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Source: Dick P – Erie Spring Conference – Date Unknown.mp3 File: dick-p-erie-spring-conference-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:53:53
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Through the Grace of God and Alcoholics Anonymous, I haven't had a drink in 32 years and 3 months, and these are the happiest days of my life. I'm completely out of trouble, physically, mentally, morally, spiritually, and even financially out of trouble, and I know how to stay out of trouble if I want to, because they don't sell whiskey at these meetings. I wouldn't lead an AA meeting if I weren't permitted to say I come out of a saloon, and many other things I might have to say you might disagree with. Just put them on a shelf, but if you're an alcoholic, keep coming back to these meetings, because this is the only place you're going to hear the answer to your problem.
The first time I heard an AA lead say, AA begins at home, I went home. I sat with my wife, Betty, and she said, aren't you going to that meeting? And I said, no, I'm going to stay home and help you with the kids, and she was shocked. She said, what are you going to teach the kids? Barroom jokes? What do you know that you want those kids to know? And she was right. AA does not begin at home. AA begins at these meetings, and if you go to enough of these meetings, then perhaps you'll have something of value to take home, and I can say something from the bottom of my heart. I did not want to be a drunk. I did not want to be a drunk. I was born and raised on the west side of Cleveland in a beautiful neighborhood overlooking a beautiful park. I went to St. Boniface grade school and St. Boniface high school, and I worked a year after school in order to buy a camera, because I was taking commercial photography, and I wanted to get better grades. And I say that only because I believe at that time I had values, and I believe at that time I knew that if I wanted anything out of this world, I was going to have to work for it, and if I wanted respect of men, I was going to have to earn their respect, and I believe I had those values in 1943 when we got out of high school, and the entire class went down in Euclid Avenue in Cleveland and joined the Navy, and I was a year younger than the class, and the Navy turned me down, and I went across the street on Euclid Avenue and joined the Merchant Marine, and in three days I was out on the Atlantic Ocean, and they put me down in the engine department of the ship, and for that I'll be ever forever grateful. I met the type of men I wanted to be like. I met the type of men that to this day I think are the hardest working, most industrious, responsible, intelligent men I've ever met, and those were the marine engineers, and I had all of the qualifications to become a marine engineer, and I embarked on that career with vigor, and I progressed rapidly, and when I saw in a foreign country with a part of the crew, and we nonchalantly went into a saloon, and I nonchalantly had my first drink, and I liked it. I liked that I stayed there all night, and when the crew went back to the ship, I thought they were crazy. I slept in a booth, and the next day I started drinking with another part of the crew, and when I ran out of money, I pawned that camera for 10 bucks. Never seen it again. I slept in a booth that night, and the next day I ran out of money again, and I pawned a watch my dad had given me when I got out of high school, and a watch that I knew at the time was absolutely priceless to me. 10 bucks. Never seen it again. Ship finally sailed, and they hauled me on board as they did many times after. They put me down in a, they took me up on the bridge and fined me six days wages. They put me down in a folksalaw by myself where I was sitting there trying to think what happened here, and I was scared. I was a kid, and I was shaking out outwardly violently, and I couldn't hold a cup of coffee, and it never happened to me before in my life, and I couldn't put things together, what had taken place here, and it scared me, and I believe I took an inventory sitting there all by myself with my legs dangling off that bunk, and the only thing that I could see that I got out of that alcohol was that I didn't, because I don't believe I was an alcoholic at the time. I think you got to earn that, but I believe that my values had changed like that with the first drink. The only thing I got out of that alcohol was I didn't have to work or study any
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longer in order to become a marine engineer. Two or three doubleheaders, and I was an engineer. Two or three more doubleheaders, I was chief engineer, and two or three more doubleheaders, I was anything I wanted to be. I got up in a mess out of that ship the next day. I was absolutely shaking violently, and I was in physically good shape. I just couldn't stop these shakes, and a guy came down, and he said, listen buddy, there's a war on, and this ship is at sea, and you get down in that engine room where you belong, and I told him I can't. I'm not physically well enough, and I had my first decision to make because he poured me a drink of whiskey this big in a clear glass, and I got sick to my stomach even looking at it, and he said, hold your nose and swallow that. You'll be all right, and I held my nose, and I swallowed that whiskey, and 15 minutes later I was an engineer again, and I can say in honesty that from October of 1943, I didn't buy another suit of clothes until I was in Alcoholics Anonymous for three months, and my sponsor bought me a suit, and I can say in honesty that I didn't buy another pair of shoes until I was in Alcoholics Anonymous for nine months, and one night the Newberg group in Cleveland sitting around a table chipped in to buy me some real shoes because they were sick and tired of taking me to all these meetings in the stupid tennis shoes and putter pants and uniform I wore, and they didn't give me the money. They took me to a shoe store, and I continued to drink, and in 1948 I was physically thrown out of the Merchant Marine, and that's not easy to do. In the Merchant Marine, you can commit violent crimes and never stand trial. It's up to the captain of that ship. It takes a lot of welching and chiseling and mooching and stealing and missing ships and missing watches that builds a reputation around you, and the crew throws you out, and we were in the port of New York, and I was on the street. I had no money. I had no papers. I had no clothing.
I had nothing, and I had a second decision to make because I knew I could have called my dad in Cleveland and said, Dad, I'm in New York City, and I'm sick, broke, drunk, and hungry, and he'd have been on the first plane up there to get me out of trouble, but I didn't have the guts. I had been writing home all of these years, telling them how great I was doing, kind of chronologically promoting myself in those letters, and naturally they believed me, and I didn't have the guts to go home and tell them I was a failure, and so I went on the street, and that time I spent two and a half years on the street. That was my first time, and it annoys me in Alcoholics Anonymous when I hear guys speak lightly about the street. I hear guys say, you know, it's not so bad out there.
In fact, there's something about romantic about Skid Row. I found nothing romantic at all about pawning your jacket at three in the morning when it's six below zero and then walking the streets, and another thing is the crushed careers that are down on Skid Row. The doctors, and lawyers, and engineers, and writers, and designers that are down on Skid Row, and I believe that they're down there only because the big book tells me they're down there, but in two and a half years, I didn't meet a one. I met a bunch of, I wish I'd have been a doctor. If I'd have studied, I'd have been an engineer. I could have been a writer. I would have been a lawyer. I met a bunch of cheap, chiseling drunks trying to find success out of the neck of a bottle just like me.
Now, if I were to tell you how often I was arrested, how often I was put in jails or hospitals, you wouldn't believe me. Let me say that in New York, they used to clean the streets every weekend, and they'd pick another, a different gang, and they'd pull them in, and they'd send them over to a clinic, and if they needed the police cars washed, they'd send them down the tombs, and if they needed the blood, they'd send them over to Bellevue, and one night, they picked us all up in a roundup, and they took us over to the Hudson J Clinic, and a doctor got a look at me, and he said, you know, this guy's sick. We better take him in the back room, give him a real physical, so they gave me a real physical, and they said, you know, he's real sick. He might not live, and so they sent me out to the Staten Island Marine Hospital, and out there, they had no place for drunks. They put me in a basement room, they call it a chain locker. They used to look in on you about once every other day, and make sure you were going to live, and they kept me in that room for six weeks, and then when they decided I was going to live, they put me up in the contagious
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ward, and they kept me up there for six weeks, and then we decided I was not contagious, and I was going to live. Why, they gave me bathrobe, and slippers, and pajamas, and put me down with the decently sick people, and for the first time in three months, I was allowed to walk the halls, and I could hear the nurses telling the patients, and the doctors telling the nurses, and they'd be pointing at me in the hall, and they'd be saying that the biggest drunk they ever brought in this hospital, and my values had changed to a point where I used to walk straighter. I used to think they're talking about me, and then I got a letter from my girl Betty, who's over in that Al-Anon meeting, thank God. She sent me a letter that she was going to come up and visit me on her 21st birthday. I knew Betty from the time she was 15 in high school, and she knew me as an older boy who didn't drink, swear, or smoke. She had never been out of Cleveland in her life. My dad was the superintendent down the mill. My brother was a research director of an international corporation, and there was me, and so Betty, I went around that hospital, and I found out she was coming, and I changed my tune, and I begged those doctors, and nurses, and Red Cross ministers, and even the Catholic chaplain, give me a break. Tell her I got a tropical disease. Tell her anything. Don't tell her how I happened to be here, and those very intelligent people didn't tell her, and tonight I think it's criminal that they didn't tell her, and so does she.
But nobody has ever helped me in my life that's answered the door, or given me a dollar, or got me a job, or got me out of a jam. Nobody's ever helped me in my life except the people that stood me up against the wall, and exposed me, and forced me to look at what was happening, and these are the only people I'm going to call friend. Betty married me in that hospital, and she had no idea. She had to buy me clothes. They burnt the clothes I went in in, and then I took her a, you can live in New York a lifetime on the street, and never know more than six streets. That's all the cops allow you, and from the Bowery down to down the west and south street, that's it, and so I didn't know where to take her. I took her to live over one of the toughest bars in the world, a place called the Dutchman's, and in two weeks I drank up everything she owned, and she went home shocked, and I shipped out. I stayed away six or seven months, and when the ship got back to New York, I hitchhiked to Edgewater Park in Cleveland and went looking for Betty, and I couldn't work at that time, or I felt I couldn't work at that time. I couldn't physically write my name. I couldn't physically sit with anybody and say I want a job. I would bounce, and I'd have to have five or six double-headers, and then I couldn't do it for sure, or I didn't want to, and so Betty and I moved out with my folks, and they lived in a beautiful home out in the suburbs, but I didn't belong with decent people any longer. It wasn't long, and my dad said, Dick, you simply can't come in this house with those stupid tennis shoes and the snow and the ice and the slush on the carpet. Look what's happening to the carpet, and then it wasn't long, and he's saying, Dick, put papers down when you sit. You know, you don't bathe. Look what's happening to the furniture, and then it wasn't long, and he said, Dick, we love Betty, and she can stay, but you got to go, and I didn't know where to go, and so Betty and I moved out to a place where we wouldn't have to pay rent, a place on the east side of Cleveland, Addison and Superior, and anyone familiar with Cleveland knows that's the worst of the ghetto, and we moved behind a bank building down in a basement where there were two boiler rooms and a laundry room. There were no rooms for people to live, and we lived in that basement for three years. We had three kids in that basement, and when I got real serious trouble around those corners, I ran away. I didn't tell her I was leaving. I simply got up on Euclid Avenue, hitchhiked to New York, jumped on a ship, and ran away, and I stayed away for six or seven months, and when the ship got back to New York, I hitchhiked to Edgewater Park and went looking for Betty, and I turned the corner that morning. It was a spring morning. They had broken the doors down, they tell me, two weeks after I ran. They took her home with their folks, and I knew that probably… with their folks, and I knew that probably happened, and so I went over to where I knew
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they lived, and they lived in a beautiful street with the trees growing over the street, and it was a spring day, and I turned the corner, and she was sitting on the front steps of the house, the three kids were up on the porch, one was still in a buggy, and my values had changed to the point where I was certain she was going to be delighted to see me. So much so, I went clean around the city block to come at her from a different direction, like a kamikaze plane coming out of the sun, and when I got right up to her, and she hadn't seen me, I was actually afraid she was going to hurt herself when she threw her arms around me, and she looked up, and she seen me, and she said, please, Dick, go away, give us a break, we got the lights, gas, and telephone on here, three meals a day like other people eat, nobody's beating the doors down to get their money, give us a break, leave us alone.
But at that time, I believe I was an alcoholic, and I believe I knew I was an alcoholic, but I also believe that I never heard of Alcoholics Anonymous in my life, and I begged her to move in with me, and she moved in with me into a place worse than Addison and Superior, a place that they nicknamed in Cleveland the Lying Hill, and my folks and her folks rebelled at the idea of those three grandkids being down there, and so they moved them up into a nice neighborhood on 86th and Denison, and I moved into the Denison Gardens.
They moved up there on a Sunday, and of course the family had nothing to do with me, so I walked up to those corners, and right there by where they were moving, I could see them moving in, I was on Denison mooching the people coming home from Mass, and I hit a livey, I asked the guy if he was holding, and he handed me ten bucks, and I said, boy, that's pretty good, you know I can get a drink on a Sunday around here, and he took me into a bar right next to where they moved, and he opened a bottle, and he hired me as a bartender.
That was a family joke. In the next three years, I didn't, I couldn't hit the glass, I was a bar rag, I was a joke. I couldn't think anymore, and everybody knew that. I used to get jobs on manpower hanging circulars on doorways, and sometimes I'd get three days to get 24 bucks or something, and I'd get up at Denison Gardens, and they'd bet me on yesterday's ball game, or they'd bet me on a bowling game played the last week, and they'd show me an old newspaper, and they'd take my money, and they'd laugh, but they'd buy, and I think a criteria of that is seven years ago, Betty led a major Al-Anon anniversary down in Akron, Ohio, and there were no men, it was all women, I was sitting, the only man in the place, I was sitting up front, and Betty spoke, and when she sat down, there were to be no comments, but a lady jumped right out of the middle of everybody and said, what's the biggest thing you got out of your husband's sobriety?
And I was going to answer her. And all the things that had been given to us over those 25 years, and Betty got back up and she said, they don't laugh at my husband anymore, and I couldn't believe she said it. All the things we had, and that was the biggest thing she felt we had, they didn't laugh at her husband anymore, they used to have meetings around my front room, I mean someone had to put me away, I was dangerous, I never hit the kids in my life, I never hit Betty, I just never paid no attention to them, and so they used to have meetings around my front room, and my mother-in-law, probably my best friend, she used to call me home from the garden, she'd say, Dick, if you come home, I'll give you a fifth, and you can drink the fifth, we want to talk to you, and when the fifth's gone, you can go back, the best deal of my life, she'd call me every week, she'd say, Dick, come home, I'd go home, the whole family would sit around the front room, they'd all holler at me, I'd drink the bottle, and when the bottle went empty, I'd go back, but in her frustration, in her fear for the family, in her charity, she cooked up a story about me running around with some woman down the street, and she called me home from the dentist and garden that morning, and she gave me my fifth, and the whole family sat there, and she called Betty out of the kitchen, and
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I didn't say anything, I couldn't talk anymore, I used to mumble, and so she knew anything I said, they could change, and so I was drinking the bottle, and she called Betty out of the kitchen, and she said, Betty, we want you to hear this from Dick, because Dick is running around with Molly down the street, aren't you, Dick? And before I could say anything, Betty bust out laughing, and she said, if he is, she's buying, but then she said, don't you understand, he doesn't know if he's a boy or a girl, and with that I ran out of the house, and three blocks from where we lived is a place, they nickname a creek, it's 13 miles long, and six and a half miles deep, there's railroad yards, and there's trestles, and there's railroad tracks, and there's old brick yards, and there's bottle gangs, and people that hang down in there, live down in there, and I went down in there, and I wouldn't come out, and I stayed down in the park there for months, and when I'd come out, it would be two o'clock in the morning, and I'd be freezing, and I'd go in the Denison Gardens, and I'd sit there and call my brother, and call my dad, and call my mother, and call my mother, and I'd scream in that phone, I am too running around, what do you think, I'm nobody, I'm somebody, I used to sit in the bar and look in the mirror and scream at that mirror, in front of all the drugs, I'm not just nobody, I'm somebody, and if I could pray tonight the way I prayed then, and if I would do tonight one-tenth of what I promised God I would do, if he would help me get sober, I'd be the best AA Cleveland ever had, but I didn't get no help, and I stayed down in that park through October and November, I come out on Thanksgiving Day, I went over to our house, of course there was no heat, no lights, no nothing, the family was gone, so I went over to my brother's house, and they were all sitting around the table eating the turkey, and I banged on my brother's door, and he came to the door and he gave me three bucks and said, beat it Dick, you'll spoil this, and I went out on his front lawn and I screamed in the world, I don't care, you know, I really don't care, but I cared, I stayed in the park through November and December, I come out on Christmas Day, dragging a Christmas tree, and Benny was in the house with the kids, there was no heat, there was no tree, and if anything I lost, it was that my kids were Santa Claus age, and they didn't know who Santa Claus was, I come up that street dragging a tree, and Benny come to the front door and said, if you stole the tree, take it back, and there was a ewe in the snow where I turned around and dragged it back down the hill, threw it away, and went down in my hole, I stayed down in there January, February, and early in February one night it dropped to six below zero, and all of us down there we had nothing to drink, and I was freezing to death, and I come out of the park, I went up to the Denison Gardens that morning early, and I went in the gardens and I said, Clem, I gotta have a bottle, and he gave me a bottle of whiskey and he threw me out in the street, and he closed the biggest door ever closed on me in my life, and he knew I wasn't allowed in any other bar on Denison or Lorain or anywhere in that area, and he told me, you know, you're losing me my customers, you have no control over anything, and I don't want you in my bar anymore, and I went home that morning with the bottle that he gave me, and because it was so bitter cold out, Benny left me in, and I sat down in the couch and was drinking the bottle when the public health officials came over, and this was the first time they caught me in the house drunk with a bottle, and so they told Benny, unless your husband gets out of the household so that we can feed those kids, we're going to take those three kids away from you, and Benny said, Dick, I'm not going to lose my kids, you gotta go, and I said, call the priest, I'll take a pledge, that was a joke at the time, but she went to a neighbor's house, and she called a priest, a Father O'Brien, who we had never heard of in our life, she got it out of the phone book, at St. Ignatius Parish, where we had never gone to church in our life, and she told that complete stranger that unless my husband gets out of the household, they're taking my kids, and he said, if you keep them there for just a few minutes, I'd like to send somebody over, and I was sitting there, I still had a little left in the bottle, when a guy walked into my front room, he looked
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like a drunk, he said he was sober four years, and then he started talking about alcohol, and alcohol this and alcohol, I thought he wanted my bottle, and I jumped up and threatened to hit him in the head with a bottle, and that's real important to me, because this I believe more than anything else, in Alcoholics Anonymous, more than anything I've read, more than anything I've heard anyone say, is that once AA has helped a guy up out of that basement or out of that gutter, maybe back to some decent clothes, maybe back to a job, a family, or maybe even to his God, that then he's going to carry this message, or he's going to get drunk, and it's as simple as that. That whether he's sober five years, 15 years, or 35 years, he's either going to continue to carry this message, or he's going to get drunk, and it's as simple as that, and so when I get a call on that phone, I know how important that call might be, I know that it's important how I answer that call, and yet I don't know what I'm going to do if I go in some guy's front room, and he threatens to belt me in the head with a bottle, not supposed to do that you know, read the book, he's supposed to say, I want sobriety more than anything else in this world. Now if you've had a hundred people grab you on the street, and say you sold my lawn mower, and if I ever catch you sober, I didn't have much chance, but this guy was talking about me getting sober, and he mentioned a hospital, and I said I'm not going in no hospital, and so the next thing he said was this is a different place. Here you go through two wooden doors, and once you're back of those doors, you're in free. He said there's no mother-in-laws, no cops, no kids, no wives, no bill collectors, nobody allowed back of those two doors but drunks, and they give you four ounces of whiskey every four hours. He didn't say nothing about cutting it off.
I don't remember at all going into Rosary Hall. I don't remember the second day, I know on the third day they had the sides up on my bed yet, and they were giving me my whiskey, but they were bringing in new people, and they were taking them, the guys that came in with me down another room, and they were cutting them off, but they didn't cut me, and then the next day, and then they brought more new people in, and they brought more people down the end, but they kept the sides up on my bed, and they kept me on the whiskey, and it was quite some time when one night, late at night, they had the sides up on my bed, I hadn't been out of that bed, when a nurse walked in, she had my drink like she's supposed to, and she reached over the railing, and she said, Dick, this is your last drink, and I would have attacked her, but this was a big nurse. I mean, this was perhaps the biggest woman I've ever seen. She had a cigar in her mouth, and I made my first good decision.
The next day, the next day they had the sides down on my bed, and I was sitting there with my legs dangling, and Sister Ignatia sent a patient in for me, and I told that patient, you go tell that nun whoever she is, because I'd never met her, that I don't want to talk to her, and then the next thing, that nun came in the room, and I have to tell you that you could go to Newburgh on a Sunday night, I'll be there, and at that group, there's old timers that'll tell you that it was a long time in AA before I put sentences together, and I couldn't remember anything. They used to say, who led tonight after the meeting, and I couldn't tell them, and I was sober a year or more, and yet I know word for word what that nun said to me that day, and it was nothing.
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said to me in my life. She said, listen you, this AA is a big business, and the men out in that hall are busy people. Now if you want to get sober, you go out there and you listen to what they have to say. And if you don't want to get sober, you get your clothes and get out of here. And then she said, don't waste their time. And she left. And those were the last civil words that nun said to me for a year to the day. She seen me three other times. And every time she seen me, she said something nasty. You know, she'd wait until 50 AAs were on. And then she'd walk up and say, I seen Betty at the Al-Anon meeting Friday, and she's wearing her high school clothes. I mean, what have you bought her since you got married? She used to, you know, I'd be sitting at a meeting and the lead would say that that wonderful starched white nun cured him in six days. I could throw a chair at the guy. I mean, maybe that same day in front of 50 AAs, she'd stop smiling and she'd say, there he is. What are you going to be when you grow up? And when I had a year of sobriety at Jordan Hall in Charity Hospital with 300 AAs there, she ran up in front of me. She threw her arms around me and she kissed me. And she turned around and said out loud, he'll never make two. I don't know. I don't know how that nun knew. If she'd have smiled at me once, I'd have taken that as a license. You know, Al-Anon started while I was in Rosary Hall. And so my wife was involved with the old-timers' wives and they had to take us to a meeting that Lois W. and Bill W. were coming to quite often in Cleveland at the time. And so they had to take two of us and buy us some clothes because we had these stupid street clothes. And they took this one guy down to Higby's in Cleveland and they bought him a $150 suit. And then they took me out to the women's exchange and they bought me an $8 suit. And I hated them for five years. But somehow they knew I'm a walk and go man in this suit. I can stay drunk until October in this suit. And I don't wear a watch. In fact, I have to tell you, I'm afraid. I've been through every type of failure. I'm not afraid of failure. I'm afraid of becoming so successful in this world that I'll forget where I came from and I'll forget about the meetings and I'll be drunk.
That's what I'm afraid of. You know, I got out of that hospital on a Saturday and it was dusk out and they left me on my front porch. And had they left me on my front porch, I believe, my wife believes, and the family believes, I'd have been drunk on Sunday morning. I couldn't have physically or mentally gone to a meeting by myself. It scares me when I hear a guy lead and he says, don't carry the alcoholic. Now, I'll agree that not all alcoholics need to be carried. And I'll agree that carrying some alcoholics might even hurt them. And I'll agree that when he takes a drink at a Sunday school picnic, he quit AA. But until he takes that drink, how can I know, how can I be the judge of how badly that man might want to stay sober?
You look around at church and you'll see a picture in almost every church of the good shepherd, Christ bringing the sheep back to the flock. Take another look at that picture, because Christ is not pointing the direction for that sheep. He's not marking a map in the sand. He's got that sheep wrapped around his neck and he's carrying them back. And that Saturday they came over and they picked me up as soon as I got in the house and they took me to the ADO5 group in Cleveland. And Sunday to the Newberg group, Monday to Lorraine Monday group, Tuesday to the Smith-W. group, Wednesday to the Baxter group, Thursday to the Angle group, Friday to the Charity group, Saturday back to ADO5. Sunday to Newberg, Monday to Lorraine, Monday to Smith-W., Wednesday to the Baxter, Thursday to the Angle group. And when I started screaming at them, they took me to the Wednesday morning group, the Thursday morning group. I used to walk out of my house at three
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in the afternoon and check the street. And the secretary of the Memphis group in Cleveland used to sit there on a motorcycle. And I can hear that. And he'd say, get on. And I wouldn't have got on that bike for a dollar. He'd give me a quarter. I'd take the bus down. You know, thank God, gradually I came to believe I was safe with these guys. That as long as I was with them, I was safe somehow. That I wouldn't drink. And they were watching over me. Then they said, you know, we're going to take you to church Sunday. Pick you up at eight o'clock. I ain't going to no church.
And he said, oh yeah, we'll pick you up at eight o'clock. I said, no, I ain't going to no church. Look at the clothes. I can't go like this. And there's an old car come up in front of my house, eight o'clock Sunday morning. There's 125 years of sobriety in there. And they're blowing a horn. And I came to the front screen door and I said, I ain't going. I told you I ain't going. And they all got up in my front yard in a beautiful neighborhood.
And they started yelling at the top of their lungs. Come on out of that house. You're drunk. And I woke Betty up. I said, they're crazy, but I got in that car. That's no way to treat a guy's anonymity. In fact, it might be illegal today. It might be illegal today. And if it is, the AA's made it so. If it is, I gradually really believed that if I could be with these guys around the clock, that I would stay sober. But I couldn't be with them around the clock.
And Sister Ignatia gave me a letter down to Republic Steel. And I went down there and I threw a convulsion on the physical. And they decided since I was the first AA that they would waive the physical and see what happened. And so they put me on the job. But it wasn't AA's there. It was a bunch of drunks worked there. They had bottles up on the boiler room and the turbine deck and down in the pump room.
And wherever I went, they were saying, Dick, come on, have a drink. They didn't know anything about AA. And I was scared. I was thinking I'm going to have a bad day and something's going to happen. That fifth is right there. But I didn't have to worry about that either, because a Thursday morning they picked me up and they took me to the Thursday morning group. And that was the most important day of my life. Not the day I went Rosary Hall, but that day, because the guy that led that meeting was a six foot four, two hundred and sixty pound steel worker. And he convinced me that whatever bit me, bit him. I was sitting on the end of my chair listening to my story. And the only place you hear that is at an AA meeting.
And I was listening. And he said he was sober eight years and he knew eight thousand alcoholics and he never knew a one that knelt down in the morning and asked God for help to stay sober for a day and then went out and got drunk. And I turn a skid and said he's a liar. Now, the second this giant sat down and before any comments, Skid and Johnny took me right up in front. Everybody said, this guy called you a liar.
And I said, no. Oh, mistaken. And he got me over in a corner by a piano and he asked me why I called him a liar. And I said, oh, but you said all the guy's got to do is pray and he won't drink. And I prayed while I was drinking. I prayed till I was blue in the kisser. I prayed. I prayed with a drink in my hand. I prayed and I didn't get no help. And he said, there's a difference in Alcoholics Anonymous.
There's a main line from the gutter to God. When a drunk kneels down in the gutter, God hears him no matter what. And I said, I can't believe that. And so he asked me the most important question that can be asked to the new man. He said, do you believe that I'm an alcoholic? And the only reason I qualify in a lead is so that I can ask you tonight. Do you believe that I'm an alcoholic? And I said, I believe whatever bit you bit me. And so he asked the second most important question.
If I'm an alcoholic, how can I stay sober eight years? And I can ask you that tonight.
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If I'm an alcoholic, how can I stay sober all these years? And I said, I don't know. And he said, it's magic. Tomorrow morning when you get up, you go out in the front room behind a big chair where no one will catch you doing something decent. And you kneel down and you say, whoever helps Pat stay sober, help me. And I guarantee you won't drink. And the next morning I got up and I went out in that front room behind the big chair and I knelt down and I said just those words that I didn't drink. And the next morning and the next week and the next month and the next year and I become fanatic about it. I used to have to go to get to work at Republic. I had to take a bus on Denison and then a Clark bus and then transfer to a bridge bus 146 steps down off the bridge. And I go to ring the card. I said, I forgot that prayer.
And I go back up those 146 steps in the bridge bus and the Clark bus behind the chair. That's not what's important. What's important is when I sat down with the guys out at Newburgh, nobody laughed. Nobody said, Dick, you could have looked at the roof of the bus and said the prayer God's there. Nobody said, you know, when you go to ring the card, you could have said the prayer God's there too. I went to parochial school. I know God's there.
It wouldn't have worked for me. It had to be behind that chair because that's the most important part of my program. If anybody in this room were to tell me that they knelt down in the morning and ask God for help to stay sober for a day and they got drunk that day, I wouldn't believe them. And if Bill W. had told me that he knew of a drunk that knelt down and asked God for help to stay sober for a day and they got drunk that day, I would not have believed him.
I don't have to put my shoes under the bed to remind me. I would no sooner walk out of my home without asking for God's help than I'd walk out of that house without my trousers on. You know, and now I was safe, real safe. These meetings, grace of God, but I was sober over two years and I was broke. I got garnished 23 times at Republic Steel. The only reason they kept me because I had 46 judgments against me. The only reason they would keep me, kept me is because of Sister Nathan's letter and they wanted to see whether this program would work. And so every week I would get $14 or $10 for 10 days work and we couldn't live. Betty was buying the kids used Boy Scout uniforms and the kids were growing up and I couldn't feed the family. And I was sober a couple of years and guys that come in with me are getting new jobs, they're getting promoted, they're buying new cars, they're making speeches and I got nothing. I'm sitting in the back of the room shaking all over and I started thinking, so what? You're sober. Oh, and that was bad.
But they were going on a retreat at Newburgh and I'm not selling retreats. I'm simply saying that they were going on retreat on a Friday. They asked me if I'd go. I said no. And they went on this retreat at a Jesuit retreat house in Cleveland. And Sunday night when they came back, I could tell from their comments something had happened out there. And I thought maybe I should go out there. And so I called up St. Stanislaus Retreat House in Cleveland and I said, could I come out there? And I don't know what a retreat is. And the Jesuit said, come on out Friday, stay with us for the weekend. You'll love it. And Friday I went out St. Stanislaus Retreat House, but it wasn't an AA retreat. It was a John Carroll alumni retreat. And I didn't fit. I sat with those guys and I got through supper somehow. And then they put a bottle of beer in front of everybody and they put one in front of me. And I thought, my gosh, someone's going to open that and then someone's going to pour it. What am I going to do? I didn't have to worry about nothing because a Jesuit come out of nowhere and he reached in front of everybody, grabbed my beer and he said, you don't get one. And I ran out of the room. Friday, Saturday, I wouldn't come out of the room. And finally I had to come out sometime and I didn't know how to get out of the retreat house. So I snuck down the back stairs where I didn't see anybody. And I thought I thought what was the exit? It turned out to be the chapel. And I turned this corner and all of them were kneeling there and they looked around, see me there and I, so I knelt down. And just as the Jesuits started talking about Christian charity, and he said it was very difficult for those men of the John It was difficult for those men of the John Carroll Alumni Retreat League to really do God's will as God laid it out because when they were asked for help they had to sign
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a check or hand over some cash because there were organizations for that. He said it was difficult for he as a Jesuit priest to really do God's will as God laid it out because when he was asked for help you know God said feed the hungry, clothe the lakid, harbor the harborless, instruct the ignorant, visit the sick, comfort the afflicted. He said it was difficult for he as a Jesuit priest because usually he had to sign a check or hand over some cash because there were organizations for that.
He said there was only one group of people that he knew that could actually go down into the gutter or the basement and bring back a derelict drunk, maybe back to some decent clothes, maybe back to a family or a job, maybe even back to his God and he said these very valuable people are the members of Alcoholics Anonymous and I down there jumped up in that pew and said that's me, I'm one of those guys and I want to tell you something, I haven't lost that for 30 seconds since.
I'm somebody tonight, I'm a normal, decent human being tonight, I'm a father and a grandfather and a worker and I even vote tonight and the only thing that can take that away from me is a drink and I ain't going. You know it scares me in the last five years, I'm sorry to say and of course it's strictly my opinion, but they are starting to read the denouncement of the leads, Jack C. is leading here, Roz P., Dick P., how do you find Dick P. in the phone book, you see, I've got the most valuable jewel anyone's ever owned.
I know exactly what I have to do and where I have to be, that's not many people that have that tremendous value that we have and I'm not going to hide it, I'm not going to sit on it, I'm not going to stand back and say I don't want anybody to know I'm in AA, I'm tickled beyond your imagination that I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous. Now I will protect your anonymity to your toenails, but don't you protect mine.
That tradition says it's a level of the news and it's highly unlikely that I'm going to become an NBC anchorman. One other thing is that Bill W. and Dr. Bob said this, God gave us this program, God will never take it away, but we could give it away to the professionals, we could give it away to the professionals once we decide that we want them to do our 12-step work for us. I'm going to close with a quick story, I got thrown out of that house on Dennison when I was sober a couple of years, I hadn't made a payment ever, I didn't know who we owed.
The bank come over one day and said you got to move, we didn't have no money and I had no point, no way to move, I didn't drive, I didn't have nothing. And so Betty and I got a chance to move on West 132nd and Cleveland, most beautiful street I've ever seen in my life, it's a park on one side and beautiful architectural homes on the other. Second block was more beautiful than the first, the third block most beautiful of all.
And right in the middle of the, people cut their grass with shears up in that neighborhood. And on the third block in the middle was a house that stuck out like a sore thumb, it was a big nine room single, it hadn't been painted in many, many years, you could have lost a regiment in the grass, there was no driveway or sidewalk. We were offered the chance to move in there if I would fix it up. And so Betty and I moved into that house on 137th, and I loved it and so did the kids the first time we seen it.
But we were there a few days and I went out, there was no back door, there was a side door and a front door and a porch, and I went off the porch to look in the backyard. And when I got to the backyard, I seen the most magnificent sight I've ever seen in my life. There in that backyard was a pile of rubbish, not a little pile of rubbish, 45 foot wide,
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about the width of this room, 60 foot deep, about the depth of this room, and over my head of bottles and boxes and fences and batteries and tires that people had sailed over those fences over 20 years. And out of the middle of that monster grew a Christmas tree, and it had these leech flowers and it picked up the Campbell's soup cans by their jagged edges and the darn thing looked like it was decorated.
And I went in the house and I told Betty I had better go to a meeting. And as the weeks passed, Betty would call me in the kitchen and say, Dick, you know, we promised to fix the house up. And I said, well, Betty, I'm painting all the rooms, I'll get the front pretty soon. She said, how about the backyard? And I, I better go to a meeting. I used to sometimes pray all night and in the morning I'd look out and I think maybe it was gone.
I used to, I used to, I couldn't do nothing, I had no way of getting rid of it. I used to run up that driveway and run up that driveway, I didn't know what I was going to do when I got back there, I'd kick a can up on the pile and go to a meeting. And along the line I was listening at these meetings, and gradually it was getting through my head that you can't have 10 years of sobriety in a day, you couldn't handle it, you got to have it a day at a time.
You can't solve 20 years of drinking problems overnight, you couldn't handle that either, you got to solve them a day at a time. You can't eat an apple with one bite, you'll choke on it, you got to eat it a bite at a time. And Skid brought me a $65 Oldsmobile, and in the trunk of that old car was two empty solid wooden whiskey cases. And I got it in my head that I'm going to back that car up what used to be the driveway, and I'm going to fill those two cases, those wooden cases, with junk.
I'm never going to take three cases, I'm never going to take one, I'm never going to miss a day, and I'm going to drive them down the incinerator. And so the next day I backed that car up and filled those two boxes, and the next day, and the next week, and the next month, and that monster disappeared. And when all that rubbish was gone, the AAs came in and we roto-tilled that backyard, we planted croaker's grass seeds, we trimmed that Christmas tree about eight foot up off the ground, and it looks like Brookside Park back there tonight.
And I think that's possible with any problem that any drunk ever brings into this program, with a lot of meetings, the grace of God, and one day at a time. I want to thank you for listening. Thank you. We're very finally appreciate you coming down. The conference committee would like to present you with this. I'd like to close with the Lord's Prayer. Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.