The 2001 Gopher State Roundup

Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is June Christianson, and I am from Dixie, Oklahoma. And I am a member of the Worldwide Fellowship of Al Anon. Gosh.

It's a real pleasure to be here. You know, Rick and I had a deal. I said, I'll say something nice about you. You say something nice about me. And that's kinda how it works when you get to introduce each other like this.

But it has been a pleasure up to this point to be here. The fun kinda dimmed a little when I had to stand up here. One nice thing about it, that light is so bloomin' bright, and it's dark out there. I can't see if y'all are crying or laughing or getting up and leaving. I just I may be speaking to an empty room by the time this is over, but if I knew I was gonna have to look at a light like that, I'd have worn my cap.

Down home where I come from, we all wear caps. I wanna thank I wanna thank the committee that puts this thing on. This is absolutely phenomenal, and I wanna thank Bill for inviting me. And when he did, I was just awestruck because I've always heard about this conference. You know?

And I know it's big, and I know it's good. And, then I got to bring my daughter, the 12 step man to this program, and that was kinda special. And then I got up here and here's Rick, and I know Rick, and then I knew David who spoke last night. I enjoyed Mary Anne, and and then there's John. And John's gonna speak to y'all tonight, and John's been a real, real valuable part of my life and the lives of my children And, Sandy.

Gosh. There's just so many. You know? I've enjoyed every speaker I'm looking forward to hearing, Heather. I wanna thank the committee for the, big fruit basket and some flowers.

And I also wanna remember to say thanks to the tapers. Ellie and the group of Governors State Tapers, that that's a job. And they come around to these things, and they do this for fun for free. Let's give everybody that in And then there was Annette, and she picked me up at the airplane, and she said, how will I know you? And I said, don't worry, honey.

We'll know each other. And sure enough, we stepped off that plane, and there she stood. And I said, are you in? And she said, yeah. And so she got us here.

And, the traffic was terrible, but she made it she made it through. Anyway, it's fun to be here, and I appreciate the opportunity and, appreciate all of y'all being out here this afternoon. I grew up in a little farm town where I live today, Bixby, Oklahoma. It's just right down the road from Tulsa. I'm a member of Al Anon Group at the Unanimity Club that Mary Anne spoke about last night.

Traditions, group is my home group. We meet on Wednesday night, and I'm a committed member to that home group. I believe in sponsorship. I believe in being committed to your home group, and I believe in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I don't make any apologies for that. Like Rick said this morning, I was I was brought up on that book, and maybe I'll think to tell y'all about that a little bit later.

But, anyway, that's where I go to meeting tonight. We have a strong strong group, and, that's where I go to meetings. That's my home group. And and I I I, it's in Tulsa. I live out on the home farm.

I grew I went back to my home place, 3 years ago after my daddy passed away, and my mother had to be moved out of the home. My husband and I went back down there where we raised our kids and, where we got married. And so we're back down there in that little farm community, and that's where I grew up. And Bixby is a little farm town, and it's real was real small back when I was growing up. And, there were some people down there in Bixby that were real, prominent and real well thought of, fluent.

They were farmers. My daddy was a big farmer. My daddy was a very successful man. My daddy was prominent. My daddy was, kind of man that did bend us on a handshake.

He taught us how to do things like don't take it if it don't belong to you, don't lie. We went, I'm a product of the Southern Baptist Church. Every time doors open, we were in that church house. My mama I've got one sister. She's 6 years younger than me.

And my mama and daddy, we we had to go to church 3 or 4 times a week. We went to church. My people were extremely strict. They didn't allow any card plan. They didn't allow any cussing.

There wasn't any alcohol in that home. There wasn't any abuse in that home. There my daddy was able to provide for my sister and my mother and me everything we needed and put near everything we wanted. We were spoiled, I guess. We our our name meant something in that town, and money bought things.

My daddy taught me that from a very early age. Well, by the time I was 17 years old, I was sick and tired of living like that, so I had decided to get I decided to move on, and I did. I, I married into a family of people who lived just 10 miles down the road from us, and they were real well known in our community too. But they were not real well known for the things like my people were well known for. They had a lawyer on retainer.

They had a whiskey still out in their backyard, and they and they had killings in their family. 1 of them killed grandpa and wound on Christmas and wound up in the penitentiary down there in Oklahoma, lived his life out down there. And, Lord, have mercy. That was the most exciting thing in the world to move out there on that hill. 17 years old, little old girl that was naive and sheltered like I was, and we were all over the newspaper.

Every time you opened up Tulsa World, there was something in there about that family of people. And it was just exciting. And then nobody went to church, and they all fought like cats and dogs, and they smoked cigarettes, and the momma cussed, and they drunk beer, and they did all these exciting things. And so I am and the one thing I remember more than anything in the world, the mother read true confession magazines, and my mama didn't allow a true confession magazine in our house. And I just sat with my nose in those true confession magazines, reading those magazines all the time, loving all those terrible tragic stories.

And, when I was married 9 months 11 days, I had my first baby, and that was Regina. And 17 months later, I had my second baby, and that was Pat. And 17 months later, I had Mike. And I lived in that marriage for 8 years, and I did a lot of things in that marriage that I'm very ashamed of today. And if if I could do anything about straightening it out, I would.

But I did a lot of things for the first time. I ran those honky tonks with that man. I tried to become like they were, and I did a pretty good job of it. I left my little kids wherever I could find a place to leave them so I could run them honky tonks with that man on the weekends. And he whipped me like a dirty dog.

I'm telling you that man would beat me up. It I it didn't make me nervous if I did anything or didn't do anything. He just give me a whipping, and he'd bruise me all up, beat me all up, and, and I'd go home. I'd gather them up, and I'd go home, and I'd stay a week or 2, and I'd go back. I don't know why I went back.

I don't know. And there ain't a woman that takes abuse that knows why she took it because I just kept on going back because lord knows I didn't have to live like that. My mom and daddy was plenty able financially to take care of me and 3 little old kids and more than willing. But I just kept going back and going back and going back. And finally, one day, finally one day, my daddy came to me.

We were having a family reunion at my grandma's. And my daddy said to me, June, don't you wanna come home? And I said, yeah, daddy. I'm ready. And my daddy said, I'll send the truck after you in the morning.

And he had an empty house across the road from where I'm living today. And my daddy said, I'll send the truck in the field hands, and he sent them out there the next morning on Monday morning. And he loaded what little bit little bit I had left up in that old truck and and 3 little snotty nose kids and moved me down to Leonard. I really live in Leonard. Leonard's about 200 people.

Well, I knew I my goose was cooked when I got to Leonard because my daddy, first of all, he did not cotton to the way I've been living. He was gonna watch me like a hawk. He did not like the trashy life I'd had been living in those past 8 years. He did not he didn't want a woman to work. My dad didn't believe in that.

I had no education, no skills. I don't know what kind of job I coulda got. So my dad gave me my job. My job was to stay home, take care of them kids. And he put money in the bank for me every week for that for for me staying home, taking care of those kids.

I didn't have a car. I had to borrow their car if we wanted to go anywhere, and I knew it was over. I was 25 years old. I got 3 little kids. I don't have a job.

I got mom and daddy watching after me. I'm going back to church in the Southern Baptist Church every time. Doors open. I've got I can't read them through confession magazines no more. Had to sneak around and smoke.

I mean, I couldn't do anything anymore because they're watching me like a hawk. And besides all that, shoot far down there in Leonard, there about 200 people, and all the men were old or took, and I knew my chances were over. There was no way I was gonna get a man down there in Leonard. But lord has way of putting things in our life, and he supplied me with a man. And he moved him right over a section across from where we were living, And he was absolutely the cute singer ever saw in your life.

He's a little cowboy, and he rode horses for 11. He trained horses for 11, and he looked right in those Wranglers. He knew I'm a tell y'all something. That ain't funny because that man is 71 years old today, and he still looks good in those ringers. Coming or going, don't make a bit of difference.

He is just too cute. And so so, daddy didn't allow any court. It wasn't gonna be no court, and, so we didn't do it. He'd sneak over there once a while, and and and he'd hide his car, and he'd visit with me. And and my little boys were riding horses all the time.

Pat and I could ride over cross section and hang out with Carl. So what I did in order to get to see him was haul water. I put the milk can in the trunk of the old car, and I go over and haul water from Carl's well. Well, everybody in Leonard was hauling water from our well, and daddy come and asked me what was I And I said, well, his water just makes better tea and coffee, daddy. And so I just I'd haul the water and I'd wave, and he'd wave, and we'd get the top across the fence, and that was it.

And so then one night, he called me. He'd been up Tulsa in a wedding, and, and he called me up, and he said, I need to come down there and visit with you. And, I said, well, you have to hide your car. It was about 11 o'clock. And I said, hide your car around behind the house, and I'll get up and wait on you.

Well, lord have mercy. I didn't know what he wanted. And I got up out of bed, and I put on my blue jeans and my old t shirt. And unlike Mary Anne, who talked about last night on her vanity, I I you can still tell it didn't match me. And so my hair was all wrapped up in, them, pink foam curlers.

And I had and I took one of them old, them old hairnet things and put it on my head and got up and waited. And I sat down on the couch and he stood over in front of the bar and and he said, I've come over here to ask you if you'll marry me. And I said, yeah. And I I didn't even think. I mean, I just said, yeah.

I was nervous tickled in all my life. And so I said, well, you're gonna have to go ask daddy. And he said, well, I will. So he went up there and asked my daddy, and and he told my daddy. He said, I'm gonna marry June and those kids.

I love those kids, and I love that woman, and I and I wanna marry her. And we never had a date, and we got married. And we got married in August 1960. And, this, what is it? This coming up August, we'll be married 41 years.

I mean, I don't recommend that to a single solitary soul that's sitting out there. I mean but I'm gonna tell you sometimes that that marriage was going downhill and but, anyway, we hung in there. We made it. And, we got married, and I was tickled at. I just went around grinning like a chess cat all the time and and just thinking how lucky I was to have that man.

And and about 2 years after we got married, well, he adopted my 3 kids. And so when we got married, we had he had 2 kids, and I had 3. And so we had 251617, and, we got married. And and the little one of his little girls moved in with us, made her home with us, and lived with us till she went away to college. And and Carl adopted my 3 little kids, and we all absolutely adored each other.

My children adore that man today, and and they adored him then, and he was in love with them. And and there was no alcohol in that home, and my husband didn't drink then. He didn't didn't drink today. There was no, I started to say there wasn't any cussing, but I'm but he was bad. I mean, he cussed like a sailor and and threw fits every once in a while because we had to work hard and and you got a whole bunch of kids like that.

And lord have mercy, we bought a little farm, and we're trying to make a living farming and and and teaching our kids our the values that had been taught to us. And we went back to the roots of our race, and we started taking our children back to church. And we we worked hard, and we tried to teach them the things that that, you know, that that you teach kids when you're trying to do right. And we started out on a lot of hopes and dreams. Never one time realizing that a disease called alcoholism would come into our home and and and and rupture it.

And so we bought this little farm, and we moved down there, and, I am just absolutely eat up with pride. I am so proud of myself for sharing that good man and that cute man, and and he's good to my kids and they're and they love him, and I am just absolutely so proud of myself. So I run up to the Bixby Bulletin. That's the newspaper up in our town. And I went up there every week, and I wrote an article because my kids, if they went to a horse show, they won.

If they went to a pig show, they won. If they went to whatever they went to, they won. And so I was always up there at the newspaper getting writing these articles and telling what my kid won. And I would always say that is Regina Christensen, daughter of Carl Ann June Christensen, because, see, just 10 miles down the road, there's this natural family that gave my kids away. There's this natural family that treated me tacky, and they're reading that newspaper.

I'm a gigging them every chance I get with that one little line, daughter of Carl Ann June Christiansen. And so that's how I operated. Well, Regina was the first one to throw a shoe, and and she went to a party at Bixby, won that. And, telephone rang. And now I I'll back up a little bit and say that there had been some things happening up Schoolhouse.

Pat and Mike were always into some kind of trouble up Schoolhouse, and, and and I I I didn't wanna tell Carl. I never did tell my kids to lie. I didn't just come right out and say, let's go lie about this. I just say, maybe we are not telling your daddy. And they'd well, they didn't wanna tell him.

So we didn't tell him a lot of stuff. And and, so then I would kinda get in between them, and I kinda make up a little stretch it a little bit, make it a little bit better so that he really wouldn't know what was really going on at the schoolhouse. There was always they were getting kicked out of school. There was stuff going on. We had a airplane, Pat, soloed when he was 16.

I had that put in the newspaper too, and he flew that airplane, got his pilot's license, and and so then he'd come in every afternoon, and he'd get in that airplane and take off. And and I and I said, where are you going? He said, I'm going out here at the airport to do a little practicing. Well, shoot far, they called me from school and told me he's coming up there to schoolhouse and he's loading up kids and he's taking them riding. And, so I had to put a stop to that and I had I sure can tell Carl.

So there was that kind of stuff that was going on. And, so there was Regina. She went to that party and somebody called, and and Carl got to the phone before I could. And I'm gonna tell you I could run a race getting to that telephone because I knew there wasn't gonna be any good news. Anytime one of them kids is out somewhere, I guarded that phone like a hawk.

And, but Carl beat me to it, and, so he was madder and I'll get out because she said lady said, you better come up here and get her. She's up here in Bixby and she's drunk. And, shoot, he he was so mad. He slung gravel for 2 miles. That's how far it is to Leonard.

And, and he got in that old pickup, and off he went. And he got her, and he brought her home. And he slung her down in an old rocking chair, and I can see it just as plain as I can if I could see y'all. I and you're out there. And that old chair flop back and forth and her little head flop back and forth, and Carl called her a tramp.

And And something happened to me that night that I didn't know was possible for me to feel for that man. And it set up deep down in my belly, and it grew and it grew and it grew as the years went by and it until it just exploded, and and I was eat up with resentment and all that kind of stuff. And I began to try to find somebody to blame for the things that were beginning to go wrong in my family, and I decided it was him. And I decided that it was if he was their real daddy, he wouldn't have talked to her like that. And if he was their really daddy, he wouldn't say things like that to Pat and Mike.

And I began to blame that man where there was no measure of blame. And I heard Mary Anne talk about that last night, how she had to find somebody to blame, and it was so important for me to find somebody to blame because it surely couldn't be my kids and I knew it couldn't be me. And so I knew that it had to be him. See, when I live with their their natural daddy, I call him lowlife, lily livered, yellow bellied, everything under the sun. But these were my kids that were beginning to do stuff, and I wasn't about to plaster that kind of name on them.

And so Regina moved with year time went by, and and it come time to send her off to college, and we sent her off up to a little college in North Tulsa. And she come home in the summer of 1971 and, moved into an apartment of Tulsa. And along about 2 o'clock in the morning, one morning in August 19 71, the phone rang, and it was the law. And they told us that they had arrested Regina, and they had were holding her in Tulsa County Jail on a drug charge. And at 5 o'clock that morning, they knocked on my door, and they picked up my boy, Pat, and they had him up there in the courthouse locked up in that jailhouse in Tulsa, Oklahoma on a drug charge, and that stinking Bixby bulletin came out.

And that Bixby bulletin said, Pat and Regina Christiansen, son and daughter of Carl and Judith Christianson, have been arrested and are being held in Tulsa County Jail on a drug charge. And I'm gonna tell you something. In the summer of 1961, a little farm community like Bixby, Oklahoma, we were the first family that happened to. And we were not the family that kind of stuff was supposed to happen to because we had stood up here in Washington DC and received an award that said we were farm family of the year. There was a lot of things going on in my home along about that time, and it was like Mary Anne was talking about it last night and others have talked about it in front of me.

But I think Rick mentioned it. It wasn't so much what was happening. It's what I made you think was going on, and I knew how to do that. We drove the right kind of car. We wore the right kind of clothes.

We went to the right kind of places with the right kind of people, and we look good. And I didn't want anybody to know what was really going on inside that house. By that time, things were beginning to happen. And Carl and I hung our head in shame, and we didn't know what in the world to do. But I had an ace in the hole.

My daddy. My daddy could fix anything with enough money. And we went up and got my mom and daddy, and we told them what had happened to their little their little granddaughter and little grandson. They had been so instrumental in helping me raise up those children, and it broke their heart. And we got in the car, and we went to Tulsa, home to the courthouse, and my daddy told me he'd fix it.

I'll fix it. I'll get this taken care of. Don't you worry. And I told Carl how to act, and Carl did not mind me. I said, now, Carl, you go up there and don't you act this way and don't you act that way and don't you say this and don't you say that because I didn't want mom and dad to act know how he acted.

And my husband didn't mind me that day and he don't mind me when I left home Friday. He still don't mind me. And lord knows I tried. But but, anyway, we got those kids out of that jam, and and Carl and I had bought a ranch down, Okmogie, Oklahoma Okmogie County down about 20 miles south where we live today. And we bought the ranch purely to speculate on.

It's a pretty good sized place. And we moved down there on that ranch and and took the only kid that was left at home because we sent Pat and Sammy, that was Carlsville girl, and Regina back off to college in the fall of the year. And and by October, we removed because we couldn't look at the people in that little town anymore. We moved down there on that ranch. We got one kid left, and that's Mike.

And, things began to go sour, and they began to go sour, it seemed like pretty fast or else I I don't know what. It just seemed like it all crashed in on me. And I wanna tell you people one thing. If you think that keeping up with 1 drunk is something, you try 3 of them at the same time, and it is a job. I got busy.

I got extremely busy trying to keep up with all those drunk kids because they all started getting drunk, and they all started drugging. They all started doing all these things. Regina became a nurse, and pretty soon she wasn't even able to do that. And she got a job slinging drinks behind a bar, and pretty soon she couldn't even do that. And Pat and my lord, I don't even know.

I can't even remember what became of them. They just kinda it was just awful. And, and the holidays would come around, and I'd rather seen a as little snakes coming after me as though it was gonna be Christmas because it just got terrible. I mean, I'm not gonna have to get up and go hunt those kids up. And I had to go find them.

I had to clean them up. I had to make them promise me, and I had a way of doing that. I kept a stash of money in my old pocketbook, and every time I'd have to go get one of my kids out of a jam or go do some pay a bad check or buy them here out of your joint that Mike had shot out or go get one of them out of jail or pay their rent or whatever I had to do. I took that money in one hand and my finger in their face, and I said, you promised me that you won't go back in that old beer joint. I'll give you this money now.

Promise me. And they had promised me. They promised me anything I asked them to. And what I know about that today is my kids did not set out with the intent to do harm, and they did not set out with the intent to lie. It was the disease that that had them in their grips right then because I know that because I know that I did not set out to become the kind of mother I became.

Because standing before you today is a mother that's capable of killing a kid, and I come dead gum near close to killing 3 of them, trying to love them to death and pay their way, trying to figure out a way, figure out something to do for them that would make life a little bit easier, didn't wanna look at them in jail, didn't wanna hear. And don't say for 1 minute this disease doesn't get a hold of everybody. Hey. I suffer from a disease called alcoholism. Rick talked about that this morning.

You don't have to drink to get this disease. I had it full blown and I had not a clue. I tried drinking and I but I did everything I did cold, stone, sober. And it was just like a idiot. I mean, if you could watch me operate back in those days, you would've looked at me and you would've said, somewhere, there's a village being denied as idiot because that's It was absolutely crazy.

In the holidays, when Christmas would come, I had to go find Regina. She always showed up looking pretty good. I used to think she smelled funny, but I just kind of put that back and then another I think she smells like she's been drinking, but she's here, and she'd be dressed up real cute. She's just cute as a bug. And she's sitting out here with me today.

And and so she'd always come up she'd always have little presents of some sort or other, but lord, pet, and Mikey, forgive about them. I had to go find them. And I had to buy them some new clothes and straighten them up to see it was important how they look. I had to get them to looking good. Now I bought them good clothes all the time.

I bought my boys good hats and good jackets and good wranglers and high dollar boots, and people stole those things off those boys right and left. Because I would say to them, well, what happened to that bunch of stuff I bought you the other day? Well, they looked me straight in the face and said, well, we don't know. Somebody stole it. Here we are in all these old rags.

So I go clean them up, make them promise me that they'd be there on Christmas Day, and then I'd say, don't worry about the present. I'll get the present for suffering me. As Rick said this morning, I'll go do your Christmas shopping. And so then I would become their personal shopper, and I would go out and I would buy the present for their daddy and their grandma and their grandpa. And sometimes I even buy one for myself and put their name on it.

I mean, depending on who I want to impress that Christmas. And so I, I'd buy usually a book, and I and I disguise my handwriting. And I'd write in that book, to daddy with whole lots of love from Pat and Mike. And And then what I had to do was take up my post and wait and watch for Pat and Mike to come down that road. We live right up in the middle of the section, and one road in, one road out.

And I had to watch for Pat and Mike to come up that road because when I saw him coming, I had to go out and inspect him and kinda spit shine him a little bit because it it just invariably happened. Regina knows it's the truth. Mike, god, he would always have a black eye or a cut face or just something wrong with him. And I had to go out and get all the questions, and we'd make up what we were gonna say about this or that. And I'd straighten them all up, you know, straighten them.

And then I'd tell them what I bought everybody so they wouldn't look like blooming idiots when they opened the present. And then I'd go in the house and I'd watch Carl. And I'd watch Carl. And my husband is not a mental midget, not by any stretch of the imagination. And my husband would open that book and he would look at it and a look of disgust would come on that man's face and he'd slam that book and he wouldn't even say thank you.

And I'd look at that man and I'd say to myself in my heart, you wrote my Christmas one more time, girl. It was always that poor man's fault. Always Carl's fault. No matter what was going on, he would not mind me. He would not act like I want him to act.

Now I'm gonna tell y'all something. Me and Carl run steers for a living. We run about 1500 head of steers on that ranch in different places we leased, and we run we we got up and rode horses every day. My husband sold and trained, cutting horses and good quarter horses. We get up every morning.

We'd saddle those horses and time up around that ground, and we'd ride those pastures and bring in the sick cattle, and we'd vaccinate. We'd receive cattle. We'd ship cattle. We did all that stuff, and we did it side by side partners. But don't talk about a kid because we couldn't discuss a kid because Carl saw it like it was, and I couldn't look.

I could not look. You know, Clancy talks about alcoholism, the disease of perception. I'm gonna tell you something. Is also, in my case, a disease of perception. John talks about there's no such thing as denial.

It's delusional. I was delusional. I was living in a disease of perception that I could make things happen like I want them to happen and I would not listen to the truth. And my husband would look at me and he'd say to me, they're drinking and they're drugging and they cannot come on this place. And not only would he say that to me, he'd step right out in the middle of that road if he'd see Pat and Mike coming, and he'd he'd point his finger at them boys and he'd say, you get the hell off my place because you're not coming on this place looking like that and acting like that.

Well, we had a code. We'd go they'd go down the road and hide out a little ways down there behind a clump of trees. They'd hide whatever they're driving, And I'd wait a little while, and I'd go down the road, go to the store, whatever, and I'd meet up with them down there because I knew what they needed. They needed a little money, and I'd give them the money they had to have. And I'd give them the speech one more time and make them promise me one more time that they wouldn't do this and they wouldn't do that, and, and that's how we operate.

Lord, have mercy. How crazy can you get? I decided that it was time that I could get the army to straighten Pat out, so I got busy and talked to him and joining up the army, and, they sent him off to Germany. And he but he didn't do very good over there. You know?

He, they sent him back. They sent and they sent him back with a letter that said he had a heroin addiction, and he'd been hospitalized over there. And heaven's sakes, I didn't know what I was gonna do because not only is my husband no redneck farmer, but but I'm gonna tell you right now, he's an ex marine, and he don't talk to that kind of stuff. And and I got out on my knees, and I began to pray to the god of my childhood. Lord, if you'll do this, I'll do that.

You know, lord, if you won't punish me no more for that way I lived those 8 years, I'll straighten up and I'll do it like this. You just give me this just give me what I want. You know, I made bargains with god. And what I know about that today is that prayer didn't go any higher in this ceiling if it even got that high. And so I I got packed.

I knew he was coming home, and and I I didn't want the the duration I was gonna do it. So I I got this notion. I mean, I thought a lot. And I got this notion that I'd go up to my doctor who was a good friend of ours. Turned out later, he was an alcoholic like somebody that speaker before me was talking about his doctor and and, turned out he he he belonged with y'all and and but I went up here and told him that there was something bad wrong with me, and and I need him to put me in a hospital.

And and he'd say to me, June, he came down my house all the time, and he'd been doctoring Mike where Mike had shot himself in the leg in a drunken stupor. And and Tom knew, and and Tom would say to me, June, why don't you tell me what's going on down at your house? And I'd look square down at him, and I'd say nothing. Everything's just fine. Well, how's the kids?

Oh, they're fine. I'd make up where they were, what they were doing. I just made stuff up. I just lied like a dog. And, and and so I said, but, Tom, I need to I just need to go to the hospital.

I'm really sick. Well, lord knows I was. I mean, I had by that time, I'd had 2 back surgeries, and I'd had big old ulcer and taken heart medicine, weighed about a 105, and looked pitiful, and it was just awful. And, so I said, but here's what I need. I need to go to the hospital on this day, and I only need to stay 8 days, Tom, and you can run tests on me.

But see, I knew Pat was gonna come home. He's only gonna be home a few days. And while he was, and I knew that him and his daddy wouldn't come up here and act ugly, over over the bed of a dying woman, and I and I I knew I'd be safe if I could get up there in that hospital. And so so Tom put me up there, and and, they run all those tests, and and he couldn't find anything wrong with me and and, sent me home. And but while I was up there, I, I got busy, and, and I got had a job out in, caliphat, Calipatric, California.

There was a a man out there I knew that owed me a favor. And, so I called him up, and I got Pat a a job. And and he did pretty good, so I I sent mine. And, shoot. They they sent him home, you know, sent him home and didn't didn't keep him very long, and it did.

And while Pat was out there, he got a wife. And, so now I got one more thing I gotta worry about. I gotta be responsible for the wife. And, and so, yeah, but everywhere I send them, they always send them back. Army send them back.

Jobs send them back. Wives send them back. No. Everybody send them back. Husband send them back.

Nobody kept them. And, and I was just thinking, thinking, thinking, you know, how could I keep them out of my hair because I couldn't stand to look either. I couldn't stand to look. I was always trying to separate myself. Mike called me up one day, and he said, mom, I'm gonna kill myself.

And and I said, oh, just wait till I get there. Just wait. I can get there, and I know I can fix it. And so I got my money, and I went up there to an old house up there on 21st in Lewes. It's not there anymore, and and there he was, surrounded with guns and threatened to shoot himself.

And, and I bargained with that boy for his life and, asked him how much would it take, and and he priced it, and I paid him. And I put him in an old pickup and sent him off far away up and go high up where I didn't have to look at him anymore. And he got up there, and he's drinking and he's drug in progress, and it got worse. Regina's and Pat's drinking and drug in progress, and it got worse. And Pat had a little girl, and she's the apple of my eye, and she's the only grandchild I have.

And she's 22 years old today, and and she was 5 4 or 5 years old before her daddy sobered up. And And I took full responsibility for that family, and and and in order for me to keep that little wife where I wanted her to be, and keep her mouth shut, I bought her things. And, I bought her furniture. I bought her clothes. I bought her anything she wanted, and and that's how I operated.

And so Mike was up there in Ohio, and, and things were bad. And once in a while, my daddy and my mama would go up there, and and they would come home. And they would tell that Mike wasn't acting right, and, he looked terrible. And and, he got married and was living up there, and and, Pat and Regina were running amok in my life, and things were crazy. And me and Carl, at that time, we're living almost like strangers in that house.

You know? We were doing things to each other that that marriages should not survive. And outside these rooms in these two programs, mine wouldn't have. And me and Carl were beginning to live like strangers, you know, and we were beginning to, pass each other in the hall, and it was beginning to be like a nothingness in that house. And we didn't talk about alcohol or drugs anymore because Carl knew he was fighting a losing battle trying to talk sense to me.

And one night, that phone rang and, and it was Mike. And Mike said to me, mama, guess what? And he sounded good, you know. And he said, mama, there's a man come up here to see me today, and he said, I've been down on my knees. And the lord has saved my soul, and the lord has called me to preach.

Now I'm an old product of Southern Baptist, and we believe in that. And Mike had told me when he was 15 years old that he felt a real strong calling from god to be a preacher. And Mike said, I just told God if he wanted a preacher in our bunch, he could get bad. I wasn't gonna be the preacher in our bunch. But Mike said to me, mama, I'm gonna I'm gonna go, and I'm gonna be a preacher.

And I said to him, you can't do that. You see, first of all, it wasn't my idea. And I said to him, you can't do that because I said, you didn't even graduate out of high school. Mike was standing in the jailhouse up in Mohave, Oklahoma the day his class graduated. And Mike Mike get put in jail all the time, and he one time, he got his dog put in there with him, old buddy, John, that used to and Carl went and got the dog, but he wouldn't get the kid.

And so I said, you can't get you can't be a preacher, but Mike said, oh, yeah. And so he went up to that little Bible College in Murrieta, Ohio, and he told them about his life. And he cleaned his self up, and he took tests that was necessary, and they let him into that school. And I sent the money up there for that kid to go to school on for about 2 years. And he called me up one day, and he told me he wanted to go to Belfast over Northern Ireland and study with doctor Ian Paisley and doctor Bob Jones out of Greenville, South Carolina North Carolina took, Mike, and and they went over there.