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Source: DICOBE-00470 – Marguerite C – CENTRAL ARKANSAS INTERGROUP – 1984-09-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00470-marguerite-c-central-arkansas-intergroup-1984-09-15.mp3 Duration: 01:04:16
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My name's Marguerite. I'm an alcoholic. I'm Marguerite. By the grace of God and attempting to follow the AA program, and with a whole lot of help from people just like you, I haven't had a drink of alcohol since July the 15th, 1954, one day at a time. Sometimes I can't believe it, you know. When I came in, I didn't know if I could get through one day, and then I had a lot of slips in the beginning. I came in 1950, the Monday after Easter Sunday in 1950, but it took me four years to get my first, what has today been my last drink.
So some are sicker than others, and I'm sure glad they said that because it makes you feel better, you know, when you see other people that come in and just sail right on. I would tell people how happy I was, and I had found the answer to my problems, and it wouldn't be a month before I was drunk and in jail again. So I just kind of lost heart, you know, telling them how good that I was doing. I was never really right. I mean, AA was no exception, laughing that up in the beginning, because I never had been too successful at anything, and ever since I was a kid, I thought that God had just sort of not made me right. When we were in school, everybody would watch everybody else, you know, and all the girls in my classes in high school were getting around here and there, and I'd go home every day and take a search and fairly physical inventory of myself, and I wasn't getting around nowhere, and I thought that God had just made me different, you know, and I didn't go on any dates, and nobody asked me to parties. I was just too little, and I had always been so scared of boys, you know, all my life. Mother and her aunts would talk about people and women, and they would quit talking when I'd get up to them, but I'd always manage to hear them say, she's ruined, you know, and I thought, oh my God, what did she do to get that way, and then I found out. I had gotten over being scared of boys, and I was kind of wondering what it felt like to kiss one of them, you know, and we went to, I used to run off from home and go this old country dance out from Marshall, Texas. They called it Green Acres, and they had good old Western music out there, and kind of a barny place that people would ask me to dance, and I felt so honored that they would bother with me, you know, in my condition, and they'd play those songs, old Bob Wills type things, you know, San Antonio Rose, and somebody would go, ah-ha, you know, and I thought, where have I been all my life? All my shyness kind of left me for a while, and there was this fella out there that was older than I was, and he was real nice looking, and we'd go out to the car and take a drink, and then one time he asked me for a date on purpose, and he come that Sunday, you know, in his old rattletrap car, and we drove out in the country and started getting dusk, and he pulled over in this pasture next to the trees and parked, and I thought, well, now he shouldn't do that, and then he asked me a real embarrassing question, and I just cried and took on, and I was insulted all the 30 minutes, and then my practical side
[00:05:07]
showed up, and I thought, Marguerite, in your condition, if you let this one get away, there won't ever be another one. I never will forget looking up through them pine trees at that big go full moon, and I said, Marguerite, you're going to hell, and it's too late to stop then. I kind of had a whipping boy then. Everything ever happened to me after that, I said, it's his fault, not mine. He made me what I am today. I thought sure we'd get married pretty soon, but he had urgent business in a distant city, and so there I was, 17 and ruined, and with an ever-increasing drinking problem, so I fell into alcoholism, you might say. There wasn't any gradual getting into it. I fell into it. I remembered something when I came to AA, and they said, get honest with yourself and take this inventory, and I did. I wrote it all down, and I remembered something I'd been blocking out all that time, and it was that I had helped him take the back seat out of that old car.
We lose a lot of our excuses for drinking when we try to get honest with ourselves, you know, because I knew then I'd sort of held up my end of that deal. I had a real living problem then. I was scared to death it showed somewhere. I thought anything that traumatic would have to show, and I was scared to go to town, and I was scared to go around with school friends or anything. I was very sad, and I had been to the Baptist Church all my life up until that point, and I quit going then because I thought that the hypocrites shouldn't go to church, you know.
We left Marshall shortly after that, and I was glad. We had another fire. Usually, people took out a little fire insurance. You know, it's in the big depression back then, and every time we got in real bad financial circumstances, our kitchen caught fire. It caught fire several times during the course of the years, and this time, we moved to Greenville on the proceeds. It was a little town not too far away, and I thought this is—I know that was my first geographical cure idea.
I thought this is a new town, and I'm going to do right, and everything's going to be different because I had really been in trouble in Marshall because on the premise that you can't get hung twice for the same crime, I just sort of relaxed after the pine tree incident, and I just let nature take its course because I got tired fighting for my honor, you know, and running down the highway and getting my brains nearly knocked out when I got caught, and I just—I gave up. Just relax and enjoy yourself. It's easier on your clothes, you know.
After we moved to Greenville, it was 1936, and I had never done any work much of any kind, and I got my first job in Greenville, old Hager Pants. I don't know if y'all ever heard of him, but he started up this factory in Greenville.
[00:10:09]
Well, he come from Dallas and opened up a pant factory in Greenville, so that was my first job. I was a button girl, and all I had to do all day long was push the little pedal on the floor and stick the button in the little holder and do the buttons down the flies of the britches, and I thought how cruel it was. That's all I had to think about. That's all I had to think about all day long, you know, and—I wanted a baby real bad. All my friends there that I met in Greenville were having their young families, and I would tell their babies and play with them and sing to them, and I thought, if I don't get one, I'll just die.
And I decided I better do it right, you know, like Mama suggested, you get married first, and so I didn't know who it was going to be until this fella came from Dallas, and he was going to be manager of the pant factory, and he was big, you know, good build and all, and I thought he would make a fine father for a little baby boy, and I ran after poor old Paul, and I finally caught him as we have a way of doing.
And I got my prize, and I mean, Paul started acting kind of funny. He talked in a way I didn't understand, and I thought maybe he was just smarter than I was because he was from Dallas, and I was still country in Greenville. And, oh, he went to bed one night with a half-eaten apple and some kind of knife and the New Testament under his pillow, and he told me he'd found his number in Revelations, and I sort of gave him the benefit of the doubt. I didn't know if he had numbers or not.
But come to find out, poor old Paul was crazy, and I've had five husbands, and every one of them has been neurotic, psychotic, or just out-and-out nuts like poor old Paul. And one day at a time, together with my staying sober, I know that I don't ever have to get married again as long as I live. It kind of gets to be a habit, you know. People, you marry, and I get another one just as bad, so I ain't gonna ever start.
I get along fine as a single person, you know. Well, of course, it gets easier the older you get, but I get along just fine now. Greenville had gotten an awful smile from me, just like Marshall. You know, same thing sat in both places, and I knew from going to church that married ladies don't have dates. That's not nice. But you try telling that to an 18-year-old body, you know. And he was in the insane asylum, and what was I gonna do? So I just did what come naturally, and I moved to Dallas.
I had my little baby, and I loved him dearly. A lot of people think that alcoholic women don't care anything about their kids, because I've heard my relatives talk around Greenville, and they say Marguerite don't love Johnny. If she did, she'd behave herself, and take him with her, and marry a good man, and who could stand one, you know. That was always the recipe for paradise, you know. You just marry a good man and have those lovely little babies, and you'd just be set for life.
I left the baby with Mama because she wanted him real bad. Her kids were grown, and she had been wanting a little baby to have around for a long time, and she took Johnny away.
[00:15:03]
came to AA, I got over that. I had a lot of things I had to get over, and I had said many times she took the love of my child from me. She told him stories about me, about my drinking, and she did this and that, but when I came to AA and really thought seriously about it, she had done for me what I couldn't do for myself, and she raised a young boy, because had I had him, I don't know what would have happened. I was not a fit mother. I knew that, but it made me fight and mad if somebody else said it, you know. And I forgave my mother, and I had her with me a year before she died, and I thank God that I had a chance to sort of come to an understanding with her and love her as a daughter. AA, there's miracles here, as you well know. Situations you think could never be righted just sort of fall into place with love and trying and forgiving people that we helped. I thought I'd never get over Mama, you know, but I did.
I came to Houston from Greenville one time. Mothers used to ship their daughters off to a relative when they started, it bothered them too much, so I got shipped off to Houston to my Aunt Alice, and I didn't stay with her long. I started getting a job and looking around, and somebody one night took me down to see the old Roseland Ballroom Taxi Dance there in Houston, down Skid Row, Franklin and Travis. And upstairs, I thought, oh my goodness, what a terrible thing it is, these poor girls dancing for ten cents a dance, you know. But the music was good, and I said, I'll never do anything like that, never, never.
Well, if you think there's something you'll never, never do, ladies, just keep on drinking. I thought, if worse comes to worse, then I can't work eight to five because of my drinking. I can always come down to Houston and get a job at the old Roseland. It never left my mind. So I tried it a while, working in Dallas. I thought maybe if I went to work in the hat factory, changing ends might change my luck, you know.
I got just as drunk making hats as I did sewing buttons on the business. It's kind of like steps going down, you know. I went on a magazine tour thinking I'd get away from Dallas, and I went up to Houston and tried to sell magazines and never sold one, except the one I bought. I got it for a subscription, but I never sold any. I was drunk every time they let me out in the morning to sell my magazines. They'd come around and pick us up in the evening in their little jitney, and there I was on the curb, just drunk to the gills waiting on them. They fired me in Chicago, and I had never hitchhiked in my life, but I didn't know how to get home, and I didn't have any money, and I was afraid to go to the police because they were the enemy, you know. You don't go to the enemy and say, I'm in trouble.
I just got out and started hitchhiking, trying to, and I thought I'd never get out of Chicago, but I finally did, and I went on down to Texas that way. I learned a lot on that trip, things I couldn't change. Sometimes you drive in a guy's car a couple hundred miles, and you're drinking his booze, and come nightfall, there's going to be a little detour, so you just accept that as part of the fare. I think alcoholics are awful tough, because we survive things that would run some other people insane, but I finally got down to Texas, and I realized that I wasn't going to be able to make it in an office, or do an office work, or any of those things, so I went on down to Houston, and got me a job at the Old Roseland. I knew I'd do it sooner or later. I found out there that I was two people. I had always wondered what in the world made me tick, because when Marguerite was in church, she was really feeling good and close to God and all that, and then when I took a drink, this other woman was
[00:20:05]
just the direct opposite. When I was working at the Old Roseland, I was so ashamed and afraid my father would find me and kill me, because he would have, he'd known I was there, and I was really ashamed of what I was doing, and then this other woman inside me was just the opposite. She loved that loud music. Oh, it was such good music then, though. It was the clarinets and the trumpets and all that, you know, wailing in the night, and the windows were open, and everybody asking you to dance, and in the summertime it was so hot, you know.
I said this other woman in me didn't mind at all about the kind of place it was, and the loud music, and the touch of strangers. I found out later that I was going to be a nun. I found out when I got to AA that we're all two people, really, but the longer we stay sober, the more together we get with our good and our bad, because I know there's good and bad in all of us, and I had to face mine and do something about it. You can't go to the Baptist church all your young life and hear all those, thou shalt not this, thou shalt not that, and then when you do, you know that just don't die, you know, that's the thing. Just don't die, because sure as you do, you know what's going to happen to you, and I tried awful hard to stay alive, you know. I got fired from the old Rose Land, and I didn't know you'd get fired from a taxidermy. I thought they were doing good to have me, because I was from such a good family, you know, and I told them that, and about how my grandmother knew the speaker of the house sometime way back there in the beginning.
They didn't give a damn, you know, so they let those other old bags keep on working, and they fired me. Well, while I was there, I had met this little bald-headed waiter that was real smart about how to make a face, but he'd been in that kind of line for some time, I think, and he talked about this Galveston. He said it was an island over there close to Houston, and it was an open city, and they had gambling, and they had that bridge that went up and down so they could hide from the police, the law enforcement. When they had that bridge, they could kind of guard, and how safe it was, and he said all the big boats went in there, and the fellas hadn't hit land for six months, and they had money, money, all they needed was somebody nice to help them spend it. Well, I knew there was something more to it than that, but I thought, well, no, I won't ever go to Galveston. But after I got fired from the old Rose Land, I had tried being a B-girl. I heard that that was a nice night job, and I got fired from being a B-girl because I drank too much. You know, there was nobody that wanted me. I wasn't good anymore, and I couldn't go to church, and I wasn't bad enough to be a hoodlum. I tried my best, but they wouldn't let me in, you know. I've been an outsider looking in at life all my life because of booze or something else, and nobody would keep me around. So after that, I went to one rainy night. I had lost my job again and had no money, and little old Bill, the bald-headed waiter, said, let's go to Galveston, and there we went. He introduced me to who he said was a friend of his. It was a delightful little old gray-haired lady. Very dignified. They called her Miss Mary, and she was the proprietor of this cute little downtown hotel there in Galveston. It was over the Sherwin-Williams paint store down on Post Office Street, and they called it Uptown Hotel. She just rented to young girls, rented rooms. We had this community room where they had the bar, you know, and the bartender shaking those drinks up, and the old jukebox
[00:25:05]
and some tables were out there. It was that year they was playing Amapola, every other one, you know, in the jukebox, and the three little fishes and the itty-bitty whatever. It was just like a party, you know, and it was no different, I guess, from a lot of other boarding houses, except every evening, about 7 o'clock, I can hear her old voice yelling now, saying, company, girls, you can't go back to church all your life and feel good about something like that. But Dora, this other woman inside of me, thought some of it was pretty pleasant, you know, and I'd never understand Dora when I was sober. I was afraid Daddy would come up the steps and find out what I was doing and kill me, because I was always afraid of my father. He was very dictatorial, you know. Mama, I could get away with murder. She cried and prayed all the time, and who listens to that, you know. And I thought every day I would leave Miss Mary's, but I'd start in drinking, and it was so romantic with the jukebox playing Amapola and people coming up, being friendly, you know, and wanting to talk to you, the opposite sex, and it made you feel sort of popular.
I was always very honored when anybody, well, after getting insulted on the pine trees, you know, I was very honored after that, that they would pay any attention to me. I had such a low-sex image. I was sort of flattered. I would wake up sober, though, and I was in hell. I knew where I was. I'd gone against everything I'd ever been raised to believe was right. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror very long at a time. I couldn't stay sober. I thought of suicide, but then I was too chicken. I never had any guts when it came to killing myself, because I had heard people say, why not? You know, when you're dead, you're dead, but I remembered the preacher in Marshall, Texas, in that old Baptist church, talking about what happened afterward, and I tried my best to say it wasn't so, but it's hard to get all that early stuff out of your brain, you know, so I wasn't real sure what happened after, and I thought, well, I better not kill myself yet. I'll put it off, because that would have been the honorable thing to do, you know. Well, I kept drinking, and I got fired from Miss Mary's. You won't believe it. Nobody would have me. And, well, I really, I sort of got run out. I never left anything until I was forced to leave, and I couldn't call a cab to get across the causeway. I couldn't call the police, because they were sort of clients. I couldn't call a yellow cab, because I had sort of linked up with this business agent that took care of my money. He said he was investing it, but I never saw any, you know. I couldn't call, because they would have taken me back, you know. So I was in a heck of a mess. I finally got a ride and got back to Greenville. Everybody's got a Greenville. I don't care what you called yours, but it's a place you can go when the rest of the world won't let you fool around them anymore, you know. The whole world gets sick of you, good and bad, and I always went back to Greenville. I used to go back drunk, from time to time, hitchhiking to visit my baby, about every three months. I'd hitchhike back home, and I would go out to the farm where they lived, and Mama would make him those little soft gowns, and it felt so good, you know. In the summertime, we'd be out on the porch, and he'd be so soft and cuddly in that little old gown, and I'd rock him and tell him a story about one of these days I'm going to come and get him, and tell him to pack his suitcase, and we'd get on the train, and ride and ride, and come to a house and live there forever. And little thing, believe me, and he'd just wiggle his little
[00:30:01]
I never did get back to take Johnny with his suitcase. I meant to. I kept trying, in a way. But I was always too drunk or too broke or in a situation with somebody, another person, I couldn't take him into an atmosphere like that. So I never did get Johnny to live with me when he was growing up, and I regretted that all my life. It was, you know, I didn't worry so bad about the grown-ups. I thought they could take care of themselves.
But it seems like a drunk woman, her kids drive her the most, the conscience, you know, remembering how they felt and wanted to love you. You just couldn't be a mother. I couldn't be a mother, and that's what I couldn't understand. Loving somebody so much. I didn't know alcoholism was an illness, that there was nothing in the world I could do. Once I took the first drink, I was powerless. I didn't know that. I thought I was immoral or amoral or whatever.
Just a bad, bad person, and I hated everything I was. I had heard in church that if you were bitterly sorry for the way things had gone, you could make atonement. So I went back to Greenville, as I said, and got sober and got a job in a handkerchief factory. That was a nice, clean job, and I took a little bit of business tours and nights and learned to type. And it was World War II time, you know, the big war.
And they were going around getting young women to go to Washington, D.C., and I got hired and went to Washington and lasted just a few months. I got too drunk for the Army Service Forces. I was out sick a lot in those days, and they said I was out 30 days and three months sick, and they were going to have to examine me to see what was wrong, and I couldn't afford to let them do that. So I just said, well, I thought I had better go back home to Texas, and they said, good idea.
You know, people were frozen to their jobs, but everybody was so tickled when I said I wanted to go back home. They didn't try to hold me or anything. I got sort of thrown out of Washington, though, because I was going to have one last party before I left, and all the wax and waves and service people went to the old Hotel Annapolis. I think that's the name of it. Anyhow, I lost my coat. I looked around, and I couldn't find it anywhere, and I went knocking on doors to see where I'd left my coat.
While I had the door open, I might have asked a few if they had a drink. It was a natural thing to ask. First thing I knew, the police were there hauling me off to jail, and I had done nothing except get drunk. I was always an innocent bystander, and I got in jail more times. I was very put out about that, having to leave Washington, but while I was there, I had met this poor little sailor. He didn't know much about women, and he looked so cute in his little white suit, you know, bell-bottom trousers, coat of navy blue, and I had heard my friends talking about getting an allotment, and I thought, if anybody ever needed an allotment, it's me.
So I followed poor old Hoyt out to San Francisco, and we got married. He was on the battleship Missouri where the peace treaty was signed, you know. He was a gunner's mate, first class, and I was on it when it was commissioned in Brooklyn, Navy Yard, and President Truman, before he was president, was there, and Margaret, and, you know, Forrestal, and some others. So I felt like I was witnessing a little bit of history.
I was half drunk, of course, but I enjoyed it, and then he went out to San Francisco, and I followed, and I drank a little bit on the train, and then I forgot whether he said Los Angeles or San Francisco. So I got off in Los Angeles, and he and his family were waiting in San Francisco, and, you know, they never did like me, and I liked them.
[00:35:09]
I tried to be friendly and nice, and they just weren't no part, you know, and, well, Hoyt and I got separated at the honeymoon night. We went to Chinatown, and there was a fight with the sailors, one on top of the other, and I wanted to help my husband as any dutiful wife, and I got on top to pull him off one at a time by the hair. Well, somebody shivved me, and I was so surprised. Blood started running, you know, and I went to emergency and got separated from my husband, and he shipped out eight days later, and I was still among the missing, and that was one more thing for his dear sweet mother to hold against me.
Well, I finally remembered where she lived, and somehow when I got there in a taxi, I had lost my dress. I lost things when I was drinking. I mean, I was covered in one of those full slips. I wasn't showing anything. You shouldn't, but it was raining, and I got out of this cab, and I had no money, and I had lost my shoes and my purse, and there I stood at her doorstep asking for cab fare. Well, you know what half mad that made her, and she just never liked me after that.
And Hoyt came back from overseas. He didn't get killed or anything. And my allotment didn't do me too much good. And when he came back, I was in Glendale in a nursing home. I had fallen out of a car. Somebody said, Do you want to go see the Homes of the Stars in Beverly Hills in Hollywood? And I said, Yeah. We started out, and he had a wreck, and I fell out of the car and broke my pelvis bone, and that's why I was in the hospital when he came back from overseas.
And he took one look, and he said, It's a damn good thing you're already in the hospital. And I was so hurt. I thought servicemen were glad to see their wives after being out at sea that long. I thought his old mother just telling him lies about me. Well, Hoyt forgave me, and he nearly killed me forgiving me. People can, you know. I thought a lot of times, the first time I didn't come home one night, if he had just kicked me out the back door and said, Go on.
I don't want to have anything else to do with you, I might have found help sooner. But he was the type that every time I'd get on one of my hitchhiking drunks, you know, I might be gone a week because I'd forget where I lived. And when I did get back home, he'd say, Where have you been? Wham! And after I got my whipping, well, he would forgive me and go get me a glass straw to drink out of because my lip would be all cut up.
So that went on for eight years, me getting drunk and him forgiving me. And he nearly killed me, beat me to death. He was trying to teach me a lesson so I wouldn't drink anymore. Well, whipping won't do it, you know. That won't do it. We had a three-ring circus around there for the neighbors, you know. He tried to kill me with the hose, knocking me off the porch with it. And I'd get the grubbing hoe and try to throw it in the living room where he was standing, you know, and kill him.
And the neighbors were all out looking. He would call the police. I mean, I'd call the police on him and they'd take me. It was terrible. He could straighten up quicker than anybody you ever saw. He'd just walk up to Jared and he'd say, There she is, officer. And I'm the one that called him and I'm the one that went. So I had to quit calling him. Our neighbors were peculiar people, you know.
[00:40:04]
Hart was a sleeper. He'd go to sleep every night by 8 o'clock. You know, if he didn't have anything else to do, he'd take a foam beer and go to bed. Well, now Collard's just waking up, you know, about that time. And this guy over the way would give us little pansy plants to transplant, you know, out in our yard. Well, I didn't feel like getting out there until about midnight. And I'd be so sick in the mornings, you know, and you get to drinking and feel better later at night.
And between Hart getting come on to bed, you know, he'd finally pass out and I'd go to transplant my little pansy thing out in the flower bed. And usually on Saturday night, I'd get me a big jug of that wine. I finally got from beer and whiskey to wine out in California, and I'd get a big jug of that toque or muscatel, real good stuff, you know, and cheap. And I'd get out there working in the flower bed, and then I would pass out.
And next morning, this lady next door went to church all the time, and she had four little kids, little bath… I'm sorry. They were little stair steps, you know. And she'd have them in their little white suits, you know, and she'd have on her little flowery Easter dress and her little go-to-hell hat. And they'd come out of their house, you know, on their way to church, and I'd be over asleep in the flower bed.
I could hear her say, ooh, ooh, children, don't look. And she was trying to keep them from seeing me. I don't know what condition I was in. And I thought, boy, they don't know how to live. I forgot that I couldn't take care of the first child, and I was going to have another one. And in my crazy mind, I thought this one would be my salvation. You know, we alcoholics, that's why they say, return us to sanity, I found out.
It isn't what we do when we're drunk, it's the fact we kid ourselves and lie to ourselves. I'd forgotten that this first one I was unfit to raise, but this second one, I was going to be a wonderful mother. Well, it came and got polio. When he was ten months old, Dennis got polio. And we took him. It was that year they had this epidemic of polio. All the little kids and a lot of grown-ups were getting it, and they all went to Los Angeles General Hospital.
And I went and got a room across the street so I could visit him. And I couldn't even stay sober for that, you know. When I came to AA and they said the way you can tell if you're an alcoholic or not is, one way, the very times that everything tells you to stay sober, it's to your benefit and your family, that's the very time you're going to get drunk. And sure enough, I did. I meant to stay sober.
I thought he was dying. They had those big old iron lungs, and they'd have two little kids in one lung, and they looked so pitiful in there, you know. And the cards on the floor, I'd stumble over. I'd go over there drunk and vomit a little. Nurses and the doctors would make me leave, and I'd go off and stay a while and come on back, just like an idiot. And I thought, My baby's dying, and I can't even stay sober.
Mother came, of all things. Mothers used to do that. You know, something happened in the family that would go to you to help you. She said, I came out to be with you in your time of trial. And I thought, Well, that don't sound right. Then one night she got tired of my drinking, and she said, Young lady, I wouldn't doubt it if your baby died because you haven't lived right, and the good Lord is punishing you.
Well, that's when I fell out with God. I never had before. I never blamed him for my drinking or the things I got into. I knew that he was there, and it was me that had moved. But I did. I thought if God is like that, that he'd kill an innocent baby to get even with its mama. I didn't want to have anything to do with that kind of a God, and I read something in A.A. that, after I came to A.A., that described the way I felt, you know.
[00:45:05]
I found everything, a description for everything I ever felt after I came to A.A. and read the literature. This guy, Thompson, wrote a poem, The Hound of Heaven, and they talked about that in A.A. Comes of Age. And this guy wrote, I fled him down the days and down the nights. I fled him down the arches of the years. I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind and in the midst of fears I hid from him.
And that's what I tried to do with God. I tried to believe that there was no God. And sometimes when I'd get drunk enough, I could say it over and over like a litany, hope God's dead, hope God's dead, like an idiot child, you know. I had no foundation, nothing to lean on anymore, and the drinking wasn't doing for me what it used to. It was making me sicker and sicker, and the wine was destroying any kind of mind that I had to start with.
Dennis and I ran away from Hart out in California. In my haste to get away from the house, he was still in his braces and stuff, you know, from the polio. I forgot his coat, and going over the mountains there was snow, you know. I forgot my coat running away with that baby. And had it not been for truck drivers that picked us up and put their wraps around the baby. Some of them talked to me like Dutch uncles, and I deserved it.
But they took care of him and fed him and kept him alive, because had it been up to me, I wouldn't have had sentinel. I was too crazy from drinking. I intended to take him to Mama, you know, and I could have told her, you took the first one and here's you another one, you know. I was through living. I couldn't do anything right. I couldn't be a wife. I couldn't be a mother. And I was just ready to die. I couldn't quit drinking, and I didn't know how to stop.
Many times I had thought going back to church would do it, you know. People would say if you just go back to church and rededicate your life and things like that, and I did. And felt better for about a week and then be drunk again. When I got home, I had a sister five years younger than I, and she used to drink almost as bad as I did, you know. So when I got home, Mother said, Lizzie and Lee, Lee was her husband, he said, she said, they don't drink anymore.
And I asked her, you know, what did they do? She said, well, they joined this AAA over in Dallas. And I said, well, what's that? She said, well, they go up there and they got hot soup and they serve sandwiches to people that's hungry. And she said, they sit around and talk, and they hold some kind of meetings. And she said, and coffee. They drank one cup of coffee after another one. So the lights come on, you know.
We thought about those saltpeter they used to give the soldiers during the war. And we thought they were putting something in the coffee at AAA. At the AAA. Needless to say, I didn't go right down to join and get my coffee. I had a little more drinking to do, but not very much. I never forgot what Mama said about Lizzie and Lee. They didn't drink anymore, and they went to the AAA. Hoyt had forgiven me again, and he ran off from California to Fort Worth, and we were over there working.
And the doctor got the baby away from us and put him in the hospital. I thought he was trying to help the baby, and he was, but he was trying mostly to get him away from two drunks, his daddy and I. And I had started in, same old thing, hitchhiking drunk. And I got in the car with the wrong kind of people. I was afraid sooner or later I'd read about it happening to other women, but I woke up in Dallas.
I remember getting in the car with two people, and we drove somewhere, and then there was another car with people in another car. And the night wore on, and sometimes you realize you've been caught in something, and you can't get away.
[00:50:06]
And you just breathe in and out and hope that you won't die. Then morning came, and I couldn't hardly get down to the cafe. There was one down at the bottom of the hill. I finally made it down there, and this guy behind the counter dialed my sister's house, and he put me in a taxi. When I got to her house, like so many other new members, they had literature everywhere. Every time you'd go in the bathroom, you had to lift up a way of life off the top of the commode, you know.
It was everywhere I looked, with who me and 44 questions and everywhere, literature. So when I could focus my eyes, she shoved a little blue pamphlet in my hand and said, I don't know if you'll like this or not, but I don't have much else to read. And I thought, boy, you said that right. And I read that little pamphlet, and it saved my life. It was the best day in my entire existence, before or since.
I didn't stay sober from that day on, but I knew what was wrong with me. And you all know what a relief it is when you finally find out that you're not crazy, you're not just no good. I used to think I had bad blood. In East Texas, if they couldn't figure out nothing else that caused you, they said bad blood. And I didn't know what the hell was ever wrong with me, but I found out in the little pamphlet.
It said I was sick and that there was a way out. It said alcoholics can be helped and they're worth helping. I had never thought that before. I had never once known what an alcoholic was or suspected that I could be one. I just knew that when I took one drink, it's Katie bar the door, you know. I couldn't drink like other people, never did. I always wanted to stay later, never through. I never got through drinking, never got enough.
I've gotten too sick to hold anymore, but I never did willingly say, well, I've had enough for the night. Never got enough. And that's why I turned down a lot of times one drink if I was sober and somebody just had one to give me. I said, no, thank you. Because I knew it would start that awful craving, you know, and if I couldn't get any more, that's hell. Wanting a drink and can't get it. That was Easter Monday after Easter Sunday of 1950 I made my first contact.
I stayed sober four or five months and then slept four or five months, slept again. I was with Hoyt. He had forgiven me again. And, you know, a lot of guys think they want their mate back, you know. Well, Hoyt hated me drunk, but he didn't like me too well cold sober. And he had lost his drinking pal, you know. We had had fun, as he put it, until I started getting too much and embarrassed him, you know.
After the baby came in San Fernando, he said, if I get a couple of fists of beer, you know, big things, he said, you're going to get crazy like you used to, will you? And I said, oh, no. And the same thing happened all over again. The whole cycle, you know. I didn't know what to do with myself. And I'd just keep going to AA and every once in a while, you know, get drunk again. And then Hoyt and I came to a party of the ways.
He said he was an American, a healthy American male, and he wanted his wife at home in bed every night, you know, at a reasonable hour, and I was down at that damn AA club. So he didn't like that at all. And so he and I got a divorce. I had decided after slipping around, and I knew that I was ruining the last chance that I had at life, because AA was the last chance. I loved the people in it. I loved everything they talked about.
Every time somebody said, God, I cried, I was a crying drunk and a crying sober-up. Anybody say, God, the tears just flew, you know. And they'd say, Do you want to say something at the meeting? And I'd say, My name's Marguerite, and just boo-hoo-hoo.
[00:55:04]
I cried at everything. And I just loved them so much. They'd sit around and talk about their drinking out loud, and they'd talk about things that I'd always hid from everybody. And they all laughed, and I thought, What are they laughing for? That's tragedy. Talk about getting in jail and losing a car. And just, Ah-ha, they just all laughed just like it. So I thought, Boy, I'm watching that. And finally I got tired of being sick and tired, and I made up my mind that anything the grown-ups down there were doing, I was going to try to do.
I didn't know exactly how to go about it, but I knew the 12 steps. And I took an inventory, and I'd write it down like I thought they meant to. And I'd go in the bathroom and look in the mirror, and I'd think of something else to write down, and I'd say, Marguerite, that ain't the way it happened. It was so hard for me to get honest, you know. I'd lied to myself so many years and been so many different people.
You know, like Dora Ferguson and Penny Singleton. They were all there, too. And I wasn't sure if I was a dancer or a movie star or a Matt of Harry, whatever. I was one of the movie stars. I knew Loretta Young. Somebody said I looked like her when I was about 15, and that helped me in my career. I had a hard time finding Marguerite, but, you know, you can keep peeling away and peeling away. And finally you get down to the nitty-gritty, and you find a person you haven't seen for a long, long time.
And I had to learn to like the person I found. I had to love me because I couldn't stay sober for somebody I hated. I had to forgive myself, and I know it's what every alcoholic here has had to do in order to keep living. We either believe it's an illness or we don't. I can't say, oh, I'm so ashamed of myself and what I've told you tonight. If I said that, I would be saying this is a moral issue, and because I didn't do what I was supposed to do, all those things happened.
I have to believe that once I took a drink into my system, I was not responsible for anything that happened after that. I don't have to be ashamed all the rest of my life. I'm making a report. That's the way it really was, you know. I don't have to be a second-rate citizen forever because I had the disease of alcoholism. When I got sober and stayed sober for a while, I started getting a little dignity.
I had self-respect, and that was something I hadn't had for years. I knew that I couldn't have done any different with alcoholism to do for my children any more than I had already done. I had to forgive myself, knowing that I had a disease that was cunning, baffling, and powerful, and I could never have helped myself sober. Without help, it's too much for us, and the more I realize that every day I'm sober, it is still too much for me by myself.
We need each other, and we need this program every day of our lives. DOA has been everything to me. The people in it have been closer than my family. My sister died. She stayed sober about seven years and started going to doctors for nerves and not telling them the truth, I'm sure. Doctors don't intentionally hurt people, but she started taking pills, and she mixed it with the booze and went to sleep all over, and they couldn't wake her up.
Before she died, she was DOA at the hospital. I hated the fact that I couldn't help her. People would call me from Fort Worth and say, your sister's here. She's in bad shape. Why can't you help your own sister? I said, because she is my sister. We can't help our relatives. A total stranger can do things to help that we can't do. I don't care how we love them. If she would have listened to me, she would have resented it, because she was drinking and I was sober, and she wanted to be sober, but she couldn't be, and she died.
My father died several years ago, and there was a time when he had no respect at all for me because I had gotten drunk one time, and told him a little about Miss Mary.
[01:00:06]
We drunks are bad about that, you know, that's how we try to hurt people when we're hurting. If they hurt us, we tell them something that they don't want to hear to try to hurt them, and he knew about that, and he had no use for me, he didn't want me around. After I stayed sober a while, I tried to tell him about AA, and he said, well, let bygones be bygones, we don't talk about that anymore. And sometimes my brother would bring up something, you know, well remember Marguerite, when you were drunk, that it would make him hush, he didn't want to hear about it or talk about it or anything, so I quit telling him.
And Mama, I explained, I thought she would understand, and I told her all about the Twelve Steps, and I thought she'd just read that big book, everything would be fine. And I told her how it wasn't willpower, it was faith in God, ask God to help. Willpower didn't work, and after I got through with all my speech about the Twelve Steps and the traditions, she said, Mama knew you could do it, all it takes is a little willpower.
And… I just gave it up, I quit trying to explain the Twelve Steps to Mama. But before he died, he trusted me. I had been sober, I guess, 25 years then, and he finally believed I meant it. And he trusted me to look after my mother after he died, and I was able, by the grace of God, to do that. I had her a year before she passed on, and I needed that time to be good to her and try to make amends. Poor old Hollett, that had forgiven me so many times, was out in Oregon, and where he had been there, years of separation, and he didn't come back to see his son to Texas.
He found out he had terminal cancer of the pancreas, and he wrote and said he wanted to stay with his son for as long as he could before he died. And he came to us and stayed in the apartment, and it was just like he was a cousin or something, you know. He enjoyed renewing his kinship with his son, and he'd go out to MD Anderson for his treatments, and he was awfully sick, and all his hair he lost, you know, and everything.
But we talked together, he and I, like relatives. We never brought up the bitterness of the past. It was all washed away. I thank God that I had that time with him, because if there was anyone in my life I ever mistreated, it was him. And we were able to talk, and he said, Marguerite, you've done a lot of things in your life, but I want to tell you this, you've done a wonderful job with our son. And I just thought I'd die, you know, to hear that from his lips.
God has been so good to me. I love you, not only for what you are, but for what I am when I'm with you. I love you for looking deep enough inside of me and finding all the beautiful things that no one else looked quite close enough to find. I love you for helping me to make the lumber of my life not a tavern, but a temple, and the works of my every day not a reproach, but a song.