The second annual Fellowship Of The Spirit convention in Cuyahoga Falls, OH

I, I am delighted to be here and, and, and see some old faces that I haven't seen for a while and be a part of this again. Mostly I think it's important for me to say that I'm grateful for God to allow me to be anywhere because given my past and that sort of thing, that that certainly wasn't the writing on the wall that, that I thought I wouldn't have been here. So I

thank you all for that.

I, Daryl and I stayed at a wonderful place last night. We thought maybe we might want to next time we're invited somewhere to see if we can get places like that to stay again and more often. We thought we deserved it.

My dry days. December 3rd, 1964.

That was the day that I

got off of a Greyhound bus.

I had, well, let me back up just a little bit. I was out on my own. I've been kicked out of the house, I've been married and we had three little girls and real little girl and I had been asked to leave the house. And so I had gone out and moved in with the Hams beer distributor,

which I thought was a remarkable move. But

after a couple of days, he'd had enough of it. And so I was kind of homeless again and went down, wrote a bad check for enough to start drinking again and, and kind of got going. And that guy threw me out because I'd written him a bad check. And, and which wasn't unusual, I wrote a lot of bad checks to a lot of bartends. That was back when there weren't all you had was counter checks. It had every bank in town that had counter checks on the back bar come in and say give me a checkbook

and they say OK which bank And it didn't matter. I didn't have an account in any of them.

I drive a check for enough to get me started drinking it and

and it'd be kind of how it started, but I had to leave the bar I was in and I called home and thinking find a way to get back in the house and Julie answered the phone. My my bride. She's still my bride

and

forgot how long that is. 5657 years and I got

and told her I'd like to see the kids and she said fine, come on over. And I thought, man, I'm back in the house,

everything's cool, you know, back in the big bed. And

so we get there, and her dad was there.

Yeah. Oh,

we had that talk

and

I sat down with her dad and and we discussed the situation. Mostly it's what do we do with Gary, you know, And back at that point in time, there were no treatment centers or their joints, anything such things around there. And all they knew about was the Wyoming State Hospital, 400 miles away from Cheyenne.

And we knew that a lot of her uncle was bad to drink and he had gone there any number of times.

And in fact, he died on on the way up there for his last trip. They had him in the truck. They're going to haul him back to the nest out in that house. And he went into the alcoholic withdrawal and died on the way. It didn't happen to me. They, we, I'd agreed to go to the nut house and

I told Julie Dad that I would go if he'd take me. It's only 400 miles, what the hell? And so I, he said, no, I won't do that, but I'll put you on the bus. And he did. He put me on the bus and, and I got off in Rock Springs to buy a pint and then that pint got me the rest of the way to the hospital.

And there was a cop standing there and I didn't pay much attention to him. But I'm looking at this hospital. Evanston's a small town and

there's a mountain right over here. On the side of that mountain is this old nut house.

And I kind of stand there looking at it because it looks like an opening shot to a horror movie. And you're looking at it up there

and, and

the cop asked me, he says, You going up there? And

how do you know?

And I said, yeah, he said, you are right. And I said, sure, that wasn't the first cop to give me a ride somewhere, but

so anyway that that was the start of things in there. In there, they actually had

a program there for Alcoholics and that was pretty unusual back in 1964. That was very unview with that. And it was mostly a, and that sort of thing. But I did not, they asked me if I'd come in to participate in their alcoholic rehabilitation program and that sounded good enough to me. I, I, I was at that point, I'm numb and I'll just do anything you tell me. The pain was so bad

and I just didn't care. We talked about the hole in the belly with the wind blowing through it and I'd woken up to that every time I didn't have booze around and if I didn't have booze round, it stayed with me. It didn't go away. The only thing it ever took away from me was

I,

16 years old and backlash a little bit, and two other fellows and myself had driven from Cheyenne to Laramie to go to the state basketball tournament,

and we did that. The two guys I was with had never enough to talk to girls and so they got this couple of girls go riding with us and we decided we needed some liquor.

And so I found a guy to buy us a cord of four rolls with whiskey, and we stopped and got some Coke and that Coca-Cola.

You got to explain that anymore,

and

we had the booze of the car and we had the girls in the car and we took off the boondocks years. A few years later, I got to thinking about that night. We had them in the car and all that, like I'm talking about, but we didn't know what to do with either one. That you couldn't go buy the magazines at the drugstore like you can now. That explained all that.

But we went out and the first time we passed the ball around, I watched it like I watched the Cowboys do it out of where I grew up.

And you did, you know, wipe it off and hand it the next guy. And, but second time it came around, I tipped it up and I kept it up till they took it away from me. And I got a whole lot of whiskey and it was great. I had the most profound experience I ever had in my life. Nothing had texted I, I, I no longer felt like I didn't belong with that group in that car. I guess I felt like I owned it

and it was just huge.

I got a little out of hand later on at night. That night they decided they'd sober me up and they took me to the truck stop and filled me full of coffee and it didn't sober me up, but it woke me up

and I took a poke at a big cowboy and and and paid the price

and I made a grab at the girl and paid the price. He slap Aaron and I'm still proud of that grab.

So anyway,

so that was the start of things. I never took a drink after that,

but what I wanted to have that same effect I had that first night when I got that whiskey and you know, I was so sick the next morning and I just couldn't wait to go get it, do it again. That was that profound an experience for me. It was just wonderful. So anyway, now let's just last sword all the harm I caused and that getting thrown in and out and stealing the kids money and taking the grocery money and I was not a nice man was sticking around for the kids

in spite of all that. Yeah, I did things I never dreamed out and do. I came home one night at AT and

was greeted at the door and she was upset with me but I thought the fight was over and so I sat down in the chair and I'm staring at those two TV's up there.

Come on, come on

and

also caress. Something comes down over my head and I turn on. I look around and some of you will remember the old vinyl and Chrome kitchen tables and sets. The vinyl though, had a split down the middle and all that fuzzy cock shit was coming up out of excuse me. And I figured it out that she dropped that on my head.

And so I jumped up and I hit her and I hit her hard enough that she slid on the kitchen floor three or four feet with that. And, and, and when I realized what I did and I wasn't that drunk when when I realized what I was done, this sensation of horror came to me that that just made me dislike myself anymore. And it I didn't need any help doing that. So at any rate,

and the money came first to provide my move more than the family and that. So I'm locked in the nut house,

get in this nut house. And they locked me in a room, just a square room with a bed and a window in the door, about like that. And I remember I'd come to and I'd look at that window and there'd be somebody's nose up against the glass looking back in at me. And they later on they, they took me out and had an interview with some of them and they asked me,

hey, do you know anything about what your alcoholism is about? And I said, yeah, I think so. And they said, how do you know?

How do you handle that? How do you know? You're aware now that you can't take another drink for the rest of your life? And the salt went through my mind. Well, let me rephrase it.

We're talking 50 years later now. And I was thinking at that point, well, if I was like some of these other Alcoholics I've seen on the ward here, they're 50-60 years old anyway, their life shot. Anyway, they don't got anything to live for. But Gee, and

I remember thinking that I don't know that I answered him or not, but that was the first thought he gave to me, and I never thought much about it. But after that,

while I was in there, that time I was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous. People would drive up in Salt Lake and nearby, some from the local town

and I attended my first AA meetings in there and,

and not sure I believe what I was hearing because these as I remember what I remember that these men and women were coming in there and they talked about this business of God. And I have no experience with God other than just it just wasn't a subject for conversation at the home I grew up in. Unless you're a cousin and

just what it was. But at the same time, I remember my dad during times of drought.

Now you have driver onshore on occasion. But let's talk about drought out in Wyoming and that you ever seen a green lawn turn to dust? That's what happens when it doesn't get rain and that sort of thing. And we'd be going into a drop. My dad would go over to the Mormons the next door and ask him to pray for rain. Sometimes it rained.

There's a fictional

character named Henry Standing Bear, who is supposed to be an Indian on the Cheyenne reservation in Miley talking about the best thing about a rain dance. The most important thing about a rain dance? Timing,

it's really an aside, I'm sorry. So anyway,

I was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm not sure I thought much of it other than that I don't know why I was so uncomfortable. I knew nothing about religion

and I remember the religious Christian people down the road wouldn't let their kids play with me. I thought they all should smoke cigarettes at the age of 10 or 11. I didn't say anything wrong with it, but they apparently did

with that, but just put the thing that I grew up with, but what I did is I watched the men out there and I'd watched my dad. My dad was probably alcoholic. He drank like one and he acted like one. And he was 5 foot 6 inches tall, weighed about 130 lbs at a fight in weight and couldn't fight with a damn. And

but he, he, he. We drank together on occasion as I got into high school.

It worked out. So it comes around and in the hospital I get a free ride to college.

For some reason when I was coming out of there and I, I was really concerned about having to look for a job. So that took me out of that. I could go to college and not look for work and, and ended up at the University of Wyoming and Laramie and attending my first a A meetings on the street there.

I, they weren't quite like the ones at the nuthouse or people would drive up and share a little bit with, I mean, around here, around some people there. I think the biggest meeting we had might have had 10 people on it. And I can tell you what I never heard. I only remember one article talking about the 12 steps 11 conversation in the

uh, with that. And I remember an old boy named Frank saying that he'd been in that a lot and, and, but something was different this time. He says, I took the third step this down. I've been sober long and I've ever been in my life and I never forgot that he said that. But I I didn't forget that The following Saturday, old old Frank came down drunk and I thought, I'm never messing with that third step

and

and I watch that, but I somehow didn't drink that. There was another younger fella in A at that point in time, he and I were, I was the youngest member and a probably in the state of Wyoming. Now that's not saying much. You need to understand that there's more people. If you divide this area with all the communities around Akron and that sort of thing and cut it in half, you got more people than there is an entire state of Wyoming.

And so they put that in perspective with that, probably the youngest alcoholic in A in the state.

And I was hearing things in a A, but none of them ever talked. We'd read the first portion of the 5th chapter because that's how you open meetings up, but that would be the end of the conversation. Nothing would happen.

I finished school quickly. I did four years of college and three got a degree in accounting because I couldn't take a vacation. I was too scared at that time by myself. I couldn't go. I worked a part time job that would turn into full time when there was Christmas vacation or things like that because I couldn't stand to sit still. And I was attending those a a meetings and I had a friend who would go with me

who was a drug addict that had never drank

and they were allowing him to come to a a meeting. But he was the closest person to my age and, and

we just hung together. We lied for each other and we did some things like that. So I got a degree finally and I got a job in Denver and at that point in time,

let me back up a minute about that. We've talked about the traditions here a minute ago with that. And the problem is we're having with primary purpose as we go from group to group. And

when they shortened the traditions, Alcoholics Anonymous got screwed. We were had she read the long form of the 3rd edition and the second form never touched what the long form said.

You know, it just did.

And the biggest excuse you can hear is somebody who's not an alcoholic sitting in a closed meeting and saying I have a desire not to drink.

Well, big deal. Anybody on the Atkins diet has a desire not to drink because they don't want the carp. You don't see those monkeys coming in here trying to screw up a egg. You just you don't see that. So let me throw that out there.

I got to Denver and I'm coming back to it for so Don't get so irritated you can't hear me.

I don't care if you do.

Every young people's group came in and then the lingo at the time and the clothes they made the damn young people is I'm an alcoholic and a drug abuser. That was a lingo one way back and

I know thought much about it because they very seldom talked about the drugs. They were generally talking about that at this same time, the treatment industry is talking about the drug of choice.

And I thought that's interesting. All of a sudden I noticed my friend Dawn, who I sponsored her sponsored as a street sponsor, trying to show him how to live in the street. When he got out of prison. He had an experience with the big book across staff in prison. But

I had a teaching that checks for money. Getting a little trouble with that. Where's that check you got Friday? What are you talking about? He missed a couple of paydays because he didn't know what the hell a check was. Anyway,

I talked to Don and he and Shelly and some of the others are just Alcoholics in the meat. They're not talking about drug abusing or any of that sort. I said what that's about and they said, well, the treatment center said they talked about the drug of choice.

My drug of choice, Don said to me was meth. That's the greatest high I could experience. I really love men. But I put meth down and walking away from it, I had to drink. I was unable to stop drinking

and I never forgot that. And that was true with Shelly and that was true with a couple of other young ladies that were in that if they were alcoholic, they had to drink. They never stopped drinking. They would use other things when it seemed like that the thing to do, but but they found they were Alcoholics. And then maybe there were one or two of them in that bunch that were both that were true LED drug addict and alcohol

with that. But now we're being lumped them as everything is a drug is a drug is a drug.

Now I got a little problem with that, but my this is taught my experience.

Take any 10 people

randomly go out and get 10 people and lock them in a room and give them nothing but any opiate out there and give them that form for for 10 days. After 10 days you let them out and what do you have?

Have 10 drug addicts because opium is an addictive drug. Go out and grab any other.

Another 10 random people

and lock them in room and give them nothing but booze.

At the end of 10 days with nothing but Buddhist, what do you get?

You get one alcoholic,

one out of ten of us roughly are alcohol.

So I have a little trouble with the things that are going on today and I'm even a little more trouble about the way we in a are handling that with that. And our primary purpose is suffering.

So I just finished my my lecture. Now I'm going to get back to my story. Please consider that because that's made a huge difference in our life.

So I end up in Denver and I'm with these people and we knew that the answer was a 12 steps. The guys aren't meeting there. I come in at nearly four years sobriety and sober longer than many of them.

And we know the answers in the 12 steps. We know that. But but Don was the only one that had experience with this step via the big book. And I'm out there kind of doping around looking for an easier, softer way. And so I tried the Hazelton guide, the inventory.

I read the 1st 6 pages in it and then there's a line in it. They're in there that says whoa, whoa. Now if you like most of it, you're trying to read through this whole thing and all that. You need to put it down and, and, and rest a lot before you do it. Well, I set that down about 45 years ago and I don't know where it is and I had no intention of picking it up again.

And

but we still knew the answers in the steps. And some of us are taking a crack at the steps as best we can. And a lot of things were happening back then.

We were being touched by another group in town that that now calls itself the God Squad. And they really didn't like the God Squad because these guys were big book people. And they didn't you came into their meeting, they didn't tolerate much other than that if you came in. Well, that's not our understanding. But here's how we took the steps to view the big book and what changed in our lives.

And that was our story. And they stuck with that. And so they had an influence on that. A little skirt. I got along real well with the most dominant figure in that group. He was a big white haired Scotsman lawyer with fingers. I think we're about #45 ring size. And he hit me in the chest and say listen kid. And I listen.

And so I was attracted to that group and the people in that group. I really were long. About that time, a man from Winnipeg, MB shows up in Denver at the 1975 International. It tells a story on what happens with the Golden Slippers group in Winnipeg. And I bottom line that story. Mac had disappeared for a while. When he came back, something was different. But this time he came back sober,

and he had this idea that they would sit down as a group and they would open their big books and they'd go through word by word, line by line,

doing precisely what it said. If newcomers showed up at their group, What time did I start? Do you remember? Didn't you?

OK, Thank you.

If somebody, a newcomer, comes in, two of us will take the newcomer in the other room and we'll welcome the AA the way they ought to be. But if that's so, the group can stay on point and do what we're saying. And so they went to the book like that. Every time the book gave them a course of action to take, they took it. And every time I'd asked them a question, they answered it. And that's what they did.

And wouldn't you know it, a few months later, the number of golden slippers going back out dwindled a lot

fewer and fewer when we're going back out into the huge change. And he had come to Mac, had come to Denver and shared that experience with us at that. And so we went out and we started one of those over at Jays House

and we started. We would do that now. I had two or three things happen to me during that time. It was so important. I found out that my length of sobriety didn't influence those guys long bit

and we would read through the book and skip to we read the doctor's opinion very carefully. I learned right there more about my first step than I'd ever heard in an Amy. I learned that the craving came after the first drink. The craving had nothing to do with the first drink. That was probably the worst problem with our heads, that where we would go knowing full well if we take a drink we're in desperate trouble

with that. So understood the phenomenon of craving and I understood

that

no matter how hard I wanted to stop drinking entirely, I was unable to do that. And they also understood, of course, that when I was drinking, I couldn't control the amount I would take, which is a fundamental definition of an alcoholic and and the doctor's opinion.

And so we read on through that. We read a line at the beginning of the third chapter said we learned we had to fully concede your animal self that were alcoholic. The first step discovered to to recover.

Gosh, we just lost

anyway

start over again. We learned we had totally concedence that we alcoholic. This is first step recovery. The delusion that or anything like other people who presently maybe has to be smashed. Sorry about that. My mind seems to be doing stuff like that more often.

Uh, and I don't know what it was that night, but I went home and it seemed to have a better handle on the first step. Now it's nothing I can intellectualize to. I, I thought about how would I explain that? But I was convinced and I was convinced of my animal self and we went on. We had that. We got into the the 4th chapter we agnostic and 2nd step discussion

and and like I say, and I'm still trying to feel this God business out and several things were going on. I'm watching some other really sick puppies coming

and next thing you know, they're growing right past me

and they're blaming it on God.

Uh, something was changing in their lives, you know, and you could see it was changing. The guys were getting caught up on their child support payments.

Their lives are changing. They had jobs and actually holding jobs and finding better jobs. You know, one guy found a job outside of the porno shopping.

Thought that was a big deal. Uh,

it's just, I didn't watching that. And so I'm coming to believe by watching what these other people are doing, they're talking about the experiment with God and they talked about practicing, practicing praying is what I call and all these ideas. And so I'm listening careful. Same time I'm working for a bunch of tongue talking fundamentalist

Christians in there and they scared me to death. I I,

they were one of them would go downtown and

Colfax in Washington and preach on the street. And I didn't think I was ever going to do anything like that.

I've been sitting there watching that. And so I'm seeing people where I'm getting, I seeing people who believe that God can do something different because it had in their life. You know, it really wasn't my thing, I don't think.

But I listen to the A's and watching their lives and

what they're doing is talking about God. And we're reading in a big book and we got to this point and we're coming to the, the 5th chapter

and

we're looking at the prayer, the third step prayer. And we're talking about, we get up to it and little Lee, I'll talk about him a little bit. He, he was the little guy, the big mouth that told me that the black print was on the white page. And that's all I needed to know. He was a little dramatic about how I phrased that, but he got it to me

and we listened to him this long time. He said I think got it back. We started this, call it a workshop. We didn't know that's what it was. We were just going through the big bug. It was fairly large Coed group. There might have been 2025 of us,

but by the point I'm talking about, when we get down to where we're approaching the third step, most of the girls have left and I asked Lynn a couple of times what happened. Why did you all leave?

And they said, well, I can't tell you, I don't remember, he says. I don't think it was you, Gary. And

so anyway, he says, before we take this third step together, I want you to understand I would like to see us all do that together.

I think we ought to read slash pray the third step prayer together. Maybe we may ought to stand up and hold hands. And I thought that sounded a little creepy because I was really uncomfortable having anybody see me praying. And I got to tell you, back in the middle 60s, group of men holding hands was really unusual.

And we,

we talked about that, he says. I've been a number of meetings right now where they're talking about inventory and they go around the room and there'll be people in the room saying they hadn't taken an inventory yet because they hadn't taken the third step.

And he says that kind of related to that. But it looks to me the way I am in my dishonesty that we ought to do this together. And then in a couple of weeks, if I haven't taken an inventory yet and tell him because I've not taken a thirst there yet, third step yet, you can call me a damn liar

because you saw me do it. And that's just the language we understood. And we said, OK, let's do that. And so I did that because the other guys were

yeah, I didn't, I didn't want to be the odd man out. And so we did that and I mouthed the words and

after the meeting I got in the car and I didn't start it up and I asked God to please make that prayer real.

I couldn't stand living that way without getting involved in the step that was in much pain, as I had been in my entire life all those years. So

I suffer more from alcoholism when I'm not drinking, if I don't have anything else, than when I'm drinking.

And we don't tell people that when it comes out, we'll say, Gee, you'll be just finding you. Stop breaking.

Lie like a bunch of rugs

and

so we

that happened that night and a couple other things happened in there and I'll share them with you. I went to had a night come up where I wanted to go to a small meeting down the South side and Julie's Allen on a meeting started. At the time of meeting I was attending was ending and I only lived maybe 5 minutes from the church where I was headed.

But so we decided that our daughters could be left alone for 5 minutes while she started went to the Al Anon meeting and I could scoot home

from the a meeting, babysit the kids

and. But we finished this meeting and I'm standing next to Big Frank.

And he'd always just intimidated me no end.

But after we held hands and said the Lord's Prayer, he and I sat back down and nobody told us to. Neither one of us said anything. And I sat there and looked at him. And I said, Frank, you got to understand something. I no longer am afraid of you one damn bit. And he laughed. And when he laughed, he laughed. It was a big roar. And he threw his arms around with me. And I thought I was dead. I mean,

it was going to be and that that's and that's all that happened.

I left there that night. I get in the car and drive home, but I can't tell you for sure that my butt's in the car seat. It feels like I was floating

and I get to the house and it was a two Storey house and our youngest daughter was in the downstairs bedroom and I went in to kiss her goodnight. She was asleep. Kissed her anyway. And then I went upstairs and my other two girls had their own upstairs. And so I went into the oldest daughter's house a room and and kissed her goodnight and then I went into the middle daughter and she was laying there crying. Patty had been

diagnosed with ulcers

at at at no 6th grade mean or first grade six years old. So and

she's laying in there crying and her tummy hurt And I said, well, you want me get you some milk? She said, please. I went down, got the milk and I came back upstairs. She drank the milk. And remember, I've been in working with this bunch of people in there who believed in healings and healing prayer.

And I thought, I wonder how they do that. And I didn't know, but I asked Patty, I said, would you like me to pray? Shall we pay it? Pray over that? And she said yes. And so we held hands here and I put my other hand on her tummy and I prayed. I have no clue what I said. I couldn't have told you 30 seconds after I did it. She was asleep when I opened my eyes

and we went down and I went downstairs and I sat down in the chair. I think

I felt like I was floating. I've never had that experience since or anything like it. Several months later, I

come home for dinner

and

we were cooking green chili and Mexican food back in Denver long before it was cool. This is pretty There's Lisa's stuff around here, but we're cooking there and you can smell it all over the house. And you came in

and the oldest girl said, he said, oh, that smells great, mom. And she says, but what's Patty gonna eat? She can't eat that. And Patty said, I can't too. She said my tummy hadn't hurt for a long time. So do whatever you want with that, whatever it was. But that was my experience that I shared with that. Meantime, we're going into and we're reading in a big book and we're looking at inventory and

we read it. We didn't read it, as I recall,

closely as we would enough. I were going to take you to the book this step. We really would be word by word, line by line by line, going through it. I can't promise you that's what we did, but we looked at it close enough that I had a pretty good idea of what it was so that I had a three column example in front of me that I could follow, not knowing that there's two more full pages on directions.

But I looked at that. But I didn't do it till seemingly the last minute.

I'm stalling it. Mean time I'm going to the young people's group and back then the young people's group was,

well, we thought we were pretty slick and pretty cool. We'd go into the meeting and it would be hugs, and if you didn't want to hug them, you gave them the peace sign.

And one of those guys in there, you saw a picture of them, tall, good looking Mexican guy with that. And back where we grew up, that was part of life. I mean, we didn't get along. We would go fight and then we go drink together and that was just life back then

and

walk in there and be hugging everybody now, looking over at Ernie and giving a peace sign. He's missing this finger.

That's only one reason I didn't like him.

So anyway,

he disappeared

and he went, hadn't been around for 2-3 weeks and I forget, walk in there and one of the girls, I say Gee, where's Ernie? And, and I'd say don't knock it. He's gone.

And but he came back and when he walked in the room, there was something different about it. You could see it. You could look at me in the eye and there was somebody home. And I don't remember anybody being there before.

And he shared that he had gotten a beef with his wife and he'd run away to Lake Whitney, TX and ran into a guy named Bob W,

who sat him down with a big look and showed him how to write inventory and send him down to an old cabin at the fishing camp and told him to come out when it's done. And whatever it was, I don't know how much time it was, Ernie came out and told Bob that he finished it

and and Bob said, well, let's go out and get in the big boat. And Ernie thought he's going fishing. He loved to fish. They got out in the in the boat and Bob turned the boat off and he says, tell me what's in that inventory. And he can't swim. So they took a fifth step.

So when he came back to the group, he was different and it was physically different and you could see it. That night I went home and and wrote. That inventory was that night and I did the best I could and I wrote all night. I quit at sunup because I didn't think I had any more to write. I added a few things to it after that. Then I ended up taking my fifth step with Ernie, 'cause I was in a situation where I didn't see anybody I liked any better than I did him.

And that was the beginning of kind of a life that goes to us. We're still the best of friends and

we talk often and do a lot and he's suffering from old man things and that we laugh at each other because we used to laugh at the old guys that had the prostate cancer and that stuff. But

and then along about that time, my life is changing and my business life is changing and don't know what we're going to do about it. And Julie and I said a prayer one night and asked what we're going to do about the business life and the business I had. And that in the very next morning

I get a phone call

from a guy who had been a member of the Denver Young People's Group and had moved to Nashville, TN

and his name was gone. And he said, I'm not sure why I'm calling,

but

I guess I need a salesman to go out to the Midwest somewhere

and work for me and sell. Our advertisements are jingles and things that we make for banks and that sort of thing. And so we sat and thought about that. I see we just prayed last night. And so the next, that was a Monday night. And Tuesday night I went down to the young people's closed meeting. And so I've never forget it. I said, explain the character like I have up and out right now. I said, do you really think that could be an answer to prayer?

And a girl that would drive all the way over from Kansas and that's 200 miles to catch our meeting twice a month

says it sure bees hell out of a bolt of lightning. Done. And

that was pretty much our answer.

It took a little while to sell a house and get moved to Indianapolis, but that was the start of things.

Keep in mind that that that means I left the group in Colorado that were going through the book, ended up in Indianapolis where I found 50 meetings a week about that point of time. I think Denver had 6 or 700 and

and all the meetings saved one or speaker meeting

and the difference in speaker meetings between there and you don't have one speaker at a speaker meeting here where we grew up, you would have three speaker Normally I left the two of them are really good and could get away with it then, but but they moved out here and so the one speaker I'm the new guy in town. So they had me talk around the town a lot and so I'm sure my experience to the 12 steps as far as I got

and

that went on. It took me, probably

got there in 77 and I think the first time I got it was able to get a group of people together to go through the big book, God forbid, and the 12 steps. And I think it takes about three years. And my favorite redneck came to me one day and called me one day. He says I want to have one of those groups at our house like you did in Denver and take people. We go through the book and take the step. And I said great. And he said you come, won't you? And I said sure wouldn't miss him.

And so we did that. Now what I didn't tell you flashback. We did that third step prayer together back in Colorado, and fourteen others took it,

and thirteen of us he had either died sober or are still sober.