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Source: Floyd R. (Hobo) – From Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania – Date Unknown.mp3 File: floyd-r-hobo-from-cannonsburg-pennsylvania-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:54:25
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this situation. I'm not saying that God put Jack in the hospital, but God knew that Jack wasn't going to be able to be here. And he had already had it planned out for an old hobo from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to come down here and speak to us this morning. Would you give Lloyd a big Meeting on the River welcome? My name's Lloyd and I'm an alcoholic. You know, I got called to come down here to fill in. And I had just worked all night and then I had a wedding to go to yesterday and I looked and I went, all right. But I was taught, you know, when somebody asked, you don't say no, you just do it. So I said, God help me. And he made it out and here I am. And boy, I'm glad I got here for that meal last night and that boat ride and breakfast this morning.
Boy, where I'm going to hear, where I come from, we didn't eat like that. Boy, I'm telling you. But, you know, this morning, you know, can anybody hear me all right? You're going to hear exactly what you want to hear. A lot of you are going to hear it one way and you're going to mess around with your mind and you're going to filter it and you're going to get an idea of what I'm trying to say. Some of you are going to see something entirely different.
It reminds me of down in 19 Highway, it goes by Cannonsburg there. One day there was a state cop sitting there trying to catch speeders. And this pickup went flying by and the guy had a pickup full of penguins. And that state cop said, what in the world? So he pulled him over and says, you know, you can't do this. You can't ride down the highway with a pickup full of penguins. Take them to the zoo. He said, yes, sir. And he was gone. And the next day that state cop was sitting in the same spot. Here come that guy with a pickup full of penguins. And all the penguins had sunglasses on. He said, wait a minute. So he pulled him over. He said, didn't I tell you yesterday you can't ride down the highway with a pickup full of penguins? I told you to take them to the zoo. He said, yes, sir.
And I did. And today we're going to the beach. He heard exactly what he wanted to hear when that cop told him that. And that's the way we do it in AA because we got such special, unique minds. You know, we deploy things different than the average human being. It's only by the grace of God and his mercy and especially his patience that I'm standing here this morning. I grew up in the Pocono Mountains and I was one of ten kids, seven boys, three girls, and two alcoholic parents that were brutal, both of them. My mother never washed a dish, never cooked a meal, never did a bit of housework. My mother drank professionally. She'd wake up, sit up, and drink up in that order. My dad would go to work every morning at 7 o'clock and leave a bottle of whiskey and $2 on the chair next to the bed. I used to watch as a child growing up, my mother sit on the edge of that bed, turn that bottle up, take $2, put it in here. That was her entranceway to the bar up the alley. We lived in the ghetto area where I grew up.
I hated it. And I spent a lot of time in the streets. My brothers and sisters were afraid of my father because he was a brutal Irish drunk. But I didn't care. Even then, I ran the streets because I didn't like it there and that filth I grew up in. And I learned one thing as a youth. I didn't have no respect. The Ridley clan was looked at the other side of the track type of guys. So I found that one thing. I got respect from my fighting. So I learned how to fight.
Guys would talk to me about, I remember snipping a strap off a pair of my sister's shoes, them patent leather black ones. And I thought I'd get away with wearing them to school and get away with saying they were loafers. Well, I didn't. And I got in three fights that day because of those shoes. It was things like this that made me the man I was as a child. I didn't like to hear my mother and father fighting and arguing every night and this and that. And I said, man, they're crazy. I stayed out of that house. I couldn't handle it. And I started running with these street gangs and what have you. And my cops would come to my father and say, you better do something with Floyd because if you don't, he's going to end up in penitentiary. Now here I'll grow it. Well, I kept on doing what I wanted to do. And sure enough, I got in trouble when I was 17 years old.
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I went to court and the judge says, Floyd, you either go in the military or you go in jail. Well, I'm not a stupid man. I signed on the dotted line and went in the service. I was a good soldier. I went into the service in 1961 and I did good. Now at E1s at that time, we're getting $76 a month. Now already in my younger years running the streets with these guys, I was drinking because the local winer would get us our bottles. I'm smoking. I'm cussing for bad language. And I'm really a piece of work. I was an accident waiting to happen. Now when I come home, I leave from the service. See, I lived in this up in northeast Pennsylvania where it was on the border of three states. You went six miles north, you were in New York. You went a mile east, you were in Jersey. Now the New York state law was 18 you could drink. Now I just turned 18 in military, so I would go up there on the weekends to do my drinking. All the guys that I ran with as a youth were in this bar where I drank at and they always had a pocket full of money. And it says, where do you guys get your money to drink, man? None of you are working. And they had a crime ring going. They were robbing and robbing and robbing and I said, wow. So I come home one weekend, I blew my money because $76 a night for me the way I drank at that time at 18 years old, I would go in and I had to buy you a drink because that would make you like me if I bought you a drink. You would like me. And $76 would last me one night and I was broke and I had another month to wait for another check. So I'm sitting there one furloughed night and I'm talking with these guys and they said, you want to go with us? And I said, well sure. So I went with them on a riding spree they did and I went back to the base that Sunday night. I had a pocket full of money. I said, my Lord, this will work. So every weekend I became a weekend thief. I'd run with these guys every weekend. I'd rob and steal and we'd do our thing and then we'd come back and go back to the base Sunday night and I had a pocket full of money. I was a cock of the walk. Well, you can't do that behavior very long without getting caught. Well, I got caught and the guys that got caught with me were saying, well, it was his fault. He showed us how to do it. The point right here. And when my dad, as a youth, all my advertised cops believed him. Yeah, well, that's Floyd Ridley. That's why.
Well, I figured they can't touch me. I'm government property. I'm military. You know, they can't touch me. Wrong. They threw my butt in jail and the military police came and hand-delivered my discharge for me to the bars. It says military has no further use of your services. And I went, uh-oh. Now I'm wanted in three states on 15 counts of robbery. Five in New York, five in Jersey and five in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania had first shot at me. I went to court. They gave me six years at Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and you're going to do the time. There ain't no getting out of it. We had no parole. And then you have two detainees for Jersey and Pennsylvania, New York, when you're done. So I go down to Western Penitentiary November 22nd, 1963. The same day John F. Kennedy got shot in Dallas, Texas. They're loading me, shackled in a van, and I heard the radio guy say to the other guy in the guard, he says, Kennedy's got killed in Dallas. I remember that day well. They sent me down to Western Penitentiary. They put me in quarantine for a week so you get used to military, or military, you get used to prison life. Then they throw you to the dogs, we used to call it. Now get this. I had just turned 19 years old. I'm in a Western Penitentiary, and I'm cute. If you know what I mean, a 19-year-old boy in that situation doesn't have much of a chance. Because I heard things about places like that, and I was ready. Because I said to myself in quarantine, I said, when they put me out with the dogs, I'm going to kill somebody, or they're going to kill me, and that's going to be that. What I didn't know, there were two guys in the penitentiary there who knew me from the street, and they were guerrillas.
And they sent word over, tell Floyd when he comes out not to worry, we got his back. I went out, the general population, they walked, had my back covered, nobody bothered me. That's a big bills running partner. So they left me alone. And then when they got to know me, they figured, well, he's a stand-up con. And they left me alone. You know why? Because I knew how to make the brew. I was a
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brewmaster. I can make the brew. They get the stuff in the kitchen, the yeast, the raisins, the sugar, and I would get in the vat, and boy, I'd make that homebrew, and then deploy it in VO2-5 tubes, you know, send it around the cell blocks. I tell them, don't drink it until it's all out of here. With some alcoholic in there, he couldn't wait. And somebody ended up drunk, and the guards would say, there still is an operation at damn Floyd, and they do a shutdown, catch me, throw me in a hole for 60 days. I would get out of the hole and go do it again. You know why? I'm doing six years, and my mind didn't work like that. I couldn't handle this time. I had to keep this thing up here numb. I had to keep my mind obliviated because I couldn't handle time, the rapes that were going on there, the stabbings and all the other stuff that goes in the prison. I couldn't handle it. Keep the mind with booze, and you don't have to deal with it. I learned that in there. I got out six years later, November 22nd, 1969. I walked out of the prison, and there were two US Marshals waiting for me, and they took me down. New Jersey wants to talk to you. And they took me down to New Jersey. I stood before the judge. He said, he gave me seven and a half to 15 years, and my knees buckled. And I had these two lawyers that my brother had hired. My brother's a lawyer now. He hired these two guys to go down there and defend me. They were the Cacillio brothers. That name could have told you something right there. Cacillio brothers. I got some mob boys in here. They came in and said, don't worry about nothing. When he gave me that seven and a half to 15, I'm looking at him like, well, don't worry. And then the judge says, you know, the warden of the Western Penitentiary wrote me a letter to recommend leniency in this case. I said, here's what I'm going to do, Floyd.
I'm going to drop that and put you on probation, suspend that sentence, on the grounds that you'll never step foot in the state of New Jersey again. I said, your honor, I won't even fly over your state. And I meant it. I would stay out of your state. And I walked. The Marshal said, we're not done with you. New York wants you. Now I'm saying Attica now. I'm saying, here I go. They took me up there and they made a deal with me. All the money that I had stolen over that three-month period that I was doing that, I was stashing in the safe deposit box in Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City. Now I had a lot of money stashed. And they came in and said, Floyd, we'll tell you what we'll do. You make restitution to that money you took, and we won't bring charges. I said, you mean that if I give you the money back, I'm going to go to Attica? He said, that's it.
I gave him the key to that safe deposit box. I got it in writing, of course. Now, here I am, 1969. I got 15 counts of robbery in three states, and I do six years. Tell me God isn't working for me already. He's already working for me. And here I was, free man. I'm 26 years old. I got a suit of clothes that the prison gave me and $40. And I had nothing else. I says, I know what I'll do. My brother, my older brother, get this. He grew up in the same house I did. He went to the United States Naval Academy. You got to have a congressman's appointment to get there. He got it, graduated 12th in his class, and then became a lawyer after he got out of there. And he was starting a law firm in my hometown. Well, I'll go to Artie. Artie will help me. I'm his brother. Wrong again. I go home and I say, blah, blah, blah, blah. All my brothers and sisters are there now in the hometown. Ain't nobody ever left. And they're all professionals now. They all finished high school, got degrees in their college. I don't know how they all did that. I couldn't do that. And I always blamed my upbringing. That wasn't true because look at the rest of them. They all turned out good. He says, well, I'll tell you what I'll do. And he went like this. He gave me some money. And he says, go find a life, but not here. They did not want their alcoholic ex-convict brother coming on the scene, and he's trying to build a law firm.
My other brother's an engineer. My other brother's a chef. My sister's all married professional men. They do not want me on the scene. So when you have a problem like that, you dispose of it. Take it from point A, put it at point B. So I took the money, of course, and I went to New York City, and I drank the money up in a short period of time. And I ended up standing on the corner of Bowery and Houston Street. That's Skid Row in New York, one of the worst Skid Rows in the country.
I'm standing there, and I'm looking up and down Skid Row there, seeing the derelicts laying in the gutter in their own urine, their own defecation, getting drunk, dying. And I said to myself, the most ludicrous thing a man can say to himself, I belong here. to Say to Himself, I Belong Here. So I fell into that trap of being one of them, but I
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needed a mentor. I needed a teacher. So I got Panhandle Pete, the best guy in the streets. And I sat under his teachings faithfully for two years. I was his best student. He was going to show me how to live in that epitome. And he taught me every con game, every manipulated point there was to live like that and survive. And I got good at it. And I'm running up and down the Bowery, and I'm crazy, and I'm drunk, and I'm going nutsy and nutsy every week.
And there's a meat wagon that came through there every day, picking up the bodies and putting them in the meat wagon. And I asked Pete one day, what do they do with them bodies? And he said, they take them down to the morgue. And when they get six of them, they put them in cardboard coffins and take them out to Long Island and put them in a hole, one on top of the other, and bury them. Potter's Field. That's what they do with derelicts.
And I looked at that and I said, that's me. That's what's going to happen to me. I can't do that. Don't they know who I am? I can't die like that. So I asked Pete, I says, am I ready? He says, go forth, young man. So he gave me my degree from hobo school. And I had a master's by now. And I left there, and I jumped my first freight train. And for the next 38 years, that's what I did. I became a professional hobo. I rode these rails across this nation, the northern route in the summer, southern route in the winter. I opened more hobo camps than I like to think about. They had a hobo convention there in the third week in August every year in Bright, Iowa, where 5,000 hobos from here in Canada would go.
In this farmer's land and have our convention, because we had to elect a new king and queen of the hobos. I wanted to be king. And that was my plight in life. I wanted to be king of the hobos. Now, that's sick when you think about it. That was my goal, to be king of the hobos. I'm going to be king. And I would go there every year faithfully, turning my potentials, and they would vote. In 1988, I came in third out of 5,000. That's pretty good. I said, almost made it. Stephen King, who was king, said, you almost beat me this year. Man, I was proud, because I said, this is what's going to happen. I'm going to become king. One year, they made me in charge of security. I said, security? Yeah, because we don't want no riffraff coming to our convention. That's crazy, you know. We had ludicrous thoughts that we had. And then I would leave there, and there would be hobos out of Sweetsboro, Louisiana, moving out. And they'd say, what's going on? Well, Floyd's got a camp in Amarillo.
I loved my camps, because I always had a good pot of beans that you get a drink, a cigarette, and a bowl of good beans in my camp before you jumped out again. They'd ask me, I've got to go, say, I said, track 18, 830 tomorrow. And I knew the track numbers, everything, what train it was, where you got off, where you re-jumped. People think you get on a train in New York, it takes you all the way to LA. It don't work that way. You've got to keep jumping and hopping, jumping and hopping. That's a lot of work. I'm out there in the streets hustling before you get a jug of wine together. People say, why don't you get a job in here, a guy like you? I get a job? I work harder than five minutes, you do all day. It's hard to stay drunk every day. It's as if you're a hobo like in my caliber. That's a lot of work, and you've got to be quick. And man, I'm dazzling them out there with my intellectual footwork, and I'm getting crazier and crazier and crazier, and that's all I knew. And I was in Denver in a park with a couple of other hobos one day, and I'm drinking, and I'm throwing up blood. And one of the other hobos says, I know a place, Floyd, where they help guys like us. I said, what help guys like us? We don't have no insurance.
We can't, people don't care about us. Well, there's a place up north. So this hobo took me, and we went up to Greeley, Colorado, and they had, first time I ever heard of and seen a detox. Now, get the drift of this. I got a beard down in my belt buckle. I got long hair, a bandana. I looked like ZZ Top in a bad day. And you wouldn't have took me to a worm wrestle if you saw me. And I smelled funny. I was like an aristocrat. I had a certain air about me. And they went up there, and I went in this detox center, and they peeled those rags I was wearing off me, and I went into a shower, and they gave me these pajamas, and they gave me those paper slippers. I called them detox Reeboks. And I put them on, and there I was. But you know what I remember about that detox more than anything else?
They put me in a room, and I got in that bed. I laid in that bed. My body sank down into
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a mattress. My head went back into a soft pillow. I pulled the sheets up. I went, God, that smelled good. That was virgin territory for me because I live in the bush. I'm a professional hobo. I live in concrete in the bush. I don't live in nice sheets. Then they took me into the dining room for breakfast, and I sat at a table where they gave me a plate with silverware. Virgin territory. Sound far out there? No. I had to learn how to use silverware. I'm not, I needed to have dumpsters like this. It's degrading what alcoholism can do to a human man. Your dignity goes. Your self-respect goes. You don't care about anything but the drink.
The drink has priority. The drink dictates behavior. I robbed that bank okay. I could be dying like I was, and they told me in that detox that Floyd, five days I was there, I'm still throwing up blood. He said, we're going to keep you a little longer. If you go upstairs, they've got a halfway house. We'll keep you there for a while until we get this bleeding under control. And they said, it's only $12 a week. I says, okay. He says, you'll have to get a job.
I said, a what? A what? He said, a job. I'm a hobo. I never applied for jobs. So I go to town, I get a job washing dishes at a greasy spoon restaurant. I made enough to pay the $12 because I knew I needed to be there because I was dying. And they too were taking care of me. Well, there was a girl that worked there that was on vacation. Well, she came back to work and she was the intake lady. Well, let me tell you something about alcoholism, folks, that when I sobered up, my body woke up. And I saw that girl and I went, wow, that's for me. Well, of course, me being who I was, I thought I put my intellectual moves on her, you know, all my flim flam and crap that I feed everybody. And three months, they kept me there three months because that bleeding was bad. I sweet-talked that girl. You know what she did? She married me. She took me by the arm. She lost her job, of course, because they call that fraternization. You know, so she took me and went like this. She said, come on, Floyd, you'll never sleep under another bridge. You'll never get out of another dumpster. I'm going to take care of you. That girl was stark raven mad. She had no idea what she was getting into. She took me home and for nine months, she put up with my crap because when I went home, the bottle came out and I couldn't stop. I couldn't hold a job. I tried to hold the job. I'd lose it after I get paid. I'd go to get another job. I'd lose it after I get paid.
She said, Floyd, if you don't do something about your drinking, I'm going to leave you. Now, she got pregnant and said she won't leave me. Well, she did. I come home from the bar and she, I know you'll hear from my lawyer. So I did what I always did. I packed a grip, jumped the freight train and was gone. Three years later, I'm in San Diego on an alleyway leading up against a dumpster drunk and a guy's coming in the alley with a cup of coffee and a pack of cigarettes. I mean, you don't walk into a guy's camp without announcing yourself. He says, hello to camp. I said, whoa, I just planted back in here. He said, well, can I come in? I saw those cigarettes and that coffee. I said, you're welcome.
I wanted a cigarette and coffee. Well, he was from AA. He sat there and he's going to tell me, I didn't have to live that way if I didn't want to. I said, boy, what boat did this guy fall off of? He must have fallen off a banana boat last night. And he was back the next day with a pack of cigarettes and a cup of coffee. I didn't believe him, but I got a noble thought. I thought about my ex-wife. I said, I wonder what I had, a boy or a girl. So I called her, a collect, of course.
And I said, you have a son? He's three years old. His name's Christopher. I says, okay, can I see him? He says, yeah, but as long as you're sober. So I was going to go to Salvation Army, get cleaned up a little bit and comb the chili out of my beard and go on up there to see this child of mine. And this guy from AA said, no, Floyd, you don't do it that way. He bought me a plane ticket out of his own pocket and got me cleaned up. And I got on that plane and the plane's landing in Denver. And I'm thinking, what do I say to this woman in this? What do I say?
And nothing to say. I got off the plane. She's standing there with this little redheaded boy, three years old. And she walked up to me, put her arms around me, kissed me on the cheek and said, do you want to try this again? That woman wanted me to take me back. That girl's sick.
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She did, but she got smart because it only took her three days this time. She said, this guy has not changed. She took the kid and went. So I did what I always did, jumped in the freight train and left. Now I've had relationships. I don't even like that word. I had involvement with women along the way. So I got real sick. And I was in and out of jail. I got busted. I went into a bank, tried to catch a $10 check. And they said, I didn't have an account there. So they couldn't cash the check. And I got angry. I says, yeah, I knocked off better cracker boxing than this.
You don't make a statement like that in a bank. Just don't do that. That's bad for your health. Well, I walked out of there and I went next door to Captain John's and I got a drink. He gave me one on credit. And two minutes later, the two cops walk in the door and says, freeze, come with us. Lieutenant wants to talk to you. They take me to the police station. There's a lieutenant sitting there. He says, Mr. Ridley, he says, I ran you in a computer here just to check you out.
And he said, we don't need your kind around here. He said, you're ex-convict. You've been arrested 156 times. And I said, damn, that's in the 80s. So every place I went, they got me for public intoxication and a fray. That's street fighting. I was always in jail, in and out, in and out. I was in jail 13 times in one month in Tampa, Florida. Down there, when they run drunk court, they throw everybody in a hundred drunks.
In the morning, they put a chair and a table out in this big gym type room. The judge sits there and they bring 20 guys drunks in at a time. He goes down the line and says, 10 days of peform, turn him loose, give him 30 days. And then the next 20 come in. I went in there 12 times and he turned me loose. And the 13th time, that was my bad number, I guess. I go in there and he stopped at me and he says, where are you from, boy? I said, Pennsylvania. He said, what are you doing in Florida? I said, I come down here to pick oranges. Pick oranges, my ass, man. You've been drunk since you've been down here. You ain't picked an orange yet. What are you going to do if I let you go? I said, I'm getting out of Florida. See to it, don't come in here again.
You ain't going to like it. Of course, I went over to Hollywood, Florida. I ended up in jail there that night. See, that's the way I was. I was drunk. It was obvious I was drunk and I looked like I was going to cause some trouble. You see a guy with a beard like that in there, he looks like a wild man with a pompous, lock him up. We don't need people like that roaming the street. So I got real, I was up in the Midwest and I got real sick and I ended up in the hospital and they told me from Florida and he says, you got cirrhosis, you got pancreatitis, you got a growth the size of an orange by your bladder, your lungs are shot, your organs are shutting down. You're going to be dead probably three weeks to a month.
So whatever order of business you got to take care of, take care of it because the death angel is going to come knocking. So get ready. So you know what? I'm going to tell you something about alcohol. I go out of the hospital, I go to the liquor store, get a bottle and I sat there in my little domain, which is the bridge and I go, pancreatitis, cirrhosis, a growth by my bladder and the alcohol does its magic. There ain't nothing wrong with you.
You know, you're bulletproof. Alcohol does that to the alcohol. It makes you think nothing can hurt you. I had that doctor's full of crap and you drink like always drinking. It kept happening and it kept happening. I kept falling. I kept, I couldn't jump the freight trains no more the way I could. I was getting slower and I was hurting myself when I come off them. I jumped off a freight train in Jackson, Mississippi one time and rolled right up to the back door of a police car.
My luck wasn't too good. The cop was reading the newspaper, get out, put the paper down, walked around, opened the door of the police car and said, welcome to Jackson boy. The bar is 10 feet away. I said, can I get a drink? And he says, you mind now. So I went to court the next day. As soon as I found out I was a Yankee, he says, I need somebody to cut weeds along my interstate. And I did that for 30 days with a sickle under the gun along the interstate.
And when I, he says, I want you to get out of Mississippi and you can't drive my, you can't jump my trains and no hitchhiking. Well, his thing was only good for short rides anyway. Hitchhiking. Well, everything was only good for short rides anyway, you know, that's all it was good. So I said, well, the heck with it.
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I started walking out of town, but I took a chance on hitchhiking, got picked up by the guy. God takes care of me, you know. You know where he sends me? That guy pulls up in a pickup truck, he's going to Memphis and he's got a case of Miller Highlight in the front seat. I said, thank you. Because that's the way I looked at things. If there was a God, he was taking care of me. I didn't know that till later.
He did for me about when I'm walking down a blizzard in Wyoming and there's a neck of a bottle sticking out of a snowbank like that and I'm going into close to DT's and I'm just saying, God, I'm going to get sick out here and die. I picked him, I seen that neck sticking out of the snow, I picked it up and it was a full bottle of whiskey. Somebody had thrown that. Was it a seal or was it even cracked?
I said, well, thanks. I think God was doing that for me. God was keeping me alive. You know why? He had a job for me. He said, he's going to be down to Ohio speaking to a bunch of alcoholics. I got to get, I got to prepare him. So I got real sick. I ended up in the hospital and I said, I was in, I came to Pittsburgh on one of my trips and I stopped and I, I moved down and I had a condominium underneath the 10th Street Bridge.
I called it my condominium. And I would hustle across the street because I liked that because there was a lot of bars. So I'd work that street and I'd make my stew and I'd get drunk and I'm getting sicker and sicker. I said, well, I need to get out of Pittsburgh maybe. So I went to Washington, Pennsylvania, right next to Coca-Cola and there was a wooded area I had to lean to and I'd hustle the streets.
Well, I did what I always do and I fell out one night in the streets. They rushed me to the hospital and doctors came in and said, Lloyd, you're dying. You don't have much time left. So we're, it's a personal care home in Canonsburg. We're going to send you down there and so you can die with a little dignity. And the doctors and the nurses down at this place will take care of you until the end comes.
They're telling me I'm going to die like in a week or so. I said, who's paying for this? He said, welfare is going to cover the bill. So they sent me down to this halfway or this, not this halfway, but this nursing home. They gave me a room and I said, I can come and go as I please. So I timed the bar that opens up at seven o'clock in the morning because that's what I was about. And I would scrub the bathrooms and wipe her bottles off and suck her cords.
And the woman, the owner would let me sit there and drink for free. Now I'm going back to the nursery and I'm drunk every day. They call the owner and say, he can't do this. He's drunk every day coming back here. He says, let him alone. Does he bother anybody? No, he's not going to be with us much longer. He's going to die. We'll put up with it. You know why? Because he's paying $1,000 a month for me, for welfare, said leave him be, he'll be dead in a week or so.
So I came downstairs one day on my way to the bar and I fell out again. They rushed me to the hospital they operated that night to get that growth, that orange growth out of my bladder. And there was a surgeon who walked by the bed and he looked at my chart and he said, send this guy to Allegheny General Hospital now. They sent me down to Allegheny General, which is a good hospital in Pittsburgh. And I was there for the next year.
They operated on me six times. They took my lung out. They took seven feet of intestines. They went back in, they shifted this over here, put this over here and they, I don't know what they were doing, but I'm laying there. The only people that came to me, excuse me, were two guys from AA. They drive from Cannonsburg up there. And you know what they did? They come in that room and I said, who are you guys?
And they said, we're from AA. I said, get the hell out of my room. He said, no drunk should die by himself. And they get two chairs, put them at the foot of my bed. One guy that opened the big book says, you know what it says on page 86? No. Why tell me? And he would. And I'm sitting there like this. Oh God. I got two. I got a breathing tube stuck in my chest, a feeding tube stuck here. I got one up my rectum, one down my throat and IVs in both arms.
I couldn't move. He had a captured audience. And then those suckers would come back the next day and open that book and say, let me tell you about this what Bill said. And I'm, I gotta listen to this crap. And I'm laying there and they're feeding this drunk, this stuff here and I'm like, I can't take it. Don't come to the bar playing that show up. Oh God. And they, they would drive up there and do this to me.
Misery. I thought it was, I'm getting payback. You know, God's getting even here. So finally they came in. Well, the last operation they did, they took my lung, my right lung. They couldn't keep me in the plane. I was shot. And then they came in that night and there was a guy that came to see me. He was from AA. He was standing there. He says, does he have any family? I said, no. He said, family don't want nothing to do with him.
He said, well, what am I going to do with the body? He said, he's going to probably die tonight. He's not going to make it. I weighed 86 pounds. And they said, well, if he dies, this guy's made, he said, we'll take responsibility for
[00:35:00]
the body. Call us. Isn't that something? I heard that when they left the room. Here I am, 60 years old, laying on my deathbed. Death angels knocking. I believe there is a God. He don't want nothing to do with me. If there is one, he's mad. So I can't talk to him. I looked out the window and I said, well, one shot. I'll give him one shot. I said, hey, boss. It's me. I'm sorry I lived the way I did. I'm sorry I couldn't get sober.
But if you got any mercy that much, I could use it right about now. If you spare me for a little while, just spare me, whatever life you give me, I'll give it back to you. There's a God that heard that prayer. You know, he spoke to my heart and said, the reason you can't get sober is you're in my way. I heard that just as plain as day. I was 47 more days in that hospital and I didn't die. They carried me back to that nursing home.
I couldn't walk. I was crippled. He said, well, they sent me to a rehab and for four months, these girls would work my legs with weights. And they put me on a walker and I got walking again. And then I got a cane or crutches and then a cane. Then I walked up three steps and I could walk again. They took me back to the nursing home. They had already taken the tubes out. And I was there for like months.
And then six months later, I'm walking across the parking lot because the doctor says walk. And I walked out of the nursing home across the lot and there's a Rite Aid and a liquor store right there. And a thought hit this alcoholic mind. I need a drink. After everything, I need a drink. That's the alcohol obsession kicking in. And I looked at the liquor store and God spoke, remember our covenant. You know where I went?
Right back to that hospital bed and what I had said, spare me. And whatever I got left, I'll give you. It was just like a flashback on a screen. And I said, and I looked around and there was a drunk I used to drink with, Santa, just come out of that liquor store. And he saw me. And my beard was gone. My hair was cut. I put some food juice on. I smelled good. And he looked and said, Rip, what happened to you?
What? Because he told me, me and you, man. He had a full bottle of Jack Daniels. Me and you. That's how much money he got. He said $50. I said, nah. He said, why not? He says, I gargle with the court. Ain't enough. If I'm starting, I'm starting. He said, well, how did you get stopped drinking anyway? I didn't tell him all the stuff I went through. I said, well, I got sick. But I know, I told him where the meeting was.
You know that guy went to a meeting, he's been sober ever since. That drunk. God spoke to my heart and said, that's your job from now on. It ain't helping drunk. It ain't doing what you're getting them drunks. Your job, Floyd, is going to be carry the message and get out of my way. Because that ain't your job. You see these bumper stickers? God, my co-pilot, he's in the wrong seat. You got to get a hold of that.
He's in the wrong seat. God used to tell me all the time, Floyd, get out of my chair. You're in my seat again. Because I want to run the show. Let me do this. I'm going to go out here and save Kettingsburg from outlawism. You ain't going to do nothing, man. Floyd, carry the message and get out of my way. And I had a while to get that in my head. I was sober. I was sitting on that nurse at home trying to get my ducks in a row.
And I was going to meetings. The guy who became my sponsor would pick me up, take me to a meeting. I'd sit there with a cup of coffee and listen to you guys speak. I think they're crazy. They actually believe that stuff. But very slowly, it says in the reading, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, that things started soaking in. And some woman came and spoke one night. And I heard something. She said, I can't even remember what it was.
And I remember saying, that makes sense. To this alcoholic baby brain, that made sense. And from that point on, I started listening. And then I started getting better. I started getting a reason to stay sober. And people would come by the meeting and give me a shirt, a pair of jeans. Because I had nothing. I was in a nursing home.
[00:40:00]
Welfare was paying for it. I moved out of there finally. They put me on, well, I got a check from welfare, SSI, because I lost my lung. And I went down there. And I got a little room. And I started, I painted a guy's door. He gave me $50. I was like, wow. And then I got a guy that gave me some money for painting his porch. And I opened up my first savings account at 61 years old. I opened up my first savings account.
And I went and got a driver's license. Guy says, do you have a driver's license? I said, I don't need a driver's license. I got a million-dollar equipment I ride around with. I got a chauffeur that drives me around the country. I don't need a driver's license. I ride around with a million-dollar equipment. That thinking had to change. But God's merciful. God comes. And he speaks to my heart in that special way.
He says, don't pick up a drink and go to a meeting and take a cup of coffee to somebody and give it to them. And I started doing those little service things. And God blessed my life. I come home from a meeting one night, and I got a phone call. And I was at the meeting. And they said, your brother called. My brother's a lawyer. I said, what's he want? He never calls me. Well, I just called. I called him and said, what?
He said, remember that three-year-old kid I told you about? He grew up. He's 23 years old now. You know where he's at in the ruins of AA? He's sober four years. His sponsor said, you need to find your father. He asked my ex-wife about me. Said, he's dead, probably, the way he lives. The only thing I can tell you about him, he's got a brother who's an attorney in Pennsylvania. He found my brother. That's how he found me.
So I call him, and I don't know what to say. So I write to him. And I figure, well, he's telling me about how great he's doing in the program and all that stuff. I'm sober two years I had built up. And I'm going to meetings. I don't really have it yet, but I'm learning. And my sponsor comes to me and says, how much money you got in the bank from that painting you've been doing? I says, about $400. He says, it's time.
Get a plane ticket and go out to see your son. You need to heal this thing once and for all. Oh, man. So I get a plane ticket. I fly out to Omaha, where he was at. Plane's landing. The same thing I thought before. What am I going to say to this kid? I have nothing to say to him. I don't even know him. I get off the plane. I go to the baggage to get my bag. He's standing there with his sponsor. I knew him right away.
He looks just like his dad. Poor kid. But here he was. He come up to me right away. He put his arms around me, kissed me on my neck. He said, dad, I hold no animosity towards you. All I want is a relationship with my father. And he took me home with him. And he goes in the bedroom, comes out and hands me a six-month-old grandchild. And I'm standing there. My son's in front of me. I'm holding my grandchild.
And I said, what the hell happened here? And his sponsor says, you know what happened? You didn't pick up a drink. And God honors that. He honors it. Everybody here that didn't take a drink today, and you're the alcoholic of my caliber, he honors that. We have a beautiful relationship today. I led for him out there. He came to Cantersburg and led for me. Father-son team. It was great. Got to know my grandchildren.
And we have a beautiful relationship. So I keep on doing it. Then guess what? Greenbrier Treatment Center called me. They want me to work for them. So I went to school. They paid for it. They hired me. You imagine? I'm under the bridge. I'm going to work at Greenbrier, boy. They gave me an office. Can you believe it? Now I'm dealing with these 18, 19-year-old drunks coming in here trying to tell me what it's all about.
I look at it and say, you know, I tried that 30 years ago. It didn't work then either. Now physically, my body's healing. I'm putting on weight. You know, I stand here today, 210 pounds. I just got from a doctor last week. You know what? He says, you're better shaped than I am. Cirrhosis, pancreas, I don't know where it's at. Don't care. It's not there. It's gone. That's God. I don't care how you cut that.
I don't care what your belief is. I believe God still heals. He healed Floyd because he had a job for me. I worked at Greenbrier for a halfway house with 25 men alcoholics. And boy, you just want a trip. You work with 25 of those. Oh, man. And they're all from the courts, the penitentiary. And I'm saying, oh, God. And God will try. And he sees me. It's the best experience I had because he taught me.
And then God speaks to my heart. He said, not only do he wants me to work with the alcoholic and the drug addict, he wants me to work with the downtrodden. People have been beat up by life. Because he said, Floyd, you know what it is to be suffered and be beat up by life in general. I work with homosexuals, hookers. that are crazy or what the heck.
[00:45:01]
What God puts in front of me, I just tell them that there is a God and He's still alive and He loves you. The only reason God never helped me before in all those years, you know why? Because when I was born, He gave me the freedom of will to do with my life as I chose, and I did that. And He stood there like this for 60 years and wept as I was killing myself. But the day that I asked Him, help me, He said, that's all I've been waiting for.
He rolled up the sleeves and went to work and the product that stands here today, I tell you, He's alive and well. And He brought me to the other end and I realized that He loved me, He didn't hate me. I go home and my brother, I was going home to visit and I would leave and come back to visit. I went there for three years sober, back and forth. He never believed I was sober, he said, he comes up here and he's sober, he goes back to Pittsburgh and gets drunk, because he couldn't believe the transformation.
Then one day when I'm up there three years later and I'm walking with him on a path, he says, you finally convinced me. And I said, what? He said, you found something. And says, I'm so glad to have my brother back. My nieces come to me and they hug me and my nephews and people in my hometown can't believe that's not Floyd Ridley, you know. And people like that, they don't believe the miracle happened.
I go to have coffee in the morning in my hometown of Gettysburg right now. I go in there and the chief police is sitting there and the mayor, what have you. Come on Floyd, join us. Can you believe a mayor? Have coffee, have breakfast with me. Darling, I lived on the South Street Bridge. Come and have coffee with me. He says, the walking miracle, that's what they called me. I remember having three years sober.
I have a ring at home in the jewelry box. You know who gave it to me? The police department. They got the money and pulled it and bought me a ring for my anniversary. It was a little gift from us because they know not only did I get sober, but they know I helped. I make their job easier, they told me. I work with a lot of street drunks. I love Alcoholics Anonymous, what it did for me. Two weeks ago, I got to share this.
Two weeks ago, I come home from a meeting and I'm sitting there and the phone rings. I had a woman in my life 37 years ago that I had a daughter with and she took the daughter at eight months old and left and said, bye. For years, I looked for her and my daughter and I couldn't find her. The phone rings and I said, this is Floyd, this is Jennifer Nicole. That was my daughter. She's 37 years old, lives in Garden City, Kansas, is a school teacher, 17-year-old grandchild who just graduated high school, went in the Army, wants to be a military policeman.
She's got another two and a half year old grandchild and she's pregnant, having a baby and she probably has to speak. I said, how did you find me? He said, you remember a while back you was on the internet with my girlfriend and I couldn't find her. And I said, well, my girl said, let's try the internet. And we found her grandmother's obituary. And that told me that my ex-wife's new married name. That's why I couldn't find her.
Her last name was different. I called and got her office. She has an advertising business in Nebraska. I left a message with her secretary to give that to my daughter, my phone number. She said I walked around for days with that phone number, my aunt and dad, and I was scared to death to call. My husband, who's a forest ranger, said, that's your father, you need to call. What do you say, 37 years later?
So I sent her some pictures and a letter. She sent me some pictures and a letter. I got a beautiful daughter. Grandchild was beautiful. You know, it's odd because she's dark haired like her mother. She married a guy who has dark hair. The kids are all redhead and blue eyes. I bet her husband was looking, what's going on out there? I bet he was flipping out there for a while anyway. But we're starting that relationship.
She called me here last week and told me, Dad, I got to call and tell you I'm scared. Others are. I said, I know. I said, take your time. Buddha's right. She said, it's like talking to a stranger. I said, I know. You are. When you feel comfortable, we'll even meet in neutral territory. I'll meet you in Denver and we'll spend the weekend together, me, you and your husband. I said, thanks, Dad, for understanding.
I said, I'm not pushing this thing.
[00:50:00]
I got, God's giving me my daughter's back. I know what's going to happen. That's restoration of a family. Only God can do that kind of thing. If you got a problem with a higher power, with God or anything this morning, the only thing I can tell you is that I had tried every conceivable way there was to live this life where I could find some peace and I lost. And all I did was try him. A guy told me, Floyd, you have nothing to lose by trying.
If God's a myth and it's all phony and God isn't what we said he was, you're going to die and you're going to get the same thing everybody else gets, six feet of dirt. But if he's real, you in trouble, as you don't know. I don't want to play Russian roulette with the hereafter. So I'm going to be right any way I go, believing the way I believe. So, well, look at all, if there's no God, look at all the findings.
I'm not going to know that. If there was any sin in doing what I was doing, I missed it because that was hard, devastating work that I did and it was devastating and hard on the body and everything else. I'm not going to know what I missed because I'm going to be dead. So I think there's, I believe there's something here. I just want to encourage you that if you don't know a God or a higher power, you don't have nothing to lose this morning by maybe checking them out.
If you ain't got one, you can borrow mine because he told me to say that. I talked to him in the men's room a little while ago because I told him, I don't know what I'm doing. He said, well, just be like Moses, open your mouth, I'll talk. I'm so grateful that you were here today and I got a little message to give you hope that there is a God who loves you. That's why you're here. He loves me and he gives me the privilege to come and share with you a little bit.
And I share my, and I end my leads with a certain way and I hope you don't mind the way I end them. Last night I dreamed I passed away and left this world behind. I started down that lonely road, my destiny to find. I came to the crossroads where a bright sign did tell, turn left to heaven, my friend, or go right to hell. I didn't have to stay long. I knew the path to take. So I started down that beaten road that leads to Satan's place.
Satan met me at the gate. What's your name, my friend? I'm just Floyd, who came to a sad, sad end. Satan went through his files and said, you made a mistake, I fear. You're listed as an alcoholic. We don't want you here. So I went back the way I came and that bright sign I did see and I turned left to heaven as happy as I could be. St. Peter was waiting at the gate, his files in his hand. And I knew it wouldn't be too long till I met the main, main man.
Come Floyd, my friend, for you I have a new birth. You're listed as an alcoholic. You've had your hell on earth. With a heart full of joy I entered in and what to my surprise to see my old buddy Bill and Cliff and a friend named Lee. There was Kathy, Tonya, and Lorraine and a gal named Belle and I was sure happy. I thought they went to hell. You can learn something from my trip. You have a place in heaven if you try hard not to slip.
If someone tempts you with a drink when you're not feeling well, you just tell them, loved ones, you're going to heaven. You've already been to hell. Thank you.