The San Jose conference

This recording is a part of the Northern California Tape Library about alcoholism. It was made in at the San Jose Conference Saturday evening, March the 4th, 1961 and the speaker is Abby Thatcher, the man who helped Bill get sober. Abby is speaking on the early days of a A when it started.

This man has a message for all of us

that when we leave the room tonight, we can't help but love this man. So without further, Evie from Dallas, TX.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm sold on San Francisco. You can say that. I have two charming ladies take me on a tour today, and they certainly did a fine job. I saw everything I wanted to see in a short time.

I'd like you to Cliff House. And so the embargo and fisherman's war from the top of the mark, we covered a lot of ground

and it's nice to be here.

I've been asked to go over the early ground array and to do so I got to give you some of my background as a young man.

I was born and raised in Albany, NY, some of you know, the capital of the state. And my father and mother had a always had a granted a summer cottage in Manchester, Vermont, which is only 60 miles away. And it was a short trip up there by train. And later on my automobile, although I remember the first time that we made it in the car that we half built and ourselves and our foundry machine shop, it took three days.

And then they wound up on a hill 4 miles South of the village that broke down for 3rd or 4th time and had to be hauled in by a team of horses. And I can see the local constables saying get a horse, get a horse. I can still hear him see my father and my older brothers coming in.

And it was there that I met Bill Wilson in Manchester, Vermont. I went to school in Albany Wood. I formed a great friendship with the minister's son and he went to the local school up there. It's a high school. And he persuaded me and I in turn sold a Millie goods to my family.

The staff there went there and go to the school up there. And I had Muttville casually before, but I got to know him very well that winter and we became good friends.

And that's where our friendship started. In the course e-mail and Lois Burnham,

who had a summer cottage directly across some ours on the Main Street of town and I knew her from childhood. In fact, she can remember. She's a little older man. She can Remember Me when I was in the baby Sherry.

And so that takes us up to

through the time that I knew Bill Wilson

in my last year in school, which turned out to be my last year because I got drinking and

was expelled. I wasn't exactly spelled, but the principal of the school wrote my father letter that summer that didn't think they could do anything more for me, which is practically the same. And so I just didn't show up that far. And my father put me to work in me his iron foundry,

and my drinking was ran somewhat regulated. I would hold it down a Saturday night. Although I'd get drunk, I was never could tell what I was going to do. I might drink some of the older men under the table and I might get drunk in the Hood Island three or four drinks and raise the devil and

have a hard time, but Zen me managed to keep it on Saturday night.

I know as a young man, I think that one of the bill and I went to school. We we talked the situation over because the condition was in both our families. My father drank too much, my brothers did, and I could only figure that I was just the same as they were. And, and, and makeup, temperamental makeup. And I'd probably go the same way.

But one time in Albany, I walked into the bar room and the hotel tonight and I ordered a glass of beer. And it was the finest glass of beer I ever tasted. And I said, this is for me, just that one beer. Just a little warm feeling of Javier

and I use it because I had no confidence of the young man and the gathering of people. I was all right with one or two of my cronies. When I got on the gathering, I I was lost and I found that alcohol would overcome that and I'd become more or less the life of the party. And I think that's what I wanted to be.

I wanted to be kingpin and everything I did probably,

and yet I wasn't quite good enough and that alcohol brought me up to the point where at least I thought I was.

But it began to get pretty bad as the years went on and Saturday night's drunker progressed into one or two nights during the week. And when the Christmas holidays came around and the debs came out and the dancers, no Adelaide, I didn't get much work done and my father got the drinking pretty heavy

and it went from bad to worse and

I was in lots of hot water and lots of trouble.

That's so that I go on a drunk and couldn't get off it. I'm taking the first drink in the morning and I started the ball rolling right back in the bottle again.

Well, I'm gonna skip a lot of the blow by blow description and get up to 1934.

I was living alone in the house in Manchester.

My father and mother were both dead

and strangers may seem we've never bought a house up there until 1923.

And I saw mother died in 27th filing 29, and I was living that alone and I was drinking to beat the devil. My brothers were all mine and they taken the most of the furniture and they left some stuff for me and I live there and I was trying to paint the house alone. I had a ladder. I didn't have sufficient equipment in there. I was too shaky to get up on that ladder

and I was making a mess of things. Generally. I've been arrested a couple of times, so drunkenness out around the town and three times in Vermont there's a mandatory 6 months sentence

state president.

So these fellows came along, a couple of them, and I had been drinking with

used to drink rips known them for years. And they counted me down at the house one day and they started talking to me about this Oxford group and become interested in

and I left them because they made sense. I know that the I don't think that they were Alcoholics in the sense that I am. They both drank heavily,

but I think that they could. They were more or less power hungry though, both of them. One was a New York stockbroker, and he just wanted to have a world by the horns where he could run it.

But that talked a lot of sense to me. They left her poker me and they said now you've been trying to run your life your own way

down in your luck and you're not getting anywhere and you're drinking yourself to death. Why don't you try turning your life over to garden?

Well, that might sound to me. And I sobered up for a few days and I wrote my brother in a whom that I'd like to get some help on the House and he wrote back and said go ahead, got a local painter and see what kind of a deal you can make with him. Well, this man had sent over a lot of equipment and one of his painters and the two of us got the thing done. We took over two weeks ago. This was a big house and let him work to be done around cutting sessions on the windows and everything.

Well, as soon as that house was painted, I lost all interest again. There was nothing to look forward to, no goal to strive for. At least that house painting was stopping to be done,

but get accomplished. So I went right back in the bottle again.

And I was apprehended by the local law for a time. And I've heard before the judge down in Bennington, the local constable whom I went to school with that one year took me down there and I prayed before him. And it still happened that he was the father of one of the boys that had come to see me, Sebra Graves. And this was Judge Graves, his father,

and he uses fighting, so he'll be back here Monday. He says, I want you back. You're sober

and I'm just mentioning this. It's a very little incident, but in in my life, it was a big one. It really meant something

when they when the boy drove the lad that I went down and drove me back to the house and I went in there all alone. I remembered that I had three nice cold bottles of rail down cellar

and I said, well, if I drink that ale and space it along, it would just sort of keep me up a little bit. I won't hit the bets and I can't possibly get drunk because I can't then anymore in town. Everybody knows about this now. Shut off my supply and I walked outside and I picked up one of those bottles and I said no, wait a minute and justice don't come back there sober with this isn't exactly cricket. Don't take a drink is what he meant really,

and you should get back there sober. He'd never know anything about it, but it isn't exactly honest.

Now I walked upstairs again and I got up there and I saw the devil as this little devil sat in my shoulder. Go on, guy, and take that in. I walked up and down the stairs three or four times and finally I picked them up and put them in a carton and took them over to the man next door. And I said, here's a present for you.

And believe me, that was the weight was lifted off my shoulder. It really was

I felt a release and that time on and I know that night my

and downside my bed and said my prayers like I hadn't said them in years and I said to God, I said I really mean business. I want to quit this drink.

Well, I stayed around the house for a couple of weeks in October and we didn't get cold or inadequate. I didn't want to start the furnace and the hot water thing, and one of these men would come to see me. I didn't know there was a third man that come along into the picture. And he also had become interested in the Oxford Group

and he said, well, why don't you shut up the house and downstairs with me for a few days. He lived in town below, about 15 miles below South of Manchester, and he had a home there and his wife's coming live with me. And we got a lot of speaking to do. And less than two weeks after I joined this thing, I've got interested in it. I was out talking my head off at various places in Vermont. At one weekend. I spoke 5 * 2 churches, a junior college,

and two town meetings. I don't know what I spoke about or remembering, but I guess the people could sense the fact that I had found something.

So that went on for a while and we got people up from New York, started with the cold house parties, the Oxford Group called them. And then I went down to New York and I stayed with one of these lads who come to see me for a week or two weeks. And then he made an arrangement with Calvary Episcopal Church, who ran a mission on 23rd St. and 1st Island on the York City and what they call the Gas House District used to be called that.

And for me to go, I had a brotherhood, a 12 man who ran the place supposedly under Oxford Group climbs and the principles. So I went down there and lived for a year.

I sometimes thought to think that I shouldn't have done that. Maybe, yeah, there. But they wanted me to do it. The only reason I think I got lazy. I didn't want to get out and work too hard. I mean, that is making money. And I had just enough to get by. I had a place to sleep. It didn't cost me anything. But on the other hand, maybe there's men.

I'm in passing. I don't know whether many of you know much about the Oxford Group. I'm not too familiar with it, but Reverend Mr. Glass told me that he'd been a member of it. I'm not too sure of his origins, except it was started by a man and Frank Bookman, who was a member of the Cloth

somewhere in the early 30s. It was 1934 when I came in Believe Richard, and I think that the the great interest in it at that time perhaps was due to the Wall Street crash in 1929. People who had lost everything, their shirt and everything else in that crash realized that they had been paying devotion to false gods.

But they were not. They didn't, we're not on the right track. And they were completely lost. And they were searching for something and they heard of this and came there. And of course, among that number were a great money Alcoholics like myself.

And I was there and I really wanted the thing spirit and tried my best to learn everything they had to teach. And they were pretty thorough in that indoctrination. They had some very fine men that they're very wise men too

and I tried my level best to get something out of that.

And I think the reason that they fail, although I understand that they're still in existence out here on the West Coast under the name of Morrow Re Armourman, they changed the name on. That name in itself was a misnomer because the thing started here in this country and people went over to Oxford University

in England. Then in turn, from there they sent what they called a team to South Africa and some reporters there got ahold of it and referred to them as the Group from Oxford.

And that name stuck and let's call the Oxford Group. And there's no more the Oxygen Group and Man in the Moon.

Well, I tried and it was during this time when I was living or and I'd gotten in the mission that I heard about Bill Wilson. And I heard that he'd been drinking heavily and, and was not wanted and very many officers in Wall Street where he worked

been made such a mess of himself.

So I'm telling that maybe I can help him. And I really put some thought into it because I knew that ability to take it lock, stock and barrel and go for it. And he'd really put his weight behind and get in and, and push or he'd reject it.

And I think the reason he accepted it was because he saw me sober after so many years of drunkenness. And he was in great need at the time. And just so I went that I I was the man of Camelot at the right time when Bill needed with what happened to be the right medicine.

So Bill came and went to the Oxford Group meetings with me

and we did a lot of work together. Bill, when I first saw him at night, didn't sober up right away. Even a few four days later he came to one of our meetings at the mission. We had meetings there every night. We had new men and we gave everyone's beds we could and we had an available beds. And Bill came in with a sailor and he was drunk and even assisted getting up in the restroom and making a speech. And the Superintendent said get him down. And I said let him go see who he's got. Well, he was all twisted up and said drunk is, but he, he had gotten something.

I talked as you walked on the subway with me that night and he said that. He said I don't know what you got when he said whatever it is I wanted. So next thing I heard was he'd gone to Towns hospital. He got himself 3 or 4 bottles of beer and a taxi. And he drank the beer on the way up in the taxi. And I went up to see him and I pressed him there two or three times. And when he got out, I thought a road hurt on him

and got him to come around the meetings. And pretty soon he took really took a hold of the thing.

I mean, turn one out. And as you know, the following summer met Doctor Bob in Akron

on form that great friendship and that great fellowship. It was so necessary because farming of a A along with sickness sister out there. I can't think of a name for a minute.

The Mr. Son as I said to the filing of a first Akron, the claims that

they were the first group. I don't question how because from the aquifer group meetings, there was some continued the meetings on at his house in Brooklyn and then we went to Steinway Hall and

York had a group. It was in perfect succession all the time, but when it became Alcoholics Anonymous and when it from

springing out from the Action Group, I can't pet and I don't think Bill can or anybody. Nobody kept a diary and nobody knew what it was all about. And you go back 27 years, it's pretty hard to remember. All the players want to get things straight. The book came out about 1939 and of course that was a great incentive and so is the the article in the Saturday Evening Post back Alexander. Well, the summer of 1936.

I've been in New York nearly two years.

I decided to go back to Auburn and then I lived in the Mission and I'd moved from the Mission over to Bill Wilson's house and I wasn't doing much more in the line of

endeavor for pay. And I had in the other place. And I understand I better go back to Albany, my hometown, where I'd made such a mess of things and where I had so many amends to make, and I did. I went back in the summers in July or August. I finally got a job at Ford Motor Company up in Green Island, which is 89 miles north of Albany. And I worked for two weeks in the base station, two weeks on the night, and I used to come down. I was working on the night shift. I got through Thursday morning wasn't too bad. And again the sunny I come down in New York

3rd or 4th weekend

and I don't know, I was getting away from the tracks of I was getting away from what I had found and I guess someone thing that I wanted that God hadn't given me and I figured that something was wrong. And then this little boy had been mistreated.

So I got off. I know one of them and worked in the enforce that the last week before you went to New York on that last trip, I said you were just like a piece of steel wire because you were so tense, because I knew something was going to happen. It wasn't an alcoholic himself.

I used to see a girl down there. There was number romance and it was she was just a friend and take her out to dinner. I clicked her out to dinner this one night and she always had a Scotch eyeball. Possibly true and that's all this you weren't innocent anymore. That was enough just sociability. Little pick up. Well this night I ordered one. She said what are you going to do on her? She just kick your legs out from my knee. You got three or four months, nearly a year supplying A2 year sobriety. You're going to kick it off and throw it away. I saw one wing won't hurt me.

Oh no. That night at 12:00, she finally got the taxi, let me off the Lexington Hotel and New York and get rid of me because I was roaring drunk. That's right. And I called Bill up, by the way, and sent a couple of guys over the next morning and he got me out of the hotel, over at his house. But it didn't own it during the start of cycle like that. You got to finish it

when Bill went away for that weekend and there I was in the house and told me there's a bottle of Scotch in there by suffering so bad I needed to drink. So I used to stay drunk for a week there

and I finally went back to Albany and back to the Ford Motor Company. I showed up there Monday morning

and

we've been kind of met me at the clock. I swear. You've been nice. I was down New York and I was taking sick of Co Main poisoning. Yeah,

let's restore him. Let's stick to it. And he's going back to work and had a man back there, a store boss. He didn't like me for sour apples. And I guess the feeling was mutual. I went to work on this machine. I didn't inspector in the springs division and I picked up a leaf with a spring to put it on this testing machine. He said, what are you doing back here? He said. He said we got a crane broken down out there in the yard and we got to unload steel by hand. Now we should get out there and out. I went in my yard and I unloaded this other guy.

And I swear that the invalid day in my hands, I couldn't open them. They were just cramping that flat steel

bail after bail of it. You know one left the muddle of it and

I used to drive back there to a back and forth from army with a man and we shared expenses and we got in the car after they gave me I tried to raise some money for you. He says I know Dan William eat a drink. I never mind raising the money. I gotta lift it to the nurse's room unless the last I was sort of a Ford plan. That was it. A couple days later, a few days later, the man appeared from the Fort plant when a security man and he had a check for one day's pay and and asked for my badge and they.

So from then on I was right back in the same old situation again, drinking, getting sober for a few months, getting drunk again, no incentive to live. I know I was doing wrong. I knew that I knew the answers, but I couldn't apply them.

And this one on a very unsatisfactory situation. I spent

a couple of summaries in Kent, Connecticut and the High Watch Farm, which was the first alcoholic farm, health farm in this country.

I have run that. I was assistant manager

and then I when the man who ran and went on to Beach Hill and New Hampshire and Dublin, NH, I went on there with him. I was there in 46 and 47. I was in Connecticut and 49 hours in Beach Hill in New Hampshire. I helped him run that and I was sober as long as I had responsibility and something to do. But when that ended, I went right back to the bottle

and I kicked around New York and kicked around New York. I spent some time in a place called a Chester Crest,

not surfing.

They call it the New York Home for Intemperate Men. It's now it's not going out of existence. It's too bad because it's quite a place. They work you pretty hard out on the farm and doing work around the place. And they gave you 5 meetings a night.

Yeah, that can 5 minutes a night and twice on Sunday.

Believe me, I got my fellow meetings, but there's right the same thing back again. So that brings us up to the summer of 19153.

And I was there in New York. I'd been, I'd come from this place up there, I'd gotten drunk and gotten kicked out of there. And I was wandering around New York and I used to drop in the intergroup and was then on 28th St. and Lexington Ave. And I must admit it, I was looking for a handout,

trying to get enough to get a few drinks because I got in a place and I can get a few drinks. I get cash, a few more.

And Hazel Rice, bless her, came over to me and she said, you know, said I think I got something for you. He said, Charlie Milton, that's been over in Paris, France, and he ran into one of your friends from the Oxford group who came to see you originally. And then in passing here, I must say that these men deserve as much credit as I do for taking a message to Bill, because they brought the message to me.

And she said she ran, he ran him and he wants to see it. So she got right on the telephone and called Charlie. And Shelly says hold him there till 5:00 and I'll be down.

Well I waited 5:00, Charlie came down, I said where do you drink? And I said over on 3rd, I don't know, right over the 28th St. And he said come on, let's go. And we sat down and walked to the bar and got a couple of drinks and sat down. I got a drink and got a Coke.

Alright, well, how would you like to go to Texas?

Texas. My God, who wants to go to Texas? And so they got no water down there. The cattle are dying all over the place. I don't want to go to Texas. I'm broke. I haven't any sent to my name and I have no clothes. I think it'd be a good idea to get you out of New York, and I think I can arrange to have you taken in down there, maybe some of those guys taking on a ranch

that you're full of help in there.

Or he bought me another drink and then he said, here's $5. Now you think this thing over, he says. I realize it's quite a proposition that they can swallow in one night.

So I went home and I drank up to my limit and saved a dollar. I think in those days that I learned to drink somewhat because of necessity. I had gotten so sick of being out in the cold weather in New York all night long and riding the subways and getting pinched and spending ten days in Rikers Island, which is not pleasant. And it's not pleasant to walk around the streets from the slush all night long.

I used to walk from 14th St. up to 76th St. and back in over 40 2nd St. to 5th Ave. down 5th Ave. 14th and over again and back up and it takes three or four trips like that to make a night until something opens. If it's 4:00 in the morning or if you haven't got a sense, you can get A

and I guess I learned how to hang out about $0.75, maybe 1/4 over to get a strike in the morning

75 times to get a bed. So he repeated the performance. He came down at 5:00 and took me over there.

I'm bombing another couple of drinks and then gave me the $5 again. That's Thursday night and he said

if you want to take this thing, I'll be closer

my telephone number. Well, I had saved enough from the night before and I could go through Friday night and I went through Friday night. All right. On Saturday morning I said this is it. And I walked up to her, see him. I went in his apartment house and he was out in the street and I just haven't catch the sight of him. He came in, well he said you're getting ready to go to Texas. I said I don't know about Texas, but I quit drinking as of now as of last night. And he said, let's go up in that room and we'll have a cup of coffee and talk it over.

So he saw me in Texas Idea and he took me out and got me a clean shirt and

any hot shower and threw away on the clothes and got some fresh stuff. And he called Dallas and got ahold of only Lancaster,

Cersei Whaley. And they made arrangements. They said yes, I can hear Cersei, or I think it was only his booming voice. On the other hand, all right, send the Yankee son of a bitch down here.

I came Sunday, we got flight reservations for Sunday night, and they put me on that plane and I swear that plane never left certain LaGuardia fields when Ryan, Ryan Ryan seems to be. I was in a complete fog and Charlie had to find a whiskey there

and wouldn't give it to me. And I told him a couple years later I'm going back and start the whole thing all over again. And I want that plan to come down here on. Well, they put me up. Searcy Whaley was running the the Texas clinic at that time and they put me up there, but they didn't give me a drink and they did give me some goofballs and those things. This might be nuttier than the seven fruit cakes

and the next morning, or a bit of people in and out of my room. You think I was Exhibit A and why to come in and see this damn Yankee curiosity and who couldn't sober himself up but have been able to solve a bill worse than that.

And there I was going through this thing as anything I know wanted people around me. When I'm going to hangover coming off on, I just want to crawl off in a corner

and I want more people in and out of that row. When you think of some Hollywood celebrity being under here.

So I just borrowed further into the bed clothes and just hid myself and it was hot in there and I'd turn off the air conditioner and so she'd come in and say, what do you turn that thing off for? I said, because it's playing music. And it was like all the symphonies and bands and everything else marching. I went on the street when they tried to find the band and they couldn't find it.

And I used to stand and lookout of a little portal in the front door, like one was out of the vision doors. And there was a department house was a balcony across the way. And I see Chair over here on the right get up and float over and down over here.

I thought that I was never coming back. I mean it sincerely as I stand there. I thought my mind had never come back

and there was an old color lately there, she says. You leave Mr. Evie alone and let him come out of this in his own way. He said he can get well. They they were just about ready to send me to the state hospital.

I was gone. I went out walking one night and I don't know where I walked and I walked at 4:00 in the morning and the police picked me up

and they put me in one cell after another

and I don't know. Later on it developed that they thought I was the leader of a car theft game because I was leaning up against the car. I got them so tired I can walk any further.

Well, as soon as he can show it. And there's another one of my great friends down there heard of it. He turned out and got me out.

Then I began to shake that off and get back in condition and began as they said. I began to be some fun around there and I began to go to the a club. I know I walked by it a doesn't times I'd walk by the dining thing and they scared to go up the steps shaking, unashamed.

Finally I did and I went around and got in the spirit of the thing and I began to get some of this Texas bird, which as you know is very great. And I began to think that maybe I could get the world with a tail again. And I sold some stock in an insurance company, which has turned out to be a fizzle. And I got into an oil deal, which also turned out to be different,

with the consequence that after 13 months I got discouraged. And I said, well, I guess I never was meant to come down at a Texas. I should have died there in New York because I don't think I would have survived another winter.

And I got drunk again.

Well, he I didn't stay drunk very long because the law got ahold of me and arrested me. But I got bailed out by a guy that was in their truck himself. But I know in Dallas and I was bailed out. But I was back in the county that night for nine days after the day, the half a day in the in the city jail. And when I got out of the county at the end of nine days, one day for good behavior, I was promptly picked up and put back in the city jail.

So my drinking was stretched out over about 3 weeks, but there was only about four or five days of active participation with the bottle.

But then and then I had that long period of going right back into that mental depression again and thinking that there was no use.

Scared to go out on the street scared. It's meaning anytime I see anybody wearing a uniform on, I turn right around. Run.

I scared it up, but I got out of that.

I began to pick up and then I think finally I began to realize that things were not going to, that the oil wells were not going to come in.

I had to accept that I had kicked myself around. Whether it's wholly my fault or not didn't make any difference. The result was there. And I kicked myself around so long and it was going to be extremely hard to get a job and that I would have to settle for what I could do. And I went to work for one of the boys that owned a printing plant. I worked for him a year

for the innocence sum of $37 a week, I think.

And I used to, I didn't have a car and I was, and then I was out of work for a while and I worked with Vicki Sheridan out on the road on his visa construction man. I was his flag man on two or three jobs over in Irving around there. And then I worked with Ben Thompson in a Brickyard and not even using reclaiming old brick and selling them for antique brick. And then my prison boss came along and gave me this job, and I've been there ever since

and I've been thankful.

But I can again assume responsibility and I have been helping out another person in Dallas

and that has given me some incentive to stay sober and I've been able to get together six years

and that alone has helped me. I am trying to forget the big shot stuff, although sometimes in the pressure of money is on and it's hard to go along and not complain about the pricks of life. But nevertheless, I, I say to myself, if I had lived in, hadn't been sent to Texas, I would have died there in New York.

And so I'm grateful that Charlie Milken and Siebel Graves and Paris and Charlie who put the thing into motion and followed it through. And it cost him money, and it cost him time and effort to send me down in Texas.

And I'm grateful to the feeble indexes who were patient with me until I snapped out of it and came out of the fog

the gang in New Yorker discusses. Remember there were a few like Hazel Rice stuck by me and figured that I had it in me if I could make an only get me in the right spot.

So I must put aside the things that I think I'd like and things that I want and yet are not good for me probably and be grateful. But I am alive and able to assume responsibilities of a man and hold the job done.

And I am also grateful that I'm able to come out and make these trucks.

And I'm grateful to you people for asking me here, for those who put up the money to bring me here, and for my true companions today who took me on such a very good trip. And I must say, the hospitality of California is right on a par without a touch. And I want to thank you all.