Ebby T. Bill W.'s sponsor speaking in a hotel room in Memphis, TN

I'm going to introduce you to stand here for a long, long time. I've been fortunate knowing of you for 17 years. That's the length of time I know through. I met every 17 years ago. You met him almost 24 years ago.

Say, call it what you will, grace of God. But if they were not for the man that you're about to hear, you wouldn't even be having this meeting tonight because he's the first guy that brought the message to Raquel. If you've read the book Alcoholics Anonymous, and I know that most of you have, in there you'll hear in Bill's story always referring to my friend. And then in the later book describing Alcoholics Anonymous and other stories that just came out some short time ago, the name Ebby came comes out. But always in the first book, you'll hear him referred to as my friend.

Should you hear a lot of us at different times and in different parts of the country quoting how Bill came in, how the organization or the fellowship started, there's only one man in the world tonight who knows exactly how it started because he was sober and Bill was drunk. So I give you, my friend and your friend, our founder, Edith. Thank you, Dick. As Dick told her, my name is Debbie, and I'm an alcoholic. I wanted to try to start this off.

Dick asked me over here. I was very glad to come because I wanna meet some of you, When I had an idea, I was one of 2 or 3 speakers, and I didn't know I was gonna hold this thing down for 40 or 45 minutes. Back home in Dallas, I'm the owner of the world's Georgia speaker. It was me back there out of the different clothes for the 10 minute and 15 minute spot. So I don't know how I'm gonna go about holding down for 45 minutes, but I'll do the best I can.

In fact, I've been living in Texas for 5 years now. Maybe I've gotten enough of that Texas braggadocio somewhere in my system. Maybe I was so so I can pull some of that out of the hat. There's a story I heard a year or 2 after I got in Dallas. It's, oh, it's taking a while.

Thank you. I hope you don't even let me tell it. The Texas ranchers drove over to his nearest neighbor. It was about 15 miles, and he said, well, he said he'd go to town and make a day of it. I said, alright.

That was happening. He got in the car, and he started out. As soon as I got out of the side of the ranch house, they opened up the system and a good long pull on the model and the first car says, you know, there's a ship 2,000 from Fort Worth the day before yesterday. Nothing was said. They drove on a while and came to a gate and had opened that.

They had another part of the bottle and the second guy, so, you know, I took 25100 bows from my siding 4 or 5 days ago. And then go along and just before they got to the main state highway, they stopped for a third good hooker. The the first rancher said again, you know, I think we're the 2 biggest bullshippers in Texas. And I hope I have a quiet little left so I can get it out tonight. I know that Dick and Jim Drake and some of the other boys wanted me to tell you some of the beginnings of AA as I experienced them.

And, you know, I think that I appreciate the things that Dick has said and other people's sort of. But I sometimes think it might keep playing the same as that I'm exhibit a in the antique division of alcoholic marijuana. That's about it. Well, I got to go Back to some of my beginnings, I started drinking when I was at school. I come from Auburn in New York.

It's my native town. Went to a private school there and I started drinking it last year. I seem to hold it under control pretty well. I did get off on a wild party one night in the military school. We had a a competitive bill, and I asked for the bill to go and went out and then so much.

So that and the Bronx. And we got in the mess, and the principal of the school heard about it, but nothing was said. But I, I wasn't very well that spring, and they sent me out of school before School was over, and that's some of the principal wrote to my father, and he always called me Ed. He didn't call me Ed, said I don't think we can do anything more for Ed. It's not and he was just calling me from school.

So that fall, my father said, you're going to work in the foundry. My father happened to be in the iron foundry, brother. So I went to work that fall, and, I confined my drinking this Saturday night. Naturally, I had to get up 6 o'clock to go down. I worked in the as a motor helper, which is fairly rugged work as you may know.

And I did that for a year, and I complained most of my drinking brew. Saturday night except around Christmas time and all the dances were going on. And I really stepped out. I remember, like, I had to go to work. I was drinking and dancing and getting down to work at 7 o'clock in the morning when I was young and you shake it off and work it off for a night.

And I managed to get away with it for a while. But as I look back and remember those times, I wasn't a very successful drinker in the start. Over time, it's true when I take some of the older guys around all me home. And other times, I'd be climbing a chandelier at 3, 4 drinks. I never knew what was gonna happen.

In fact, the matter is when I was about 15 years old, I remember putting a lot of thought into this business of drinking because it was in my family. My brothers drank pretty heavily. My father did. And I'm I'm kind of afraid of it if they drank that way, and it wasn't any good for them and it was not good for me either because I was just about the same temperament as they were. But it was that first drink that I ever took on my own when I walked into the bar of the hotel tonight and all and ordered a glass of beer all by myself and I was a big shot.

And I still say that was the best glass of beer I ever tasted. Sometimes I can almost taste it again. And somehow that that just gave me just the same bow and my beer is a lot stronger in those days than it was little beer. That was about 1914, I think. 19 Yes.

It was 1914. And I know that I said to myself, this is for me. And soon after that when I started drinking, I kept it down pretty well at 2 or 3 drinks. I used to drive, but anything that spring, this friend of mine, I went to school. He called me up and asked me if I had my license done.

I said, sure. I guess it's just a star because the family was sitting in the room. And I said, sure, honey. I'll go ahead and have a chocolate milk. Really?

I got time. And we were far from chocolate milk. But I managed to get home by 11 o'clock, so there's nobody knowing about it. But I know that the effect and the taste of alcohol is fascinating to me from the beginning. And later on, I read a book called The Common Sense of Drinking from which a lot of AA was taken by Dick Peabody.

He's not dead, but he was one of the first of the late therapists that had a tremendous following of alcoholics. A lot of other books have been written by a lot of his pupils. The Glass Crutch is one of them by Dutch Chambers, and I can name a half of those and I can't think of right now. But he said in that book that the difference between a lack of heart and a heavy drinker was that the heavy drinker might drink just as much and I'm given that as the alcoholic, but the next day was another day to him and he went to work and the first thing in the awakening in the morning was the office. Well, the first step that the alcoholic had was on the night before and where could he get the next drink to get bring that party back again.

And that always appealed to me because that's the way I was. I forget business and wanna get somewhere I could get with the gang again. And he said the effect of alcohol and people of your type it's too fascinating. You can't handle it. Yeah.

What I knew then that, coupled with the drinking in my family, I figured out that I better lay should stay away from them but I never did once I had that drink. But as time went on, I of course, got into a lot of more trouble. And, the family business broke up. It was one of those things to do Been running since 1852, and it broke up in 1922. And I was more or less on the loose and doing one job to another and getting in more trouble all the time.

I was thinking it was increasing. I didn't get overseas in World War 1, but I was in the I'll sit there and stay in there and ride in my hometown of Albany. And then the State Army there, I I got to be a second lieutenant in this outfit, and we always had a jug in the officer's quarters because it was a drug. And while the coroner's right near the armory, that always we saw our money to get a bottle of whiskey, and we could get it because those are the days of prescription. Doctor will issue you a prescription during prohibition, and you go ahead and get this line of whiskey, but we got it all we wanted.

We got that down down in jug filled repeatedly. And I was a 42% to drink and cry and they're all over than I was. And finally, we got into a jam one night. We got in a taxi wreck, and I just got superficial cuts on my both wrist and face. But I was kind of a bloody mess.

It was just breathing a lot. My father came in, I was sitting on the bed and said, you get out of that mess and dry tomorrow morning, and he said, you leave my house. Well, I didn't feel like we were in this house right now. So late that afternoon, I walked up and told the captain I was gonna resign, request to be put on the reserve. So that ended my national guard career, and that's phase of the drinking.

But things got worse, and my father and mother died in 27, my father in 29. And I was sticking around then pretty bad. I inherited some money from my father and should've had fentanyl to take care of it, but I didn't. I lost hassle overnight in the stock market trash, and the rest I just found the drain over a period of a year, a year and a half. And we used to summer in Vermont, and it was there that I met Bill Wilson, but it was longer to go than 24 years ago.

I first knew Bill about 1910. I went to school with him in 1912, Worked to take us back quite a few years. And, as I to get back, I we went to summers in the match at the Vermont. Well, after my father died, the house was vacant up there. We bought a house after all the years.

The father had spent money at the hotel for all of us. We bought a house in 1923, and in 1929, he died. And the house is after all my other brothers are married. Father died without a will, so they just divided up the furniture. That's come for me.

And I had one room furnished in that house and the rest was bare. And I was living there all alone drinking heavily all the time. Got it right and then we jump now. We're gonna get up to the summer of 1934, which is 24 years ago. And I've been in the trials of the law twice that summer.

I've gotten drunk, gotten arrested for being drunk and disorderly, fined $5 or something like that. And it seems that in Vermont at that time, I don't know whether they were lost still on the statute books or not, but if you got arrested 3 times, anyone given you for drunkards, it meant 6 months and the Windsor State Prison. Well, I was getting drunk right along. One time I got drunk, and I still don't know exactly how it happened, but I was in my own house and apparently somebody got out of wire for me. I I still see yet what I was doing since I was on my own property.

But one of the boys the boy that was comfortable at the time was the guy that I'd gone to school with in 1912, the same year that I went to school with Bill Wilson. I forgot to say that I went to a private school in Albany. But this one year, I went up there in Vermont in 1912 and in the fall of 1912 to go to that school for 1 year and then back to my other. And this other boy, John Jackson, was comfortable. And I walked uptown the next day.

Well, I went up and sit on the store, the the steps of the hardware store. I talked to the owner of it. This son John brought up in society. He says, everybody got a warrant for you. Gotta take you down to Bennington, which is the county seat.

He took me down and saw the judge. And the judge says, be back Monday. We'll see what we can do about you. Well, I've gotten ahead of my story because before that, I'd say late in July or the 1st part of August, 2 men came to see me, 2 pilots that I had brought with Austin. And one of them happened to be the son of this judge, his name is Seba Graves, and he's now living in.

The other one was Shep Cornell, and I don't know just where he is. I think he's somewhere in Ohio. I'm, I had a hangover, of course, and these 2 guys wanted around. I was out and back somewhere in the kitchen, I guess. I remember they came up the back steps.

I may, they they didn't know exactly how to begin at me because they remembered me and having a lot of fun with me drinking. And I thought they had something on their mind, so I said, what what do you got in your mind? What's what's cooking? And they said, well, we kinda come and see you and said we couldn't get some idea into your head about something. I said, you mean about my drinking?

They said, yeah. You're not getting anywhere. You're I understand you're in wrong all over town, and we just sort of well, we just sort of we've got linked up with a group called the Oxford Group. And we think that you could get help if you join up with it. And they said, you ever think of letting God run your life instead of every pastor trying to run it all the time?

It might really talk sense the way I figured it and it seemed to me that they were just telling me things that I had when taught in my childhood about the right way of living. And I said, well, dear, these 2 guys have got something out of this. Maybe there's hope for me because I just about given up hope and I said I was willing to quit drinking when I didn't know how. Excuse me. I didn't know how to do it.

So I listened to them and they left me a book by one of these men in the Oxford group. I don't recall. I'm in that book now. But in it I could see myself staring out of those pages. Now the Oxford group, let me explain, was not concentrated on alcohol, alcoholism.

It was a spiritual group that was founded by a minister from Pennsylvania named Frank Bookman, b u c h m a n. Got its name, Oxford Group, because Brooklyn got a lot of people interested and they in turn went abroad, and they went to England and Oxford University, and they got a lot of people interested over there. And from there, they went to South Africa, and they got a quite a big meeting down there. I don't know if it was Cape Town or one of those cities. And the reporters referred to them as the group from Oxford and then damn name stuck in it.

It had nowhere to do with the the group or its founding than anything in the world. But just like those things happen, that's the name that stuck with it. And it was called the Oxford Group. And they're they were really trying to find something. It was that time in 1929 when the crash had come on Wall Street and the the nation was kind of a low point economically.

A lot of people were hopping out of windows in New York, and that's no joke because they were. A lot of them hit those manholes head on from the 30th floor. And a lot of people were drinking terribly, and they wanted to find something and they searched for a group. A lot of people came around to it, and, of course, the good many of them happened to be alcoholics. And don't ever let yourself think that nobody but an alcoholic can help an alcoholic because there are a lot of men in this group quote who have a right understanding and had a damn good knowledge of the thinking of an alcoholic's mind.

And I sometimes think that I I mine is no different than anybody else in this world. We just give in to things that other people do not. Well, anyway, that idea appealed to me. I read the book, and I filled it up for a few days, and I had started to paint the house. But I had a ladder that was too short, and I couldn't get up to all these places.

And I made a deal with a boss, and he sent around one of his men with some equipment, and the 2 of us finished the house. I didn't touch a drop all that time, but the minute that job was over, sure, I would write back the bottle because I had nothing more to interest me. It was a wet time. And it was then on that means after the thing in the house that I was picked up and taken by the county judge. There's one thing that sticks in my mind.

And it always will. I know it was at that time. May not mean you. You may not get what I mean by that, but As we drove home that afternoon, it's the constable John Jackson left me off at the house that I was living in. And he said, well, I'll be around to get you Monday.

This is Friday. And he said, remember the judge says, be sober. I said, yep. I'll be sober. So I went in the house and I remembered that down cellar I had about a half a dozen bottles of ale and I know that they're gonna be nice and cool.

And there's one thing I like in this world with Valentine's ale and that was it. So I went down cellar and I said to myself, I can't possibly get drunk between now and Monday on 6 bottles of ale. And I know that nobody in town is gonna sell me anymore after they've heard that I you know, what a small Vermont community is. Everybody from 10 miles up and down the valley knows all about anything like that. And I knew that none of I mean, the bulldog didn't sell me anything.

And I got down and I reached one of those wells and, uh-uh, that ain't cricket. Alright. The judge said you get this over, would you? You'd be that over. Now that that is not cheating.

Somehow, and I walked back upstairs and that damn devil got from his shoulder. Get off. Go on down there and take it. I couldn't take that damn ale. This is no that's not no.

That that's not the spirit of the thing. It might be technically I might be alright. I'd get their soul but I'm expecting it. Well, that's not exactly what he meant. He didn't say don't take a drink but that's exactly what he meant.

So I put them and put them in a basket and carried them over to my next door neighbor and I said, here, they're yours. And that minute, I had a victory. I know that. I had something that was just like a weight being lifted from my shoulders. And I've often thought about it in later years when I started drinking again, why I couldn't recapture that feeling that I had then.

But perhaps that service, the drink cloud, and later on you you get a more mature, if I may use the word, outlook. But I don't think you if you have a slip, you can ever go back again. Well, as it turned out, I went down there Monday, and an administrative man come to see me too. Name was Roland Hazard. He was a pretty slow gent too.

I never knew him. I never met him before. These other 2 guys I had. He was there on Monday when I brought for the judge. And give me a little lecture, and he says, Hassett, will you take this man?

And he says, sure. So I was released in my own recognizance, and the charges were dropped. And this guy took me, and he took me back home and left me there. And a few days later, I closed the house up, went down, stayed with him. He lived about 15 miles below, south of the town.

And then we went on down in New York, and I stayed with Chuck Cornell, one of his other jobs that was coming to see me. I stayed there about a month, I guess. And, during that time, we made trips back to Vermont, Hazard and I, and 2 weeks after I was connected with the Oxford group, my work is a much looser membership than Alcoholics Anonymous, I really think. I don't think I've been out speaking. The 1st weekend that I went out speaking, we went up through Vermont.

I've spoken to junior college, 2 churches, town meeting hall, and someplace else all in 2 nights. 2 afternoons and 2 nights. And I still don't know what I talked about. But I just felt good about the whole thing and really figured that these guys must have something, that there must be a higher power because they were the ones that originally we say, believe in a higher God or a higher power as you understand them. And as well I was doing this and and, going back to New York, I heard about Bill.

I hadn't seen Bill, I don't believe, for over a year. Although Bill, you see, was born and raised in the town 6 miles north of this town of Manchester, Vermont where I used to summer. Also, it's been quite a few winters there. And I heard that Bill was in pretty tough shape, drinking bed, and I had been downtown in in Wall Street and seen some of my old friends. One of whom my little sister-in-law, and he said he was in tough shape and he said, why don't you give him a ring or telephone?

And I said, well, I will. But I wanna think this thing out a little and get myself a pretty good story, a pretty good take to get to it. And I can truthfully say now that I believe that the fact that I went over there, Bill would either go for it lock stock and barrel or he would have none of it. He wouldn't just play around with it for a little while. I suppose that if he put his teeth under it once, he'd stick to it.

Because I thought I knew him pretty well. I've been going to school with him and seen him over the years. So I called him up one night, and I haven't got the what I got lost. His wife and over well, it happened to me and it just must have kinda shown me something. Well, I don't even suffer myself in about quite possibly 6 or 7 weeks.

But I think sometimes the initial effect that we get from a thing is we're more powerful than we are later on. We get stale. Well anyway, Lois said to watch from over to dinner all night. And, since he's mentioned the date, I said, fine. So that night I went over that SS 5, I guess, in the evening.

And and I rang the bell at 182 Clinton Street. The only person home was an old card of mine, man, who I've known for years. He's been with the family. I have Lois' family, others. And he said they're both out, Both missus Wilson, mister Wilson are out.

Come on in. So bring some bell appeared and, he's been drinking, but he wasn't too bad and settled all of that and the other thing and he's kinda raging around. Any maintenance too. He had to go out and get some ice cream, something else for supper, and was not over to join. I've done it so many times and stuff.

So and Lois came in. And there was another girl invited. There was a girl invited because, she lived upstairs and then made the place in some apartment. So we all sat down with dinner and moved out a little garbled in the book about the dinner across the kitchen table, but no major difference. Yeah.

It is there. Now we had dinner and then we all moved upstairs and in those houses and back there in the east, most of the living room is on the second floor. So we rolled up in the 2nd floor and after a little heaven and heart, Lord said, well, let's hear about yourself. So I started them. I guess they got me wound up and I guess that talk would put me at 1 o'clock in the morning.

And I remember Bill said I walked the subway with her, and I knew that he wasn't gonna go for a drink or if he had a bottle in the house anyway. And on the way over, he put his arms around my shoulder just before I went in the subway. I said, I don't know what you got, kid, but you got something and I wanna get it. Well, he didn't stop drinking right away any more than I had stopped drinking. Like, that summer when my accent group was came to see me, but the idea was in there.

The idea happened to get in Bill's head. And at that time, I had moved to a mission in First Avenue and 23rd Street, New York City. It was run by a Calvary Episcopal Church called Calvary Mission. It was run under the offices of this Oxford group. It was just a typical so called bowel emission.

We had 12 men who were running in and, We already had available beds for about 35 men in there for every night. Well, and I was living there, and about 2 nights after I've been overseas, Bill, he appeared at the mission just as the meeting was about to start. Well, this he had a guy in tow and both visibly drunk. Well, not too bad. I'm wrong about as great money as that was the those meetings there were called testimonial meetings.

We had a man up on the platform, and, he would call on various men in the audience and get up, say what they've found. Of course, most of them are doing it just to get a place to sleep. They called taking another guy for God to get a flop. That's where they expressed it. Well, then the next one of these proceedings, well, gets up and walks up to the platform, and he's about 633, and the only reason it.

I'll go on the piano, and he starts to spout. I'm a super down. It's just him pulling that out of there. It's a long go. Let's hear what he does say.

The guy gave you dirty work for me. Let Bill talk. And then 3 days later, this was sometime late in November, as I've been talking to Jim and Blake and some of the other boys, I wish that either Bill or I or somebody kept a diary back there so that we could remember dates and have some kind of a military as as to our story because you go back 2048 and you come out to the last year of calls and you accurately. Well, this was sometime late in November 1934. And it's a few days later that Bill got himself a taxicab and Tuesday bottled the beer and went up to town's hospital hospital in Central Park West.

And when I heard he was up there, I guess, as the next day, I went up to see him Because I made up my mind that having started this with Bill, it was up to me to take it out, which I think is a true thing in every AA 12 step case you go on. If you're gonna go, don't spread yourself too thin and take on 25 or 30 people. I'd rather see you concentrate on 1 or 2. I don't know whether I'm my brother's keeper or not. But I do think and if you start and put something in a man's mind and possibly in his heart and soul, you gotta stick with him to his test batch as well as his his pictures.

You're the one who started, and it's up to you to see as a gift on the street. My father built up up there, and we had some cars. He got out and went back down around Wall Street, man, to make a few little moves in there, and I kept riding hard on him as they stay out in Texas. I wrote hard on him. And, he came around and he began to attend back for group meetings which I might add are exactly the same as AA meeting today.

They had a speaker, I mean, a leader, that's what they call it. They didn't call it chairman. They call it the leader on 3 or 4 speakers. And Bill spoke many times from Calvary House in Dynasty Park North in New York City. And later on, when we slipped from New York's group and became Alcoholics Anonymous, we went back to that place and had our meetings there up to about 2 years ago, the original Manhattan Group.

Of course, Ohio, Cleveland, and one of the other cities They claim that they are the original AA, but, well, I don't know. I kinda dispute that a little bit because there was a clear succession right through from the Oxford group meetings until the time we broke off. The meetings went to that in Bill's house, and then they went to Steinway Hall on 57th Street. And from there, the Burke Taylor's shop on 5th Avenue. We occupied one of the floors of this trailer shop.

And Let's see. The men there's a direct succession. But I don't care whether Freeman or anybody else claims your first group. It makes a little difference. This thing gets started.

So Bill and I were together to write the election for a quarter, and then I went back to Albany in 1936. And Bill went on to found AA. And he's really the one. I just had something to do with giving him the idea. He went on to with Doctor.

Bob found AA. And in 1937, I had a slip. I fell off the wagon after 2 years and 7 months, which was slightly different than that Dupont. So in the Dupont film, I met me falling off a month after I talked to Bill, but that wasn't so I was 2 months and 2 years and 6 months later. And I've had to go through the trouble off and on.

If I wanna go back and count the years, I can count possibly 15 years of complete sobriety out of the 24 or maybe 16 years. But they're the longest of 16 months 8 months 7 months and so on. And summer of 1953, I was again in New York City drinking. And I walked into the inner group one day and Hazel Wright, one of the secretaries there said, I think I've got a man that can help you. He's that something real and something tangible?

And she said, I'm gonna call him right away and she called this man who come down skinny. He says, where do you drink? And I said, when I ran in 3rd Avenue, it's a piranhasco. And he said, I ran under Steve Berg, a man who originally came to see you over in Paris, France. He said, how's old Evie doing?

This guy said, I don't know Evie, but I hear he's not doing it all. So he says, Steve told me that you didn't have a chance here in New York and we don't think you have. I said, I know damn well I have. I look, I can't throw it off. Well, he said, how about going to Texas?

Well, I said, I don't know about that. Well, he expounded on the voices of Texas and the good old American ways of living that was still down in the east parts of the country. He gave me $5 and bought me another drink. He said, I'll see you tomorrow night. So he did and approved the performance.

Of course, I worked him for another $5. That's for sure. And a few more drinks. And that was Thursday night. Now he said, I'm not gonna see anymore, but the office still holds good.

Saturday morning, I walked over to his apartment building, and, he was outside. He was coming in one door, and I was going to the other. I said, ready to quit drinking. I had another drink last night. So he put me up in his apartment and, got me some clean clothes and a shower which I barely needed.

That night, he called up Holy Lancaster in Dallas and said, how about taking this guy down there? Alrighty. He says, suddenly, you act a little bit silent. I could hear all the booming about. Out.

So the next we got a reservation that night, American Airlines for Sunday evening, and it was Sunday before Labor Day, September 6th. And the 30 so and so never even gave me a drink after 3 months lunch I got on board that plane. I didn't know what I was. On a plane or a ferry boat or where I was. And I got off the plane as the land stopped, and I would have been off sure and had it.

I don't know. I don't know. I stopped, but it was I got off that plane, and I the first first came out of it. They know soon I had that thing rolled up, and I was zooming. I was down on the steps.

I had enough flying for one night. When I got down there and I looked around, I saw 2 big guys, and, of course, I was having hallucinations all over the place. And I said there were either a couple of g men or a a couple of goons and some gangster squad. And then I heard that booming voice again. There's the Yankee bastard.

There he is. I've seen him in New York. So they got a hold of me and put me in the car and put me down to 6 to 20. And I stayed there, and I guess I stayed there all together about 2, 3 months. But the first 2 or 3 weeks, I it was pretty rugged because I'm gonna tell you right now I had hallucinations all over the place.

I didn't believe I was in Texas. I didn't dare go out of the place. One of the girls there that was taking care of the books and sort of running things took me downtown one day and I couldn't get back in that place fast enough. I was scared of the car, the traffic, and scary road. And it wasn't when I was there 2 weeks, I said, The guy said, I'm going out to mail some letters at the airport.

Do you wanna go out? And I said, I sure do. I wanna see this airport and see if I'm really in Dallas. When I got out there and I got out of the car, and I walked up to this placard that said, love field Dallas, Texas. I put my hand on it and I said, alright.

I'm in Dallas. I believe it. Right? Where I stand here, I did not believe I was embarrassed. Because there's been a pretty rugged drunk and a pretty hot summer.

I haven't been much to eat in those 3 months. I was thinking everything I'd glam my hands on, then they'd be cut short like that. Furthermore, they gave me some few goofballs on there. I hate those things anyway. I hate the effect fight them.

I just like me. Alright. I'm sorry that I've taken up so much time telling you it's all been on myself, but I didn't know how to bring the history of AA. And you've all seen how it spread, how it's worked. I know that if it hadn't been for AA when I got to Texas, I know I would have been able to survive.

And just coming out here alone, I'd have been lost. It was tough enough as it was because I was among strange people, slightly different ways than ours. It it would be enough people to get from the valley down here in 6 hours and chase yourself all around. But if it hadn't been for those good Texas people and the people in the suburban club, if I hadn't been able to go around there and stay there and shake it the 2 weeks before I went in the club, a little over 2 weeks. I walked by it one day and started up the steps lost my mother and went back to the clinic.

Almost like a guy going back and hiding under the bed. And I know the troubled times they said, well, I know. I heard him talking. I don't know what we can do with this guy. He's gone goofy.

And then I had a colored girl that worked there. She's quite an old woman, and she said, don't you worry about that name. He doesn't need it alone and he's coming out of it. He's sick. And that's just what I was.

I was sick, mentally and physically. I mean, gradually, I worked out of it. Nature took over. And then I was able to get around the club and get into the activities. And maybe I got in and it was too fast.

I was the hottest someone that had been on record in the Texas weather bureau. I went down in the ranch, and I was we're out working the sheep of this man, and he put me in as a sheep man. That's kind of rugged work in 95 degree day. And I got mixed up in an oil deal and I sold some insurance stock and every one of them flopped. The insurance company did almost.

They're still struggling to get back on the street. And I got in another deal and that flopped. I was over a year and 1 month after the year was up, I flocked. And that was in October 1954. And that 13 months, I only had a few days to make a rent.

And, it was over a 3 week period, but I got slapped in the county jail for 10 days and left the bill of actors in for you. And they came out and some friends took me in their house and I sobered up. And they haven't had a great sense. In other words, I've had about 5 years sobriety in Texas. Out of Total.

And I know and I'm grateful to see what Grady is over there in Paris and Charlie for following it up and for the people in Texas and over here, all of you people, who have given me another chance. I couldn't have done it by myself. It isn't under my own scheme, I did. And I know that my sobriety in these 4 years, these last 4 years that I've been sober, it hasn't been my sole effort that kept me sober nor do I believe it has been entirely the hardship and the help of people. I think it has been the help of a higher power.

And while I've lost that idea at some times along this way of life, Thank God I got it back again because I know that I couldn't exist without it. There are times when I know I am not like the great many people I hear at court that They say there isn't a day in their lives that they don't fight the desire to take a drink. Well, I'm telling you right now, flat out, I'd go get drunk. I couldn't be that much of a hero. I did every day and every hour.

I don't have that. But I do have periods every 3 or 4 months when it's maybe 2 or 3 days at drug. That's all I think about. You've taken a drink. And if I haven't got myself conditioned to the correct way of thinking and knowing that if I take that drink where I'm gonna end up.

And I I have no doubt that this time, I noticed that last night that the drug that the the liquor knocked me so badly physically and mentally too that I'd never survive another one. And I get that in my head, and I get I keep it there in spite of the fact that I wanna go out and I get sick of it being in harness every day and going to work, and And, I'm getting along in years. Right? I like to have a little rest once in a while, but I gotta go and work. And I often think if I come home tonight, if I could take one good swag of whiskey or one bottle of Valentine's ale and go eat, It'll help me a lot, and it probably would help me physically.

It'd give me less, but I know I can't do it. So what is the use of time of the idea? I don't quite get so much the idea I used to. I'd like to get drunk. Although that occurs once in a while because I think in every one of us, there's another portion.

There's an alter ego. And that old drunk, the those heavy thatcher is still in there. He may be dormant, but he's there just like a volcano. He takes his top off and he's going, boom. Or this side, he goes zoom boom and it'll be all over.

But I haven't got anything much more to say except speak to your and speak to God. And I think that you'll find that you're having any trouble, you'll find help there. I want to thank Dick, and I wanna thank the other members and all you people who've entertained me, and I sure have enjoyed coming to Memphis. Thank you. Keith and A.