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Source: Julian B – Palm Springs Desert Roundup (1986) – Date Unknown.mp3 File: julian-b-palm-springs-desert-roundup-1986-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:43:16
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Good evening. I am Julian B., an alcoholic. Hi, Julian. This is some crowd. Before I forget it, let me thank the committee for asking me here. They've made other mistakes. I can't help but feel, and I tell you the things I feel, I never know for sure what I'm going to say. But I feel like a kid back home we had back in the mountains. I'm a Virginia hillbilly. You'll find this out very shortly. And this boy was about ten years old, and he'd never spoken until one morning.
He said, this damn gravy's lumpy. At ten years old, they all jumped up and said, my lord, what happened? Isn't this wonderful? Why have you never spoken before? He says, everything's been all right up to now. And that's just the way I feel. I drink liquor a long time. You can tell by looking at me I've been somewhere a long time. I was born way back in the bloomer days. Some of you here are old enough to know when that was.
And back in the mountains where I come from, they made bloomers out of flour sacks. I don't know if I was an alcoholic at this time or not, but I begin to have trouble about the time self-rising flour come out. Most alcoholic stories are somewhat alike, and you'll find mine somewhat different. By that I mean most people you hear talk say we started drinking as kids, and my main drinking started back in college.
I never drank in college. I never went to college. I didn't have any trouble in high school either. I think as well as I can remember, I was well up around the third grade. See, where I came from back in the mountain, I was born and raised on a farm. My father died when I was young. We eat what we're raised, and my mother liked to eat, and we worked. And you went to school. You didn't go to school until you graduated.
You went to school, you got big enough to plow. And I remember very well one time going to school, and we had a nice-looking schoolteacher. And I was looking at her about like a lot of people look at this program. Nice for other people, but not me. And one day coming home from school, we were playing ball, and the ball came down, and when I caught the ball, she had her arms around me. I turned around, and she kissed me. I was big enough to plow.
I jumped every fence from there home. I get a lot of kidding about my education. I learned a lot while some of you were going to college, actually. I do get kidded a lot about it. It's a one-room country school. But actually, we were further advanced there at the time I went to school than some of your big colleges are today. In other words, they're still arguing about whether or not to teach sex, and we had it then, only we called it recess.
But as soon as I got big enough to swim the river, I left home. I lived right on the Shenandoah River in the Trades Valley, Virginia. Very beautiful place. And I wanted to get out of that farming business. I knew enough about farming not to do it. And as I say, I was raised on the farm, so I went to the big city to make my fortune.
[00:05:02]
And you might say that I started my second phase of my drinking on 9th Street in Washington, D.C., which was then known as Skid Row. I won't say much about it, but the whole place is now, I mean. But this is where you did your panhandling, and I did. I panhandled on 9th Street many years ago to get money to go to the old Gaiety Theater. And this went on from then on. I had no respect or time or reason to think or think of anybody else.
I didn't. I worked a little. I had to to get a little money, to get a little liquor, to get a little strength, to work a little more, to get a little more money, to get a little more strength, to get a little money, to buy some more liquor. I went around like that until my hair all flew out. I mean, it was just one big shirt. I cared nothing, as I say, about anyone else. I was a lot like my brother back on the farm.
One day a man came by with a load of hay and sat out in front of the house. My brother said, Come on in and have dinner. And he said, I better go. The old man's going to raise hell. And he said, Now, come on. He went in. He said, Eat dinner. Sit there a while. He said, I got to go. The old man's going to raise hell. I kept saying this. And finally my brother said, Where is he? The old man's going to raise all this hell.
He said, He's out there under that load of hay. So this is the way things went with me. I'd get drunk and go somewhere. Wherever I sobered up, that's where I lived. I would come back once in a while. I did send for money. I'd send home for money. I never got any, but I had as much money with me. I had as much money with me as they had at home. I got $3 one time from Kansas City. They didn't want me to starve to death, but I don't think they wanted me to get all the way home, either.
This is the way things was going. As a matter of fact, I was wandering around and didn't know what was really happening. I felt like old Uncle Joe come in one morning after a drunk dragging a rope, and he said he didn't know whether he'd found a rope or lost a mule. And that's the way I was. I mean, I had no particular place to go, no time to get there. I hitchhiked both directions on the same road.
Well, I didn't know half the time where I came from, so it didn't make much difference where I was going. And when I'd get there, that's where I lived. And by coincidence, I would seem to fall in with the same kind of group of people. Now, back in the Depression days, where I was on the East Coast, they used to lock you up for riding trains. Well, no, I got out in the Midwest, and they would round us up and make us get on a freight train to get out of town.
They didn't want us around. And I wasn't doing any harm to anybody but me, and I didn't know it. As I say, I drank. I didn't know what the trouble was. I could see that I wasn't getting anywhere. I didn't know why. But I knew that I wasn't having a very good time. Now, many of you had drinking spells and this, that, and the other, and finally I wandered around and tried. I thought I tried everything else.
I tried getting married. And you young people here don't do that. I mean, it don't help. I got a very beautiful, wonderful wife here. She stayed with me. She didn't have anywhere to go. As good as she is and as much as I love her and as great a woman as I think she is, I often felt like by her, like a fellow was going down the street and he had a little dog on his arm and the fellow said, What you got there?
He says, I got this for my wife. He says, I wish to God I could make a trade like that. I often felt like that.
[00:10:00]
I tell this for what it's worth and in case there may be some psychiatrists in the room, maybe they could use it. I used to drink until my wrist watch would get heavy and I knew that I had to do something. And I'd get up and get out in the living room and just about the day that I thought, you know, there's days you go through you don't know whether you're going to make it or not. See, I didn't pull many one-night stands.
I either got drunk in the spring or the fall. And about the time I would think I was going to live and get out in the living room to the Davenport and lay down, she'd come in and start that damn carpet sweeper around. We got, I think, about 12 grandchildren now and they're all afraid of carpet sweepers. So I say, if there's any of you here that helps. And I'd like to say to you young people, you look at me and wonder, I haven't always looked like this.
I mean, I felt just like a lot of you young people that probably are around looking at this thing or the way I felt when I came in. I went in and here's such a whole bunch of old people around the table. Looked about like I look now. False teeth, glasses, leaning over, shaking and walking at the cane. I mean, says, if you want what we got. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Sure, I didn't want a darn thing they had.
But don't let that fool you hang around, folks. It gets better. But I say, when I would get real sick and couldn't stand it any longer, I'd take off and go back to the mountain where I should have stayed in the first place. I mean, if I'd have stayed back home, I left, you know, to amount to something. I don't know what it was going to be, but I was going to… If I'd have stayed back there and made axe handles, I'd have been the biggest axe handle maker back there now.
Nobody else makes them anymore. But I'd get drunk and go back to the mountain and sober up. And I'd lay down by a spring. We had springs all over the place and I'd lay out there in the woods by the spring and drink spring water and throw it up before it got warm. About three days of this will do just as good for you as any 28-day program I know of. And I'll guarantee you, you will remember it a lot longer.
And I, like everybody else, I'd lay there and worry about things. It was none of my business. We had trains. In Luray, Virginia, there's three trains. You'd go through there every day going south and two going north. And I'd lay there and worry about them getting all the trains down south. I didn't have much education, but I knew that three south, two north, sooner or later they're going to all get down there.
And I wondered how they got them back. I've been sober many years now and I still don't know how the hell they get them back. But I've learned that this is none of my business. They don't know any more about running the railroad than that. I can't let them get them all down there. I accept things like that that I can't change anymore. Learning to do this was a great thing for me. As I've said, when I got in here, I got so sick that I didn't think I was going to live and my wife called the doctor.
He came out to see me and he told her to give her some pills to give me. She gave me some and said when he wakes up, give him another one. He was asleep for about eight hours and about ten minutes I got up and started out and she gave me another one. With no clothes on, I started out the house and she gave me another one. And I went to bed and I saw all the things that I thought that I would see when I died.
I saw my people that had died years before out there in the yard making arrangements for me to get there. She thought she'd kill me and was kind of proud of it, I think. She'd kill me and was kind of proud of it, I think. She never admitted it.
[00:15:00]
But this was a revelation to me when she said, this doctor says there's a bunch of fellows getting together down there over the liquor store, and I don't know what they are doing, but whatever it is, he better start doing it. And I went down to see him. Well, as you know by now, I talk mountain talk and this fellow that I talked to was a full-blooded Scotchman that just crawled out from under the bridge in Scotland and came to this country. I couldn't understand him. He couldn't understand me. So I had to go back to see what was going on. And by the grace of God and the help of you people, I haven't had a drink since. That was 1947.
It's a long time ago. And if I was to tell you the great things that have happened to me, you would not believe it. I think some of it are stories myself, but I've told them so much, and I learned how to live in this program. The teaching of these twelve steps is a way of life that is second to none. As I say, learning how to live is a great thing. You'll hear many fancy great stories in this program. You young people can expect and will happen to you, you can hear great fabulous success stories.
With very few years of sobriety, many people become very successful and make a lot of money and get drunk again. I've seen this happen. I stand before you tonight, a sober man with many years of sobriety, and I have nothing to offer but the power of example. I am living proof that you can stay sober and not amount to a damn thing. You really don't have to. Just don't work too hard. There isn't a drunk in here that didn't either not work after six months or got two jobs. They either overdo or do nothing. I raised two children in this program, which is no better way in the world to raise children than by the teachings of this twelve-step program. I know that some of you have teenagers that you wonder about or are having trouble with.
I assure you that they'll make it. You may not, but they will. I know. How, I don't know. Many things turn out right, I mean, that you, if you keep out of the way. Now I made, of course, I got sober and like everybody else I made some arrangement. A poor man doesn't do business, he just makes arrangements. And I learned a lot from these old boys that told me what to do and they told me what to do. And I got a few fellows working for me. Now one of the parts of the program that I learned and the other one has come to me naturally. Your anonymity is safe with me, I'll forget who you are before I get out of here. But I say, I raised two kids in here and I learned how to live. Now this is far greater than making a living. Anybody can make a living. These kids that I raised and the way that I learned how to live was by going into business for myself. Nobody hire you, that's what you do. If you, you people think you've had a mess, I made a living hanging paper. Now that is a mess if you're dumb. But I had a few fellows working for me and one morning before breakfast one of them called up and said he'd be late when a painter's right, he's drunk. Before breakfast was over two of them called up. One of them the streetcar one was on running a bus, the other one was on. Very likely drunken story. I told my wife, I said it looked like it's gonna be a nice day. So I started out and I went out on the job and when I got on the first job the plaster didn't show up and the man was raising the dickens about his ceiling wasn't fixed right and this was going wrong and all and the man wasn't there. I believe the wheel began to turn. I'd been sober about eight months. I went on over on another job to collect some money and the man said I'd charge him too much he wasn't gonna pay me. I left there immediately and went to another job and
[00:20:04]
when I got there my wife called me on the job. That unknown built-in radar that these Al-Anons have that know about where you are, whether you know it or not. She said hurry home. I said what's wrong now? She said well your brother is drunk again, sick, got ZTs. He had them when they first come out. He's got DTs and you got to get him in the hospital and said while you was gone the oil man came and the oil tank's leaking. I said I'll be right home. By this time it was about 11 o'clock and I headed directly home. I went home and I opened the front door. I did not stop. I had a little office on the side of the house and I went right on into the bedroom and she came in and I was undressed. She said what are you doing? I said they told me to learn how to take it easy and I've I've had enough things to make me drunk a half a dozen times I'm going to bed.
And I did. I wanted to stay sober. I went to bed. I stayed in bed until supper time. I got up. We don't eat dinner. We eat supper in the evenings at home. I ate supper. I went back to bed. I was afraid to go out. I didn't want to get drunk. The next morning when I got up as truly as I'm standing here tonight before you every drunken painter I had showed up. The plaster came to work. The man had fixed his own ceiling. Fellow found the wrong bill and he paid me. My brother's in the hospital doing good and if the washer didn't fill up on the oil thing it quit leaking.
I've been taking it easy ever since. This could be one of the reasons I never amounted to too much but I have arrived at the point of where a lot of people work all day and all years and many years to get to where they can take it easy. To give you an example, some of the things I say up here make sense to me later on. It may not right now but one day I'll open a little store on the front of the house so I could buy stuff wholesale.
I really I live within two blocks of a big hex department store and I really they took in thousands and thousands of dollars there and some of them have to stay until midnight to count the money. I could close at four o'clock and be in bed two minutes after four. I mean it was that simple and this came to me one day I closed at noon. My wife said that's a fine way to run a store. I said I'm running this one. If it starts running me we'll close it. A fella come by and he said what are you doing? I said I'm going fishing. He said what? I said I'm closing up. I'm going fishing. Want to go along? He said I can't go. I said why can't you go? He said I got to work. I said why you got to work? He said because I'm broke. I said how long you been on this job? He said four years. I said hell you could have gone fishing four years ago and just got back.
You know it made sense to me and I still learn now and do take it easy. I do the same thing with these kids I was telling you about. I raised two children in this program and they live by the program. One of them drinks a little too much I think but they still he lived but that's in the program too. One night this boy stayed out he came in it was about five years old I think I don't remember dates names but the man next door is a fella pulled up in the car and parked out there all night and the boy said I think that man ought to go to AA and I said you don't know what AA is and he said yes I do. I said well tell me I don't know. He said it's a place for retired drunks. This boy grew up when he got to be about 18 years old one night he stayed out all night. My wife was up looking out the window for him all in the night. You wouldn't think it by looking at me but I
[00:25:02]
can remember having been about 18. I knew about what was going on. She acted like she didn't. She kept me awake and the next morning when I got up about seven o'clock they was out in the kitchen and I got a little sleep and got up when I got out there. I was very proud of this boy really she was asking him a lot of questions and he was answering wasn't telling her a damn thing. Well when he got through he said aren't you gonna say anything and I said well I'll straighten it all out I was 18 once. He looked at me kind of funny he'd always listen to me and I said just keep it simple. I said son if you had a decent girl out you shouldn't kept her that long she wasn't you shouldn't taken that long I mean it's that simple.
These are facts of life we've got to live with. I mean you're not going to change some of these things. You've got to learn to live with and apply what sensible reasonable thinking you can towards these kids. They are different. Everything's different. I mean even my hunting days were different. I was a great hunter in my day. I used to save up money and buy a lot of liquor and go back down the mountains and go hunt. I can sit in my room now. I went back to the mountains where I belong. I live in the same house I was born in. I got a big sign out on the road says Bozerman's last stand. I hunted deer for 35 years. I used to take some shells with me when I go and really I did I hunted deer for 35 years and never did get one and you'd look out my back window and see them running through the field. You'd think as much as I laid out in the woods drunk one would have laid down by me and died.
But of all of these things that I went through got me to where I learned about this AA program. When I came into AA in Washington there were two meetings there and I would travel around and go to different places to meetings and incidentally I don't know of anybody that I ever really helped got sober. One fella I'm sure that I helped. He passed away about two years ago. I went to see him down in the drying out joint, goon and roost or whatever we used to call these places and the old boy was real sick and after I talked he came up to me and shook my hand. He said I'm glad I heard you. He said any SB as crazy as you are can stay sober. It'd be an insult to my intelligence to ever drink again. He never took another drink so I'm sure I helped him. Others I don't know about but I do know that all I can do is tell you what it did for me and as I say things beyond my fondest dreams happened. Great things happened to me. I mean by that I learned how to live. I learned how to live and I learned of a God of my understanding and the love of you people which is second to none. Say great love has man for his brother greater yet for his mother but no greater love was ever known than one old drunk for another. I believe this. I have deep feelings towards the bunch that came in when I did. They've about all passed away.
They're getting scarce and I believe now what a fellow told me a few years ago he said don't get old it'll kill you and I'm darn near sure of it. And I began to feel like old Bertha in our group one time said I said how you feeling Bertha? She said well as I tell you Julian I can't get to feeling good all over at the same time. But I feel better with a bunch of drunks on a trip like this than any other.
how to live. I've learned how to understand this God of my understanding. And all I had
[00:30:06]
to do was do what you people told me. But to you and to you new people or young people, this is your program. I can't tell you what to do. You have to do it yourself. I can explain this better to you by telling you of a story they told me when I came in. There was an old fellow went on a trip. He took his secretary with him. And when he got to the hotel, they only had one room. He said, You've been my secretary a long time. Do you mind sharing a room? She said, No. They went in to hang up some blankets between the beds and went to bed. And she said, I'm cold. And he got up and closed the window and got back in his own bed. She said, I'm still cold. He said, There's some cover over there on the chair.
She said, I know there is, but I'm still cold. He said, You want to play like we're married? She said, Yeah, yeah. He said, Well, get up and get your own damn cover. You got to get your you got to get up and get your own program. We can't get it for you. The way I see the program and the way you see it may be entirely different. I'm not. I belong to the big book group in New Ray, Virginia. And we go by the book. But the way I see it and the way you see it may be entirely different. I learned of a God of my understanding that I never knew about before. I learned that prayer does pay. Honest prayer is answered. And I'm sure of this. I'm sure you can pray like my old uncle did it and expect to get anything. I don't know longer got drunk one night and thought he was going to die. And he called in Jenny and said, How about saying a little prayer for me? And she dropped down on her knees. I think she was a little hopped up to drop down on her knees and said, Dear Lord, please forgive my poor drunken husband. He said, Oh, hell, don't tell him I'm drunk. Tell him I got the flu. I don't think this will do it. But if you mean business, be careful what you pray for. You might get it. I know this and I don't know how to tell you the way I feel about it. But I know it pays off. I don't try to explain my feeling about a higher power. I know it's here. I know there's no drunk hanging up that moon or the sun. There did to be a lot more cloudy days than there is. I feel like the old fellow was preaching. And he kept talking and talking. And finally, he says, All of you want to go to heaven, stand up. And they all got up except this one old boy. And he said, Don't you want to go to heaven? He said, Yeah, when I die. I said, I thought you'd get another load to go right now. And also the fellow, somebody explained that one of the speakers that I've heard some of the best talks I've ever heard here since I've been here, each and every one of them seems to surpass the other. Put me in an awful spot for tonight. But you got you got to have some bad with the good. But I know that my prayers have been answered and I have all I need, not all I want. I have the love of so many people all over the country. And the love that is expressed here and amongst the AAs, I have never found any other place. You have a great, great, kindred feeling that comes with this program. And you don't work and get this program, you stick around this program until it gets you. How it gets you is up to you. I don't know how to tell you. I know how that if you kick about everything, they told me long, long ago that a said a mule can't pull while he's kicking. He can't kick if he's pulling. So don't kick about your program. Somebody said last night, don't go change programs and louse up somebody else's meeting. Stick to your own and do what you can. It's here. Just a matter of when and how you find it. I've met some people here that I've known for many years. I don't know how to tell you how I like being here. I love the people in AA. I
[00:35:03]
travel a lot and talk to a lot of people. Some people say I've helped them. One of the things is, and I don't like, I know that the time must change, things do change, but I know that we are lacking a lot of sponsorship. We are lacking a lot of 12-step calls. And I heard, I happened to be privileged to hear Dr. Bob make his last talk. And he said with tears in his eyes, for God's sake, boys, don't louse it up. Keep it simple. Please keep it simple. Keep it any simpler than I am, you might not get it at all. But keep it simple. I also heard Bill Wilson make his last talk.
And he always, never answered a question with try it. If it works, it's good. I believe we are passing the time of trying it. We try too many things. One of the things we try is not telling people when they come in what they should do. They don't all look like, I mean, the girls don't look like they did when I came in. We had a fellow in Florida that a very good friend of mine now that stayed around for four years before he got sober. This too is all right, but nobody told him to stop drinking. No, they said just keep coming to meetings. Said every time you want a drink, eat a candy bar. Said he got so he could hardly take a drink without eating a candy bar. I don't care what anybody, your sponsor or your counselor or whoever it might be tells you, you've got to stop drinking along with it. And you got to get out and do something in this program for yourself. You do more good. I do more good trying to help somebody else than I ever did having them help me. I am a true honest believer that it is impossible to do good for anybody without having it return some way. To look at me and to see from where I came, from a bum, a traveling bum, from Skid Row, I've been all the way from Mission Street in Frisco to the Bowery in New York. And to come from that to this is a hell of a long ways, I can tell you, and enjoyed it all the way along. I owe an awful lot of this to the Al-Anon, to my wife. This gal here has been great to me as your Al-Anon is to you. But I have to do some of it myself. I had to do something. I did a lot of wrong things, but I didn't drink. And I know there's better ways of working this program, but always remember, as far as I'm concerned, I served a little time in the service in the last war. A fellow said, you look kind of old being in the service. I said, yeah, I was kind of old. Says, you do any fighting? I said, yeah, I fought like hell, but they took me anyway.
I mean, I told an officer aboard ship, I said, there's nobody on here knows as much as me and him both. And the officer didn't believe that. I swept that thing, but I got my reward. I got out and alive. And the same thing happens in here. You hear a lot of things you don't want to hear. And if you can make some people in me, one of them, you'd make some people mad enough, they might stay sober. I've done it. I told the fellow the other night he was in bad company when he was by himself. He didn't like it, but he stayed sober. So I said, I don't know what happened, but I do know you have to do a lot of this yourself and put something into this program.
You can't get anything out of it if you don't put something in and don't expect to. We had an old boy down home that had a horse that he liked and they got, he got drafted in the service and he had this horse he wanted to keep. And he said, yes, command said, how about you keeping my horse? Said, okay. I said, how much? He said, $50 a month. And I get the manure. He said, that's too
[00:40:01]
much money. He went on to another old farm. He said, what do you keep my horse for? He said, $25. And I get the manure. He said, I'm going to be gone two years. He drove on down and pulled into an old ramshackle barn. He said, Mr. Woodell, you keep my horse for, he said, $10 a month. He said, who gets the manure? He said, $10 a month. There won't be any. So if you don't, if you don't put anything in this program, don't expect to get anything out of it. I know it's getting hot and you all are getting ready to dance and it's, uh, it's getting late and my time's about up. I had a lot of stories I wanted to tell you. I just haven't got time, but maybe I'll be back. I'd like to thank each and every one of you for being so nice to me. There was a time when people didn't seem to want me around much. I say that a lot of things that I'd love to tell you, a lot of things I forget that I should have told you. But I still, the main thing that I go on today is that for you people that think that there is a great utopia, there is no such thing. This pursuit of happiness is what it's all about. You ever caught up with it, you'd be in a hell of a fix. There's nowhere to go. From where you are, learn how to live. This I have done. Life don't begin at any one particular time. Life begins when you're at peace with yourself, your fellow man, and your God as you understand him. This is when you start living. This today, I have reached this point in life and been doing it for many years. I live almost accidentally. I don't know just how it happens.
It helps if your wife works and she's quit. But I would like to thank every one of you for being so nice to me and inviting me here to the committee and to all of you. And especially, I think, Fred and his wife have been especially nice to me and I've seen things here in the desert. I still don't know why they built a town out here to start with. I've seen a lot since I've been out here. I've met a lot of lovely people and the whole program has worked all around for me. All I have to do is just don't take a drink and it seems to work out. I just feel like the old man had got a fiddle and he played that fiddle, his wife ought to go nuts. One of them one string jobs. He just seesaw, seesaw. She said, I don't get it. Most people run their hand up and down the neck of that thing. He said, yeah, I know they do. He said, they're looking for something. I found what I want. Thank you.