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Source: 1960 Long Beach International Convention – 1960 Long Beach Int., chair Pat O'B speakers Mary S and Tom D part 1 of 2.mp3 File: 1960-long-beach-international-convention-1960-long-beach-int-chair-pat-ob-speakers-mary-s-and-tom-d-part-1-of-2.mp3 Duration: 00:50:09
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I'm going to introduce our chairman of this meeting tonight, a man who I happened to meet for the first time two years ago at the General Service Conference of AA in April of 1959. He was a very pleasant and likable Southerner, given to slight fits of outbursts, at times became a little noisy, and he joined some of the rest of our fraternity back there. He's the guys who get up and do the work, instead of sitting back and listen and criticize what we have done. But you learn a great deal becoming a delegate, which he is.
You really learn the meaning of services, something that each and every one of you out there are a part of, because that is our third and last legacy from Bill, services. Number one, your 12 steps to recovery. Number two, your traditions. And the lifeline for all of us, number three, services. So I won't stay up here and take any more of my time, but it gives me a great pleasure and a lot of happiness to see this man out here, the delegate from the lovable state of Louisiana, the capital of Baton Rouge, Pat O'Bee.
Come on out here, Pat. Thank you, Walter. O'Bee is about as anonymous as, well, my name is Pat O'Brien. Hi, everybody. I am an alcoholic, and by the grace of God, which came to me freely through nothing that I did, but through my mother's and the lady who is now my wife's, their prayers, and by trying to follow the 12 steps and live by the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, also by trying to follow the 11th step in the manner in which I was taught as a boy, I have somehow or other, and I can't say this without laughing, I have not had a drink for 22 years.
I guess I laugh because people expect you to probably be somewhere near normal if you've been sober 22 years. And anyone that knows me knows I'm not normal. I forgot my jokes. I didn't have any jokes to begin with. They're out in the back of the car in a little green book, and my wife wouldn't go get them, and they're corny anyway. And the only one I have to tell that suddenly came to my attention, I'm going to try it.
A man was going to speak, and the reason I'm going to tell this is I'm nervous right now. And one time a fellow was going to speak, and just before the talk, he ran into a lady. And the lady said to him, oh, you're the speaker tonight. And he said, yes. She said, well, are you nervous before you get up to speak? And he said, oh, no, I'm not nervous. I'm accustomed to this. Well, she said, what are you doing in the lady's restroom then?
By the grace of God is this membership in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I want to just say this one thing, that it is by the grace of God that you and I are one, each one of us are one of the 1%, the 250,000 who have quit drinking in AA, out of the 25 million, that means there are 24,700,000 more for us to carry the message to. We will never run out of 12-step work. Now, it gives me great pleasure to introduce the first speaker who has really been around.
I have just met her, but geographically, she comes from New York and is now from Honolulu.
[00:05:04]
So geographically, she has been around. She is a housewife and has a teenage daughter, and she has the great pleasure of having a daughter attending the convention with her. Without any further remarks, I will introduce from across the water at Honolulu, Hawaii, Mary S. Mary? Here they say hi. In Hawaii, we say aloha. I'm very happy to be here. I'm very nervous. This is the first time I have ever spoken in front of a microphone.
Can you hear me? He talks about different places and spaces and distances. I came from the Middle West. I went to New York when I was 18. I had some very gay years in show business. Very wonderful, happy years. I was doing what I wanted to do. Then it got to be sort of a tiresome routine between the Stork Club and El Morocco and Café Society, and probably some of you know that route too. However, the drinking didn't give me any trouble in those days.
My voice is shaking. I can hear it. But I decided that I wanted something more than that. I wanted a home and a family. So I met a man I had known for a great many years who lived back in the Middle West where I had come from. We were married and had a lovely home, had a lovely daughter, had everything I seemingly wanted and planned on. And that's when this thing started, this business of alcoholism.
My thinking must have been terribly mixed up all of a sudden because I can remember as much as I loved my daughter when she was a baby and she was so cute. I used to find myself down on the kitchen floor scrubbing out corners and things and saying, Damn, how did I ever get myself in this situation? This was a peculiar twist because this is what I wanted. Now that I think back, it was simply my thinking.
I did have everything I wanted. Everything was wonderful, except my drinking had increased. And it played tricks on me because I was a periodic. I would drink along for, oh, six months or so and then fall on my face for a few days and then pick myself up and drink along for another four months and fall on my face for a few days. And this routine went on for quite a long while. Someone was always there to take over when I wasn't able to.
I knew about AA. I had a feeling that I was an alcoholic too. I think most of us have. I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what was wrong with my thinking particularly. I knew something was going wrong with my drinking, but I didn't think about my thinking. I was introduced to AA in the Middle West briefly, but it didn't mean anything. I don't think I was ready in a sense because I hadn't quite, I hadn't suffered enough really.
I really hadn't had it too bad in any way. Then we had this chance to move to Honolulu, and I thought this was wonderful. It still is wonderful. It still was wonderful. We got to Honolulu and things went along very smoothly for a while, and I thought all this and heaven too. Honolulu is very beautiful. People do do a lot of drinking over there, but they seem to do it very well. It was a very gorgeous spot.
We bought a beautiful home. Everything was going along beautifully when all of a sudden this thing took a terrific turn. I found myself in the hospital a couple of times, came back. Everything was all right for a short while, and then it happened again. Suddenly I found myself on a plane going to New York. I wasn't sick. I wasn't drunk. I mean I was sick. I was terribly sick. I arrived in New York.
I'll have to put in a little bit of a funny story here. I arrived in San Francisco and I had an hour or so between planes. It was a night flight from Honolulu and of course a tourist flight.
[00:10:01]
I asked the stewardess several times if she had anything to drink on the plane, and she said no, only coffee. When I got off the plane in San Francisco, I went to the bar. I was not a bar drinker. I didn't know much about even ordering a drink at the bar. I was a bottle drinker in the kitchen sort of thing. I went to the bar at 7.30 in the morning. It opened and I asked for a bourbon and water. I wanted a straight bourbon and some water.
He gave me a tall glass with ice, poured the bourbon in and poured the water up to the top. This I didn't want at all, but I drank it. I was afraid to do anything else. I had two of these and got on the plane, but before I got on the plane, I bought a half a pint of whiskey. I put it in my train case, got on the plane. There was a large man sitting on the aisle seat of the plane. I had my train case on my lap.
It was locked, and as soon as the plane took off and the little rooms were opened, I excused myself and dashed down to the other end of the plane and got a cup and dashed up at the other end of the plane to go in the little place. The red light was on. I had to wait. I thought I'd never get out of there. I got in, opened my train case and got out my little half pint of whiskey and opened it with my fingernail.
It was all I had. I couldn't waste any. This was on my mind too. And I poured this little paper cup full of a drink of whiskey. It was about so big, you know, the paper cups on the plane, and gulped it down and turned around to get a drink of water like this, took the drink, and it was liquid soap. And I waited for a little while, and my first thought, being an alcoholic, was, my God, I can't afford to waste the whiskey.
And I waited and I waited and I waited, and it stayed down. I was surprised. I still am. So just like any other alcoholic, I suppose, I thought, well, that stayed down. I'll try another one, only this time I'll be sure and see where the water is. So I did. I took another cup of whiskey and turned around and had a drink of water and walked back to my seat, and I was pretty happy for a while. At least I was calm for a while.
We'll put it that way. And during the trip to New York, I had the rest of the bottle, and I arrived in New York in pretty good shape and went to my sister's apartment. She wasn't expecting me. No one was expecting me. The next night I had dinner with a friend of mine, a non-alcoholic friend, and she was the first one that I revealed this great, deep, dark secret to. And I said, Gertrude, I think I'm an alcoholic, and this is a horrible thing.
It's the first time I've ever said this to anyone. And she said, what about going to AA? And I said, well, I don't think I'm quite ready yet, but maybe before I leave. So she went right to the telephone and looked up the meetings and took me to a meeting that night. And by the way, just before I came up here a few minutes ago, there was a girl sitting out in front who was one of the first girls I met in AA in New York.
I didn't know she was here. It's nice to see you, Ruth. I went to my first meeting and cried during the entire meeting. Of course, I tried to get out of there, too. I ran up the stairs, and my non-alcoholic friend stayed. It was an open meeting, and she stayed down there and was having a very gay time. And I sat there and cried, and I finally beat it for the stairway. And some very kind man took me by the arm, and he said, Honey, it doesn't hurt a bit.
All you have to do is just sit there for an hour. So I did and cried during the meeting, and they say it was one of the best meetings around. They had the best speakers that night, but I don't remember anything about it. And my good friend Paula and Betty were there, and they said, We'd like to call on you tomorrow, Mary. Is it all right? I said, Oh, yes, I'll be home. So they came at noon, and of course the shades were all down, and I was lying down.
There was nothing in the house to drink. My sister, I don't know what she didn't drink or didn't have it or had taken it out because I was there or something. All I could find is some banana brandy. And I don't like bananas, and I don't like brandy, but I was doing the best I could with that. And one of the girls said, Mary, I think you should go to the hospital. And I said, Well, I'm not that sick.
And she said, Nevertheless, I think you should. So they took me to Towns Hospital. This was the first time I was ever hospitalized and had my clothes taken away from me and had the perfume taken away from me, which I didn't understand until later. But I had five days in Towns. I hated every minute of the first two days because, as Colonel Towns said yesterday, and I heard him speak, there were no outgoing calls, no incoming calls, There were no outgoing calls, no incoming calls, no mail, no visitors except A.A., and A.A.'s, Ruth, who is here today, was one of my first visitors, A.A.'s came in all day and visited, we had our little slogans on the walls, I sat up until two o'clock in the morning talking to the nurses, trying to find out more and more and more of what this was all about, and you know at the end of four days I didn't want to leave towns, I thought if I could find some little thing to do like wiping up the floors or something,
[00:15:27]
I'd just like to park there and stay there, I didn't care whether I left or not, so I left anyway after five days and started my meetings in New York, I went to a meeting every night for six weeks and some in the afternoon, it was the only way I could get this thing in my head, I think I had a hard time admitting to myself that I was an alcoholic, it sounded awful, I didn't like the way it sounded, this, you're an alcoholic, was, I don't know, I just didn't like it, I, it was awfully hard for me, some people come into A.A. and I don't know, a cloud, something is lifted from them and whatnot, it wasn't so with me, it took me a long time, I didn't drink, but it took me weeks and weeks, I was afraid to pass a liquor store, I was afraid to look at a bottle of booze, I was afraid, I was afraid, I was afraid, I was scared to death I was going to have a drink, but six weeks went by and I had to go home to Honolulu, then I had another great fear, what was A.A. going to be like in Honolulu?
And that I found out was pretty wonderful too, I met a wonderful crowd of people over there and that's where I've more or less, I've been in A.A. since I've been there, I had 15 months in A.A. and I went back to New York on a trip and with my daughter and had my first birthday, which was a belated birthday, I think, I had been in A.A. 15 months, and I got some very distressing news from home, that's an understatement, it was a crisis in my life, so I had to rush back to Honolulu immediately and the news was even worse than I had heard that it was going to be.
My first shocked reaction was to pass out cold, I don't know how I happened to do that after not having a drink for 15 months or any medicines of any kind, but that afternoon they called a little oriental doctor in to see me and he talked to me about facing things in life which I knew with our serenity prayer and what not and I thought well he's telling me things I already know and he left a few pills for me to take, a couple of second alls, or something to sleep and some tranquilizers to calm me down and I went to bed that night and had a very not good night's sleep I think, I was very tired and the next day I got up and not having anything, sedation or anything else I guess for 15 months or the shock or I don't know what it was, I got up and prepared breakfast and it was all on the table and I reached up in the cupboard to get a glass for some milk for my daughter and there was a full bottle, an unopened bottle of Johnny Walker scotch facing me. When Lulu got there I don't even remember her coming in and I had only had that much scotch, I was completely drunk.
Well this went on for 10 days and of course I was a basket case, I was hauled into the hospital and this was the first time this ever happened. So it was hard coming back, it was very hard with all I had to face and so forth and so forth, if it hadn't been for AA and all the wonderful help I had from all the wonderful people in Honolulu I wouldn't certainly be standing here this afternoon telling you my very simple story.
However I have picked up the pieces, I am very grateful for everything that's happened because I probably couldn't have made it the other way anyway. I have all this responsibility, I have had to sell houses and sell furniture and move and make a good move across the country and so forth, which I have been capable of doing thanks to AA. I don't know what I would have done without my friends and all the help I had, my God it was a big job for me. This is an entirely new life, I don't mean AA is a new life of course, I mean that but my life outside of AA is going to be an entirely new life for me from now on.
My daughter goes into college, I'm completely on my own but I am going back to New York and AA is home in New York. I have lots of friends in AA there, I have my own group. It really has taught me many, many things. It's taught me that I am capable of doing things on my own, that I don't have to have someone to lean on constantly.
[00:20:14]
I lost some of my good friends, my AA friends in Honolulu temporarily through some misunderstanding and I immediately thought, oh my God I can't stand this, I can't stand this, I can't do it alone, I simply can't stand it. But you can and I did and that taught me another lesson. AA is the most important thing in my life, it comes before my daughter, it comes before anything that I have. Without it I have absolutely nothing. I'm very grateful, I was very surprised when I had this letter from Hazel asking me to talk because I'm certainly not a speaker in any sense of the word.
My story is very simple, it took me a long time to get the message, I guess it's because I didn't have too much, too rough a time with this drinking business. I was protected, I was a periodic, when it did happen someone was always there to pick me up and then it was over and then I was alright and this thing, I guess it could have gone on, my God, on into the rest of my life if it had gone on that way.
But I'm very happy that it came to a head. As a matter of fact, when I had this relapse and I don't like to call it a slip because it was a complete collapse, the AA's in Honolulu decided that they would let me drink and so instead of coming in and taking what I had away from me they supplied me with more. And I didn't know quite what this was all about until after I finished. This one girl came in and she said, honey, I'm bringing you the very best I have and we'll put one under the sink and one at the bedside table and one under the bed and if you forget, please call me if you forget where we put them.
We love you very much and we want you to be happy and have everything you want. And she said, this is from my husband's very best stock, Mary, it's something that won't hurt you too much. And so this was all I needed, of course, and all I did was finish the one in the bathroom, by the way. Then I was strapped on a stretcher and taken to the hospital and that was the first time for that too. When I got into the hospital, I must tell you this because I think it's amusing, this girl decided that she wanted to put a long, flowing nightgown on me so I would look glamorous going into the hospital and had trains and skirts and it was long.
So I got in and they got me all quieted for the night and my train case was unpacked and I was on the third floor and there was an open fire escape at the other end of the hall and when no one was looking, I picked up my train case and picked up my train and flitted down the hall and flitted down the three flights of stairs of the fire escape and flitted across, I was barefooted, flitted across the yard, which was kind of a, I don't know, that stuff they put on driveways, which is very rough, I know.
And got out on the highway and flagged a car and asked them to take me to a taxi and someone called someone and said a patient had escaped and I turned around and there was a very tall woman and a very small man in a white coat and another little woman and they ushered me in and they strapped me in bed and I thought, well that's fine, I can get these straps off and they were locked and that was the first time for that.
So it wouldn't have been long before I actually did make the psychiatric ward because I didn't see that nurse again and I'm sure she was from upstairs. So it's all significant. I was headed, I'm certainly sure, for a great many years for this thing. I was even grateful for the people in AA for making me so damn sick. I wish they hadn't been so generous. But AA in Honolulu is really very wonderful. We have a wide range of nationalities, as you know, there. It's all very interesting. I don't know whether you heard the chief talk at the other meeting at 2.30 and tell you what we have over there, but it's growing in leaps and bounds.
It started in 54 or 57 when I came in. They had two little groups. They now have nine and it's all very good AA. I've enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to going to New York and the AA I know there. It's wonderful being here. I'm very flattered in everything that I was asked to talk. I'm very grateful to be able to tell my story in all its simplicity. As far as traveling is concerned, it hasn't been much. It has been Honolulu, the Midwest, and New York, New York, Honolulu, the Midwest, you know. I haven't stopped any places in between. I've just made long range changes.
[00:25:10]
Thank you very much for listening to me. I hope to see you all again. Aloha. Thank you, Mary. Mary, you could have gone another few minutes. That white light was just that there was still a little time. I think that more than Mary have cried in AA. In fact, today, yesterday, last night when I saw Sister Ignatia on that platform, today when I heard this man who had been in prison many, many times, when I saw him on the platform leading these hundreds and hundreds of people in the Lord's Prayer where he just choked up and I choked up with him and the tears came down. I don't know. Is it wonderful to say that it's wonderful to cry? I don't know. To me, it was.
And then when I heard another Californian today tell, he wasn't telling his story exactly, but he was trying to tell us how to communicate and talking about anonymity. In telling this, he mentioned that his father was an alcoholic. He also mentioned that when he went to a jail to give a talk, there was his son in jail for the tenth time. These things point up the fact that we are dealing in the most serious matters, matters that are matters of life and death, the difference between happiness and sorrow.
I want to thank Hazel for inviting me to be chairman of this meeting. To have any share at all in this is a wonderful thing. And thank my friend Walter Kay of California for introducing me. Our next speaker is quite a character. I think we have a treat in store for us. Sometimes these psychiatrists and sociologists will tell you that we are what we are because maybe we were only children or we were the first child or we were spoiled.
But how under the sun a man who is one of thirteen children, which he is, how he could be spoiled is beyond me. And he grew up, he said, without any respect for discipline or order, none at all. And then he joined the Marines, where he spent six years going in a private and coming out a private, but being other things in between. He is an example of the rags to riches stories that we hear in AA. He never had a nickel. I think now he has several nickels.
In addition to that, he has the great honor, I think, and it must be very difficult to control himself at times, he has working for him now in one of his companies, a retired admiral and a colonel. And I hope it's a colonel of the Marines. So from Jupiter, Florida, from that other wonderful sunshine state, we have Tom Dee. Hello Tom. I'm a grateful alcoholic as I stand here. I want to say to the lady that preceded me that I too drank in Honolulu. I never saw any of that good stuff with the labels on it. I saw plenty of the cane squeezins, the kick-a-boo juice, the raisin jack, but I don't know about the stuff with the labels.
I'm a very grateful alcoholic as I stand here today, and as Pat told you, I had kind of a rough time. I don't know why they didn't save the horrible example for last, but here I am. I have the privilege and the honor. I have the privilege and the honor of having my sponsor in the audience, a man who is responsible for me being sober, Jackie down here.
[00:30:07]
He met us at the plane the other day and it was a great thrill for me. You know, I would have been sober about six months longer, only I thought Jackie was crazy. I knew that he had been in and out of a few institutions that weren't labeled for alcoholics. I hadn't seen him in quite a few years. And here he was coming after me to go to some kind of a meeting where I knew the building and I knew that there were some sort of holy rollers in that particular building.
And then I knew he was crazy. He was going to get me up there and attend one of these meetings. But I later found out what his intentions were and had I listened to him, I would have been sober six months longer. But thank God, I'll make a few statements up here tonight and I won't be boasting and I won't be bragging, but I just want to show you the miracle of AA and how it's worked with me. As Pat told you, I was one of 13 children, so there's no reason why I should blame it on the only child and being spoiled.
So then I come along as a youngster right after the First World War. You know, I'm going to make another statement up here. And anything I say is not in my own opinion. These are none of my ideas. I've gotten them all from people like you out there. About three years ago I heard your wonderful speaker Chuck in Miami. He made the statement that he was so many years old he didn't look it because he hadn't lived that many years.
Well, I'm 50 years old too and I know I don't look it, but I was drunk so damn many years that I didn't live them either. And I had a hard time with the booze. Because anything I did, I did hard. I worked hard, played hard, drank hard. And I started drinking at a real early age back during Prohibition. I can remember when the First World War veterans were home. They were all gassed and they were all gassed in many ways. I mean, they were from this mustard gas.
And I was just a kid about 15 years old. I was driving Model T Fords and four-cylinder Chevrolets. And I was elected to drive the people around I wanted to and I got a taste of the booze. And it didn't bother me for quite some time. Because I was young, I was quite active in athletics, and I warded off all these physical effects. It didn't bother me too much. And then I started to get into jams as we all do.
Now here's something for a guy like me. It was almost impossible for me to get in jail in the little town I came from up in Connecticut. I knew all the cops. I could speak to every third person on the street. While my cousin was mayor of the town, I got in jail for drinking. I remember one time, I was in there several times, I remember one New Year's Eve. He came by, he was elected mayor. And the chief of police was showing them the jail, to inspect the jail to see the prisoners like they do, I guess, in the service.
I'll tell you a little bit about that too. He took one look at me. He said, well, you're the cleanest drunk in here anyway. I had a tuxedo on. It was New Year's Eve, night four. So I was one of the cleanest. So I had trouble from the very, very start. And as Pat told you, being a person who would not or could not accept authority, I joined the Marine Corps, not to be patriotic. I was in a bar one day drinking and a guy looked at me and he said, you're a pretty well built guy, you're athletic, you'd make a hell of a good Marine.
So I joined the Marines. I didn't know anything about it, but believe you me, for the next six years I found out a little bit about discipline. I even volunteered to go overseas to get out of a jam. The only difference between the civilian jails and the brigs, they call them by a different name, that's all. You know, I've also sold myself on the idea that I was a periodical drinker while I was in the Marines.
I had periods of five days, 20 days, 30 days, 60 days. I even had a period of 123 days one time without a drink. As soon as they let me out of the brig, I was drunk again. I was back in the same brig the next day after spending 123 days in there. I got a little bit of liberty, a little bit of money, that was all I needed. I was the type of drunk that once I took on a little bit of booze, I didn't care what happened until I was knocked down and dragged out.
I wasn't like this lady drinking the liquor with the… One thing I can't understand about people in the AA, how they can remember so vividly the kind of liquor they drank and what they drank and the beer. I never knew what I drank. I didn't know how much. I did know one thing, that every time I came to, that's all I wanted was something else to drink.
[00:35:06]
And it had gotten down where it was a very serious thing with me and I didn't realize it. I can remember that while I spent over two years overseas, volunteered to go over. You know, I thought if I went overseas I wouldn't be able to get booze, I'd stay out of trouble. I wanted to get away from the people who were getting me in trouble. You know, the gang, get away from them, you won't get in trouble.
But I was the type of guy that regardless of what was going on, I could always go out and promote something. I was always promoting different things. I could get the vehicle, I could get the booze. And I am a very, very fortunate fellow to be standing here today. I could have been in a naval prison up here in Mary Island. You see, I'm not a stranger to California. I was out here in the Marine Corps. I was out at Camp Elliott in 1942.
I was back, when I came back from overseas, the Marine Corps base out at Pendleton. So California looks a little different to me now. A little different. I was in the San Diego jail and the L.A. jail, too. It seemed, though, every time I got drunk I wound up in jail. D-D-D-D. Drunk, disorderly, and dirty. These things I am not particularly proud of, but they did happen to me. They happened to me because I'm an alcoholic and I didn't know it.
I didn't know I was an alcoholic when Jackie was chasing me to go to a meeting, but he knew it. I thought he was nuts. How many times I think of this boy now and how I look forward to seeing him last week or this week. These are the things that we have to cherish. You know, I'm a lucky guy because when I first came in, back in 1946, and incidentally I haven't had a drink of booze since then. I haven't even had a desire to have a drink.
I've had a little trouble in between, but no booze trouble. And this is the miracle of A.A. Like Pat told you, I didn't have 15 cents to rub together that I could call my own. So this is what can happen to a person in A.A. And I was sober for eight years before I got my first real break. I was in the right place at the right time, and I was sober. I was ready, willing, and able, and I took advantage of the situation, and the bottom has fallen out of things as far as these wonderful, wonderful material things have happened.
Now I'll say this, and I'll say it in all sincerity, that if I were to choose today between the material things that I have and my sobriety, I'd take sobriety. Because I know that I could go out and make what I have made. If we could do this in a short six or seven years, we could go out and do it again. So I'm not worried about that. The thing that I am so concerned about now and so deeply loyal to A.A.
is for the wonderful things it has done for me. You know what Pat forgot to tell you? I did go to school. I didn't learn anything. I went all the way through school without learning anything. That's not easy. I became a salesman because I had to go out and promote money to drink with. They could have paid me off in booze, it wouldn't have made any difference. Because I converted into booze anyway. And I traveled all around.
I was even out in California here prior to going into Marines. I've been all around the world. I used to do a little bit of ice skating when I was younger. I was pretty good at it, but I wasn't the world beater that I thought I was. We're not the geniuses we think we are after we sober up. We're normal, we're fairly intelligent, but we're not the geniuses that we… This is a wonderful mutual admiration society, but we're not the geniuses.
But we do have these God-given talents that we misuse. And then we come in here and we sober up. They come to the surface. I want to make another statement here too. If you couldn't play the piano before you came into AA, sobering up isn't going to allow you to play the piano. So a lot of people come in here and they're in here for about six months and they look around and say, where the hell are my Cadillacs?
That happens. They look around and they say, gee, you're a lucky guy. But they fail to realize that in between all these things, we had to go to a lot of meetings. You know how lucky I was in the beginning to have fellows like Jackie and Betty sitting out there and a couple more? They wouldn't let me rest. They wouldn't let me not go to meetings or go on 12-step calls. I learned early in the game that the only way that I could hold on to what I'd gotten here in AA was to give it away freely.
Give it away freely. Give of yourself. It doesn't mean to dip down in your pocket and give away your cash, although a lot of people think you should.
[00:40:00]
To give away freely what you get here. The only way you can hold on to what you get here in AA is to give it away. And that's wonderful. You know how simple this program is? That if you can count to one, you can make it. Take one drink for one day, you can make it. Otherwise, how could I have made it? Because I didn't have anything to work with when I came in. I was in rough shape. But it didn't take long.
One day, a month, a year. First thing you know, I was celebrating my second anniversary and things like that. But I have been so lucky that every place I go, I get active in AA. While we're so busy around Palm Beach County and Jupiter with drunks, we haven't got time to get drunk ourselves. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing. Now, these 13 brothers and sisters that I had, or 12, if they knew that I was within a thousand miles of their range, they were nervous.
Because they were sure of two things. They were sure of two things. If I had a pocket full of money, I was giving them hell. And if I wasn't, I was maybe looking for a buck to get out of jail. So this is another reward that I have gotten. These people are glad to see me now. And if I don't visit with them, I don't write to them, they're after me to find out why. The rewards that I found out, the rewards and dividends in AA that we derive, we don't go out and strive for.
As a result of the way we live and what we do, certain things will come to us if we're supposed to have them. And if we're not supposed to have them, we could wait until hell froze over and we wouldn't get them. This has been a wonderful education for me. I have learned so many things, things that Pat asked me about my bringing up. And I told him that as a kid, in going to school, and I went to a parochial school, I could have been sitting there counting numbers, just saying prayers.
The only time that the spiritual… Well, I had a spiritual awakening. I'd broken through when I came into AA. You know, I first came in, and these people know what I'm talking about, and I went to a banquet. I was in a very short time, we had a banquet. And a fellow got up, and he told about seeing the lightning and hearing the thunder, and he had a spiritual awakening. He was a very, very good speaker, a tremendous speaker.
So I sat around there. You know, I was one of these angle guys. I sat around there for about a year, and I was waiting to see the lightning and hear the thunder, and I wanted a spiritual awakening. And one night a guy got up and he said, Listen, if you have had a change of attitude, you have had a spiritual awakening. And I had had a change of attitude the very first meeting I went to. And I didn't come to AA to stay sober, believe me.
I came in here on an angle. I can remember watching that basket when I went around, see who was taking the cash. Hell, I was an angle man for a long time. You know, I have these reoccurrences of people coming to me now, and they say, Well, you're fairly successful in business. Didn't you do this? I'll say, Yeah, I did, but I haven't done it for the past 13 and a half, 14 years. I can't deny what I did prior to that, but, you know, humility in me is nothing but facing the truth.
That's humility. And the man that tells you he has humility stinks. I think. Anything that I say is my own opinion. I had an experience here a short time ago, and maybe one of the reasons why Pat labeled me as from rags to riches, in this small town that we have had a lot to do with developing in Florida, we're starting a bank. Imagine me, a director in a bank. And that has happened. So they come around and they investigate.
People from Tallahassee and the people from Washington, they have this long application that you fill out. So what clubs do you belong to? So I put down a few of the clubs I belong to, and then I put down Alcoholics Anonymous, 13 years uninterrupted sobriety. And you know, when a man came around for a personal interview, they were there for three days, he sat me down in a special room, and maybe he didn't want the other people to know.
He said, What about this? I said, Well, when I tell you this, I don't have to tell you what happened 13 years prior to that, because you'll know. So he turned the other page and he said, Well, I see you're doing all right. He said, I know a lot of people have been helped by your… He said, I know a lot of people have been helped by your movement, so you see, the good word gets around just as well as the bad, so if it wasn't characters like me that have got out there occasionally and let people know what we're doing, you know, in Jupiter where I come from, there's no anonymity as far as I'm concerned, and we went there, we went to Jupiter six years ago, there are a little over 600 people, we have 9,000 in the area now, and we're getting ready for 90,000,
[00:45:22]
spreading all over the place, and the post office has been, had a few additions on it, but anything that comes to the area marked Alcoholics Anonymous automatically goes in our box. I'll tell you another thing too, we started a group down there about six years ago, it'll be six years in October, we had six people at our first meeting, and two weeks ago we had 103, 103 people. So you see, this does work, and if it'll work for people like me, people, hell, when I came in, you know a smart guy like me doesn't learn very easily, shooting all the angles and looking around, so if I can get it, why there's hopes for ever so many, but I know regardless of what happens, what kind of a business deal I might be in, if there is any AA work coming up, I'll drop it and I'll go. For the simple reason that if it wasn't for AA, where would I be today? Anything I ever have, anything I ever hope to have, I have gotten directly from AA.
I'm going to make another statement here, that if I should lay my head on a pillow tonight and not awaken, I won't die a drunkard. I couldn't say that thirteen and a half, fourteen years ago, I couldn't say that. So this is the miracle of AA, the example. The only authority we have to speak by is by our example. I know anybody that knows words can use them. I'm not so interested in hearing a sermon as I am in seeing it. And that action and getting out there and giving, it has so many rewards.
I could stand here for hours and tell you humorous things, and I think too that we should, guys like me should get up here and tell these things and keep people laughing a little bit, because things that were so tragic a short time ago, we can now laugh about them. I wasn't particularly proud, and I'm not proud of, like Pat said, my Marine Corps record. But it did happen to me. I went in a private and I came out a private.
I had a fluctuating rank in between, so I just quit using it. It fluctuated so much. But isn't it wonderful to come in here and know what makes us tick? And to know that we can be normal people without the use of alcohol. Isn't it nice to know that we have a disease instead of being… You know the thing that used to gripe me? People called me a rummy. Oh, boy. And I was a type of drinker, and invariably I would get over the other side of the railroad tracks, sleeping in alleys, sleeping in automobiles. I got down to drinking shaving lotion. Now, the menins, when you burp a little bit, that's not very pleasant.
I learned that in the service, and I knew that if I had gotten back into civilian life, if I ever got back into civilian life, and I was carried COG in the government for two years, because I only contracted to stay four. I joined before the war. The war broke out and I had to stay two additional years, convenience of the government. And I know they were glad to get rid of me. But when I got back into civilian life and I was doing the same things that I was doing in the service, in the military, drinking and shaving, that is when I thought I was crazy. That is when I would probably have welcomed Jackie to take me to one of his old nut factories. But I found out that these wonderful things can happen. Some of you people probably saw another reward I have. My beautiful wife spoke this morning at 8 o'clock and gave a wonderful talk.
I have so many things to be thankful for. But like I said before, if I were to trade all these things for my sobriety, I wouldn't do it. I would keep the sobriety. And it's very nice of you people to listen and to be patient and to be so nice to me, to break a little smile and a grin there, because that helps me. And if I'm asked ever to do anything for AA, I hope that I never say no. You know, the only time I ever said no prior to this was when they asked me if I had enough to drink. I never had enough to drink. So if I can repay in a small way, I know that I could never repay AA one iota for the wonderful, wonderful things that have happened to me. And thank you good people.