Comox AA Rally in British Columbia, Canada

Well, my name is Lou Fenimore, and I'm a recovered alcoholic. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting Linda and I over here. I'd like to thank them for giving me that bottle of cheap wine and my fruit. At least somebody here is reading a big book. It says any scheme to shield the alcoholic from temptation is doomed for failure.

I don't know how you get one of these started. I always say I sort of feel like Elizabeth Taylor's 7th husband. Interesting. I, I was telling that deal today here, you know, I, in the book it says if you want what we got, you're willing to go to any lengths to get it. I was telling the joke that I heard a while back of this young teenager, the son of a pastor.

And he said to his dad, he said, when can we talk about me driving the car? And his father said, well, when you bring your marks up and I see you reading the Bible on a regular basis and you get that long haircut, we'll talk. So about 2 months later, he got his dad cornered and he said, now what do you think about me driving the car, dad? Well he said, there's no doubt you have brought your marks up. He said I've seen you read in the Bible on a regular basis, but you still got that long hair.

And he said you know, dad, he said Jacob had long hair. He said, Moses had long hair. And he said, Jesus had long hair. And his dad said, yes. And you noticed they walked everywhere they went.

So if you want what we got and you're willing to go to any lengths to get it, above all, you'll get your haircut, I'll tell you that. But anyway, this theme here is something different than I've ever seen. It really gets down to what this thing is all about, new roots and new soil. Because the themes that I see, like I hear people say that alcoholics have above average intelligence. And the only place I ever hear that is at AA meetings.

I'll tell you that. I have been at AA conventions from Johannesburg, South Africa to Auckland, New Zealand to Whitehorse in the Yukon And I have never been at a roundup where the theme is the keen alcoholic mind. You know, I think a lot of us I listen to more people come to AA and they'll say, You know, it just puzzles me how I ever wound up here. It's not a puzzle. It's the simplest thing in the world.

You know, it's like this guy that died and went to heaven. And God ushered him into this magnificent room and he said, now look you get unpacked and when you're done I'll come and get you and show you around. So while he was gone, this guy looked down in the clouds and here was a whole bunch of young people drinking, dancing, rock music, going, having a ball. And God come back and the guy said, I was looking down here in the clouds and I see all these bloody young people down there drinking, rock music, going and dancing, having a ball, what's that? He said, that's hell.

Well he said you sent me to the wrong place, that's where I'm supposed to be. So they gathered up his gear and sent him down and he arrived in this stinking dirty, grungy, hot hole of a room and Satan come in and the guy said what's this? He said this is hell. Well he said what's this I see up here in the clouds? He said whole bunch of young people, rock music, go and dance and have it evolved.

Satan said that's our marketing department. And that's what got us to Alcoholics Anonymous was a number of marketing departments. And if you're talking about sobriety, you're sitting in the finest marketing department in the world right here. You don't need to go any further. Above and beyond, over, below, or anywhere else, it's right here.

This thing walks, talks, and shakes hands. And it's real. It says we tell in a general way what we were like. I read 8 pages out of this big book every day of the year, 365 days a year. I read one story every Friday.

I read it 52 times a year. It's the last person that's alive today of those stories in the big book and the originals, freedom from bondage. And in a few weeks, Linda and I are heading down south, and I hope I can spend a few hours with her in Fort Worth because she's quite old now and still fairly alert, but I think sometimes that these people have left us a legacy. And I think it's so important to read AA comes of age so you'll know what you belong to. And I read the story of hers every Friday.

But it's interesting, when I read the book, I always had to have somebody interpret it for me. Now this is what Bill meant and this is what doctor Bobble meant. And I can't find that anywhere where they want me to get someone interpreted. They wrote this in a pretty simple manner. If a maritimer like me can understand it, anybody can.

And it says, we tell in a general way what we were like, not what I drank like. What was I like when I drank? What happened and what am I like today? Not what I own, how much I've made, the expensive car I drive, or I just got an airplane, that's not what it's about. And that's what I did for years in AA.

And when a guy sat in my front room one time about 6 months after my first meeting, some people will remember old Bert Bingham, he's dead now, and 16 people from the 4th Avenue meeting including my wife. And he turned and looked me in the eye and he said, you know, Fenimore, you're the phoniest bastard I've ever seen in Alcoholics Anonymous. And as stupid as I was, I didn't need a second opinion. And I didn't have to turn to this guy and say, Dave, what did he mean by that? You see today when we're talking to a new person, we try to speak in a fine spray of generalities but nothing concrete they can put their finger on.

This book is self explanatory, it says it's our basic text. When I went to school I took math 5 days a week and I took science one day a week. I'm much better at math than I am at science. And that's what this thing is all about. And for me to tell you in a general way what I was like, it don't take long.

Like going down into the South speaking of roundups has helped me a great deal because they don't want to listen to no 40 minute dissertation of my drinking from Halifax to Vancouver. They want me to I believe that everybody that come here, came here to find out how not to drink, not how to drink. And there's new people here tonight who are relatively new that can tell me something about drinking. My last drink was November 16, 1963, when I came up via the Skid Row to Vancouver and came into this fellowship. But I was born on the East Coast in the province of New Brunswick, in a little town right on the American border, the state of Maine.

I know the Bible says the wise men come from the East and I've been wise enough to stay the hell out here. There was no wisdom where I come from, I'll tell you. But I look back on a number of things and I was talking to some people here today, I was taken away from my real mom when I was 3 months or 4 months of age and turned over to the people who raised me, mom and dad. And apparently, they gave me back to my real mom when I was about 7 or 8 months of age for about a month and it didn't work. She was a drunk.

And they gave her back to the people who raised me, mom and dad, the only parents I've ever known. And my mom had a railroad or a hotel, it wasn't hers, but a hotel that she ran. And I lived in a railroad divisional town and she worked in this hotel, not up there, down in Perth, New Brunswick. And from what I can gather, she supplied a lot of men who stayed there with everything food, loving, and lodging. And she was a beautiful woman, absolutely gorgeous.

And I met her when I was 11 years old, and, she she wore the big floppy hats like Olivia de Havilland, and she was a gorgeous lady. But when I got in school and kids started finding out what my real mother was, they started teasing me. And I was a skinny kid. There's a fellow here, Norm, who knew me and my mom and dad real well, my family, but I was really skinny. And you know I had about £4 of ears, and I used to have them boils all over my neck.

And they started teasing me and I started fighting. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that if you can fight. Took a good man to beat me. It didn't take him long, but it took a good one. I had a lot of fights and by the look of my face, most of them were split decisions.

And I get seen lots of guys when I had a store up on Kingsway, they used to come in from back where I'm from and they'd say, No, he's a good fighter too, Lou. They got scars going in 17 directions. And I said, I hate to ruin things for you at your age in life, but good fighters got no marks. And they never caught on to that. It's amazing.

We're the only people in the world that some till this day still think they were good at what they failed at. Every company from Halifax to here that ever fired me is still doing well. And I used to think, You'll regret it. Maybe they did, but they've not informed me. I've never seen so many brilliant people unemployed in my life till I come to AA.

Absolute geniuses. And we have a quality that not everybody has. We're the only people I've ever met that can walk into a room like this of 400 people and pick the idiots out just like that. Never even took a course. It's just a built in feature to recognize a jerk.

You see, I find today, I have to be very very careful what I call anybody else because I must have the same qualities or I'd never spot them in you. And so these are the things that I look back at today. Just about 16 years of age, I was away on a drunk from Friday until Wednesday with 3 guys. And these are the things, I had the privilege of having my mom with me for the last eight and a half years, but I was just about 16 years and a half old, something that, and I come home on a Wednesday, and I was still drunk. My dad worked for the railroad, and I had, I had had a job working for a construction company there part time and on weekends, but I come home drunk.

And these are the things that you can make all the amends you want, but they're things that are very lasting. My mom was a short little lady. I can see her yet standing by the kitchen when I come in. And she started to give me a lecture, And I hauled off and hit mom in the face, and she went down in front of our kitchen sink. I grabbed some clothes and a bag, and took off before daddy got home, and I went to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

1985, mom phoned and asked if I'd come back home and see her. She was 72 years old the next time I've seen her, and I'm a tough guy too. In 1991, she phoned Linda and I and asked if we'd come get her and bring her out to spend her final years with me. And 9 weeks ago, I was to kneel by her bedside and hold her hands as she took her final breath and left. So AA has has given me a lot of blessings, and it's allowed me to see me as I really am.

Not as I was, not as how tough I was. Coming across this country, I left Halifax from there to St. John, New Brunswick, from there to Montreal, from there to Elliott Lake, Ontario, from there to Winnipeg, Winnipeg to Calgary. And in 1957, I wound up in Vancouver. Me and a guy from Glasgow, Nova Scotia and a Newfoundlander left Port Arthur, Ontario and made it to British Columbia.

Now that is a miracle. Being in here is not a miracle. For the 3 of us, drunk all the way, we'd get right out beside the car and have a fight. Not for any reason, just fight. And we made it here.

My first night in British Columbia, I stayed in the ARCO rooms. For any of you who know where that is, I had a room overlooking. It didn't have a window, so I didn't know what. But it's it's right above where the old Pender detox used to be. That was my first night here.

And I like the downtown area. I like the skid road, when I first went down there. When I went across Pender Street, I'd gone south. I was on holidays. And I liked it down there because nobody asked you nothing.

Kids didn't bother you? Well, I didn't have any of that. Creditors didn't bother you. Relatives didn't bother you. Wives didn't bother you.

It was it was an ideal place. Then I met a guy, I used to do a bit of singing in the Allegiance and beer pudders, and I met another fellow who was a singer, and him and I tuned up. And then I met a friend of his from Edmonton. And him and I were in the New Fountain Hotel downtown, and he said, I know a lady up here in Vancouver, and he said, come come with me. And he said, we'll drive up and see her.

And we went up to this lady's house, and she had just been evicted from a house on Wall Street, and she moved 2 doors up on the same street. And we walked in, and I was probably as drunk as I had ever been. And she immediately threw him and I both out the door. And we went and slept in this car here somewhere all night, and the next morning when I woke up, I said to Chuck, I said, where was that house we was at last night? Oh, he said, it's over on Wall Street.

I said, take me back there. And on the way back, we stopped at a grocery store and I got a pound of bacon, a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread. And he took me back to this house and we walked in and I threw them on the counter and I said to the lady standing there, I said, cook me breakfast. And she did. And I was there for the next 11 and a half years.

Winnie has regretted this ever since. I'm just like a dog. You feed me and I don't leave. I just stay there. Well, I wanna tell you this woman got an introduction to life that she had never known before.

She thought welfare was bad. I got a I had a job for Johnson Terminals at that time and I looked around this house of hers about a week later after I'd been there and I said, this is not good enough for my family when he had 4 children. And we had 2 more. We have 6 now, and she got her first introduction to bailiffs and repossessions. I started buying furniture.

And what is interesting is that the first bit of furniture I ever bought from in Vancouver from the fellow son who's sitting here today, Bob. It was from his father who had a furniture store, And there's quite a story that goes on with that particular family. He's the man that actually gave me my first work when I sobered up, his dad and Bob and Bob. And I became very close to them, and I have so much to be grateful for in little things. But Winnie and I split up and I went back downtown.

And on November 15, 1963, I got thrown out of the Rainier Hotel at Caroline Cordova and what I prayed to God was my last drunk. And I got back up to the house where they lived and how I got there, I don't know. I have no idea what time it was, but I'll never forget it. I knocked on the door and Winnie come to the door, and she was always famous for asking stupid questions, She said, what are you doing here? How the hell would I know?

I don't even know how I got there. And she let me come in, and I slept on the front room floor. And I'll tell you the situation that this family was in when Einstein returned. The lights shut off and phone disconnected. A percentage of the furniture had been repossessed.

I owed $7,300 at 51 different places in the City of Vancouver, not a lot of money. But 36 years ago, that was a hell of a pile of money. I was in small debts court 41 times my first two years sober. The next morning when I got up, I had about half a bottle of wine, and I went to take a drink and a voice as clear as anything could be, said Lou, your drinking days is all over. And I asked Winnie what the number was for Alcoholics Anonymous, and I have no idea where I ever heard of that name.

And she said, if you want the number, look it up. And that's the most she'd said to me in months. And I thought, now she's thinking of reconciliation, I can tell you that. So I looked the number up and we had no phone, it was disconnected. I went next door to Bill Brown who worked for Molson's breweries and I phoned up and Lucy in them days was on the phone.

She never asked a whole bunch of questions like you do now when you phone in and you fill out a sheet of paper. She asked me where I lived and how old I was. She said, I'll send 2 guys up to see you. And I got a whole bunch of intellectual questions ready, and they sent 2 of the dumbest bastards I've ever met in my entire life. And you talk about a bored loser, they were from Nova Scotia.

And I thought we're going to get somewhere here. And happy Don and his brother come in and happy Don was sober 21 days and neither him nor I have ever had a drink since. But they come in and I started tearing people apart. And his brother, he said, oh, live and let live. And every now and then he'd poke Don in the ribs and he'd say, ain't that right, Don?

He'd say, yep. And that's all he said all afternoon. Every time he got hit in the ribs, he'd say, yep. And I'd get going again, he'd say, No, don't worry about Christmas. We'd do it one day at a time.

About 5 o'clock, they had all they could take and he said, we're going for dinner, we'll be back at 8 o'clock and get you and take you to a meeting. And as they were leaving, the smart guy, the 4 word fella, he said, Just remember, if you don't take that first drink, you'll stay sober. And I thought, man, he got something. I'd never thought of that. Never dawned on me, if you didn't take that first drink, you'll stay sober.

And and I thought he was smart. Like, you just talk common sense to a drunk and he won't know what the hell is going on. Stay away from this theory. Just talk common sense and you got him right where you want him. They went out the door.

I went across the alley. And this is the part from here on that I don't ever want to forget of my first day. I know none of you people have ever done this, but I went across the alley to a fellow's house and I was drinking downtown with him the day before. And I walked up his back steps and across his patio and into his kitchen And Roy was sitting there, he was with Electrical Workers Union and he took a glass of whiskey and he went to take a drink and I said, Put that down, I'll kill you. Well, you can't describe a look, you have to personally see it.

He said, what happened to you? I said, I quit drinking. He said, when? I said, must be 6:8 hours now. I hadn't even been to my first meeting.

He said, will you leave? And I did. The Oral Roberts of AA had hit the streets of East Vancouver and haven't even been to a meeting. And I left. Now we can laugh about that, but that'll be 37 years this November.

And he's never uttered a word to me from that date unless. What's the book say? Interesting stuff in here. I don't want you to start reading it right away because it's pretty heavy. But he says, the ex problem drinker who has found this solution, who is properly armed with facts about himself, not Alcoholics Anonymous, can win the confidence of his fellow alcoholic in a matter of hours until this has been done, little or nothing will be accomplished.

It says nobody wants to be told anything about alcohol by one who hates it. We wouldn't even do temperance drinking any good. And isn't that interesting? I hear people go to their first meeting and they'll say, boy, I got a brother-in-law that could use this. And this sister, wait till I have a talk with her, and I'm thinking, I hope they move to hell out of British Columbia.

She'll drive them crazy. Leave them alone. Get them to follow you here by your example. That's what this book tells me to do. So they took me to my first meeting, and this is the thing I wanna remember above everything else.

I had a black shoe and a brown shoe on. You still can't get shoes like that in the same box today. I got brown ones and I got gray ones and I have blue shoes. But I walked into my 1st meeting, 28 years old, 6 foot tall, £130, £4 of ears. I had them wine sores on me.

And Jerry Ecklund who's dead now was at the back door and he said, welcome, in the right place. And I thought, 28 years is the first time anyone's ever said that to me. First time anyone ever said I was in the right place. I had some magistrates tell me where the place I should be in. But boy I'll tell you he impressed me and they took me up and set me right in the front row, the second one over from the end.

Every speaker that come up was about my age now, hearing aids, a cane, and they'd shuffle up and say, if you want what we got, you're willing to go to anything to get it. I thought, hell, I can't wait. Where is it? You know. They made it so exciting.

And then I swore they gave every one of them about $25 worth of change and they'd stand there and rattle that. And them old guys, they they had them suspenders, you know, and they could lean way over till their head touched the floor, And the soles of their feet would never come off the floor, and they come back up, and they'd rattle that chain and they'd say material things don't mean nothing. I thought if I looked like that, they wouldn't mean a hell of a lot to me neither. And it's interesting how things transpire. Material things mean absolutely bugger all to me today because I got them.

I think it's important to don't tell a guy that's got nothing that that something isn't important because it's very important. Everything is important. To have my wife says she love me, to have my mom look at me every day, and take my hands in her head in her face, and look right into my eyes and say, I love you, Louis. And that was the same woman I hit. Everything is important.

I am so grateful for all of the problems that Alcoholics Anonymous has given me, like standing in a bank lineup, driving in traffic on the highway. I never had a car when I come here. I couldn't go in a bank when I listen to what we bellyache about today. I drive in from Chilliwack, I I just traded in a car, a vehicle, 2 years old exactly, a 184,000 kilometers, and nobody's ever heard me blow the horn at anybody in traffic. If you don't wanna be in traffic, stay the hell off of the road like this.

That's the simplicity of of of life. But I'd see people going by me every day on the freeway. And their finger up in the air and their fists are going, their mouth going, they pull in front of me and says, easy does it, live and let live. Put them on your dash. That's where we've always kept vital information where we can't read it.

Everything we know that's good is for someone else behind me. And so I think the thing about it we realize is the drunk watches the show, he hears the lecture, he listens to the sermon, but he didn't hear it. It's like the old guy went to the doctor. I tell this story all the time because I think it's good. And he said, the doctor, he said, no.

The wife and I have married 45 years and our sex life is just shot to hell. He said, I don't know what to do. The doctor said, I'm gonna give you this prescription. He said, when you go home tonight, he said, and you're having your tea before you go to bed, he said, just drop a couple of these in your tea. So they were sitting in the kitchen, he said, sweetheart, look at that beautiful moon.

And she looked out and he dropped 2 in her tea and he thought, to hell, I put 2 in mine too, so he did. And they both went to bed and fell sound asleep. About 3 o'clock in the morning, she woke up out of this dead sleep and sat up in bed and threw her hands up and said, I need a man. About 2 minutes later, he woke up and sat up and threw his up and said, me too. You don't need to wish nothing bad on a drunk.

Leave him alone. He don't learn. It's like the 2 hunters in Ontario, the this plane flew him into this lake hunting. And he taxied up to the dock and let him out and he said, no. Okay.

I'll be back and get you next Tuesday and 2 moose. That's all we can take out of here on this plane. They said, okay. Next Tuesday he comes back and he taxis up to the dock and near the air and they got 3 moose. And he said to him, he said, I told you with this plane we can't put 3 moose, you 200s and your gear on, get out of here.

They said, look, we heard that nonsense last year from the other pilot and we gave him $500 and he took our moose, 3 moose out of here. So the guy went for it. He took the money, loaded the moose, the hunters in the gear and they went down the lake and cleared the lake and cleared the trees. They went about 10,000 yards and crashed. When they come to 100, he said, the other, he said, where are we?

He said, a 1000 yards further than we got last year. And that's the way we've operated. This is the way we've operated. You see and so we come into this program and the reason it becomes difficult because this program tells you tells me not to think of me, but to think of you. It's not what I can do for me, but it's what I can do for you.

And it's like the young guy just before Valentine's Day. He was setting on the bus, and he had a card in his lap. And this old guy got on with a beautiful arrangement of flowers and sat down. The young fellow said, boy, somebody's gonna get a nice gift this Valentine's Day. And the old fellow said, yep.

He said, have you got a girlfriend? He said, yes, I do. He said, I'm giving her a card this year. He said, that's all I can afford to give her. And the old fella said, that's okay.

A little while later, the old man reached up and pulled the cord to get off of the bus. And just as before he got up, he reached over and he put the arrangement of flowers in the young fellow's lap. And he said, give these to your girlfriend. He said, my wife would like that. And the young fellow watched as he got off the bus, and walked through the gates into a cemetery.

So you know, sometimes that with the alky, he's thinking it's just like cement, well mixed and firmly set. And he has no time to think of you because he wakes up with the gimmes and goes to bed with a wand and it's all I, I, I, I, I. And I is the smallest word in the English language and carries the least amount of importance. And I look back today on my time when I come into Alcoholics Anonymous, the things I've done, a lot of them that I'm not really happy about. And, I have a lot of people say, well, I can remember Fenimore when he was this, and I can remember Fenimore was that.

And I'm glad they can because I pay no attention to it, and if I'm ever doing an inventory and I need the information, I know they got it. So, you know, I need that type of safe keeping. What people think of me is none of my business. It's none of my business. Doctor Paul said, when I get in my head, I'm outnumbered.

And isn't it amazing that's where we stay all the time. £230 all in here. Wonder why it's crowded. It says in our book, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind rather than in his body. And you can talk about any portion of a man's anatomy, he'll even brag about some, but don't discuss his head.

He don't like anyone in there unsolicited telling him he's not. You don't win friends and influence people that way. So I was sober 4 weeks and I found one sucker left who loaned me $200 and I started a trucking business. And I mean, that is a story in itself, me and my in citywide Cartage moving in storage. You know, I was so busy looking for the second truck, a little later on they repossessed the first one.

And I thought every successful trucking company owner should have a Cadillac so I got one. I ain't gonna tell you how I got it. The important thing for the drunk is to get a set of wheels. And I had this big white Cadillac. And you know what happened.

I've only ever had 2 real big expensive cars since I sobered up and they repossessed both of them. But Bob, who's here tonight, Bob T, his father gave me my first work up on Renfrew Street. And it's interesting how this all transpired, these things, and what happened in the process. When they talked about deflation of ego in-depth, you see today, we got so many facilities where we're teaching and treating that sometimes I think we fail to tell people the truth. I ran around AA talking about all the money I owed, and old Gordy Jen, who's passed on now, he tried his damnedest to talk to me in a nice way, and I didn't hear.

One night at the pleasant group, he got up and in them days, about 135, 140 people at the pleasant group. He said, you know, Fenimore, you've been talking about all this money you owed. You ever considered repaying it? And I thought, hell, that's a different approach. I'd never really thought of that.

What a genius of an idea. And now I know from being in business myself over the years where the word stress comes from. It's telling people how much you owe but with no intentions of paying it. That's very stressful. If you don't intend to pay the guy, for God's sakes, don't admit you owe it to him.

That's trouble. And so my old sponsor sat me down one day and he said, we have 2 primary purposes in Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, one's in the book, one isn't. He said our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other people to achieve sobriety. And that's the first time I ever realized that staying sober was an achievement.

The second one, he said, is to get a lifestyle together that's open for inspection 24 hours a day. And today, I can say that. Who I'm with, where I live, what I do, how much I got, my life is an open book. And so I think these are the things that I look at today that start to make sense to me as a result of these steps as they're printed, not as I interpret them. Because when you look up interpretation, it says avoidance of truth.

So don't get my interpretation of something. This is laid out pretty simple. And so I think these are the things that I look at today It's just this, and it says here are the steps we took. And it doesn't say how long, and it says if you want what we have and you're willing to go to any lengths to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps. And these are outlined pretty well.

I think these steps are quite simple. I will say today, 12 you fess up, 3 you look up, 4, 5, 6, 7 you clean up, 8, 9 you pay up, and 10, 11, 12 you keep it up. And that's about as simple as you can get it. But the minute you mention that to somebody, you know what they say, yeah, but. I've got a book and it says, God never says, Yeah, but.

There is no yeah, buts. There is no yeah, buts. I've had a lot of things that's happened in my life that's got me to where I am today and to see things as I see them today. And this made me aware of the fellowship I belong to, the legacies that have been left to us by people much wiser than I, that were here long before I. I just received a copy just recently of, the life history of Clarence S, Clarence Snyder who passed on, and this is a book and a half to read.

And all of a sudden, it opens your eyes a little bit more of what went on. And 3 years ago, when I was asked to serve on the Board of Doctor. Bob's home in Akron, I really got much more interested in what Alcoholics Anonymous is. What do I belong to? There's nothing in this big book anywhere that says if you go to meetings, you'll stay sober.

I can show you people every day that's going to meetings getting drunk. So I think there's a whole structured program here and it says this is a design for living that works. And so I think it's important when I'm looking at myself to use a mirror and not a telescope, try to get a close-up, you know, so I recognize the guy looking in the mirror. And I think we sort of want to sometimes get a faraway look at ourselves because just about everything that's ever been said about Lou Finamore, negative or anything else, there's been a measure of truth to it. And that's good.

Not that it's right, but it's good that it was a measure of truth. But doctor Bob said to Bill, he said, Bill, we must watch our errant tongues, and it's comforting to know that from that day to the list, there's never been a word of gossip in Alcoholics Anonymous. But you know the tongue located in a damn place has a tendency of slipping when moving fast. And so I have to be very careful of what I say. I have no right to stand up here and get my laugh at anybody else's expense.

If I want to get my laugh, get them at my expense. If I want to tell a story up here, tell mine. Not my wife's, not my children, not my ex wife or ex girlfriends or anything else. It says for me to tell in a general way what I was like. It's important that I see the eye.

What happened and what am I like now? And to me, I was 15 years sober before I recognized all that. Some people catch on to that quick, like 4 or 5 days. I was a long time because somebody mentioned here this morning, you know, you come in and you see the Cadillac and the blonde and the nice home, and I want all of them. I got them too.

Maybe not in that order. And isn't it interesting? I lost them all too. But the interesting thing about it, that these people like Winnie, and Vera that I lived with, and Sharon, these people are all good friends of mine. You don't hear me running them down and they don't run me down.

I don't play games anymore. I like to play games, I just hate losing. And these steps get me out of playing games. And I had to look at the step, the first one where it said we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. Alcohol is the last word.

It's the last word. Like every skipper is a good skipper on calm water. We're all great members when everything is going great. But what was I powerless over? I was powerless over saying yes when I should say yes, saying no when I should say no.

Being with the people I shouldn't be with, going to the places I shouldn't be. I was powerless over that. Why? Because of the insecurity and and what went on in my life. I was teased as a little boy.

I never felt as good as, worthy of. And so, I was powerless over alcohol. And it said that our lives had become unmanageable. It didn't say that it's on the way, it told me that it's arrived, Lou. It's here.

And the steps are all in past tense. It said, we admit it, we came to believe. It doesn't say we'll admit, we'll come to believe. And I think these are the things that really become aware to me. And then we looked at number 2 and it said we came to believe not in a power greater than ourselves, it said that a power greater than ourselves.

I hear people say, well, I really have trouble believing in this God stuff. They don't give me that choice. They took that right away because they knew I'd question that. They said, we came to believe that a power greater than yourself could restore us to sanity. And in the big book, they define that the sanity and insanity is positive and negative thinking, has nothing to do with mental hospitals.

And when I looked up to the meaning of the word restore, it said to return to original form. And it said that I was being returned to what God had me as a little boy, that I believed, that I trusted, that I had faith, that I forgave. You know, you can give a little kid a spanking when I was a little boy, and an hour later, they crawled up on daddy's lap and said, daddy, I love you. That's what I was restored to, that I could forgive you. Regardless of You know, it's amazing that all of the things that I hear people talking about someone else, 90% of it is, Do you know what I heard?

And isn't it amazing that I will form an opinion based on, do you know what I heard? And then try to convince somebody else that I'm getting better. Any time I form an opinion on any man or woman in this room based on what I heard, I'm a long way from home plate. I'm a long way from home plate. You see, when you hit a triple in baseball, you didn't score a run, you got to 3rd base.

And I think that the purpose of this thing is for me to cover all the bases in order to score a run and help my team win. Out of all the 12 steps, only one did ask me to make a decision. They know that's not one of our strong points, agreeing with them, yes, but not making them. I hear people say, Oh, I turn it over to God every morning. I said, What's it?

No. I do. I turn it over every morning. I said, I heard you. I did not question you.

I said, what is it? I've turned a lot of things over to God and he pulled a chair up and await me. I turned my bills over to him and he turned them right over to a bailiff. Many things he's very unreliable in. Very many things.

Said we made a decision to turn our will and our lives which is my thinking and my actions and it doesn't say I turn them over to God. It doesn't say that at all. It says, I turn them over to the care of God. And that's a big difference to me. When I turn something over to you, I expect you to do something.

But this is saying I turn it over to the care of God when it's something that I can no longer can't cope with or handle at this given moment. And he will keep it in good care till I'm able to take it back, straighten it out, and cope with it. And we've got I sometimes believe that we just turn everything over to God. I hear people say, when God wants me to have a job, I'll get one. I'm saying, who in hell are you praying to?

I've been looking for God's employment agency for 65 years. I needed a drink to go apply for a job, once I got the drink I was too good for it. God will give me the courage to go apply for a job. That's what he will give me. But I think this candy coated rationalization that I see sometime, and I realize why people, they relapse.

It's because these steps are outlined precisely how I'm supposed to live, not tell you how you should live. I am not a dictator. I am not a controller. Our leaders are but trusted servants. They do not govern.

And this is what the steps has got me to do today, is to allow my wife to live her life, my kids to live theirs, my 14 grandchildren to live theirs, my 4 great grandchildren to live theirs. I just be there if I can be of help. But we're like I was saying today about the lady walking down the street, and she's got a little boy in each hand, meets a neighbor, and she's 4 of the boys. She said, the doctor's 4 and the lawyer's 6. We don't control.