I have done just a little bit of drinking in Abilene, just a little bit back in the fruit jar days. That was back in the days when the old Grace Hotel over by the railroad track was the leading hotel, and it was when Lindbergh was flying the Atlantic. I had an old boy over there. We, we shared a big corner room in the Grace Hotel. That was when I was doing my, my, uh, my practice work. And he would get drunk and horrible shitty. I didn’t know what was the wrong, wrong, the matter with him. We’d have to tie him to that old brass bed. I can shut my eyes and see it. Spread-eagle him, ankles and wrists. He’d go absolutely nuts. Good guy, too, you know it? Most alcoholics are good guys and good gals. We found the program here, a lot of us quite by accident, if we choose to look at it that way. I don’t. I, I, I’ve got to believe that- .. that higher power of ours steered each and every one of us at the time he selected for us to cross trails with AA.

I don’t think there’s any element of, of accident attached to it at all. I, I’ve heard so often people in AA say, “I wish I had known about it 10 years ago.” Well, I just can’t feel that way about it. I’m, uh, I’m thankful I found it just when I did and just how I found it because I believe that was the time my higher power selected for me to find it. Since that time over in the Grace Hotel, I’ve learned considerable about an alcoholic. I learned the hard way about the lonesomeness attached to their lives, the abject humiliation of, of coming halfway to and realizing what we’ve done to our families and to our friends and to our associates. It’s a horrible awakening. We’ve got tonight a, a wonderful guy, a wonderful speaker, a physician, an alcoholic. He’s seen both sides of it, and I know he’s going to give you a wonderful story. And after his message, there will be a very brief intermission, and then a big surprise, so everybody stay hitched.

And I’d like right now to introduce you to Dr. Jim from Kerrville. Thank you, Ollie. Well, um, Ollie was up here bragging about one of his drunken episodes in which he didn’t black out. He remembers the name of the hotel and how the guy looked. He’s– There are some of us that, including myself, that we do remember a few episodes, but many of them are blank. Very interesting here what he said about the civilian, the mayor pro tem. Uh, I, my wife, Marge, and I were standing at the elevator on the mezzanine here, and two or three people came out of the elevator, and a man followed them, and he looked at the sign Les Ross has out there on the alcoholic program. He saw the word alcohol, and he ran back and started batting against the door of the elevator a while ago. Said, “I’m on the wrong floor.” Now, that’s, that is certainly the way that I, I, I could see myself, I could see, uh, Dr. Jim many times in that position.