Aberdeen Wednesday Night Group's Soberstock Roundup in Aberdeen, SD

Hi everybody my name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How you all doing?

My sobriety date is December 7th, 1964 and

I got sober in Washington DC. I had the same sponsor for 42 years. He passed away almost two years ago.

You should be so lucky to have someone that close to you for that long. It was, you know, you start out your sponsors, your sponsor, but after 20 years or so, you were just very dear friends. And he would ask me questions as much as I would ask him. And we just became

two guys that wouldn't have missed anything. And before he died, I went up and we went back to the first group that he took me to, to my first meeting. And they were having an anniversary. And I spoke there and he was there in a wheelchair. And it was like bookends. That's where he took me in the beginning. And this is where he was about a month before he passed away. And at the end of the meeting, we sat down there and said this has been one hell of a ride

and there was a lot of joy. It was it was a happy event.

I was born in New Haven, CT in 1931

and the 30s is a long time ago.

So I'm going to tell you a little bit about them

because I'm getting old and I think back on things that

some of us don't know anything about.

But we had just come out of the Depression and my father lost his job as an engineer and got a job as a glorified janitor at the local university, Yale University, where he had graduated earlier and went off to build a bridge as an engineer in Albany. And my grandfather owned a chain of

men's clothing stores in New Haven and Bridgeport and Waterbury, and in

1928 he came up with the idea that we ought to sell clothes on credit, and you could buy a suit for $5 down and $5.00 a month till you paid it off. It was a revolutionary idea and it caught on big time

until all the people that owed the money didn't have jobs anymore. So he lost all the stores. And my mother tells me that without missing a beat. And he had nine kids.

He started riding the streetcar down to Winchester Rifle, working on the assembly line and kept providing the food for all the kids. And he kept that up all the way through World War Two. And never, he never mentioned that he lost his clothing stores. He was just, this is what I do now. It's really amazing.

And my sister and I were. My sister, by the way, has

31 years in a A up in while I'm at it. I got that's my only sister, but I've got six kids and 15 grandchildren. The two of my daughters are in a A and one of my grandsons is in a A. So I've covered 3 generations. I hope everybody else is doing your share to make sure we have plenty of money

members.

And somehow

everybody was surviving

and they were closer together than you can imagine because everybody was in the same boat. There was nobody who was escaping this. And it's like us in a a there was that. Yeah, I understand, you know, and I do have some extra bread or I do have this, but why don't we give you a ride? It was just built in. Sharing without

it just came natural.

And when World War 2 broke out,

it was just a continuation of that. The country was a unit. And I just can remember all the My mother every six months would go through her kitchen and look for another pot that she could get along without. And then she'd take it over the center of town and there was a chicken wire enclosure in front of the town hall and she'd throw the pot in there and you'd see the other pots that had been

and melt them down for bullets.

And, and so this was just all being done voluntarily. And then, you know, a neighbor would actually, I don't need this one.

There was, it was just amazing how close knit. That's, that's what I remember is how close knit everything felt.

And we had

blackout curtains. You didn't drive at night, didn't want any lights that you could see from an airplane.

My mother was an air spotter 4 * a week. She went up on top of a hill and reported by telephone every plane that she saw. People were always seeing submarines because we lived right near the Atlantic Coast.

And

I think we forget that this was a very dangerous time.

And about a year ago I met a friend. A friend of mine told me about meeting this gentleman at a university who was a teacher but from Germany, an older man. And the older man asked him where he was from. He said he was from this little town in Wisconsin. And the man said, oh, that little town, isn't that where the Angel River? And the

river come together

and this guy said those are the smallest rivers. They don't even show on a map. I mean, how could that guy know that? And he said, how do you know that? And he said

in Nazi Germany, I was going to be the administrator of Wisconsin,

and I knew Wisconsin better than the people who lived in Wisconsin.

I mean, the second chills up your spine. We think there was a guy over there that was going to run Wisconsin

and and there was one for every state. So,

and I remember Churchill came over and thanked us for joining the war

and you got the sense this, at least this is my memory,

that the war really was between

two God fearing nations and a nation that was out to wipe God off the planet.

That was the perception then

that was, that's what, you know, the the backbone of this country was the churches. And so that was the two armies that were lined up was that. And there was a tremendous, I remember my parents talking that

we will win, you know, this side will overcome. And the other thing I remember there was a polio epidemic and I was 10, maybe 11. I was 1942 right in the middle of the war

and I was sent to A and it hit a boys camp I was in and a whole bunch of the other kids got it and some of them died. Some of them didn't get it real bad. I was in the middle with one leg and one arm that got paralyzed

and I was sent up to a crippled home in Newington, CT and eventually I was one of the small percentage that the Sister Kenny treatment worked for and I got the use of my arm and leg back almost 90%.

But I still can remember the spirit of the crippled kids, not the polio kids, the crippled kids who lived there. It was unbelievable how happy they were and they were running up and down flights of stairs with crutches. You couldn't keep up with them. The kid on crutches could take 6 steps at a time and you, you would just go God.

What I saw there was the tremendous spirit to overcome handicaps

and the example of looking at that. And then it was hard to feel sorry for yourself sitting over here with an arm that just wouldn't flop quite right. And the reason I'm telling you this is you get that feeling in a A and you watch people overcome divorces, death of a child, whatever it is, with great dignity, and you feel the prayers of the group.

And you've realized there's a great similarity between a A and America at that time.

And it's a wonderful time to remember, even though it was horrible. You see what I'm talking about. I'm talking about here's this raging World War. And underneath it was this tremendous unity that made it not only tolerable, but actually taught us a lot of lessons. So I, I look back on it with almost a desire that it was still like that.

But it's only like that when there's a big emergency.

And that's what holds us together. I mean, I think the greatest strength that a A has is that they're still making booze.

That's what really holds us together. I don't think I'll keep going here. And alcohol is walking around outside. If you knew, they probably haven't told you about this, but there's little half pints of vodka that circulate around the outside of the meetings. And they hide in the grass until someone comes out and says, how the hell with it? And then they jump up and go, hey, over here, over here, and you

must be God's will. Look at that bottle of milk. Good.

And then the bottle says I understand you're not interested in AA. That's right. Well, maybe I can help you.

Let me beat you up for a year or so and said why don't you try it now?

And things look different.

So there's something, as Bill said, we're like passengers on a ship that's been

rescued, and we all still need each other and we still are.

It's up to us to hold this thing together. That's why our first tradition is so powerful, putting a as interest, your home group's interest, the head of your own.

And you know, that's one that I think you don't hardly have to teach anybody. I remember as a newcomer, I'm a clown. I like to cut up and talk when you're not supposed to and interrupt and do all these things. And do you know that something told me not to do that here. There was something that told me, don't screw around in here. You really need this.

Don't mess it. And, and you can sense it.

You know what I mean? You just, you really hardly have to tell anybody that, that if this group doesn't survive, you don't survive. So it brings us together by necessity until we find out how wonderful it is to be together by choice.

And that's that beautiful feeling of being not separate, as was so eloquently pointed out earlier,

but a part of. And if there's anything that I've seen after 43 years,

I see in this room that if I were to harm one of you, it would hurt me because I'd be harming myself. It used to be a theory, but now I see it. I see it just as clear as a bell. And I wonder how I could have ever missed the fact that we're all part of something instead of being a separate something.

And that's what we

with the steps

clarify.

And Chuck's phrase, A new pair of glasses really says it all.

We simply see everything differently,

and when you see the world as a happy place with loving people in it, full of joy, there's nothing for alcohol to fix. And it's real easy to not drink because you're already happy sober. And the trick is to do that which we don't know how to do before we get the help of the steps.

And I want to talk about the program, but I'll tell you a little bit about my story.

In spite of all that unity and in spite of being brought up in the Catholic Church and my everybody took care of me. I'm in this small family. I felt I didn't belong. I don't know where that stuff comes from, but a lot of Alcoholics have that. There's four of us at the table, the three of them and me. I don't know why I had that. I just had that. And the only two places I ever belonged was the Marine Corps and a A.

And boy, did I, I just love them both.

Um, my sister and I sat in the front Pew in the same church, listening to the same priests and nuns and Latin and incense and all of that. She still goes because it's so friendly and comforting.

I saw something similar to Auschwitz.

I saw little Nazi Gestapo nuns that were out to get me

and taught me about terrible, horrible things that were going to happen. I saw confession as a place where they're gathering evidence for later when they're going to hang you. I mean, I just saw everything wacky and of course it scared me, but that was not what was there. That was incorrect. So I had no comfort from the idea of a God or anything.

And as soon as I was on my own, I just stopped going.

And a lot of it had to do with the fact you get drunk on Saturday night and you can't get up on Sunday morning. So you you start going. Actually, I don't believe in God. And that just explains why you aren't going and you just keep on drinking. I know I talked to a lot of us when we arrived here. We're either agnostics or atheists. I don't believe. I don't believe it, man. I just think it's all that. And sometimes I have some fun and I go, well how did you become an atheist?

Did you see a non burning Bush?

Did a voice yell down to you? I do not exist.

How'd you become one? Well, you know how we became one? Were you just decided to become one? That's how we became one. I figured out that that's what I am.

We'll look at our third step. It says we made a decision to do just the opposite.

Why should we make a decision to reverse the earlier decision? Because we're getting crappy results from the earlier decision. We're miserable. We're afraid, we can't stand ourselves, other people or anything. So the offer is made. Why don't you try this and see what kind of results you get? It's very scientific, very practical,

and the results that we get are what you see in a A isn't so much what you hear,

it's what you see. It's called a program of attraction. And you see people that have something that you want. You don't know what it is. You can't really put it into words, but you want it. They have a glow, they're happy about something, they're laughing a lot. They're all getting along and there's nothing that would justify that. They're not millionaires. They don't have this, they don't have that, and yet they're just delighted with life.

And so that's what that says if you want what we have.

So anyway, I went to a little prep school in New Haven. I got very high grades. I was a good athlete. I got a pipeline right into Yale University. I got down there, I had done construction. I worked on all the hometown place. But when I got there and I saw the people that came there, all these rich guys from all around the country, I realized I didn't belong there. So what am I doing in here? This is I'm in dungarees and

you know, work shirt. I don't fit in with this crowd. I just, I knew they were going to throw me out that some,

a bunch of these guys were going to report me to the Dean and go, what's he doing in here? That kid doesn't belong in here. That's the feeling that I had and I wasn't drinking. I was 19 years old and everybody was drinking at college and I was holding off to try and get high grades and go out for the track team

and I attended a social function. I was afraid to meet anybody. It was impossible. They all were very mean people. You could see it in their eyes.

They just,

they were stuck up. They didn't want to know me. They were looking down. I was just melting in their gaze, just standing there trying to walk over and say hello to somebody. And I said, well, maybe there's a bar here, maybe I'll have a drink. And everybody says it makes you feel good. And I had one nothing happened to. And about halfway through the third one, I concluded that it didn't work and was going to leave. Except I turned around and all those guys were friendly

and they all were smiling

and they all wanted to know me. They were begging me to come over and join them. And I went, God, this amazing. It was like the other guys were gone and these guys were in there. They're all hey. And as I walked over, I realized they were right. They were going lucky to know me. And I started shaking hands and I had something to say about everything and I intuitively knew how to handle situation. My creativity came out. I wasn't afraid. That was the anxiety was gone.

I was smart. I had everything to talk about. I said, my God, I should have started drinking in grammar school. This is amazing,

but the big impression was that it changed my world. What a world this is. Look at these people. And I thought they did till they went home. They I was still there talking, talking. The guy who hid in the corner. So I went back and had fifteen more drinks just to see what would happen. I got deathly ill.

You know, vomited all night, dry heaved. My head is splitting. I'm sitting on the edge of the bed. And the thought occurred to me, are you going to drink again tonight? You know, I'm just and I just went, yes. Oh boy. I didn't take any time to think that one through. And I said this throwing up and dying is a small price to pay for what I had last night. And I made a decision that that experience that I had,

which as was pointed out earlier is very similar to a spiritual awakening,

was worth anything to keep.

And pretty soon I was sacrificing in order to have that. The grades win, the athletics win. I'm in jail. I'm getting my teeth knocked out.

But boy, am I having fun. I'm loving it. Oh, who needs the teeth? You know I put these in, Dennis. They'll fix them up. I mean, you explain everything

and

I barely graduated. It was so close.

The Korean War was going on and they had a draft. Everybody had to go somewhere. So some of us joined the Marine Corps.

So that's how I got into the Marines. After the rude awakening of boot camp, I went off for six months training to become an infantry officer. And during that time I saw some training movies about pilots. And I'd never been in the plane, but that looked cool. So I signed up for it, met a young lady while I was in that training and we got married,

went off to Pensacola to a career as a pilot.

And I got air sick on the plane going down

and I had air stick down there for a while, but eventually that went away and I was very good. I would be number two or three all the way through 18 months of training. And I got my wings and got sent overseas and the first line fighter squadron and the war was over. And so we were flying these missions and drinking and drinking and flying these missions, and God was it fun. Everybody,

everybody in the squadron seemed to drink as much as I did. The Colonel with sit us all down there was

twenty of us in the Colonel and he would order the drinks, bring my boys around the drinks, bring my boys and they drank so fast I didn't have to sneak drinks. You remember when the It's a slow moving crowd, you'd go to the bathroom and have two at the bar and then come back and join the crowd. And,

and I just was thrilled with the fun I had there.

And before I came back, one of the majors was talking about how he wanted to get his own squadron in a couple years and he wanted all the best pilots. And he looked at me and said and I want you. And then he said, but I wouldn't let you drink.

Now I'm a young first Lieutenant. And he said, and I wouldn't let you drink. And I didn't ask him. I pretended I didn't hear that,

and it wasn't till I got to a A that I realized that even in the middle of very heavy partying Marine pilots, my drinking scared him. I was doing something they weren't. They were just getting drunk all the time. I was drinking with an intensity that he could see. He could see that this was the necessity and not a choice.

When they came back to the states with their family, they just slowed down and adjusted to what was ever

whatever was socially acceptable. I came back and kept writing on the same path

and I ended up with 14 years as AI was making a career. I loved it. So I got a regular Commission and I was a forward air controller with the 7th Marines and

flight instructor. And at the end, I was in a photo squadron during the Cuban Missile Crisis, very elite squadron

at Cherry Point, NC

And it was then that the disease decided with we're going to up the ante. And I started having withdrawal symptoms in the plane because I would not drink for 12 hours and I'd start going into alcoholic withdrawal. I didn't know what it was, but it would be heart palpitations and my vision would start to go sweat.

Real anxiety. I'd just be God. I don't know if I can stay in here

and I'd fly with my hand on the ejection seat. Maybe I can punch out. I mean, it was really terrifying. But I kept that up for about seven months. I just kept getting back in and going up. And there was sometimes when I just, I just didn't want to go. It was too, it was too hard. But somehow I was flying good missions. The the Colonel like me and you know, so things are going

and

I was on a cross country with three other airplanes

in a different plane. This was not the photo plane. It was the radar plane. There's the radar guy in the right seat

and we were about 1/2 hour into that flight and I said I'm out of here. I mean, I just like that I'm out of here. You know how you have to bolt out sometimes you can't stay where you are. You're just going to, I got to go. I got to go. It's not easy to go out of the plane,

you know what I mean? And we had another hour and a half to go. And I said, I can't, I can't make an hour and a half. And I couldn't remember how you got out of this damn thing. It didn't have an ejection seat. It had a chute that came up then then some kind of a ramp opened up and you slid out the bottom. It was a real antique. And I'm trying to figure that door out. And then I went, jeez, this guy doesn't know how to fly. I can't go out. And then he'll be going, hey, where the hell

so.

So I declared an oxygen emergency, which is a what you do if you want to land well, you do it if you have an oxygen emergency. But if you say, declare the oxygens bad, somebody could pass out very shortly with bad oxygen. So they pick a field and we all landed and we went to the club and I got drunk and felt better. The test showed there was nothing wrong with the oxygen

and I told the flight leader. I said I ain't doing this anymore

and they retrained me,

broke my heart and they retrained me

in something else because you got to have a specialty. Took about three months,

and during that three months I was sitting at this desk in that squadron watching people look at my office with disgust.

This guy can't hack it. All I felt was three months of shame

and finally I got my orders and became an air traffic controller, which is unbelievable.

Anyway, I was out in Los Angeles last year

and I was at the Brentwood Group

and there was a gal coming up together, 30 year medallion. And her husband drove him, drove up, drove her up

and she met and he was not an alcoholic. And she mentioned to him there was a guy named Sandy Beach was leading the meeting that night. He said, I think I know him, tell him to come out and talk to me. So right before the meeting I went out and here's a guy I never saw him before in my life. And he looked at me and he said in 1962 you were flying an F3D2 Q The radar plane on in a flight of four on a cross country and you declared an oxygen emergency

and the planes all landed and you never flew again.

Naturally I said, how do you know that? And he said I was in the plane with you.

Now, what are the odds on that,

you know, 45 years later, to run into the guy who was in the plane with me.

Turns out he wasn't radar, he was another pilot.

Turns out that we had flown away from Cherry Point because a Hurricane was coming. And when they come, you fly somewhere safe and then you drink until the hurricane passes. So it's pretty good duty. So no radar guys were going. There was all pilots. And he was a new pilot that had been recalled from American Airlines for the Cuban Missile Crisis

and had since retired as the second senior pilot at American.

And so he came. The next day I was up in Oxnard and he brought photographs from the squadron and he brought back all my memories of what happened.

And he said to me, did you know how popular you were in that squadron?

Do you have any idea how much the other guys lied to you? Do you know how much it broke their heart that you weren't going to be able to fly anymore? The Colonel was trying everything to find a way so you wouldn't have to do that. See, there were no alcohol programs.

I thought they were all looking at me with disgust. Turns out it was breaking their hearts that I couldn't fly anymore. And this guy's telling me this now That story from that man is in total contrast with my story of three months of shame.

So I had to go back to 1962 and go erase, erase, erase, erase, erase, erase, erase, erase.

All the shame is gone and I put in everybody liked me a lot

and that story feels much better

then the old story.

Did you know that you can get rid of the old story?

What is your life story? But a story?

Where'd you get it? You made it up.

You made it up.

That was your version of what happened.

I heard a speaker one time say my stories divided into two parts, what happened during the years that I drank and what I thought happened during the years that I drank. And everybody laughs

and it turns out

our whole life can be looked at that way.

My childhood is divided into two parts. What happened when I was a child and what I thought happened when I was a child and what I thought happened when I was a child are old ideas.

What I thought happened in high school are old ideas. None of those are facts.

All of those are my reaction to facts. I had a childhood. I decided it was lonely and I was misunderstood. That's my story. It didn't happen that way. That's how I decided that it happened. I decided that the church was mean. I told myself this is a mean place. And when I heard that, I got scared. I believed my own

comment. This is really terrible. Yeah, it is. I'm feeling sick over it.

I'm only feeling sick because I told myself this is bad.

It's a permanent con job between my ego and me. Hey, this is really bad. Well, I'm feeling sick now that it's bad, and then the fact that I'm feeling sick is proof that it's bad. You see how the con game works? I tell myself a lie. I believe it. It makes me feel sick. So it's true.

The Big Book is so powerful on that point.

Do you remember what it says about the idea that somehow we can drink like other people? What do we have to do to that? Smash it. Remember that line? The idea has to be boom, smashed. There, Now that's how to take care of an old idea. Smash it.

What would happen if we smashed all the old ideas?

You know, be left the truth.

The truth is revealed. It's not told to us. Somebody doesn't just walk up and say here's the truth.

It it becomes revealed to you as you work the steps,

you find out what you got to get rid of. You ask God to remove it. And as that light, it's like cleaning the fog off the mirror in the bathroom,

and then you can see everything clearly. And so this is a very powerful message

that we've had two talks in a row talking about getting rid of old ideas because that is the reality that we live in are those old ideas. We think it's facts, it's just a story and it can be smashed just like the idea that we could drink like other people. And that man smashed 3 months of 1962 from me.

He walks up and went crush happy three months.

So I put that back in. I went. Man, that's fun to think back on 1962. That was quite a that was quite a pleasant time. That was really nice,

and I think as you move through the program, you're going to find your whole life will do that and you won't be holding anything that is uncomfortable,

that's making you sad or mad or frightened.

Now, our ego doesn't want to let go of certain things. Oh, now that guy did what that guy did to me in high school will never be forgiven. Really never be forgiven. How about that for a death sentence for yourself? I'm never letting her off the hook. You know how stupid that is?

Bill uses the word stupid quite a bit in our big book. We were especially stupid in that area.

And that doesn't help a real smart guy to say, well, your real problem is you were very stupid.

It's not highly technical, psychological, it's nothing. It's stupid to hold on to and not forgive something just for exercise for the heck of it.

Imagine tonight you go back through your entire life and forgive every unfair thing that ever happened from the time you were a baby till now. Every single thing

where you were hurt

and forgive it.

Forgive the grammar school, high school, forgive the girlfriend who ran off with God. Forgive this. Forgive the IRS, forgive the government, forgive this. Forgive all the politicians, forgive all the situations in the world. Forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive,

I would submit to you. There wouldn't be much left inside of each of us.

We would be about as light as a feather.

That's what we live on,

are the injuries that were done to us. We keep a very close record of all of that. And then when we get nothing else to do at night, we review them all. Oh, man, yeah, that was bad. I remember that. I remember this. I remember that. What if there was nothing to review? Well, as I look back, nothing.

What would you do?

You probably just sit there and enjoy the world.

You'd probably just look out at the moon and go. That is unbelievable.

Imagine that would be all of life would be just looking around going isn't this amazing, just like we do in a a we look at around all that sobriety and the countdown we go. Is that amazing? Wow, I can't believe this.

That's the freedom from old ideas. It's amazing, isn't it? The beauty of it is no one else in the world has to do anything. We do it all ourselves.

We fix everything by forgiving. No one else has to change, no one has to do anything. And we're transformed as people, just like alcohol used to do it. Terrible day. Oh God, I feel terrible. You couldn't believe I would prefer give me a drink

three drinks later. Hey,

problem free, this is more like it. Let me buy you a drink.

I thought you were broke. No man, I got 3 bucks. I buy you a drink. Right? And we're transformed.

The world's the same. We're transformed,

and that's what the program is for. Profound personality change, entire psychic change. All of those are the same words for awakening seeing things differently.

Anyway, I

eventually lost my career.

I went on trying to support

eight people. I had a couple years sobriety. We were broke. God, we were broke. I'm not a good money earner. And after about seven years of that, we split up money. She's working in a grocery store and I'm just trying to sell and do all this stuff. And she finally found somebody who could really offer financial stability for the kids,

and he's in and I'm out.

And that wasn't fair.

And there was all kinds of periods of adjustment and this and that.

My kids didn't want to talk to me. They thought I was the one that called. There was all of the what you call unfair treatments. Not fair. I'm sober nine years. My kids won't talk to me. I'm working just hard to think about. You should have heard me at meetings around people. Don't. Don't go near them. Don't go near them. You know how you doing? Oh, you'll sit down and take about an hour. I'll tell you how I'm doing

and

my kids and I are so close now.

It's just wonderful.

And

their mother and I are very close. We were childhood sweethearts. She's been married to this other man who's a really nice guy for 30 years. And the kids go visit them and they go, Dad, he's not looking well, he may pass soon, and you and mom can get back together.

And so it's you can see it couldn't be much better than that

considering all the things that happened that we're all very close.

I'll tell you about

how I got the job that I ended up loving and worked in Washington for 22 years and then retired from that.

I was selling, selling and I couldn't sell it in real estate market in the 70s and the mortgage money dried up. And, you know, and there's eight of us and it was just a mess.

And somebody got me an interview and it was done. All ex Marines. A friend of mine was a Korean POW and he was working on Capitol Hill. He heard about a little government agency that regulated credit unions and a Marine general just took it over a retired Marine general. And there was a Marine Colonel, lawyer retired, who was the general counsel, and they were looking for a congressional liaison

and he could get me an interview.

And I said, what's congressional liaison mean? You know, I don't know anything about this, but he got me the interview. So I go over and see this Colonel and he said, do you know all about the Congress, how it works? No, but I could learn. I could learn that. Well, do you know about, I know I got money in the credit union? No. Do you know all about the law and the regulation? Well, I could learn, I could do. And he's trying to give me support, but he can see that I'm not the guy they're looking for.

And he said, by the way, why'd you leave the Marine Corps?

And I went, ah, I remember saying I really need this job.

So I said I got thrown out for drinking,

but I've been sober in a A for 10 years and I know I can do this job. And he said, well, I'll let you know. Two weeks later, the personnel office said, if I want the job, it's mine.

And I went there and they told me the general was a big mean guy. And I said, well, what do I do? And they I'm in with the young lawyers. And they said, well, when he testifies in front of Congress, you write his testimony. Really. What's testimony

said? Well, you better figure out he's testifying in a month on this big banking bill. And I'm like, oh, jeez. So I get a little office and there was a history book in there about credit unions, and I read it.

Nothing else to read. And it would. The whole movement was started by finance department store in Boston. He was a philanthropist. He saw credit unions in India and he wanted to get them for his employees so they could save their own money and borrow from each other. And that way they could get loans, which they couldn't get from banks. And when he went to step one up, they told him he had to get a law passed. He can't just do that. So he hired a lawyer

to pass the laws, and the lawyer was

incredibly spiritual. This whole book sounded like the big book with all these spiritual principles in there that you have to treat each other fairly. If you save up a lot of money, don't go in the credit union and want higher savings rates because they have to rein the loan rates and we got to help the little guy. So you settle for a low savings rate

and that's the way it works. Don't get greedy. You know, I'm just, so I read this whole thing and then I looked at the testimony and I said, I'm just going to use the principles I just saw in here, these spiritual principles. So I'm writing all this flowery stuff and we're going to go in and turn it in. And the general secretary came back and said, the general wants to see you right now. And the young lawyers all went, you're in for it now. And I went up there and this guy was,

he didn't even introduce himself. He just looked at me and said, did you write this? And I went, yes, Sir, this is great. And I suddenly was his boy. Do you know what I mean? He brought me back to the office and he had an arm Taco there saying, well, you know, these guys are going, what the hell happened?

He liked that style. It was the way we talk here tonight, you know, that kind of. And so I worked there for 10 years in the trade association, hired me away for 10.

So I had a career in retired and all that. Anyway, I'd been there a couple years and I was down at the lawyer's house, the Colonel, and he was my age and we had become pretty good friends. And he said, you ever wonder why I hired you? And I said, yes, Sir, I did. And he looked right at me, said I just wondered what it would be like to work with someone that honest

Now, isn't that amazing? He just wanted to know what it would be like. And I had the biggest compliment I've ever had about

workplace after I left there. And I've been gone about two years.

And I used to go back over and hang around with those young lawyers. There was about five of them. And we became pretty good friends. And we were out to lunch and one of them said this. He said, I'll tell you one thing, it stopped being fun to work here the day Sandy left.

And I felt that real deep. I felt that I may not have been the best worker, not the smartest guy, but it made him happy that I was working there and it made it makes me feel good to this day that that. And that's what you feel in a a You feel the energy of the other people, and you want it.