The 34th SENY convention in Tarrytown, NY

Hi, my name is Bill and I'm an alcoholic.

Wow,

I was waiting for more to happen. I all of a sudden I'm up here.

Anyway, congratulations to

to the gentleman with two days.

If you have anything like I was when I was two days, you don't even know where the hell you are right now.

Thank you.

Matter of fact, like a friend of mine says, I don't even remember getting so because I was drunk at the time, you know?

But seriously, I'd like to offer you

all the best and please stay with us. And as they say, it's much easier to stay than it is to come back.

I say that from personal experience

and you've just received a book from a gentleman with 45 years of sobriety.

And when you stop and think about that, he did it one day at a time.

It's an it's just, I don't know, for an alcoholic, it's an incredible feat.

You should see what you look like from up here.

What a fantastic sight.

The miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous.

You know, I think we ought to you know, sometimes I, I, I just take for granted where all this came from, you know, and it comes from a higher power and and AI think we owe our higher power a good hand this morning. Aren't you

so much? You know what I

I've had, I've had

a fantastic weekend. You know, I'm supposed to say something like that, you know, because, you know, the committee worked so hard and, and all of this, but from the bottom of my heart, I had a fantastic weekend.

Oh, no, that thank you. Thank you. And I'd like to thank Cookie and I'd like to thank Laura and I'd like to thank Susan.

The, the, the work that goes into putting something like this on. My wife, Bernard and I are privileged to attend conventions from time to time and in various parts of the country. And you know, you don't realize, you know, all everything that this, this started over a year ago, the work that that began and then

and then and here we are enjoying the fruits of all of that labor. It's, it's really something

anyway. I also like to thank my Home group, the Leonard Park Group and Mount Kisco for for all the members that have turned out this morning to support me and

and I need a lot of support.

I'm not a bit nervous,

I just lie a lot.

I, I,

I don't need notes to tell my story,

but I'd like to share back with you some of the things that I got out of this weekend.

I mean, all of these meetings are wonderful and and I've got something from every one of them, but I have to be honest and say that my favorites are the Alchathon.

If something happens, I was hearing this with some friends of mine, something happens at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning in an Alchathon meeting that just doesn't happen anywhere else, maybe except in Moochie's Bar at 3:00.

You know what? I used to sit there hovering over this platoon, you know, sharing with my fellow platoon artists or writers or whatever the hell they were, and when the truth of the drunk comes out. But something happens in in these meetings. But,

but from the very beginning, at our at the welcome meeting, Bill,

our Canadian friend who's now a member of GSO,

said something that hit me between the eyes. He said he came with Alcoholics Anonymous with a big ego problem, Huh. No fooling, you know.

But he also said that you know, he still has a touch of it. Haha. No fooling, you know.

But he also said something which touched me and he said that he and his wife found an apartment

in a brownstone 2 doors down from where Bill and Lois Wilson lived on Clinton St. Wow. Now, if that isn't guard stuff, you know, I remember what I was doing some research for a project that I wrote. I agree with Aaron. I would stand across the street from Clinton Street where Lois and Bill lived and where, you know, the, the, the very early beginnings of, of what we have today,

you know,

took, took, took place and I was just awed. I, I, I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm, I'm so damn envious and jealous of where the hell they live, you know,

and I'm sure they appreciate it. And then, then Ruth, the Al Anon speaker, who I have the privilege of knowing from California, her and her husband Connie live in California part of the year. And she said something and and I never thought Alan Lines admitted this kind of stuff, you know, but

being married to one. But

no, I'm only, I'm only teasing. And because no, no, no, no, the truth of the matter is I love Alan. Without Alan on, I wouldn't be standing here. My wife and I wouldn't be together.

I

through Alcoholics Anonymous and and and Al Anon, my wife and I on March 17th this past celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary.

Anyway, Bruce said that I'm telling her story. She said that she still falls back into her old patterns now and then. You know, this of course is after she talked about her character defects, shortcomings, and but she said not as often as she used to. And that made me feel good because I do also fall back into my patterns from time to time.

And and then I went to an Aquaphor meeting that night and found out why

I fall back into my patterns from time to time. And a fellow named Mission, a wonderful young man from South Ozone Park, was leading a meeting on Fiat,

and he talked about that, how fear triggers us falling back into our patterns,

into our own character, these into my character, defects in shortcomings. That fear has always been the thing that led me around by the nose and continues at times to lead me around by the nose. And sometimes I'm not aware of it when I suddenly burst out in anger.

It takes me a while to to realize where it came from. It's because I'm afraid of not getting something I want or losing something that I have, and

I still have that because I'm still an alcoholic. As a matter of fact, my alcoholism is 37 years older

than it was the day I walked in here. And I must never forget that, you know,

that this disease continues to grow. And that's why I need to make my meetings. I need to be with my fellow members and I need to be active in Alcoholics Anonymous. And then another young man at a, at a, at an alkathon meeting, young man named Carl. I think he's only six months old, but he sounds like he was 60 years sober. He, he talked about, he's a welder

and he talked about his welding one day and I guess it was a flash or something and, and he was blinded. He's taken to the hospital and and he put bandages on his eyes and he suddenly came to realize that all these years he had taken his sight for granted, and now that he no longer had it

and it only lasted 24 hours. But he said in that those 24 hours changed his life, that he began to stop taking things for granted.

And that happened to me. When I finally came back to Alcoholics Anonymous,

I finally realized how blind I had been in so many ways,

so many areas of my life. And that you began to remove the bandages from my eyes and you let me see.

But still today I find myself taking things for granted, taking this life that you have helped me and God has given me for granted. You know, I'm a typical alcoholic. You know, Bill Wilson was once asked what was his shortest definition of alcoholism. And he said I can do define it in one word more.

What do you want? I want more,

he said. He always wanted double S of everything to make himself feel better.

Yeah, that sounds familiar.

I always wanted double s of everything. Make me feel better. Bigger house, bigger car, bigger this, bigger that, more of this, more of that. And and I and I sometimes, you know, get angry with myself and get ashamed of myself that I can still be like that.

But then I was at another Alpha Thon meeting,

and I've heard a young man from Brooklyn talk about how angry he was with himself because he couldn't understand why he wasn't more honest,

why in conversations he had to exaggerate. You know? My fish is bigger than your fish, you know,

And I'm sitting there, he was sober about a year and I'm sitting there saying to myself, where to have you? Hell, have you been for the last 37 years? Your fish is still bigger than everybody elses,

but what I've learned is I've learned more today about accepting myself as I am while trying to get better. You know, I spent a long time early on beating myself up for not being better or not growing faster and all that kind of stuff.

I'm aware. I guess I'm supposed to be and I'm trying to improve as each day goes on and, and, and that's all I can expect of myself. I'm not taking it easy on myself, but I'm not beating myself up anymore. And it was a young lady at that meeting who was really impressed with some of the other speakers, you know who who talked about like this one lady talked about, she said something that struck me. Very simple thing

when she was talking about how she found her higher power

and you know, how disappointed should we get from time to time when she would pray and not get what she prayed for and when disappointing things came into her life and she couldn't understand them. But she finally broke out of that and found a loving God and she said my God is always good

and so is mine.

I wonder why he doesn't give me what I want right now when I work so damn hard for it,

You know? I'm, I'm still, I still find myself trying to manipulate him, you know? I'll do this for you if you do this for me, you know,

but he's a good guy. My God is always good. And then this other young lady and I met her out here just a little while ago and, and she said, I wish I, I wish I were better. I mean, I wish I could grow faster. I wish I could, you know, get more and whatnot. She said I wish I could be like you, and I wish I could be like you, and I wish I could be like you.

And the leader of the meeting smiled at her and said, but you are. You're just like us. You're an alcoholic, you know,

and we're just like each other. That's why we're here. You know, I'm just like you, and you're just like me. I may look different, you know, I may have a few more pounds, you know, I may smell different.

Gay may smell different, you know.

That's an inside joke for those that weren't here for the banquet speech last night.

He and his wife Patty Gay and his wife Patty just were fabulous last night. Another miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know,

of course me, you know, I, I latch on to the, the, the stupid things. Aside from the fact that, you know, he, you know, he rode, rode around this wonderful country on a on a railroad car for a long time and met his wonderful wife in a, in a, you know,

how should we put it? A

the Bowery Saloon in Ogden, UT.

She was 100 lbs heavier than she is now and he hadn't take a bath in six months. But it was love at first sight.

I

oh, and then he, then he joins this group and, and Utah are and, and he manages to get 90 days sobriety. And one of the old geezers at the meeting says, we're going to give you a certificate. So you just get up and tell us who you are and thankful for your sobriety. And so they gave him the certificate and he gets up and the old geezer sitting over here and and he says

I'm gay and I'm an alcoholic.

And the old geezer says we can help you with your drinking problem. But the other stuff, I don't know, you know?

Oh, man,

I mean, we're, we're but an alcoholic synonymous, you know?

Yeah, yeah, I'm in the movie business. But you can't, you can't write stuff like that. Nobody believe it, you know.

Oh man, do I love? I have. Do I love A A?

Don't you love a A? Oh man.

Anyway,

I'm better than my wife wanted to know why I was a spiritual speaker. No, she didn't really want to know why I was a spiritual speaker because she knows I'm not a spiritual speaker. But you know, it's this is this is this is another one of God's funny jokes. Me being up here, you know, spiritual, spiritual meeting. But but,

but she mainly promised not to tell any of those stories I usually tell. So that's that's the way I'll be spiritual.

But anyway, I'm going, I'm going to share with you, you know, a little bit of my story and, and, and, and that's, that's a spiritual thing because, you know, I suffer from a spiritual malady. You know, yes, it's a threefold disease. It's physical, it's mental and it's spiritual, but it's primarily spiritual. I didn't know that at all.

When I came to Alcoholics Anonymous,

I was very sick physically.

I was a walking fruitcake mentally, you know, but I was totally, absolutely spiritually bankrupt.

And I don't necessarily mean religiously spiritually bankrupt. I was that too.

But what I was was a guy who had once loved life.

I loved like so many of us. I loved playing ball. I loved being involved. I loved achieving. I loved I, I, I, I was, had been a newspaper writer, a magazine writer. And I loved writing and I and I loved so much. And gradually that all died. All died. And so when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous,

particularly the second time, because the first time I wasn't an alcoholic,

but when I came back to Alcoholics illness, I was dead spiritually. I mean, I couldn't smile.

I was filled with self pity.

I was filled with hate. I not only, I mean, I didn't realize I hated myself, but I knew I hated you,

you know, and I had, I had achieved one thing though. I had gotten over, I had gotten over my particular hates. I used to hate particular people or particular nationalities in one night, but I had finally reached the point where I hated everybody. You know who's a hell of an achievement, you know?

And it was the guy became my sponsor that told me that the reason why I hated everybody was because I hated myself.

I was filled with self loathing.

I used to call myself names. I won't mention anything because my wife promised, maybe promised to be spiritual,

but I used to call myself, well do do. How's that? You know, well, do do,

because it's it, it lays at the bottom of the ocean. You can't go any lower than that, you know? You know, the kind of things we used to call ourselves, you know,

but that's what I was And, and,

and that's where alcoholism, alcoholism got me. Not alcohol. Yeah, that was a primary motivator. It, it enabled her to get me there. But it was all that stuff inside that just decayed. And that's where I got and and that's why I love laughter. That's why I loved, you know what you guys did for me last night. That's why I'd love what you guys have done to me all weekend.

I love, love to laugh.

You know the first time I laughed, my sponsor nudge me and said you're folly kidding it,

ISIS, sit around in these rooms, wonder what the hell you were laughing at. Dude, that matter was flying off this Cliff

every last year. Fly off of that and Cliff and they're laughing, you know? You know,

then they dragged into the emergency room. My arm is cut, my teeth are knocked out, my hairs.

God, what are they laughing at? You know, don't they know how I feel? Look at how many these bunch of nuts. Oh,

oh, anyway,

thank you. Thank you for teaching me how to laugh again, man, man. Oh, anyway, where did I start in life? You know, I'm not going to go back to where I started my I'll just tell you and and I also

I'm not going to stand here and and tell you everybody who caused my alcoholism.

I was asked to speak of the panel once, the adult Children of Alcoholism,

and I won't say any more about it than that. But

our young woman in her 40s,

and she was a young woman in her 40s, was sober eight years and she got up, She spent 1/2 hour knocking the hell out of her father what he did to her. You know, I never beat her, never raped her, none of that stuff. But he drank

and it was his drinking that ruined her entire life. Now here, she's so great, he is filled with more self pay than I had ever thought in my life and blaming everybody for her alcoholism, mainly her father

and being the father. I mean, I didn't like that, you know,

my father was a roaring alcoholic. I don't blame him for my alcoholism.

In fact, I give him credit for some of the funny stories I can tell these days. You know,

you know, like as a friend of mine says in our house, Christmas Eve was knocked down the tree night, you know,

it was a damn tree. You know,

I

you go to awake with my father and his brothers and you didn't know whether we're going to bury one or four, you know,

and my mother, God rest his soul of both of my parents have passed on. I know where they are and they're having a lot of fun where they are right now.

And my mother, you know,

she was kind of an angry person at times.

But if I live with my father as his wife, I probably would have been angry at times too. You know, she was get mostly angry when he would come home drunk and she would try to lock him out, you know, and he'd breakthrough the back door to get in into his own place.

And then she'd get the carving knife out of the drawer and start chasing him around the dining room table, yelling for him to stop.

Now,

now, my father was an alcoholic, but he wasn't stupid, you know.

So my mother didn't 'cause my alcohol isn't either, you know. Neither did my Uncle Willie. Neither did my Grandma Mcclintock,

MY2 grandfathers who were Alcoholics. I mean, there may be something to this jeans thing, you know? You know, Gene, you know,

but

I remember my sponsor saying I was talking to him one day early on and I said why? I mean, why, You know, I was 28 years old when I finally so. But up I said why? You know, he said, what the hell difference does it make? Why? He said if you went to a doctor and he told you you got cancer and you said why?

And he said well, because you spoke 15 packs of cigarettes a day and you and you worked in the S asbestos fact. Thank you.

Excuse me, I'm dry.

I'm not nervous at all.

I just keep talking and we'll think about it and specify, and they finally thought it, but I say asbestos.

And so you've only found out how you got it doesn't change a damn thing. You still got it. This is only one thing that counts as what do you do about it when you got it? And that's alcoholism. What do you do about it when you got it? Our problem is my problem was I denied it for so long,

but thank God, you know, thank God he keeps giving us opportunities with with cancer, it's a little different. You keep denying it and it's going to keep growing worse. Alcoholism is too. It's going to keep growing worse,

but we keep getting see with alcoholism, I mean, we can come, we can come back, we can get sober and we can get well if we look as they get too far, you know. But anyway,

doesn't make any difference how I got it. I'm not blaming anybody.

I am an alcoholic because of me, OK? I am physically, mentally and spiritually different is what I'm told,

and I believe it. And so it's what I do about it that counts.

Getting back to this spirit thing, I as also as a young man, I wanted to become a priest. Now, to hold your laughter for a minute,

I I decided at a young age that I was going to become a Marino missionary priest and I was going to go over to China and I was going to save all the Chinese.

This is even before Bill Clinton saved them, you know.

Anyway, I went away to a seminary and studied for five years until my spiritual director called me into his office one day and said William. So I know he was a little bit teed off when he called me William. You know, I had just played in a basketball game in front of a bunch of nuns and punched the referee in the mouth for calling 1/5 personal foul on me.

And he said, well, I had a lot of zeal

and he thought one day I might be a wonderful father. But he said not in this place, you know.

So I came out into the world from the seminary and the seminary, what they mean by the world is where all the women are this, that's the world. See worldly things, you know. So I came out into the world. Now, I had been a very uptight guy before I went into the seminary, you know, you know, like all of us. I think one of the characteristics that I identified with so much, with so many people in a A is, you know, this feeling of not quite feeling

equal to, you know, this low self esteem, we call it, you know, and I had been like that all my life. I, I never just felt like I quite fit in, you know, there was a missing piece somewhere, you know. So now I come out of the seminary having been away from the world for a long time and, and hell, I'd see a girl and I'd blush.

That changed pretty quickly. But I, you know, and I got a job working for a newspaper, some of you with the same color hair that I have. My remember the New York Journal American with the Big Red headline was back in the days when, believe it or not, New York City had 17 newspapers. Believe it or not, now it's got 2 1/2. You know,

you can decide which is the half.

And

I start off as a copy boy. I was going to St. John's University to finish my education and I decided I didn't need St. John's University because now I was going to be a big shot newspaper man. And anyway, I, I broke a story. Something happened. I broke a story and they made me a newspaper report. I was 18 years old, wet behind the ears, scared to death, and they sent me over to Brooklyn.

So Brooklyn police headquarters and

put me on a police beat on the lobster shift. That's midnight until 9:00 in the morning, which is when most things happen in Brooklyn anyway, right?

I said to the city editor, what do I do as a newspaper reporter? And he said to go over this to the headquarters and introduce yourself to the other reporters and they'll show you the ropes. That's the way you learned the job back then. A lot of jobs you learned that way and still do, as a matter of fact. So I went up to the Lieutenant on the desk at Brooklyn Police Headquarters, and I asked him where I could find the other newspaper reporters. And he brought it across Flatbush Ave. to the Edison Bar and Grill.

And he said you'll find some of them in there. And now he was wrong. I found all of them in there, you know,

and I walked in and, and, and I asked the bartender if he could introduce me to one of the reporters because I didn't know any of them. And he introduced me to Joey George of the Daily News

Little short guy, always had a half a pint in each pocket, was always ready for action, you know. And Joey bought me a drink and then he introduced me to Charlie Feeney of the Daily Mirror. And Charlie bought me a drink. And then he introduced me to Charlie Robinson of the New York Times. And Charlie Robinson formed me a drink and they passed me down the bar. You know,

I walked into the Edison Bar Grill about midnight, a scared, uptight 18 year old rookie police reporter. And I walked out at 4:00 in the morning a veteran news man.

I

that's what alcohol did for me. Just like that, just like that,

you know, it's like a friend of mine who had never been to a dance before, an Irish guy from no Rochelle, and his buddies get him up and he doesn't want to go on a dance, dance for hall. So they bring him into the men's room and they feed him a half a pint and he walks out the other door. Fred Astaire, you know, I was sharing at one of the arthritis about his friend of mine in California who says one of the reasons

and I'd like to share this with our with our friend who is sober two days. Now. One of the reasons so many of us don't make it in Alcoholics Anonymous is because a, a takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. We have slogans like give time, time don't leave before the miracle happens. We have these for a reason that we have to

stay and listen and learn except

and practice and begin and but with alcohol, it's entirely different. Alcohol is fast, man. I mean, with eight or ten shots, I mean, I was the tight end for the New York Giants,

you know, with 15 or 16 shots. I was an astronaut before the space age, you know,

It happened fast. I could be anything I wanted to be. I could get out of any trouble that I was in up here, you know, I could go from really down to really up and then from really up to really down, you know? I drank because I was cold and I drank because I was hot to cool off. I drank because I was sad to cheer up. I drank because I was happy to get happier. I drank because I wanted to dance and I couldn't dance. I wanted to drink because I wanted to ask a girl to go on a date, and I drank because I needed a drink to take her on the date. You know,

I go on and on and on. Alcohol, without my realizing it, began to control my entire life. Now, if you had told me that at the time, I wouldn't have agreed with you a bit, but it began to control every aspect of my life. I began to drink to get ready to live. I began to drink to get ready to do things. I didn't do it consciously. It just became part of my life. It's an insidious disease

that just creeps up and takes over. And it took over every aspect of my life.

And as a result of that, I began to give up and give away and walk away from everything that was near and dear to me in my life. I love playing basketball. I love playing softball. I became a sitter on Monaghan's saloon stool rather than part of his team down at the park, you know, or rather go to the park and sit on the sidelines and drink the beer. I'd I'd be the one that would break the keg before the game was over, you know, kind of stuff.

And that was just the beginning. I mean, later on, I, I nearly drank up a wonderful family. I drank up wonderful jobs. I drank up a faith that I believed in. I drank up myself respect. I gave it all away. For what? For simply for another drink. And that's what we do as Alcoholics. Everything else becomes 2nd, 3rd or 4th place. And King alcohol, as someone read it, one of the alcohols takes over and re begins to rule my life

and I had no idea that was happening. I went from a police reporter to cover Manhattan headquarters

to covering the criminal courts. They found that I could write. They brought me inside on night rewrite. I began to write the stories for the paper. Then they found out I could write well and they they promoted me to Dayside Rewrite. I found myself writing for seven editions a day. When I was 21 years old, I was a Byline feature writer for the largest evening newspaper in the world. I say that because that's a fact. When I was 24 years old, I was the obituary editor for the largest evening newspaper in the world.

Now you don't get your name above an obituary

unless you're really gay, you know, so so I think I need by lines for that. I run up as the obituary because I got fired five times all directly as a result of drinking. The first time I got tried, I got fired for wrapping up my car while being drunk on the job. I was on my way to cover A5 alarm fire going to general in in all all out by in the Brooklyn Navy Yard one night and I was going from Monahan Saloon. So I left with a six pack in a bottle

the summer night I had this beautiful powder blue convertible. And I'm driving along Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn at 80 miles an hour, you know, sipping my booze, sipping my beer, listening to the music and enjoying my grandiosity as a great newspaper man.

And I forgot at one point that the train goes back down underground

80 miles an hour into that stanchion. Boom

and I come to in Jewish hospital in the emergency room and there are doctors and nurses around me and they've got something in my mouth. And what happened is I lost part of my tongue and busted some of my teeth and busted 6 ribs and I was cuddled over the place and, and I what I do remember, you know, we come out of black hats and some of the damnedest places. And what I do remember is there was one doctor that was ready to stitch up my tongue and and wire up my jaw

and he opened my eye and he said we ought to give him a little anesthesia before we operate. And you know, the doctor says this guy doesn't need a thing.

No.

So when I got out of the hospital, I went, I went over to my mom and dad's place and and you know how? And all my friends from the boys came to visit me. You know, Alcoholics. We would love to visit the sick and bury the dead as those with a bottle around

and and they were passing the problem when it came to me and here I'm sitting with my wife. I've joined my father grabs the bottle and he says you should have any hard stuff. And he takes a bottle of Christian Brothers Sherry wine and he hands it to me and he says this will leaves the pain.

So I began clucking Christian Brothers Sherry wine through my wired up joy. You know, if you clock enough of it, you can get pretty drunk and you can get pretty sick. And have you ever tried to puke through a wired up drawer when I'm here? You know,

Yeah, the big pieces come out of your ears, you know? So.

So anyway, I I swore off Christian brother Sherry wine, you know,

understanding one other quick story about my my journey through the newspaper. This is a in 1955, the Brooklyn Dodgers the way the next year team finally beat finally beat the Yankees for the very first time and brought the World Series to Brooklyn. Remember that

there's a guy 15 years old. I mean, he'll lie as much as I do.

So the city area that says to me, Bill, I want you to do a the lead story for tomorrow's paper big feature story on, you know, how Brooklyn feels about finally winning the World Series. So once you go to Brooklyn, interview the people and come back and, you know, and write an article for the Morris paper will be the lead story. I said, fine, Eddie.

Eddie Mahara is my city editor then, an angry, angry, angry alcoholic who stopped drinking on his own and hated every, every slug of humanity. He was the only man I knew that could string together 17 profane words and make a perfect thing to sentence. I mean, that's how angry he was, you know? So I said, all right, Eddie, so I go. Now where does an alcoholic go to interview the people in Brooklyn?

I hit every bar in Brooklyn. Luckily, I had a photographer with me, Nell Finkelstein. Wonderful guy. Remember Bernard? What a wonderful guy. He's

he didn't drink and he was my he's the driver on a radio club. Anyway, Mel was with me and he was dragging me in and out of these places and dusting me off whenever I need to be dusted off and, and tell me we ought to get back to the office. And the last thing I remember, I was at the Brooklyn Dodgers party signing my name to the back of Sandy Amoros. I don't know if anybody remember Sandy Amoros, who was of now fielder for the Dodgers. And Roy Campanella had torn his shirt off and everybody was autographing his back, you know, Then I remember I'm sitting at my typewriter

at the City Room in the General American. And this night, city editor Art McGovern. Excuse me, Art McClure. Well, you would know who the hell they were anyway. So

both McGovern and McCullough are Alcoholics just like me

and on the floor screaming for the story. And I don't even I'm coming out of a blackout and I've got notes all over the place, you know, and, and, and clippings from other papers and, and, and the copy boys are bringing me coffee and the it's about 6:45 and our deadline is 730. And I'm writing a lead story.

So I finally start writing when I get finished with the story and the park happy boy brings it over to the city desk. I'm trying to sneak out of the office and McClure screams at me. Fortune, get over here. And I walk over to the city desk and Aunt Mccool looks up at me and he says to me, Bill, from now on, I want you to come in to work the way you came in this morning, because you're a much better writer drunk than you ever were sober.

Now, if that will tell you that alcoholism, that alcohol is your friend,

I don't know what will. So it just subconsciously reinforced, you know, and it made such an impression on me that I could remember the lead that I wrote on that story. It's crazy, isn't it? Like a mighty comet roaring down from outer space. The realization that its beloved bums had finally won the World Series struck this Burrow last night with a mighty roar.

What is show off? Huh. What is show?

And three years later, I was the obituary editor

because my alcoholism progressed when I wanted to spend more time in moochies. Moochies, by the way, was a wonderful saloon right in right near the East River in New York. And I like what I liked about it most is that when the when the tide would come in, it would flood the basement and overflow the toilets.

And the aroma in this place

probably love it. Gay.

It just made me feel at home and made me feel like I was, you know, he's

so I didn't even do an honest job at the obituary job. You know, they kept wanting fresh orbits. They wanted me to call up funeral homes and find out what well known people drop dead that night. And I don't want to do that because I was busy at moochies. And so I would steal the obituaries out of other newspapers. I would paste them up and send them into the composing room and and then they would start, you know, then I get notes in my box from the editor saying we want fresh orbits. We don't want people who died, you know, three days ago.

And then when I sent it, one guy had paper had been laying around. So I, I tore it out and sent it in and the guy had died 2 weeks ago.

He was, he wasn't fresh at all, you know, So I know traveling all over the country, interviewing famous people, going to places I'd always wanted to be and wherever I went. You know, I get drunk, you go into a blackout, just about make my deadlines. And, and that job only lasted 3 1/2 years. I was about to get fired from that. And then I quit that job and I got a job in the public relations business in New York.

The other PR man I had ever met was a drunk, so I thought I'd be safe in that business, but that only lasted me six months.

So I can trace the progressiveness of this disease in my job life. I can trace it in my home life. You know, I, I have been engaged a couple of times and so a couple of different girls and, and this one night after after this other girl falling with made sense enough to break off her engagement. I won't come to that story. I I walked into this place that I used to hang out. I had a dance hall in the back and I was just lovely looking, beautiful still this woman gal sitting back there. I

and 3 1/2 weeks later we danced off to Alton, Maryland and got married.

Well, actually it was a very sincere proposal. See, I used to like to get my dates home by midnight so I could have four more hours to drink on my own.

And this particular night, I said to Bernard, you know, let me take you home. And I said, she said no. I said, what do you want to do? She said, I want to stay with you. And it had been so long since anybody said they wanted to stay with me. I said, OK, let's get married.

And

so we got married. We drove down N to Maryland. We got married and

she should have known something was wrong when she told me she was hungry and I drove into town and I bought her an 8 cent loaf of wonder bread and a half a pound of Bologna

and a quarter 4 roses for myself. You know

Burnett? Burnett came from a wonderful Italian family,

is 16, only one brother in a whole family, maybe one boy and all those girls.

I used to think her brother was a little strange. I asked him once. I said, what's it like growing up with all those sisters? And he said to me, you know what? I didn't know until I was 13 that I didn't have to sit down to pee, you know?

Wonderfully easy. He's a great guy,

So. And. And Bernadette had a mother. Her father had died when Bernard's father died when Bernard was only 8. Bernard was the last in the family. As a matter of fact, she had two older sisters who were older than my mother. Yeah, so and her. And then, then there was Bernard's mother, whom I came to hate with a passion