Anniversary. Uh, I think the Lord, uh, allowed me to quit drinking on Thanksgiving Day so that I would remember it and be thankful. And it’s a very great day every year. I look forward to Thanksgiving. It’s a very special event for me. Uh, that was the morning I, I called up my friend Steve Foreman and said, “Steve, I think I’ve got a drinking problem, and would you help me to stop drinking?” And he said, “Yes, I will, and we’ll start today.” I thought he would give me a, an appointment for the following week or something. But, um, thank, thank God, the most important thing on his mind at that moment was my sobriety. And, uh, thank God for, for him and Clarence Snyder and Grace and you people, members of AA, and the Big Book, and, uh, most of all, my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I’m very thankful to Him. So, uh, tonight, um, uh, Harold Hill is, uh, gonna be speaking, and I have the privilege of introducing him. Um, I want to mention a couple things.

Um, I was, uh, listening to the speakers and some of the programs that have been going on, some of the literature that I’ve seen, and, uh, I was, um, was seeking something that I could relate to you that would maybe be meaningful. And, um, the thought that came to my mind was, have you ever been, uh, to a place where they sell yachts? And I’d like you to picture in your mind a big, new yacht and how nice it is with the chrome and the brass and the white paint and the mahogany decks and the leather seats and the clean windows and the shiny brass anchor and all that kind of stuff, and it really is a gorgeous thing to see. And another thing you’ll see around marinas quite often is an old, dirty scowl and a fellow out there with a power grinder grinding the paint off of the wood. These are the old, the wooden ones, not, not so much the steel ones, but the wooden ones. And you see them out there working with that, and then, uh, they get through.

They’ll maybe find some places they have to, uh, cut out because the wood has got dry rot and replace that wood with new wood, and then they’ll put a primer coat on that, and then they’ll put another coat. So anyway, several months later, you might see this same boat, and it’ll have, uh, maybe the 28th coat of paint on it and a little wax. And, uh, that old boat that has been restored will have something that the new boat didn’t have, and that’s character. And I was thinking how this relates to us as we go through our AA program, uh, that we come in and we see all these different, uh, applications that we’re being exposed to. Um, some of it is, uh, the cutting out process where we’re cutting things out of our lives and, and there’s other parts where we’re, we’re putting on some new things. And, uh, as you, uh, relate to what’s going on here, sometimes you have a tendency to do something that’s out of the order.