on my last leg. But there was a good friend of ours who lived on the street, a gal by the name of Besseker.

Her father was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Some people here know, Jimmy knows him, and Frank. His name was Art Buchanan, Art’s dad, now 10 years. He was my original sponsor. And I used to get on to Gracie’s on a Sunday morning to see her husband, Howard, because I knew I could get a beer down there. The taverns weren’t open. I didn’t want to open one at home. The same story, that’s why I went down to the lumber company.

I’d run down there. And this day I went in down there. I don’t know what it was or how it was, but Gracie said to Art, do you want something to drink or do you want a cup of coffee? I said, Gracie, I don’t want anything. She said, well, what’s the matter, are you sick? I said, Gracie, I don’t know. I said, hey, I’ll see you later. And I started out the door. As best I can remember, it was four doors away, three doors away.

And she said, tell Mary I want to see her. So Mary went down, and Mary came home about two or three minutes later running as if something had happened to her. She came in the house. She says, do you know Gracie’s father’s in AA? And, hell, I didn’t even know what AA was. The only thing I knew about AA was jokes. You know, we’d make a joke in the bar or something about it. And she said, would you be willing to sit down and talk with him?

I said, yeah, I’ll sit down and talk with him. I’d be glad to. So I had been having quite a problem at that time. And she said that she would get, Art was either out of town or something, she was going to get with him the next day. Gracie was going to make this connection. So somehow the connection was made, and Art took me to my first meeting over in Williamsville, New York. And, hell, I walked into that first meeting, and there was a, I remember a fellow there by the name of Jimmy Campbell, who later moved to Florida.

And he had said to Art, God, Art, I haven’t seen you in a long time. He said, how long have you been in now? And he said, 18 years. I figured, if he’s been in 18 years and hasn’t had a drink in 18 years, what the hell is he going to tell me about drinking? I had a drink today. And that’s the hard-headedness, that mental block that I had there. How’s he going to tell me anything? But at any rate, I was under, once Mary found out that there was, something could be done for this booze, this action, the problems, the situations that I was causing around the house, she almost, it was almost like a forceful deal.

Did you call Art, get a hold of Art, you know, one of these deals? Well, I went to AA, not that I wanted to, believe me, because I really didn’t know. So I went to that Williamsville meeting with him on a Tuesday night. The following Friday night, I went to the Hillbilly Group. We meet in the police station in Orchard Park. And they’ve been meeting in that same room, in that police station, for 46 years out there.

So it’s the fourth or fifth oldest group on the frontier. But I recall going to the meetings there at Orchard Park, and they would read a few, how it works. And if you want what we have, boy, I’d look around, I’d say, are you kidding? I want what he has. And I could always find somebody, somebody that I would compare, that I didn’t want what they had. I stuck around for five months. And geez, that’s a long, that’s a miracle in itself.

I didn’t have five months sobriety, only maybe the first year of my life. God, five, five months. And of course, Art sort of was winging me, telling me I should get to meetings. And he would have things to do. So I went over to a meeting in Lancaster, New York, and it was their second anniversary meeting of the Matt Talbot group. And it was Jim S., who died about a month ago, a lefty. They were going to have their second anniversary meeting, and the speaker was going to be from Cold Springs.

His name was Ike Anderson. I break Ike’s anonymity. Ike’s been deceased a number of years now. And some of the things that they had told me in the five previous months was, Art, try to identify, man, find one person you can identify with. I mean, some people in there identify with the common denominator of the booze. Never mind, you’re not as old, you’re not as young, you’re not as big, you’re not as strong, you’re not as wealthy.

Just try and find that common denominator of booze and try and identify. So I went to that meeting that night over there in Lancaster, New York. And this fellow got up, his name was Ike Anderson, and I had not, prior to that, met a black man in AA. In fact, there was only one woman that I had known in AA, Jenny Yates. She’s deceased. She belonged to the Hillbilly group. And I thought Jenny only came there to check on her kids.

I didn’t know she was an alcoholic. She used to tell stories about packing lunches for her railroading sons. But I went over to that meeting, and this fellow, they introduced him, and he’d get up to speak, and he says, My name is Ike Anderson, and I’m an alcoholic. And I spent, I don’t know how many years, in Atlanta prison for killing a woman with an automobile. I was sitting back there as far back as I could get, and I said to myself, people like him should be in AA.

They should. I mean, he’s black. He’s probably unemployed. I can understand. He was in prison. He had automobile accidents. I can see why he’s in AA. And he should be. And I was drunk before I got home, before I got back to East Gerrard. I had stopped in a tavern. And for the next 29 months, man, I couldn’t put 30 days together. The best part of that 29 months is I never stopped going to meetings. I’d go to a meeting and drink on the way home.

I wouldn’t drink on the way to the meeting. Art would call me and say, You want to make a meeting tonight? I’d say, Yeah, Art. Or if he’d pop in at the house. He was such an individual. He knew me inside out, backwards. I didn’t know he knew me, but he knew me. He’d pop into the house, and I’d say, Geez, I went out again last night. He’d say, Don’t worry about it. It was yesterday. He’d say, Let’s say a little prayer.

I worked today. Just today. Never mind. To hell with yesterday. Let’s work today. Let’s go forward from now. Right now. And geez, it worked for me. But for the next 29 months, geez, I picked this thing from pillar to post. I almost got to the point in my own beliefs that this thing would work for you and you and you and you. But I thought this was the way I was going to be living, because really, all my brothers

and sisters were living this way. Our family down in Pennsylvania, hell, they were nowhere in AA. They were all drinking every day, getting sick and getting over it and drinking again. I was pulling the same thing. Fortunately enough, through all this, although the program has given me an altogether different understanding of a God of my understanding, which I will not stand here and impose on anybody else, my beliefs.

But fortunately enough, I had never lost, apparently, that there was a God, that a supreme being, a higher power. I separated from it. Hell, the type of God that I thought existed was put into me by the St. Joseph nuns in grade school. And believe me, I was on my way to hell on roller skates long before I reached AA. I thought I’d done it all and there was no chance. Forget it. It’s over. But you taught me here in AA that it’s not that way.

You taught me that things can be different. But through continuing to go to meetings that 29-month period, something had to rub off. I had a meeting one night, a hillbilly meeting over there in Orchard Park. It seems to me there was a fellow from Rwanda there that had said this to me. I was going to say I had another slip. You know, these slips. I had them every month. And I said, I, and I, this, and I, he said, wait a minute, can I say something?

He said, hell, this ain’t an I program. This is a we program. Get on us, man. And that apparently had something to do with this turnaround at about that period in my life because it was only a couple days later that, and Art was around all the time, it was only a couple days later that, and things weren’t too good at home, as you would know, because I, Mary’s, living with all this uncertainty, hell, she’d go to an Al-Anon meeting, I’d go to a Wal-Mart, I mean, and she never knew what to expect or when to expect it or how to expect it.

God, there was so many times that the East Aurora police would pick me up and take me home. They didn’t give me a ticket. They apparently knew, the guy’s got a booze problem. Park the car. I said, I can drive. Just let it sit. Just don’t even move it. Get in here. They’d take me home and they’d go and get the car. Or they’d give me the keys and say, get it in the morning. And I never, fortunately enough, to today, I look at it now.

I never had a ticket. I should have had. My God, I should have been locked up. I know that one time I came back from South Buffalo, apparently wanting to stop, wanting to get caught, wanting to get this monkey off my back or whatever it was. Now, I could have taken a left there to Circle and East Aurora and went right up Oakwood Avenue, took another left, two doors, and I’m in my yard. I went up Main Street and I take a right on Payne Street.

That’s on the corner where the police station is. Run up over their lawn, back down onto the street, up over the curb, cross their lawn and back down on the street. They come out chasing me. They took me home. Mary, Mary said, you’re damn fools, you. Yeah, I mean, why don’t you lock them up? And I didn’t know why, geez, I was lucky. A story that happened a few years after AA. I wonder, Mary answered the phone and said the East Aurora police wanted me.

So I get on the phone and he says, Art, we’ve got a guy up here that used to be like you were. Could you come up and get him? So I got up and I went in the back door of the police station to where their desks in that are in the back. And he said, didn’t you.

I learned something around over there at that Hillbilly group meeting. Our oldest son, Jim, was graduating Orchard Park, or East Aurora High School, and he wanted to go away to school to St. Joe’s in Albuquerque. He claimed he wanted to go away to, you know, because it was St. Joe’s and it was quite a school. He wanted to get away because of the conditions at home, and I don’t blame him. So Art came in that day, and we were telling him that, this is 10 o’clock in the morning, Art came in. He never knew when he was going to drop in. Just a tremendous individual. He dropped in, he said, we were talking about Jim going away to Albuquerque to school. He says, well, why don’t you and Mary ride him out there?

He said, wait a minute. I’ll get you a trip ticket. I belong to AAA. I’ll go get you some map. So out of the house, out of the drive, half hour later, Art’s back there, and he says, come on in here. He spreads that map out on the living room floor. He says, now, here’s what you’re going to, and I was a sarcastic, ignorant individual, but he felt he hasn’t had a drink for a while, and if I can get him in the car with Mary, they’ve got to talk. I mean, they’ve got to learn to get along. That’s a long trip, and he won’t drink with her there.

So he spreads that map out on the floor, and he said, now, you’ll head west. You’ll head, look, over here to Hamburg, and then you’ll go Erie, Cleveland, on up, Indianapolis, and he’s headed west on this trip ticket. And Mary said, oh, you go through Tulsa? He said, yeah, you’ll go right through Tulsa. She says, well, that’s where Oral Roberts University is. That’s where the prayer tower is. I said, never mind Oral Roberts. You’re Catholic.

So that gives you a sampling of how dry I was, not how sober. So we left home. We took the youngest son and the oldest son, and somebody babysitted the other ones, and we’re setting out for Albuquerque. And things seemed to go along all right, and I distinctly remember almost as if it were yesterday or today. It was at noon, and we need gas. We get off, and we’re in Tulsa. Phillip 66 Station. I says to the fellow, it’s noon. Where’s a decent restaurant around here to get a good sandwich? And I don’t want any of these Burger Kings, you know, something home-cooked.

He says, oh, right down there, see that little plaza? It’s called whatever it was. So we went in this little plaza. So we ate. Geez, it was a nice home-cooked place. A diner effect. Geez, the waitress was all bubbly and smiley. The wife is, too. The only one that wasn’t was Art. My wife, I always call her Big Mouth for that. She said to the waitress, where’s Oral Roberts? She said, Oral Roberts? Huh, right there. Look out the window. See that? She said, oh, you’ve got to go over there. And I figured, oh, geez, I’ve got to go over there. Well, I did have to go over there to keep any peace in the family.

There would have been no peace the rest of that trip. So we went to Oral Roberts, and it was too damn hot to stay outside, so I went inside with her. Went up in the prayer tower, up to the fifth floor. Geez, they meet us. They open the elevator. Here’s two or three people, beautiful black gal there that’s going to escort us on a tour. First fellow introduces himself. Hi. I’m trying to think of this guy’s name on TV. It wasn’t he, but the same name.

Introduces himself, and the gal says, would you like to take a tour of Oral Roberts? And I said, no, no. And I thought a tour was walking around some army base. I knew what a tour was in the Air Force. But their tour, she says, well, fine, follow me.

I said, geez, she misunderstood me. I said, no. So we’re following her. We go into this little auditorium. Sets about 200 people, small auditorium. She says, the tour will be on slides, and it will be dark in here momentarily, and the tour will be on the screen. Fine. It got so dark, you know, and she turned out those lights. I’ll tell you, I couldn’t, you couldn’t see nothing. And man, this slide, sides of this wall. Genesis, the supreme being, God as I understand him, holding the entire universe. This is the first slide in the beginning.

And it said, ask anything that you want in my name, and it shall be granted to you. We talk about spiritual experiences and spiritual awakenings, and hey, but I’ve never had to pick up another drink since that auditorium. I’ve often thought, I spoke as a wise guy. I’ve often said that I could fall in a vat of wine, and God wouldn’t let me open my mouth. But I’m not foolish enough to quit going to AA. That’s why I was at a meeting last night, and that’s why I’m at a meeting here tonight, because I need the people of AA.

And I know by living example, and I can prove to you by living example, in this room, there are people that didn’t take a drink today, so it works. I want to thank everybody. Thanks, Art, very much. Could you please come up here? We’ve got a certificate of appreciation for speaking at tonight’s meeting. Could you give Art another hand, please?