The 70th "Old Grandad" Conference in Hot Springs, AR

Good morning,

my name is Mary Pearl and I'm an Al Anon trying to be happy, joyous and free.

Oh oh, as you can see, the Row City group is alive and well here today and I'm a member in good standing of the Rose City Al Anon family groups and I'm very, very grateful for all of y'all showing up today. Thank you very much. I do want to guarantee you that you will have time to pee before Matt speaks

tonight.

Some of us are sicker than others.

We're we're told to share from the the big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, our experience, strengthen hope and and share a little what we used to be like, what happened and what we're like now. And that's what I'm going to try to do for you this morning. Hopefully there will be a difference between the two.

We'll see.

You may not realize, but I spoke here before on my 40th birthday

a very long time ago.

It's like I was talking to Clay and he said, and I told him, I said I was speaking when you were a baby in diapers.

Chances are that's true.

But anyway, I am grateful to be here and I want to thank the committee for having invited me. It's always a privilege to get to speak in front of a group of Alcoholics or Al Anons, because if it weren't for y'all, I wouldn't have the life that I have today if y'all hadn't cared enough about me and JD to embrace us. This was the first convention that we ever went to

in 1970, seven, 1977. And I remember our feeling when we left that that Sunday afternoon and we looked at each other and we said, God, we got to stay in this deal. We got to come back and we got to do this more because we were just overwhelmed. We had a tradition back then that on Friday night they had the talking chairs and that was all the chairpersons. Remember when they used to do that?

And then we would all go back to somebody's room and we would have meetings all night long. And there was one particular gentleman that it seemed like every year he got put in the room next to us and he told me one night he says I have requested never to be in the room next to y'all.

He said, Do you ever sleep?

And I thought, no, no, When you go to the convention, because you're so excited and you're meeting everybody and you're having such a good time, who needs to sleep? Well, now I understand.

I had Mary Pearl in the room next to me last night. And so,

but I understand that exuberance and that feeling that we all had. And so that's, that's, that's no big deal.

To, to tell you a little bit about Mary Pearl. I was the youngest of four children. I'm a change of life baby. And I was a spoiled kid. I was the only one at home. And so I felt like I was an only child in the family of four. You know, there I was. My mother was 41 when I was born. My daddy was 54. And so I was raised by old people in a world with older people.

I never knew how much to relate to kids because I was never around that many kids when I was very small growing up. But I knew what to do to get the adults attention. My daddy had retired from the military right after I was born and he had, he was an officer for 38 years in the Army and he wanted to fish and hunt and raise bird dogs. And that's what he did. And I was right there with him and I loved it. I was always a tomboy. I didn't enjoy being around my mother. My mother was not a happy camper.

My mother was the untreated al Anon. You know, if there's anything worse than being raised by an alcoholic, it would be being raised by an untreated al Anon.

Far more neurotic. If you think about it, an alcoholic gets a little relief every once in a while. You know, they take a drink, they feel a little better. The Al Anon takes bitterness.

You know they don't have any fun. It's a it's sort of like wearing a merit badge. You know, if they have fun, it doesn't count.

And so my mother was a very miserable lady, and Daddy and I escaped as often as possible. Now, an incident happened when I was five years old. It was going to have a dramatic impact on my life and that of many others. As it turned out, that particular fishing trip, Daddy and I were going and she announced she was going to ruin it and go with us.

Now my mother had rules about everything. She had rules and she would tell you that fishing rules. My mother made everything a job. Seemed to her that if you weren't working, you had no worth. So my mother was the workaholic and she was constantly working and so she made fishing a job. She said that she got to catch the first fish, the biggest fish and the most fish. Other than that, you can fish.

Well, I screwed up right off the bat. I caught the first fish. It was only about this long, but my mother gripped it off my hook, slapped it up on her pedal where she had Marks and she said it's not a keeper and with Glee threw it back in.

I went into a screaming coma right there in the boat.

My philosophy efficient then and now is if it has eyes in a tail, string it.

And daddy said to her, he said honey, or said to me, he said, honey, come back here in the back end of the boat with me. And so I went back to my daddy and as I got close to him, he leaned over and said, and we'll get her.

I didn't know what it meant, but intuitively I knew I was going to like it.

And what it meant was every time she'd catch a fish, she'd swing around, he'd take the fish off, rebait her hook, she'd swing around, start fishing and he'd give me the fish and I'd throw it over.

Every fish yellow heifer caught I threw over.

Now daddy's playing a joke on Mama. But the not little kid here. Do you know what the little kid has realized this day? I have learned that when somebody does something to you and it hurts, you

do it back to them as many times as you can.

And I found that out when I was doing a four step when I was right now about my past and everything, and I was writing this down is one of my most pleasant childhood memories.

But revenge was to be a way of life for me and it was OK. I mean, that was the standard. That was the standard. Well, my whole life changed on November the 30th of 19 of 1954. I watched my daddy die of a heart attack that night and I was left with it. And I called her the warden because I felt like I was in prison and, and my whole, my whole world changed at that point. And I knew that everything I had been

told about God and life and everything was all a lie. Because if God loved me, why didn't he take her and leave me with my daddy? And so I lost any kind of spiritual connection at that point in my life at the age of 12. And now I was going to do self will run right until I got to y'all and sometimes afterwards,

you know, we don't get this overnight. And so anyway, I declared war on Mama and I think she declared war on me in the in the bottom line was whoever dies first, the other wins.

Now I'm an overachiever. I'm a straight A student and that's not good enough. I'm the straight A+ student. You know, I've got to be better than everybody else so that I can feel equal to the kid who's making a CI. Don't know why, but that's just the way it was. And I always felt different. I never felt like I completely fit. Now I LED a gang of people because my, my thing is you either leader, you don't go

because I can't afford

to be at the mercy of someone else. You know when you've got to manage and control things, you cannot be at the mercy of someone else. So therefore you become the natural born leader. Haha. And I had this group of little sickies that followed me. Some say I still do,

but it's not a little group and they're not really that really sick. But anyway,

in 1954, they did a wonderful thing for me. They built the our rather little 57, I think was they built the Air Force Base out at Little Rock.

Actually, it was in Jacksonville, and I read in the newspaper that they said that there was 10 men for every one woman in the area.

And I want my 10

and I want your 10 and your 10 and your 10. Is there ever too much of a good thing? No. If it feels good, do it to you. Die on the spot,

you know?

So as you can see, at this point I'm ready to drink, am I not?

It just doesn't do for me what it did for a lot of y'all. But I had everything else in place. Everything else. The only thing I can see between men and alcoholic is a difference is an allergy to alcohol. And then when they drink, I have an allergy to their drinking, you know.

But anyway, this was going to be later on. Now my mother's father, mother, two brothers and sister were drunk.

My mother was the only one in her family that didn't drink. I think she needed one.

I think maybe. And she was always afraid of that. She told me. She said we carry the bad seed, so don't ever drink because you see what happens. And her father was a very mean drunk. And she had many scars emotionally and physically from altercations with him until she was only 13 years of old age when she ran away from home. And so therefore, I knew about alcohol, but I didn't know about alcohol.

You know, it's real funny, you think, you know, when you live in the disease of alcoholism and you don't realize it is a disease and it's alcoholism never becomes alcoholism. It's always ISM, you know, and the family carries that ISM as well. You don't have to drink it to get sick on it. And so I'm living proof of that. OK. I went out to that air base and I went trolling and

and sure enough, there's, there's sick ones everywhere, you know,

and I married this little Yankee boy and he never knew what hit him.

You see, he said the magic words, I'll take you away from home. I would have gone with Satan himself if he'd have said I'll take you away from home because I hated being there. I knew if I could get away from home, it was always he ever noticed how was always going to be better over there. And when you get there, funny, isn't it? It's always better over there. And you know why? Because everywhere you go, there you are. And I didn't know that. You know, there's so much you don't know, but you think you know everything. And when you think you know everything, nobody can tell you anything.

And so anyway, I married this little old Yankee boy, and he took me far away from home, which he promised. He took me to Newfoundland

to see at the Air Force and I looked at that and I thought Newfoundland, Newfoundland, where is Newfoundland? I got out the Atlas even find where it was. I said it's just this little dinky island off the coast of Canada, you know, and he said, well, that's where we're going and it's called semi remote. Well, God forbid you should ever go remote.

I stepped off that airplane. I was as snow up to my butt. I had never seen anything like that before in my life.

And I'm looking around and there's some funny little strings in the backyard of our apartment. Now I'm looking back there and I said, what are those? He said I'll have a clue come the thaw. Those are your clotheslines.

Average snowfall, 290 inches a year.

I'm telling you, it was a it was a shock for this kid. But more than anything else, I can tell you the one word that described Newfoundland to me was boring. I mean, how much snow can you watch fall?

The wind blows, the power goes off, You know, I mean, it wasn't at all like I thought it was going to be in this foreign country. You know, it wasn't foreign enough. And

where did I find excitement? I found excitement in the clubs and they had the Airman's club. There was a couple of clubs down on downtown and then there was NTL club, the officers club. And I thought, Oh my God, it's Mecca. And not only that, they had gambling machines in the clubs. And I mean, I'm underage, you know, this is wonderful. You know, I'm just having a big time and I got to trolling in the clubs because I had this problem with memory.

My husband played in the band, and while he played in the band, I worked the room. I'd forget I was married

because you see, my drug of choice is adrenaline.

I'm addicted to excitement. If you don't have some creates, for God's sake. And that's what I would do, you know. So anyway, while I was there, I started to work for the American Red Cross as the assistant field director for Newfoundland and Labrador. Now, you think Newfoundland's bad Labrador is the world all of its own, up there with the Eskimos. And I was, I, I call myself doing good. I really thought I was doing good. And but my thing has always been I have to push the envelope no matter where what I'm doing, I have to push those rules. I don't go with rules

very well. And they had rules like you can't take liquor off the base on the Queen's Highway. And I would think, the hell I can't. And so they would have these little inspections at the front gate all the time. They pull your car over to make sure that you weren't carrying any booze. But you see, I learned something really good when I was in school. And it said if you act like you know what you're doing, you can get away with just about anything. And that's pretty much true because when the airman, the air police pull me over that day, I had two giant sacks

taboos in my car. And so the guy says booze inspection. I said just a minute. I picked up my sacks, I got out. I said go right ahead.

He inspected the car, I put him back in, got in, drove off.

Don't you feel safe with military like that?

My husband and I weren't getting along too well, Needless to say. And but we stayed there. We extended and we stayed there for five years till right before they closed the base because it was good money. I was making good money when he was doing OK and making rank. And so that's what we were doing. And then it came time to rotate back to the States.

And so I remember calling the guy in stack assignment section, I had not mentioned this to my husband, absolutely not, because I'm in charge. And so I asked the guy, that Sergeant down there, and I asked him, I said, where are we supposed to go next? And he said my, not North Dakota, my not, I'm not.

I've been in I since no, five years. I am not going to more ice and snow. That is not going to happen, he said. Well, where do you want to go?

I said. Well, I want to go back to Little Rock Air Force Base. Don't you know it's going to be all better back there now? Don't you know it's going to be a

It wouldn't be once I got there, but it was going to be. And he said, well, there's not an opening in your husband's career field. And I said, well, make one.

I've always been a positive thinker

and he said well I can't do that. And I said well then change his career field. He said I can do that.

So a stroke of a pen. My husband, who is an aircraft mechanic, overnight

became the head of a missile inspection team.

He had never seen a missile.

And we got sent back to Little Rock Air Force Base. You know, they were a little excited about that too.

Anyway, you guess what, It wasn't working in Newfoundland. It ain't working in North Little Rock either. It's just not working, you know. And so after in a little took them a couple of months and I got that whole deal straightened out and they told him, well, now you're going to go to Wichita Falls,

switched out Kansas. I said in the middle of the Tornadoes. I don't think so, You know, I'm not going. And see, all I needed was just a little excuse because I didn't want to be married. I did not want to be married to him, especially,

you know. And the bottom line was though, I wasn't ready to be self supporting through my own contributions.

Now, I may be sick, but I'm not stupid.

So I convinced him with a little fast talking for slow thinking that he should go on and at some point another we might get back together again. I got him out of the house and I put away all the stuff that was his and I said free, free. I I was like, I was like Martin Luther King, free at last, free at last. Praise God, I'm free,

but I'm bored,

so I have to have a little excitement. Well, I noticed, you know, have you ever felt like that you were a carrier? Because everywhere I go, there they are. You know, I feel like I carry that disease with me. And I noticed this guy across the street from me, and he would drink, and when he'd come home, he'd beat up his wife. Well, this is what my grandfather and my aunts and uncles always did. And so I was very familiar with that kind of behavior. And so it wasn't a big deal to me, but it was a big deal to the girl that was getting beat up.

And she was pregnant. And so he came home one night and he beat her up. And she went into labor. And she came over to my house, and she asked me if I'd take her to the hospital. And I told her sure. And I went back over to her house. And I walked in, and there he was laying on that bed, passed out with a little smirk on his face. And I looked at him and I looked at her, and I thought, you know, somebody ought to whip his butt. And here's where I had a spiritual awakening.

I am somebody.

So I tied him up in his bed sheet, I took a sled out of the bed, and I beat the fool out of him.

Just made you feel good all over, you know? Little did I know this is gonna be the preview a coming attractions.

The next day he came over to my house and he said I was in a hell of a fight. Last night

I said I bet you were

told him his wife was in the hospital. He had a baby girl on the other side of me. There was this guy and the doctor told Freeman you are an alcoholic, you will have to quit drinking. Freeman quit drinking. That was it. No a a no, nothing. Freeman quit drinking. Now we get to see what irritable, restless and discontent looks like next door.

Because I'm always looking out, I'm always watching. And so I was a night person, always have been a night person. And so I would get home around 6-7 in the morning and he had a garden and he wanted to till his garden at 8:00 in the morning. This is not acceptable. This makes noise. This disturbs me. So I went out and I told him. He told me shut my mouth and get my fat butt back in the house. He didn't know about Mama and the fish.

Now, Freeman had six beagles. If you've ever had one little Beagle, you know you got a barking little dog. But he had a whole chorus out there. And I would wait till the wee hours of the morning. I'd run off my back porch with a broom. I'd run over there and take that broom handle, run up and down that dog yard fence, stir them into a complete frenzy, run, jump back on my porch and watch

and he would come out in his underwear. He had cussed them out to hold them down and go back in the house. I'd wait about an hour and we'd do it one more time.

The sheriff came to see me.

Have you ever noticed how law enforcement people are really they, they just don't understand when you're trying to explain that?

So I went into Plan B.

I got my daddy's straw gigging headlight.

I mowed my grass at 11:30 at night.

The sheriff came to see me.

I had this Winchester 94 that I would shoot off like fireworks and the sheriff came to see me and after a while it occurred to me I had better find some other entertainment because the sheriff and I are beginning to develop a relationship.

It was that summer that I had this wild birthday party. But in the meantime,

I decided I would join. We had a neighborhood softball team, just your average neighborhood now back in the middle 60s, you know. And after the game, we would go back over to somebody's house and discuss our strategy for our next game. It was a mixed team, all different ages, just having fun. And some of them would be popping a few tops, and some of them were snipping stuff and others were, you know, out here. And then they had those with the sugar cubes. They were in a class all by themselves and

just your normal neighborhood. And so they were all over my house one night. And this little boy, he was about 18 years old, which wasn't legal to drink,

and he somehow got drunk at my house. And I got to thinking, now if he gets picked up going home by the sheriff and he tells him where he got the boots and I'm going to be in trouble here for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Don't want that particular charge. And so

I decided I'd drive him home and have somebody follow me. Bring me back. Now it sounds real simple, doesn't it? Well, we get out in his pickup and in the sitting in the seat of the pickup is this China tea set. And I said to him, what is with the China tea set? He said it's for my mom. I saw it and bought it for my mom. And I said, oh, and now he can't hardly walk. And I think, well, OK, I'll be helpful,

we'll carry this for him so he doesn't break the China, they said. And so here it is. It's two or 3:00 in the morning, I'm going into a strange house with a drunken 18 year old kid, and I'm carrying a China tea set.

Your everyday situation,

that did not seem bizarre to me because you see, bizarre was my normal state, you know? And he goes in there and he flips the light on his bedroom and there's a man laying on the bed and nothing but his underwear. And he looks up and goes, hot damn little brother, you brought us abroad home.

That was JD.

Now, that doesn't seem like a strange way to meet your husband to me,

you know? I didn't figure I'd find him sitting in the front row of the choir, you know.

But anyway, that was earlier in the year. And then later I was having this four day birthday party bash and we got raided a couple of times. But you know, JD came over, Roger told me he was the kid who got drunk. Roger came over and he said, my little brother, can he come too? I said, oh hell, who cares, the more the merrier. And so he thought I was too weird.

He told his brother, he says she's too weird for me. I don't like would say that. I mowed the grass through it in my house. My walls were painted black. I had nudes and the psychedelic lighting. I don't know why he thought I was weird. I had long black hair parted in the middle, sort of like Cher used to wear hers, you know? And I was doing vampire at the time. And I don't know why he thought I was weird. And I said, well, him and the horse he rode in on and who cares?

Well, that party put me in the hospital and

when I was sitting back home trying to recuperate, I called Roger and I said, I'm out of cigarettes and I said, would you go get me a carton of cigarettes and bring them? And so he came back with the cigarettes and he had JD with him and they came in and I had music on and I was making Scarlet Ladies and JD thought heaven, you know, because it was alcohol. And that was from the very beginning, you know, it was alcohol was a big part of our relationship. But the the irony to that was

we dated for four years.

We had a wonderful, wonderful relationship and then he ruined it. Now, during that period of time, yes, he got drunk several times, but he wasn't getting drunk in a on a daily basis. And when he would get drunk, he would break out in spots.

New Orleans, Saint Louis,

he would just not show up, you know, for days at a time and then come back and act like he'd been gone for 15 minutes. It was amazing, you know? And after an hour, I would be assured that he had not been gone that long. You know,

he was doing that fast talking for slow thinking stuff on me. And then he ruined it, though he said, I love you and I want let's get married.

Oops. You see, there's a time to tell stuff. And if you go past the time to tell stuff, there's not a good time to tell stuff.

And I said, well, I can't marry you. And he said, well, don't you love me? I said, has nothing to do with it, really. And he said, well, what do you mean? I said, well, I'm married.

He said you're married. I said, I forgot, I forgot,

out of sight, out of mind, I forgot. He said, where's your husband? I said, oh, I think he's in Vietnam or something. Maybe he'll get killed. You know, then I'd get the, the big check and everything and still get back, You know, I mean, I'm still thinking along that line. And, and so anyway, the amazing thing to me is he still wants to marry me. Does that tell you how sick he is?

Why would you marry somebody who can't remember they're married? Yeah,

a match made in heaven. Our best friends gave us six weeks and by the grace of God come November be 41 years.

Well you know we got married on the 7th of November. We had a big party for Thanksgiving. I went into the bar that was fully stocked when JD moved in and woman with a house. I got that

and a job

the every

alcoholic needs right. Anyway,

I had a fully stocked bar. I went in there to make drinks for the fact we'd been robbed.

He helped me look for it.

Now we had a German Shepherd and a poodle. They don't drink.

Where could it have gone? Was there any, any doors broken into any windows? No. But your mind doesn't want to go there. And now the disease of denial is fully alive in my house. I'm not going to see what I don't want to see. I'm not going to hear what I don't want to hear because I can't deal with it. If you don't like what you're seeing and hearing, and you don't like what your only option is, you won't see in here. You know, it's just like when the other women came in to the picture. You know, you don't see what you don't want to see. You don't hear what you don't want to hear,

and therefore you don't want to have to confront that deal. And so you begin. Your world begins to get smaller and smaller. The disease of alcoholism is alive and well in our home. And then it became very imperative to me that he needed to be taught how to drink.

I, well, he didn't know how to drink. I mean, it was obvious, you know, because he didn't drink, right? Because I could drink tremendous volumes of alcohol. And so I quit drinking to show him how easy it was.

I'm here, you know, he's still drinking and I don't understand that. And so I began to try to do all the things that we do in the sickness from the Eleanor standpoint. You try to reason with them. You tell them in 3000 different ways, the same thing, trying to find the one that's going to register in the little brain now.

And violence enters our home

because now we have a relationship of a mother and a bad child. And so I would tell him what he could do when he couldn't do it, what he could do when, where and how. And then he would go ahead and do his thing that was unacceptable. He'd come home and the war would ensue. And then I would have to put him out of my misery.

I got very sick doing that. And because you see, there's something about when you heard another one of God's kids, it comes back against you. You can't hurt other of God's kids and it not affect you spiritually at some level. And it was like I would be, I would dare him. I'd say hit me back, hit me back. And he'd say, my dad said no, hit a woman. I thought it's a good thing you hit me. I'll kill you.

But I wanted him to, because if he did, then it would make me feel that what I had done was OK.

And So what he would do, he would go out and get drunk, which I told him not to do. But he came home, took his whipping and he felt everything was OK now. And so we did that one day at a time.

Thing about it is JD's drinking began to get closer and closer together and longer and longer and longer. And then he began to go to the jails. And the thing about is, when he gets drunk to a certain point, he gets a big mouth on him. And he would have to tell the police all about their parentage. And when he would do that, sometimes they were not too kind to him. But they learned early on. And they say we'll just take him to her.

She can do for us what we can't do for ourselves.

And after a while, you know, you just get to the point where you just, you can't function anymore, you know, and that revenge thing, JD decided, you know, he just had to have a sports car because he was hip, slick and cool. I wanted a station wagon. We bought a truck. Nobody wanted that

and he had to have that sports car and now he he got this little MG Midget. Well, I was about double the size I am now. And so you can see it's not a car I get in and out of, it's a car I put on and take off.

And so I had this girlfriend who was very large as well. And I told him I said, OK, now I'm going to the grocery store tomorrow to be sure and leave me the pickup. And instead, he thought, wouldn't it be funny to see both of them getting in there, be like at the circus, getting all that out there?

So I got up that morning. I saw it, and it was in the winter time. And I saw it was that little car. And I thought, OK, that's all right, I'll do this. He'll not stop me from doing what I want to do. And I had all my coat and everything. Well, I knew how to get in the car. You just can't bend low enough to get in the car when you're big and tall. And that's a teeny little car, I'm telling you.

And So what I do is you just turn sideways and fall in. And once you fall in, then you got plenty of room for your feet, but you got to get in the thing first. And so I did. And so I was going through those gears as I was going over to her house, and she saw me from about a block away. Or there's a school ground there and she's standing on the front porch doing this

and she said, I can't get in. And I said, yes, you can and you will. I've always been a positive thinker

and I explained to her how to get in the car and So what. She got in and fell in the car sort of rocked a little bit and I got her feet turned around. Then I fell in on my side. Now, if we go and every time I shift gears, she gets a spiritual experience,

will we get up to the grocery store parking lot and I pull in, You know, now getting out is hard. If you think getting in some getting out, it's worse. I never fell out of that car that I didn't get my feet hung in the steering wheel. I don't know how,

but I did my normal thing, got my feet, hung the wheel, crawled out of the car, walked around. I told her, I said come on. She said I can't. I said, what do you mean you can't? She's I'm stuck. I said stuck. And she said, yeah. She said my bucket stuck in this. And I said, holy God, you're way over the bucket, what are you talking about? And so anyway, I had one foot on the door and one foot down here and I'm jerking on her. You know, I'm going to get her out. And when she came loose, she came loose quick

and she fell on top of me. And we're rolling around out there on the parking lot,

this black guys watching and he's sewing. Lot of mercy call a fire department.

I look over here,

I said. You want your ass whipped

now? I went in the store and we bought groceries. Can you feature that? Where are you going to put the groceries?

The trunk is like a glove compartment, you know. So we had stuff all in the floor behind the seats. We hit it all over. And then we got all back in the car and started out and we broke the axle. Now

that night JD comes in, he says where's little darling?

I said on a, you know, ditch over on Healy or School St. and he said what happened? And I told him, he said there's a £500 weight allowance on that car and I said who knew and who cared? You left it here, not my problem.

So we got in that big GMC pickup. We went over there to retrieve little darling and he had this piece of chain. He said we'll just tow it home. I said OK. So now he begins to give me instructions on how to tow. Now I don't know about you but I despise somebody trying to tell me how to do what I know how to do. My mother used to do that to me. You know, you'd be fishing she'd say 15,000 times how to raise and lower the anchor till you want to stip it, you know. And so he begin this thing. I'm just listening. He say

now it's in the winter time, it's cold and the automatic choke was on the big truck and I figured there's enough power just like take you put off the brake, get that thing. I mean, it's just a little old dinky car anyway. And but he kept going on and whatever you do, don't floorboard it now. I mean, what floorboard? What is the matter with him? So all I do is I take my foot off the brake and sure enough, there was a lot of power on that. I mean, it slung him sideways out of that ditch.

He went Bing Bing over there and broke that chain and he was just,

he was like a crazed person. He came up there and he talked to me like no man should ever talk to his wife,

and he accused me of floorboarding it.

If you're going to carry name, might as well play the game.

And so I waited and he got the chain, which is now shorter than it was a while ago. He's got that chain hooked on the back of that little car, on the back, that truck in front of that little car. And so this time I floorboard it.

Well, that was exciting. You know, I mean, he just started was like rickrack ricocheting from one side of the street to the other. And, and he came up there and he was he couldn't even talk. He was just and I said, now that's what happens when you floorboard it. Do you see the difference?

The chain is now 4 foot long,

he said. If you stop fast, I'm going to go up under the truck.

Well, is it plain to you? It is to me. I can't please him, so I just won't stop.

So I just went home without stopping. So what if it was a stop sign? So what if it was a red light? You just keep going, you know? And when I got him there, he was just absolutely hysterical. And he says I'll never. I love the way he quivers when he gets mad. I'll never ask you to tell me again in the echoing quarters time.

And I thought, yeah, you will. And when you do, I'm going to remember this day,

3 1/2 years later,

he called me. He's over to his mother's, the fuel pumps going out on his little darling. He wants to know if I'll tow him home.

I now have a Big 12 passenger station wagon with a 450 horsepower engine.

Yes, I'll tow you home.

And I hung up that phone away.

Oh God, he's mine. He's mine. Every dog has her day. You just wait long enough.

So I went over there and very calmly backed up and I hooked on to that little bitty car and when I look at my rearview mirror, I couldn't even see the front end of that car because he still had that 4 foot piece of chain.

I could see the windshield in his eyes. It was enough. And I took very calmly through the little streets to the main highway there going to Jacksonville. And I pulled out on that highway and I went 80 miles an hour.

You could feel a little bit of a drag.

You could see smoke from his tires. You know he wasn't stopping. The big Mama. She was on her right. And all of a sudden I

coming up and there's three cars pass them all at one time.

Now we laugh and that's funny, but if I wouldn't have been funny if you'd been one of them three cars, I bet you.

And it wasn't funny when I think about it in today because I could have killed all of us out there on that. But I was getting even. And that was the way that revenge was for me. That was the biggest adrenaline rush in the whole world. So it was going to be real hard to let go of. But anyway, the drinking. Finally I told him. I said, you're going to have to get out. And this time I'm in it. And you know, there's many times you say it, but there's a time you mean it.

And he said, well, I don't know why I do what I do. He said, I think I'm sick. And I said that is the truth. You are sick, sick, sick.

And so I took him to the family doctor.

Now the doctor knows what's wrong with me. I've been going to him for years with stomach problems, nerve problems, blood pressure problems, all that kind of stuff. Now the doctor knows what's wrong with me. And he tells JD, he said, you know, we and the medical profession, we don't do much for Alcoholics, he says, but there is a group of people call Alcoholics Anonymous, and they seem to help people like you more than we can. And JD said I'm not an alcoholic.