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Source: Clancy I – Reel Archive Recording – Reel 0805-812A (1958) – 1958-10-31.mp3 File: clancy-i-reel-archive-recording-reel-0805-812a-1958-1958-10-31.mp3 Duration: 01:20:40
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Hated him, loved him, cursed him, one time I wanted to punch him out, and all because he wanted good things for me, all of those things just because he wanted me to have a way of life to live that would give me some peace and comfort that I was looking for and didn't know how to get. And he used to browbeat me, he used to threaten me, he called me arrogant, he called me an egotistical maniac, he called me lots of things, he shouted at me a lot, and I had tender feelings.
I know none of you ever did, but I had lots of tender feelings, and he shouted at me. And the truth was, when he was doing all those things, all he wanted for me was a good life, and to learn to live in Alcoholics Anonymous and be a survivor. One of the things he has always, I've always heard him talking about when he's working with anybody new, is that survive for now. Right now we'll survive, and later on it'll come easier for you, but now you must do the things to make you be able to survive. And I've watched him work with a lot of countless new people, countless numbers of new people. More than any other person that I know, I have watched this man more personally work with him. And it's not because he's a good man, not because he's a good man, although he is that, but it's because I think that he believes in what the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and the big book says, that if we're to keep it, we've got to give it away. And I can't think of a better example of someone who gives enough and tries to give it away, any more than your speaker here tonight. I'd like to introduce to you my sponsor, Clancy Eye.
My name is Clancy I., and I'm an alcoholic. I assume this is for someone previous to me, I hope it is. It says, in a nice way, let's hurry on along. Yes, we want to get on to the next trophy. This will be good training for me. We're having the Olympics in Los Angeles next summer, and I thought maybe they'd play the state songs for the winners. I want to welcome all of you to the Saturday night meeting, and a special welcome to all of you folks downstairs in the half measures room. If you want to get too far away from the Pepsi machine, why don't you go over and have a sandwich and wonder what that arrogant summoned son of a bitch upstairs looks like.
I want to thank the committee for inviting me. I've heard many fine stories about this conference. My sponsor has told me about it a number of times. He's been down here several times. And it really is kind of a staggering thing, you know, 600 people at this convention. That's just how many we have at our weekly Wednesday night meeting in Los Angeles. Only it's a little better organized. We don't have hardly anybody who talks funny there. Am I off on the wrong foot, are you?
I've enjoyed the convention very much. I'm sorry I missed Hank Thursday night. I had to be at where I work on Thursday afternoon because one of our guys are dying, one of our long-term employees, and so I couldn't get out until Friday morning. But I have heard Hank talk probably more than anybody else here, with the possible exception of his wife. And I've enjoyed him very often. I'm sure you all enjoyed him too. And on Friday, I'm sorry I wasn't here for the gin tournament. I could have used another trophy.
And Friday night, it was nice hearing Frank talk, who's America's substitute speaker. Anywhere you go in America, whatever your program says, Frank Milo's talks. It's a touching story. And I want to tell you something, Frank, because I want to make friends with everybody here.
[00:04:59]
You said that you were disappointed when you came to Dallas and you couldn't find any cowboys. I'll explain that to you. They're all being indicted on cocaine charges.
[00:05:19]
Maybe I could make some friends later on. We're all very arrogant in Los Angeles. I see that in the paper today that they have allowed the Los Angeles Raiders to stay in Los Angeles and not have to move back to Oakland. So we're all feeling good. And I very much enjoyed Beth's talk this morning. She doesn't look like someone who's been through a lot of trauma, and she doesn't sound like it. But boy, I'll tell you, her talk sent shivers down my spine. Anyone who missed that, I would suggest you get a tape of that talk. It's an excellent talk, showing what Alcoholics Anonymous can do.
And I want to also say one thing. I see among the committee here is Pat G. in Al-Anon. And I heard Pat talk last Saturday in Atlanta, Georgia. And she gave an excellent talk. Her husband was not there to defend himself, and so it was an even better talk than usual. Let me tell you what that son of a bitch did to me. For a change, he's not here to cuff me around in the room afterward. So Shirley, why don't you give her a few raps tonight after the meeting, just for drill?
And I'm looking forward tomorrow morning to hearing Bill I. from North Carolina. I've not heard him talk, but I know that anyone whose last initial is I has got to give a good talk. Tom I, I mean. Tom I, right. Anything except red I. I was thinking, not very far from here, but in Amarillo, 17 years ago, was the first time I came to Texas to talk. And I came to Texas to talk, and I was a little apprehensive, because at that time I was still technically a patient at Big Spring State Hospital.
And all they ever needed when I was in the state of Texas was a phone call from my wife for me to be returned to the electric shock ward for the rest of my life. And so I was somewhat apprehensive when I came to Amarillo at the top of Texas. But as it turned out, I ran into some nice people. I ran into Francis Newsom from Midland, and Joe Clary, whom some of you know, and Shelby Parnell, and they invited me to come down to Midland. And I went over and talked to that hospital. I've talked there every year since. I always try to get down there one way or another and talk to the current student body and push them deeper into their apathy.
But I very much enjoyed it, because I remember, I don't know how I happened to think about this, I remember starting off my talk, I didn't know what to say. I said, because all week and long people had been talking about how wonderful it is they were alive in Texas and so on. And I remember saying that it was nice to see so many people living in Texas, but I thought I might be the only one at the convention who died in Texas. And they didn't know what the hell that meant. But I had, as I went on to explain to them, and most of you know, I committed suicide in Texas.
Which, at that time, today when you commit suicide they give you two aspirins and tell them to call back in the morning, but in those days they were kind of cold about it. And they examined me for some time at the psych award, and I tried to explain to them that there was just a series of misunderstandings, because I had just got done directing an opera at the University of Texas at El Paso. And I was working days at an advertising agency. I was a sports writer for the El Paso Herald Post. I was the official statistician for the college football team, that's when Texas Tech was in our conference.
And I had had some depression, but the only thing I couldn't get around was how the hose in my car happened to be running from the exhaust pipe into the car and the garage doors were locked and I was in there dead. I couldn't explain that very well. And so the doctor talked to me for a week or two on a continuing basis, incisive questioning, finally determined I had a badly split personality, a schizoid personality, and committed me for an indefinite period to the Texas State Hospital at Big Spring, Texas.
[00:10:13]
Now most of you younger folks think that the Texas State Hospital at Big Spring, Texas and these other state hospitals are primarily designed, you go there and do 30 days for alcoholism and come home. When I was committed there, there was no alcoholism commitment in the state of Texas that I know of. And I wasn't committed as an alcoholic, I was cold sober when all this happened. I was committed as a mental patient and I had to go there and stay there until I got well. And if I wouldn't have found a way around it, I might have had a call in my talk tonight. I'm sometimes not certain that I would pass their graduation exercise examination.
But I remember being committed and thinking how dreadful. And it categorized among my other defects that I was a severe depressive, which I had been. And I remember sitting at Big Spring in that old red brick building there and thinking, Jesus, I thought I was depressed before. When you get an indefinite commitment to the Texas State Insane Asylum, that is almost a basic resume buster. You really have a bitch working that in later, I'll tell you. And then what did you do during the next five years? Well, self-employed.
The only funny thing I ever thought about that is that I thought back and later I was going to go back and get that psychiatrist. I almost was going to prosecute him for malpractice because he misdiagnosed my case intensely. I was going to go back there and say, you goof. You know, if you call yourself a psychologist and call me a split personality, if I could get my personalities down to two, I could make it from there. It's this group therapy and I'm alone in my car, you know.
And the reason I was in such a severe depression was because I had been forced to stop drinking to hold my job. And I had to hold my job because my wife was pregnant again. And I had just recently come to El Paso to start over from the last time I busted open. And it was two states back that I was behind in trying to do something. And I drank because drinking provides relaxation for me. And I was under terrible tension. I always felt very intense. And the dean of the university called me and he told me that he understood I'd been acting bizarrely in Juarez.
And I have a terrible time. Some of you have been in athletics, realize there's something called choking. And it's when the pressure is on and an invisible hand comes out of your shirt and goes, and it makes you miss the third strike or drop the punt or do whatever. But it also happens in the real world. And it happens to me where I'm under a lot of pressure. And it may happen to you too. A hand comes out of my shirt and my mind thinks, but I can't say it. And I want to just shriek at this guy, but I didn't. I just thought at him.
I'm not acting bizarrely in Juarez. I'm under a lot of pressure. I'm trying to make up for lost time. I have a terrible life. I'm holding three jobs, for Christ's sake. Most of the people I know can't have trouble holding one, and I'm holding three. I got a bunch of little kids, they cry all night. My wife is pregnant again. Sometimes my mind goes around. I can't stand it. I can't sleep. I maybe get up at two in the morning, just frantic. And I may go to Juarez, where I'm known and loved. And I may go into the Chinese Palace or Las Catacumbas. And I may go in and stand on the bar. All the tourists have gone home.
Bar, all the tourists have gone home, just a regular over there, balance on one leg just for my cuteness, and order limon y tequina y sal, and sing my little song, yo soy el maestro de los locos en Chihuahua,
[00:15:28]
God damn it, that relaxes me, that helps me sleep, but that's what I thought, what I said was, and the commission of my employment was I could not drink anymore, and when I can't drink, I, it makes the pressure intolerable, because as long as I can remember, drinking has been a pressure reliever for me, drinking has been a, something that eases off the pressure, and sometimes when the pressure is too great, or I'm not watching myself, I lose control and I drink too much, and when I drink too much, sometimes people think that my problem is drinking, really well intentioned, kindly people think my problem is drinking, and I have, I can't even think of an answer to explain to them, my problem really isn't drinking so much, it is now when you see me drunk, but that really isn't it, there's something about me, I don't think I ever put my finger on the phrase, but if I could assimilate all the ways I felt, if I could have said it, if I could have felt, if I could have collected it, I might have said, there is something different about me, but I don't know what it is, I either gotta find a place where I fit in, or I gotta drink, but I do the best I can, and it goes good for a while, but then it dissipates, and I do not know why, but people act differently towards me, as though they have found out something about me, and I don't know what they're finding out, and I just feel different, and I get frustrated, and I feel, I feel almost as though there's something in the back of my shirt that says, treat me different, and I can't see it, but everybody else can, and I wind up feeling frustrated, and full of anxiety, and I feel separated, and people who I was coming with two months ago, somehow they're not coming anymore, or something's different, and I don't know what it is, but there's gotta be some place, where there are people like me, who have a strong sense of humor, or when they say things, it isn't always the wrong thing, but understand what I meant by it, or that I understand that I'm doing very well, doing the best I can, and I can't find it, and I found it again and again, but it never lasted, it never lasted, I remember a couple years ago, I was up in Portland, talking at a convention, sitting around the coffee room, people were sharing their experiences, dealing with the Mount St. Helens explosion, about how they felt, the people who lived in that area, north of Portland, because they didn't really, just like lava coming, you get that in Hawaii, where the lava comes and burns you out, but there it was just, they'd hear far away little noises, I mean I saw no evidence of it, but everything, little by little, the whole town turned gray, just this fine powder came down, and the lawn turned gray, and the house turned gray, and the car turned gray, and the children outside would come in, and they're looking a little gray, just a fine, fine dissemination of volcanic ash, and I'm thinking about that on the way home, I think that's almost an exact description of my life, I go to places, I run my way to find a colorful place, where it's going to be colorful, and keep me interested, and then, and then there was some far away noises after a while, and things began to turn gray, the house that looked so nice is now beginning to be gray, and the car is getting gray, and the new job is getting gray, and the neighbors are getting gray, and my chums, my new chums are turning gray, and little by little it gets grayer, and grayer, and somehow inside of me there's something that cannot stand perpetual grayness, I've got to have, I want some excitement, and occasionally I want to have some pleasure out of life,
[00:20:10]
and I can't get it from a gray world, to this day when I look at, look at, look at the laws, I cannot identify with Dorothy giving up the technical laws to go back to Kansas, well, it's not even gray, it's a supia, it's just a, it's, yuck, Auntie Em may be a knife or a broad, but she ain't that knife, come on, everything's gray, that's why I drink a little bit, I drink because Dorothy puts a little color in my life, and I started going to AA way over 30 years ago, AA is a nice place, but it's another, almost a perfect example of planning for a gray existence, you step into AA and you realize that you are at the beginning of an endless gray tunnel, just an on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, and sitting in meetings, those people get non-applicable cliches, I don't want Dorothy, no, you keep coming back, there's something intellectually exciting about the answers you get, and you can get up every morning, wow, another wonderful grade, and there's no relief anywhere, and at the end of the year, you watch people get a year, is there some break, no, a little hatch open, and a squirming arm drops a thirty-nine front cake, hmm, is that all there is, hold, and on and on, and there's got to be more of them out, and so I found a lot of things, I realized that I went to a lot of places, I worked in a lot of towns, I did a lot of different kinds of jobs, and all of them were just the answer until they turned good, and I had it again and again, and I have new, I'm going to be a wonderful father, I bring my children out of this town, I was only a town or two ahead of them, and I bring them in, and I remember in El Paso, I brought them here from El Paso, and we, when you come here on an airplane to Lubbock now, it really is fun coming out of Los Angeles, you see the entire south coast, you go to Phoenix, and stop, we stopped there a long time, because there was a lady got on foot, the safety boat wouldn't go around her, so they had to go to a different plane, another safety, there's only a hundred and five, and then we went to Albuquerque, and then we went to El Paso, but I like to go to El Paso, because I used to live in El Paso, and I remember when I brought, to get my wife and kids, and I brought them down to, drove them to Texas, drove them to El Paso, we came in from Kansas, last night at midnight, I took them up, there's a road that goes up the mountain, before I woke them up, there's a mountain right in the middle of town, and woke them up and said, this is the place, and they were bold, and they were ready for the world, everything was going to be fine here, and a year and a half later, she had to get on and sign up to put me in the insurance company as long as I didn't, and it just went on like that, and when you feel like that, a few drunks sometimes are necessary, but the problem is, how in the world to keep from getting drunk, I want the relaxation, but I don't want the things that happen when you cross that line of, when you start getting a reaction, I've often thought, my efforts to control drinking were very similar to modern man's attempts to control the pump of energy, but it works, nothing works better, but every so often there's another three mile island that you didn't expect to, instead of waking up feeling relaxed, you're leaning against a wall like this, or you got your hands handcuffed behind you, or three guys just get done kicking the bejesus out of you on the back of a bar, and think, I got to avoid that, but I also know, I tried psychoanalysis over 30 years ago,
[00:25:09]
I got into metaphysics, I read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, I did everything I knew how, I went to A&A, heard these guys, and my perceptions were so prejudging, that I never heard any, I'm sure they must have been saying the same things in A&A 30 years ago they're saying now, but I never heard it once, but it seemed to me I always heard, I drank for many years, night and day, around the clock, one day I walked through that door, and the desire to drink left me like an oak, fluttering to the floor, I now have three million dollars, right in that pocket, several different families have returned to me, and I owe it all to one thing, I put the plug in the jug, and the only alternative to that was the other guy who said, and I've just never felt so god damn good, and I didn't know what to do, I fought and fought, I went to A&A, I went to therapeutics, I did different things, I went to jail 30 some times, that's hard when you're trying to keep up an executive career, I've been in hospitals, I've been strapped down, tomorrow night I'm going to visit Albuquerque, I have a bunch of kids who, through a series of bad breaks and misunderstandings, live in Albuquerque, and it really is kind of funny, my oldest daughter and her husband were teaching in Kentucky at the university, and they both got a very good offer to come to the University of New Mexico, so they came down to New Mexico, and one of their sisters visited them, and she was at Long Beach State, and she just loved Albuquerque, so she moved to Albuquerque, she's working on her degree in nursing education, and another sister graduated, she and her husband, a little girl, they graduated from the University of Hawaii, they didn't have the master's program they wanted, so they visited Albuquerque, and they loved Albuquerque, and next month, my youngest child, my son is enrolling as a freshman at the University of New Mexico, so it's a, I sometimes think, my older daughters don't understand why they have such an empathy towards Albuquerque, because they've never lived in that kind of a climate, but I think I know what it is, because Albuquerque is very similar to El Paso, and I think when they were little and they loved El Paso, that's what they kind of remember is that Albuquerque, but I'm going there tomorrow night, but one of those daughters is working on her degree in nursing education, I remember when she was born, the day mother went to the hospital, I was already at the hospital, strapped down on the next floor, chained down I think, now a lot of husbands get there with the wife for a day later, but to be there a day ahead, to anticipate labor, and just get up there and chain yourself up, and God damn it, I hate that, because they look at you funny, it seemed to me nurses go by and say, it just makes you crazy, I've always been very sensitive to people doing things like that to me, my oldest daughter, the faculty at the university there, when we lived in Dallas, when I finally got out of that Texas, I finally beat the Texas Nuthouse, because they put in an alcoholic program, the first one in the state of Texas, and I manipulated them into allowing me to become, I believe, the first psychiatric patient in the state of Texas to be allowed to go to alcoholism, to the alcoholism unit, because I'd been going to AA for 6 or 7 years by this time, I knew how to act like an alcoholic, and I had this old man, nice man, Les Ross, I manipulated him terribly, and I got, you know, the others just came and went every 30 days, but I was there till I got well, so I became the best patient they could have had, old Mr. Ross would give us a talk for an hour, he'd say, I'm going to tell you about the 12 steps today, boys, and we'd go, ah, but not me, he'd get all done, he'd say, are there any questions, only one question, is this not cruel and inhuman punishment, but I have a question, Mr. Ross, perhaps you could tell me, I have a question, Mr. Ross.
Perhaps you could tell us some more about the fourth step, and how we put this stuff on paper,
[00:30:00]
and reach down and get the garbage out of our system, and find out a way around it. He'd say, I'll tell you about that right now, Clancy. And the whole rest of the room would say, Aw, shit. But I wasn't trying to impress them, I had to get him. You know, it wasn't really what you call sincere alcoholic recovery. You'd say to the guy next to you, What are you going to do to get out of here, Fred? I'm going to kill that bitch.
But by attrition, I got to be secretary of the group. And pretty soon they started sending me out to little towns to give AA talks. You know, it's a couple of patients would take me over to Odessa, or Midland, or Big Spring, or San Angelo, or someplace. Not give little talks, just wonderful. Friends, I'm just proud to be here tonight on behalf of my fellow patients, to thank each and every one of you for carrying a message of faith and hope to us at the Big Spring State Hospital.
Many of us were going across the vast desert of alcoholism, and our legs were weary when we came to the tall green hills of Sobriety, and they were too steep for us to climb. But folks such as you showed us twelve golden stairs that we could climb one after another. And they were difficult, and they were hard to climb, but we climbed those steps. Now we stand nearly up on top of the hill of Sobriety, and we are looking forward to going back to our homes throughout the West Texas to transmit the message you have given us to other lost wayfarers on that desert of alcoholism.
And may God bless you and your wonderful ongoing work. Now you can laugh, I got me out of the Texas Nuthouse. And the funny thing is, I've said many times, a lot of people think that kind of therapy doesn't work. But I never had another drink, until I ran out of Thorazine. But we were living in Dallas, now some people had given me a chance again, and now I was going to make my move, and I'd learned my lesson, and after taking my 48 electric shock treatments at the Big Spring State Hospital, my head was coming back.
I didn't know I had that many years later, and Dr. Preston down there told me, if I'd known that, I'd never have been able to think. But since I didn't know it, I was able to come around. But I was working in the largest advertising agency in the South, a firm called Tracy Locke, and I was working on these old ads for the Borden Company, these Elsinore ads, and I was making my move, and when things started graying out again, and I determined this couldn't happen again, because I was still an outpatient from that nut house, I signed out to my wife. Can you imagine that?
She had to file a report every Saturday to how I was doing, and send it in. And all she ever had to put on there once was, he's acting funny, and that's the end of that. So that makes a little tension around the house, you know. Hadn't you better get the garbage out? Wish I'd have thought of that, Char. And you just think, if she goes near that phone, I'm going to kill her. And I was determined to make it up to my children.
I had a little daughter, Mary, who was nine, and I loved her, and she fell off the porch one day, and it turned out she'd broken her leg, although I didn't know it. And I rushed out. I just happened to be home watching a football game, half in the bag, and I picked her up, and I said, Honey, I'm glad Daddy's here, and I rushed in the house. And she was longer than the door was wide, and I broke her leg again.
Things like that. You just wonder, what do you have to do, for Christ's sake? When you do act well, it goes bad. And it went on like this. And I went to AA, and I went to a lot of things, and nothing ever was the answer. And it got grayer and grayer, until one day I found myself hearing a guy say, Get out and stay out! And I looked up, and I had been 86th out of the midnight mission on Skid Row in Los Angeles.
And my family was still in Texas. My parents had written me off. And I couldn't believe it! I was dying, and I don't… I thought if I only would have found that place. It isn't from lack of interest or lack of desire. Remember, many times I have taken vows that I would no more break that vow, that I would rather be died than break the vow. For example, time after time, I have taken intense vows. Once…
We were talking about it a couple of weeks ago. Once upon a time I was in jail for fighting a cop
[00:35:00]
in my hometown when I was a young guy. And my father came to the jail cell early in the morning. He says, I hope you had a good time last night when you were out drunk. And I said, No, I didn't. I'm going to do better. He said, I hope you enjoyed it because you let your little son die at home. And I could… I almost went crazy with that, I'll tell you. And the judge let me out because he was a friend of our family.
And he said, I hope you remember this. And he said, I hope every time a guy like you goes by a bar, you see your little dead son's face on that door and never go in. You cannot handle it. And I… We went out to the cemetery. It was winter time and up there in the winter time they don't bury in the ground. They put them in a holding chamber till the ground thaws. And it was just a little casket. And I remember I felt so bad.
And the relatives came in and looked at me funny again as though to say, look at that son of a bitch. And I couldn't stand it. So I wouldn't let anybody be a pallbearer. I said, I'll be his pallbearer. I took him from the little… after the funeral on the hearse and over to the little house and I put him in there. I was in there alone. I put my hand in his casket. I said, John, this will never, ever, ever happen again.
You will never have to be ashamed of me. I hope when you're in heaven, you sit down and know you will never be ashamed of me again. And 29 days later, sitting in a room where I was working in a different city, I began to drink. Because if I hadn't begun to drink, I'd have gone crazy thinking about my son John. And now that isn't a problem with drinking. Putting the cork in the bottle doesn't change that.
Stopping drinking and becoming good doesn't change that. Yeah, I'll be glad to go to AA if you can make it 1948 again. If you can make it 1951 again. If you can make it just a week before up in another place where I was working where this guy and I were… I'd met him in a market. He was a clerk. And I was an executive at Fairbanks Morris. And he said… I said, is there any cheese? He said, there's some cheese.
I said, is it any good? He said, it has a certain authority. I said, what's a goofy clerk in a store docking like that for? So I got talking to him. Turned out he had been just expelled from the medical school at the University of Wisconsin. And he'd been caught in a compromising homosexual situation. And he and I got to be good friends. And I said, listen, I'll tell you something. I don't know much about homosexuality.
It's never bothered me. But let me see if I can help you become straight. Because I've read theories where homosexuality is kind of a retarded sexual maturity. And I was directing a play a night up there. And I put him in a place called My Three Angels. And I made a point of getting him together with a leading lady. And they came to fruition. And he was starting to like it. And his job was to help me so I wouldn't drink.
I was going to watch him so he didn't become homosexual. And he was going to watch me so I didn't drink. Well, that was all right. But one day, as it must, I didn't know why. Nor does anybody here know why when it happens to them. I just wanted to drink. And I got so goddamn tired of the gray world. And I drank. So somebody said, shouldn't you get a hold of Bob? To hell with Bob. And I drank. And I got drunker.
And then I got mad at myself. Maybe some of you have done that. And I started breaking up things in the living room. And my wife didn't know what to do. She got a hold of Bob and said, Bob, can you come over? Maybe you can help Clancy. I can't. So he came over. And he looked at me with that look. And maybe you've seen that look again. I saw it again and again all my life. That look of disappointment.
That look of, oh, how could you do this? Just that, don't even say anything. Just look at you. Just look at you. And it makes you feel so bad. And I shrieked at him, get that goddamn queer out of my house. I got children in this house. I don't want a queer around my children. And on and on. And he just turned white and staggered out. And the next morning his mother called up and said, what happened to Bob?
I said, I don't know what. She said, he killed himself last night. I said, oh, Jesus. And that day I gave up my job and wound up hitchhiking west to play piano in a cheap bar in San Francisco and left everything I had. Just everything I touch turns bad. And yet I can't find a formula for it. And maybe I'm crazy, but I'm not crazy. I've got to find a place where I can sustain it. And I can't sustain it.
I can't believe that I've been singled out to just feel bad all my life.
[00:40:01]
And in a sense it was almost a relief standing on Skid Row in Los Angeles. I had a T-shirt, an old pair of pants, and some tennies. I could look down and see the scars on my wrist where I had my wrist lashing. And I could think back, at least I can't hurt anybody now. And I remember thinking, I wish I would have known what the hell was wrong with me. And I went over the next morning to sell a pint of blood at Skid Row Blood Bank.
And they took a drop of blood in my ear and said, you don't have enough iron in your blood to sell blood anymore. Couldn't get a $4 for a lousy pint of blood. And it was raining, and it was cold, and I felt bad. It's a funny thing. Suicidals always never want to commit suicide when they're really at rock bottom. You've got to have something to make people sorry about. When you're at rock bottom, you fight to stay alive.
It's the damnedest paradox. And I walked 71 blocks out to the AA Club. And I walked in there. There's something called the 6300 Club. And the guy says, you can't come in. And I said, why not? I couldn't talk very well either because I just had my front teeth kicked out in the Phoenix drum tank. Which cuts in your ability to do consonants. I says, why not, for Christ's sake? He says, you've been banned out of here.
Remember, two weeks ago you stole the coffee money at the Friday night discussion group. I said, oh yeah, I remember that now, yeah. I remember thinking, I better tell this guy that I better pretend to be an alcoholic. I said, I guess I had a little slip. He says, you didn't have any slip. You're just a phony puke. I said, I guess you're right, Tom. But I thought, someday I'm going to pull out your fingernails, you son of a bitch.
One by one and listen to you scream. But I can't do it today. He says, why don't you just go in the back room. Don't anybody know that I let you in because you make me sick. I said, God bless you, Tom. But I thought, I'm going to heat up those fingernails and stick them in your eyeballs. Just scream, scream, mother, scream. And I went in the back room and I lay down there and I thought, what am I going to do?
I remember thinking briefly, and it sounds funny, but it wasn't at all funny. I remember thinking, I thought maybe my suicide in El Paso had been successful. And that this is the way it's going to be for eternity. When you're a Lutheran, you think those sort of things. And I thought, I better pretend to be an alcoholic for a while just to get these people off my back. Just to get them off my back. I don't know what the hell went wrong.
But by God, I was better at 15 in the Pacific in World War II than I am now when I've had success. I've only wanted to be a good man in a good world and there's something inside of me. Maybe I'm possessed by some kind of devil. Maybe there's something that every so often just comes and gets me. And I don't want it to happen, but it happens. If I could only find a way to keep the color without the result.
And I decided to pretend to be an alcoholic until I could get a score and get to Seattle. And it was so bad that I couldn't even get a score. And I wound up stuck in that damn club for weeks, for days, and then weeks, and then months. I lived in the back seat of an abandoned car in the parking lot. In the tall weeds. And I just lurked out there and came in in the morning and went out at night. And I had no idea then, and I didn't after a while.
I remember when I was 30 days sober thinking, Jesus, I'm 30 days sober. There must be something wrong. And I had no idea that that would be my sobriety date. Because I didn't intend for it to be, and sobriety doesn't help cases like mine. And that's why I'm glad tonight to give my sobriety date, as you say here. Through the grace of God and the power of Alcoholics Anonymous, it's not been necessary for me to take a drink or a sedating or tranquilizing pill since that morning, October 31st, 1958.
And for which I'm very grateful. In a couple of months, if I survive, and I knock on wood that I won't be carried away by gypsies, I'll have 25 years of sobriety. And I sometimes have questioned the quality of my sobriety, as I suppose every sober alcoholic does who's been sober longer than 20 minutes. But when I sometimes think about where I came from, I'll tell you, I will settle for any quality sobriety.
I will settle for any quality sobriety. I hope to make it better because it's more comfortable, and I want to regain my comfort when I get in these, when I get in situations that are bad.
[00:45:02]
But I'll tell you this, that I, uh, I sometimes find myself, as you would expect, when I'm reminded of things, almost tears in my eyes of gratitude because the best professional people in America that I knew threw up their hands at my case. And the best A.A.'s that I knew threw up their hands at my case. And nothing really traumatic happened. Nothing really traumatic happened. Somehow, some way, something made me desperate enough to do something that I would have usually not done.
And that is to, for whatever the motive, I began to change my actions. The only reason I changed my actions was I could hustle these people and make a score. So I began playing their sick little game. And their sick little game that I played worked. And I was in that club all the time, so I had to act better all the time. It really got to be a drag. I had no place to go and let it out. And those old guys, and I got a sponsor. I had many sponsors. I had the editor of the El Paso Times was my sponsor, and the head of the largest public relations firm, and a big doctor, society doctor in Dallas was my sponsor.
And I've had sponsors in every city I've ever been in that I went to A.A. because they would say, get a sponsor, get a sponsor. So I got a sponsor. But this sponsor was, turned out he didn't have unjudged love. If you want to make it easier on you, look for a sponsor that has unjudgmental love. Who says, I love you. I don't want to get into your space. You got to do what you got to do, but whatever you got to do, I love you. I always look for sponsors like that because they don't bother you. They don't get in your way. They don't nag you.
I got a whole, I tried to get a couple guys like that in that club, and they didn't want, they said, we don't believe we're qualified to handle your case, Clancy. So I got a guy. And I got the wrong sponsor. He did not understand love. You know, he'd say things, you know, when you got a sponsor, I'll tell you what you do. You try not to talk to them unless you got good news. Or else you got, you need money, one or the other. But then you call them up. When you usually talk to your sponsors at 2 o'clock in the morning, you call them up and say, hello Fred, I'm afraid I've let you and A.A. down.
And if you got a loving sponsor, you say, you haven't let us down. You're sick. You've had a relapse. That's all. I'm coming right over. I'm bringing some of the guys. We're going to sit with you through the night. We'll bring you pints so you won't get DTs. And if you need money, let me know. And we'll sit through it. Can you get through this? Now that's what I call a sponsor. This old fool said things to me like, kid, call me whenever you want to. Whenever you have to. Up until the time you take a drink. But after that, don't call. Because all you're going to hear is a click and a dial tone.
That's a crappy way to sponsor people. I said, Jesus, Bob, look at me. I'm living in an abandoned car. I'm an award winning writer. I directed one of the most outstanding university productions of a grand opera ever seen in America. And here I am living in a car taking crap from pukes. I'm cold and I'm hungry. I'm not used to living like this, Bob. What do I do? He says, get a job. I says, look how terrible I look. He says, get a terrible job. I followed that direction to a T, I'll tell you.
And now the amazing thing to me sometimes is I look back and think, you know, 24 years. Incidentally, I hope I don't forget tomorrow to wish someone a birthday. Someone who's got 30, what, 36 years, 11 months and 30 days. I know it is. I knew when you were still drunk in Los Angeles, you'd puke. I guess they don't have loving sponsors down here like we have in L.A. We don't judge out there.
[00:50:00]
But I get 24 years and nine months or nine and a half months. And I, to think that the only therapy I've had since 1958 is Alcoholics Anonymous, to think that I have found something that has done the one thing that I thought could not be done in my life, enable me to sustain and occasionally return the color to gray life. I suppose in the last analysis, that is the greatest goal. Frank was mentioning last night when he was four years sober. And all of AA had become gray. And he didn't want to go anymore. He ran into some people, some people I know. And they got him taking actions that restored, or in his case, almost put the first color in AA since he was new.
And one of the hardest things to do around here is to remember that. Because if you are like me, I have a tendency to fall into the terrible trap of when everything is good, I forget, I think that's how it should be. When things are bad, somehow I'm being screwed. And that is exactly wrong. It took me a long time to understand. I am not here to fight an alcohol problem. I am here to battle the disease of alcoholism.
And about 98% of the people who battle it, lose it. And some of them win for a while and take it for granted and then lose it. And almost probably 99 and some percentage points of alcoholics die from alcoholism. The mere fact I'm in this room and you're in this room is really an oddity. Because of one funny phenomenon, the one thing I never thought of, and I always thought I was being screwed in sobriety. The natural state of sober alcoholics is anxiety and tension and depression and frustration.
These are not things that come and get you. This is the natural state. Because that is the natural state of sobriety in the disease of alcoholism. I've talked about this so many, many times, but I still, I need to hear it again and I hope there's somebody new who might need to hear it. Probably most people die. I'm in a position today that hardly anybody in this room is. Maybe a couple of you. But I see alcoholics dying every day. I see alcoholics going into brain damage every day. Watch them taken away with brain damage every day.
Sometimes I sit in that job when I'm tired and down and I think, what am I doing here? I can't stand it. It happened just a week ago. I went to work. I was tired. I'd just come back from Atlanta. It was a hot day. And I watched that other guy hauled into my office, stabbed to death and his gut hanging out. I think, what am I doing? Why would I give up a good career as I had sober to do this? Other days when I'm feeling better, I see it differently. But I watch these guys die. And I suppose most of them are like me. If the last day I had my last drink, if a man would have put a lie detector in my arm and said, are you an alcoholic? I would have said, no, not really.
And that needle would not have flickered a sixteenth of an inch. Because unlike alcoholics, my problem is not really alcohol. My problem are emotions and feelings and something that makes me think different once in a while. And I don't know what the hell it is. And I very nearly died and I watch people die every day and some of the people in this room tonight will die from it. Because it took me almost my life to discover the nature of my problem is not alcohol. It is something called alcoholism.
Which again, you know, it's the same as I like to smart-aleck punks like me used to say, well, it's just a little three-letter suffix. That's sophistry. But it is not sophistry. That little three-letter suffix is what makes me terminally ill and at the same time, if I can identify it, gives me the only chance of ever getting better. And the difference is just this. If your problem is alcohol, and it sometimes seems in AA there are speakers whose problem is alcohol. I don't know why they're there. Because they make it sound like they say, well, I was sober and it was just wonderful. Then I drank and I just went crazy. Then I got sober and it was just wonderful. Then I got drunk and I just went crazy.
[00:55:20]
Then I got sober and it was just wonderful. Then I got drunk and I just went crazy. And you feel like saying, well, why do you drink, for Christ's sake? People like you really shouldn't drink? But if you are one of those people whose problem is alcohol, I've got a solution for you that's going to revolutionize your life. Don't drink. You have to sit in these smoky rooms for the rest of your life, listening to neurotics complain about the nature of their upsets, rather than listening to yours.
If it turns out that you suffer from what I suffer from, whatever the degree of intensity, there is no chance for you. Because people like you and me never understand, at least I never knew anybody who did, the nature of the problem is not alcohol, it's alcoholism. And the difference between an alcohol problem and alcoholism is probably best described by saying, stopping drinking relieves an alcohol problem. Stopping drinking has no effect whatsoever on alcoholism, except to move you into a more painful area.
Sobriety is the deadly aspect of alcoholism. That's why people drink again. It doesn't mean that when you get sober you suddenly just go to hell. Sometimes there's a big surge, you take vows, you're going to do better, it's going to be alright. But eventually, you're back in reality. And the same things that made you feel bad before are still there. And the tensions come back. And the intermittent fear, and the paranoid guilt, and the defiance that you use to cover your guilt. And the screw you attitude, I don't care what anybody thinks, which means I care what everybody thinks.
And on and on, you get just, and you give it all you got, and you want to do it for your little child, or you want to do it for your mother, or you want to do it so you won't be such a goof, so people won't look at you funny. But little by little it comes back. And one day you look around, and it's starting to gray out again, boy. And you get to a point where it's graying out, and the tension is there, and the problems are there, and you just can't hardly stand it. Now, the funny thing is, that doesn't make you an alcoholic. There are millions of people like that who are not alcoholics.
They are known medically as intense or acute neurotics. They are people who see reality as it is, but react badly to it, react emotionally, react obsessively, overreact, withdraw, then overreact. These people, in fact, unless something happens to change the pattern of their growing conflicts, can get to a point where they snap. They're psychotic. The brain makes you see reality differently to reduce the conflict.
Now, it's a funny thing. Alcoholics almost never become psychotic. Isn't that funny? Alcoholics almost never become psychotic. Now, they say, well, alcohol is the second greatest cause of insanity. What are you talking about? Not insanity from conflict and snapping. Alcoholic insanity, as I mentioned, is brain damage from continued use of alcohol. And you think, well, I got a little alcoholic insanity. I'm acting funny. Alcoholic insanity doesn't make you act funny. If you ever saw a case of alcoholic insanity, it sends shivers down your spine.
If you want to see a good case of alcoholic insanity, you see someone who is sitting in a ward somewhere, and they come and change his diapers three times a day, and they feed him, and put him to bed, and get up in the morning, and change his diapers, and feed him, and you never, ever, ever get better. There is no possible recovery from that. Through one of the great ironies of life, the two major areas of the body…
of Life, The Two Major Areas of the Body That Do Not Recreate Damaged Cells Are the Brain and the Liver, The Two Things That Alcohol Hits, But, They, What Happens to Alcoholics?
[01:00:02]
Why Don't They Snap? Because When It Gets Bad Enough, Long Enough, They'll Have a Few Drinks, Which Begs the Question, Why Don't These God Damn Neurotics Have a Few Drinks and Relax? And the point is, they do, many of them do, and there is the other funny quantity of alcoholism. It doesn't bring relief for them. It turns out that alcohol has a special effect on my body I never dreamed of. Now, I used to try to measure, you hear it all the time in AA, it has a special effect on your body. What is it? Well, I guess it makes you stay drunk all the time. I never stayed drunk all the time. Now that I look back, I have never known a human being to stay drunk all the time. I think it's safe to say it is physically impossible for a human body to stay intoxicated 14 straight days and nights in a laboratory. You sure can't do it on the streets. Is it that you get crazy and weird?
Not really, not really. Some of the worst miserable God damn drunks in the world are people who get drunk on New Year's Eve only. And they just act, in fact, any self-respecting drunk that I know wants to stay off the streets on New Year's Eve. Because them amateurs are out there just acting crazy. They don't know when they are going to throw up. Anybody in this room, and you got at least 10 seconds, you go, pardon me, just a second. Got a cert?
These people don't see these feelings every day and they just, they're going to be talking right to you. So I said to Billy Joe, I said, they don't know when they are going to throw up. They don't know when they are going to fall down. Anybody here just goes, they just fall on you. One of the great things I was thinking about recently, one of the great ways you can tell a non-alcoholic at parties, I said, Margaret, I'm a little fuzzy. Would you mind driving the car home tonight? If anyone in this room ever did that, I'd be sick with remorse. The answer is, it's my goddamn car! And I'm driving my goddamn car!
You know what, I'm going to rock your ass down the road! I'm not going to give up my keys when I'm at the top of my game. That's the first time I felt secure all day. It turns out, of all things, how do you measure alcoholics? By what it does to them? By what? How many times have you been in jail? It's been estimated that most people who die from alcoholism have never been in jail. Most people who die from alcoholism don't have long histories of hospitalizations. Nobody knows, but that's what's estimated. What is it that makes an alcoholic? What is the difference in my body? It turns out something I never dreamed of and I never knew anybody who told me about it. Then I've been sober for a while. It turns out the mark of the alcoholic is that alcohol does something special for me that it doesn't do for other people. By the time it's doing something to me, it's way down the road. What does it do for me? It almost instantly alters my perception of reality. It almost instantly alters my relationship to my environment, wherever that environment is. It almost instantly makes me larger and more self-contained and them smaller and less threatening. And I don't even know it. I take it for granted. Now, if it does that for me, I am lost. Because every time it works for me, it little by little alters my ability to deal with reality without it. And the curse of alcoholism is not that you can't get sober. If getting sober was the answer, detoxes would work. Treatment centers would turn out winners. Hospitals would turn out winners. Toilets would turn out winners. You always get sober. What it means is that somewhere in the disease of alcoholism, alcohol has now done enough to renovate my perception of reality so that un-renovated reality is untenable. And that's why nearly everybody who has it dies from it. Because they keep knowing deep in their heart, but I'm not like them. My case is different. They don't really understand. I suppose if
[01:05:08]
there ever was a universal phrase that every alcoholic I've ever known has ever said is, but you don't understand. Just that. And knowing if only, if only I would have found the right place, the right person, the right job. Whatever your if only is, every alcoholic in the world knows. If only she hadn't died. If only I had kept that job. If only this hadn't happened. And we've all got our hooks to if only's and if only's and if only's. Now, so alcoholism is a deadly thing. Makes it impossible for me to live sober very long. And I can't handle drinking because by the time the drink is doing something to me. I guess that's what is so well described in that first couple, that first little paragraph in chapter 3. The one thing all of us have in common, what? That we all benefit, not that we live in Texas or New Mexico, not that we drank rum or not that we drank martinis or not that we're lawyers or not that we're writers or not that we're farmers or ranchers or cowboys. What is it we all have in common? We all got so terribly drunk we wound up in jail. A lot of people in this room have been in jail. Some have been in prisons. There is one thing we have in common and it's written in this book and it says, the great obsession of all of us is that somehow someday we will control and enjoy our drinking.
The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many of us pursue it into the gates of insanity and death. And goes on to say that there's brief recoveries followed always by still worse relapse until you reach a point of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. The natural state of sober alcoholics is anxiety and depression. Now, that makes it seem bad and that's why I have to remember that the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous, its actions, its involvements, the reason to do these things is not some token thank you to some abstractions of where forgetting me sober. I gotta, again, this is only my own opinion, of course. Everything I say is my opinion. But Frank was saying last night, I used to have a great deal of problem with that too. Because God is, if God is just picking and choosing people to stay sober, he's not going to have any time for me, baby. There's too many nice people dying. What they're going to do for a bad guy? I finally had to come, the hardest thing I ever had to come to believe in was God. I could not accept God.
Because if God existed, I was damned. And it's what you do in that case. There's no God. Become a parlor intellectual parlor atheist. If God exists, let him strike me dead. You know, things emotionally immature people do to cover up their own fear. One time, we almost, we got, we got almost had a deal in the, one of the Texas newspapers. Because we were cute then. We're going to put in a dial a prayer number in the phone company. A dial a prayer for atheists.
Well, you dial this number and nobody ever answered. And we were so cute, we thought we were just cute. I had to come to believe in my sponsor. And he got me to do things that gave me enough self-worth to believe in AA. And when I got enough things done, one day became to understand I can come to believe in God. I have been given tools. Because if my sobriety is preordained, or my drunkenness is preordained, all of this is just a big scam. This is just a hollow mockery. I believe God loves me. I believe God loves you. I think He loves me the same amount He loves you. And I think He's given us all kind of tools. And we're all, some of us aren't very good with those tools. So I guess He, maybe it's the amount of effort you put forth. But I know that I am staying sober and I couldn't stay sober.
[01:10:00]
And I watch people in this room, in this state, in this nation, in this world, who I know all over the world, staying sober until they somehow get a perception they no longer need to do these things. And little by little, what happens? Their perceptions begin to gray out again. And AA turns gray. And people turn gray. And the steps turn gray. And God turns gray. Unless they're in one of their exaltations where they are now alone with God, watching everybody else turn gray, which causes people to get drunk just as fast. And so I suppose if I wanted to say anything, the one thing I've learned in all these years is that taking these actions restores the color in my life. And the sad thing is, I take it for granted sometimes, and forget it. About a year ago, I found myself in a situation that I would have sworn I would never find myself in again, because it's caused me a lot of pain over the years. And I thought, how can I be in this situation? And the situation, very easy, because I had been so active in my actions that I had not, in addition to that, maintained my spiritual contact with God. I got into a little situation where anything I thought must be God's will. And I had to start all over again a year ago. Not no big dramatic thing. I just had to start rebuilding my relationship with God, so that I could again walk in the sun. I was thinking yesterday morning when I got up, I was telling someone here at the convention, I had a kind of a terrible pain. After I was sober about five years, some of you know my family moved out to California, and they've lived there ever since. We had a little boy, and he's… But this next month, I had a terrible pain. It will be the first time in 33 years we haven't had a child in our house. And I don't know, I want to have a spiritual program going, because you know, as much as I hate being inconvenienced by those rotten kids, it really gives you something to think about most of the time. I wonder if that little son of a bitch is going to pass. I wonder if he's going to make that tackle, or is he just going to let that back run right up and down him, you know, on and on. But all these kids, and all these things, and my parents, and I probably have never had a better life. As most of you know, about nine and a half years ago, I gave up a marketing career that had become successful. And I run the same mission. I got 86 out of… I've been doing that for almost 10 years. And it's not an alcoholic treatment center. We don't even… We feed 43,000 meals a month, and we bed down thousands of dying men. And I could make a little more money doing something a little more fun than that. And the funny thing is, as I say, when I'm feeling bad, I wonder what the hell I'm doing in this gray world. But when I'm feeling right, I think I got more color in my life, if I could pick one of those poor bastards off that street and give him some life than I did in all of the coming down elevators in Beverly Hills, snapping my fingers and saying, baby, I'm cute. The funny thing is, you never become wonderful here. You always have to maintain some posture. Because it isn't that I turn bad. I stay fine. But everybody else grays out if I don't take care of myself. You all get screwed by life. And the reason I stay active is to keep you shaped up. I'm sick of sacrificing for you if you want to know the truth. Those of you who are new tonight, what I would say to you, we ask you to take these actions. You don't need them. But all these pukes around you do. Everywhere you are, they got to… And if you don't take care of yourself, they go look bad again.
That's why they say don't get too hungry or angry or lonely or tired. Not because they're bad conditions. They are perception disorders. When you're hungry, people act stupidly. Have you ever noticed that? They just know you're hungry and they act stupidly. Are You Hungry, and They Act Stupidly, When You're Angry, It's a Perfect Approved Obsessive Explosion, You Dumb Son of a Bitch, I'm Just Saying It for Your Own Good, When You're Lonely
[01:15:03]
It Pushes Every Self-Pity Button You Got, Well, I Suppose All the People from the Group Probably Went to a Party Tonight After the Meeting, Guess They Didn't Want to Tell Me, Oh Well, I Like Johnny Carson, When You're Tired People Act Funny, As I've Said Many Many Times, The Best Example I Know, Driving on the Freeway in the Morning, And I'm Tired, And I'm Going to Maintain and Make Sure that No One Knows I'm Tired, And How Do They Know?
They Know, Total Strangers Know, You Just See an Old Lady Up There, See the Boy in the Blue Merc, He's Very Tired This Morning, I'm Going to Cut That Son of a Bitch Off, Sometimes I Don't Chase Them Anymore, I'm Not Past My Exit, If I Haven't Caught Them By Then, The Hell With Them, I Used to Go Out to Covina After, 20 Miles, But the Point of All These Exercises, The Point of AA, As Was Said Here Before, AA Is Not, This Is Not Alcoholics Anonymous, This Is The Pit Stop for Alcoholics Anonymous, Meetings Are The Pit Stop for Alcoholics, The Race Is Out There on Those Bricks, Just Like It Is in Indianapolis on Those Bricks, It's on Those Bricks, That's Why A Lot of People Have Problems, Because They Get Thinking Here, They Get Thinking So Well, They're Going to Go Out There and Be Wonderful, But You're Not, You're Going to Be Mistake Prone, Because You're A Human Being, And You're Going to Be Fallible, You're Going to Make Errors, And You're Going to, Sometimes You're Going to Feel Superior to Them, Sometimes Inferior to Them, And You Need A Lot of Reinforcements, That's Why Action in Alcoholics Anonymous Is So Grand, That's Why Working With New People Is So Grand, Because You Relearn The Stuff Through Them, If You Ever Take A New Person To A Meeting, You Will Notice You Listen 10 Times As Good As When You Sit There By Yourself, Because You Have To Listen In Case There Are Any Heresies To Explain To The Puke What He Really Meant Was, And The Purpose Of It All Is Not To Make You Wonderful Or Grand, But Better Than That, To Give You Some Way To When Your Perceptions Get Grey, To Bring Them Back To Color, Maybe Not The Vivid Color, To Bring Them Back To Real Colors, To Bring Them Back To Living In The World, I Sometimes Am So Grateful That I Am Sober That I Could Cry, Sometimes I Forget To Be Grateful For Days On End, And I'm Just Concerned About Why Things Aren't Going My Way In The Board Of Directors, Or Some God Damn Thing, But Somewhere In Between There Is What AA, And God, And The Steps, And The Sponsors Make Available To Me, A Perception Of Reality That's Got Enough Color So I Need Never Drink To Stand It, A Place To Go To Share That Perception, Knees To Kneel On, To Ask God To Give Me A Little More Courage To Do What I Should, And A Little More Wisdom To Know What It Is That Being Carried Away With My Own B.S., And My Moments Of Delusions Of Grandeur, And To Little By Little Be Willing To Extend Myself For The Next Man As Someone Extended Themselves To Me, I Am Very Pleased To Be Here Tonight, My Sponsor Chuck C. Asked That I Especially Give You His Good Wishes, He Is Not Feeling Well But He Is Coming Along, I Am Grateful To The Committee, I Am Grateful To Have Seen So Many Old Friends And New Friends, But Primarily The Best Thing I Know, I Must Be Alright Because You All Look Okay Tonight, Thank You.
[01:20:08]
This Is The Same Size The Other Speakers Got, I Am Sorry Clancy We Will Get You Another One Bigger.