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Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> Hi everybody.

My name is Bud McDonald and I am an alcoholic. Now you notice I gave my last name and I violated the tradition of anonymity in as much as it's my I I'm allowed to do this. I can do it, but don't nobody put it in the paper or take a picture of me or anything like that.

If you do, you're crazy anyway. You know, you'll break the camera. But, but uh I uh didn't know until just a little while ago that I was going to be here talking to you folks.

I figured I'd get to see some meetings down here. My home group is the Hole in the Ground in Huntington Park, California. That's in Los Angeles County.

And it was the oldest group in the world meeting in the same room. It like two months of being 60 years. And uh we uh ran it the way we wanted to.

The uh we had uh four secretaries in 60 years. Uh so I mean like I say, we ran it the way we wanted to. A guy named Tex Adams started the group in 1941.

And uh when he started the group, it was he had joined the mother group in Los Angeles. There were about 15 guys sober in a in aa in Los Angeles. The Saturday Evening Post article by Jack Alexander hadn't had just gotten out and New York was flooded flooded with letters from people wanting to know about this thing that Alexander had reported on.

he was going to expose this click that they had this sinful thing that they were doing with drunks or whatever it was. But old uh they join started that thing in Texas. Adams found out about it.

His sister Cibil was the first woman in alcoholics anonymous in the west coast. A guy named Marty man was in New York and two other women in Akran, Ohio. Uh they didn't think women could be drunks, you know, couldn't be alcoholic.

But uh Cibil wrote a letter to New York after this article in the Saturday Post magazine wanting to know where it was and she would come there if they would cuz she had a real bad drinking problem. And uh they wrote her back and said, "Well, there's a small group in Los Angeles meeting at the Cecil Hotel on Friday nights." And so she gets her husband to take her down there on this Friday night and they met and talked to the people and then the guy that was leaving the meeting says as is the custom the women will have to go meet in the kitchen because we are only alcoholics here and civil was crushed and her husband who was a non-alcoholic never had two short beers in his life was subjected to this AA meeting that these guys had. So anyway, Cibil got a hold of the guy a milkman out in Whittier and called him and says, "Send your AA ambulance after me.

I need well, you know." And uh but he told her to come back the following Friday night. He'd make sure she got into the meeting. And she did.

Met these people. And by this time a lot of stuff was coming to Los Angeles from the general service and or it was just the central office in New York at that time. And uh they had this big box of mail of people writing wanting to know about help.

And there was a whole bunch of them from women that had drinking problems. And uh Frank Randle that was leading the group at that time says uh we have a woman alcoholic now and we have these letters for women with problems and we're going to turn them over to Cibil and we may put Cibil in charge of the drunken women and Cibil had never been in charge of anything and she could see flash. Cibil's in charge.

Cibil's in charge. civil in charge. But anyway, she went out and began to make some calls on people and she one of the guys she called on was her brother Tex Adams who was a labor broker down on Skidro and he used to have the walking man that would go and throw papers on people's front porch, you know, and stuff like that.

And so he gathered up a bunch of his drunks and went down there to find out what this scam was. There had to be some money to be made someplace in this thing. And so old text, he went down there and he found out there was no money to be made in it, but he did find out that it was it helped him with his drinking problem and he paid attention to these guys and he never had a drink from that day till the day he died.

And that was some 11 years after that that he died. But old text, he started the hole in the ground group accidentally. He wanted to say something one night and Randall told him, "Shut up.

you don't know nothing and uh you sit down and text us to hell with you and out he walked and he said I'll start my own group they says you can't do that you'll wreck aa he said watch me and so he went down to Walnut Park which is a little town in southeast LA and they had their first meeting and a guy named Walter Block in his uh living room and there were about six or seven guys there in this meeting in civil It was kind of funny. Oh, Tex was leading the meeting and he says, "All right, we're going to close the meeting now with the Lord's Prayer. S recite the Lord's Prayer with us." And she said, "I didn't know it." You know, and that's kind of ridiculous cuz we hear the Lord's Prayer all the time.

But she didn't know the Lord's Prayer. But anyway, they started that group and they sat in the little place at the end of the J Carline street car switch around there. And uh this is where they located.

And that building caught fire the night before the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor in 1941, December the 7th. And so that night they rented the place where the hole underground finally established itself. And it was at the old ebel club in Huntington Park at the corner of Clarendon and Malibar.

They started these meetings and it began to grow and then some guy would get mad at Tex about something and say you can't do it this way text with you. Here's a book and a pound of coffee. Go start your own meeting and don't answer us with me.

And so more meetings in Southern California were started as hate the hole in the ground as anything could be. And so this is what how it began in in Southern California. The group uh was uh Tex died in November of 19 42 or 52 and he gave the keys to a man named Duke Carson and uh appointed him secretary.

No election, no nothing. Just he appointed him secretary. And uh so Duke was an old ex-convict out of Levensworth Penitentiary.

used to smuggle Chinese into the United States when it was profitable to do so, you know. And I think Tom Murphy that was around there one day and he was applying for a job and he was filling out this application and he put Duke down as a personal reference and it says occupation that Murphy wrote down oriental importer. So this Chinese smuggler, he took over as as the the secretary of the group.

I arrived there March 10th, 1953. And I came in out of jail. Now, uh I'd been in uh reform school.

I remember when my brothers were going to high school, I was going to reform school. And when they were going to college, I was going to prison. And so our lives were a little bit different.

I was I was the town horse's ass, you know. And uh but I read the book Alcoholics Anonymous in jail and I had met a guy that was in aa just briefly. And he looked and sounded just like a drunk that I used to drink with, one of my drinking buddies.

And he he wasn't an alcoholic. Couldn't be, you know, cuz he drank like me and I wasn't an alcoholic. you know, and so anyway, this uh guy, I listened to him and I got out of jail on that Monday, March 10th, 1953.

And I thought, uh, got home. My wife picked me up down to LA County Jail and we went down to her folks place where they were kind enough to allow me to stay after being in all kinds of trouble again. And I got out.

I had uh 10 year to life sentence hanging over my head. I had to make restitution about $9,700 that I'd stolen. And and uh I didn't know where the hell I was going to get that kind of money or anything.

But I thought I better call some of my friends and let them know I'm back on the bricks. And I couldn't think of a living soul that wanted to hear from me. My mother wouldn't allow me in her home.

Wouldn't allow me anywhere around there. I'd stolen from her so many times that there no hope there. My brothers wanted nothing to do with me.

I had flipped and clouded them in every direction and they wanted they'd had all they could handle of this child, you know, and I thought, well, I'll call Alcoholics Anonymous. And I looked it up in the phone book. I flopped a big LA phone book that thick open and it opened right to Alcoholics Anonymous in the Southeast.

And I don't know, maybe that was an omen or something, but I called and uh a guy who later became a very dear friend of mine, old Joe Penner, we called him Alabama, he was uh little old wine oak from Alabama, but he knew more multi-yllable words than anybody I ever heard. He could make he could make asking for a cigarette sound like a major speech or something. But an old Alabama, I told him, I said, "Just got out of jail." and he said, "Have you had a drink yet?" And I thought, "That has got to be the dumbest question I have ever been asked." Yeah, I'm calling aa.

And I said, "No." And he said, "Well, you better get your ass over here now." That you know they need me right now. It's I better hurry and get over. So So I go over there and and the wife and I and we listen to what these people had to say.

Everybody was trying to impress each other with how bad they were. You know, the more evil things you had done, the more status you had in alcoholics an economist and kind of sound like, can you top this? But they said they had a meeting there that night and it was called a beginner's meeting that I should come back to that meeting.

And so I came back that night and a guy named Jim Farwell was leading the meeting. Jim died a couple of years ago with 54 years of sobriety and uh well Jim Farwell was leading the meeting and I didn't know what the scam was. I knew there had to be some hook someplace in there for these people to get this bunch of people around and this was in hard times.

It was Dwight Eisenhower was the president of the United States and it uh was kind of a semi- depression and there was a lot of guys hanging around that place and a lot of tall tales that you heard and everything else. But I went back to that meeting and I heard this Jim Farwell talking and he was a tall thin man, very well educated. You could tell by the way he talked that he was well educated, knew what the hell he was talking about.

And old Farwell told a little of the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, how Bill and Bob met and their connection with each other and he made sense. And I thought that he was being paid to be there to be at their meeting and and then they took up a collection and I knew he was being paid, you know, and that's where the money had to go. But I listen to what he had to say.

I heard guys tell some big wizards that I couldn't believe, you know. But there was one guy, this old Duke Carson, the the Chinese smuggler. He talked about sitting on the edge of the bed at 3, 4, 5:00 in the morning wondering, "What in the hell is the matter with you?

Why do you do it? And you can't stand the guilt. You can't stand the pain." And I was doing all right.

I was drinking beer and Joe bought me a double shot. Well, god damn it. Every time I drink beer and whiskey, I'll go off the deep end.

I'm not even out of the jam I'm in. I'm planning the next one cuz the next time will be different. I won't drink beer and whiskey and I'm planning the next one.

And so I I was attracted by that and I came back to the meetings and listen to what they said and I said and I got the book and reread it and tried to study it and tried to find out what it meant and a lot of it confused me and there was a lot of talk about God in there and I didn't believe in God. I uh was agnostic. I didn't have guts enough to deny the existence of a supreme being, but I couldn't see where there was one.

And uh I didn't have the guts enough to say there wasn't those. So I chose to be an agnostic for a long, long time. But I kept going to the meetings and listen what these people had to say.

Like I say, I had this big restitution bill I had to pay. I had never paid anybody anything at any time. I uh a banker financed a car for me for me one time and my folks he was a friend of theirs and because of their friendship he financed his car and they found it about 8 months later with the rear end out of it marked parts someplace at the curb bell gardens or someplace you know and I would him and I would everybody that I could think of and I can't find a job I'm black ballalled in the trucking industry I was a truck driver drove long line trucks And uh other than doing time in jails and prisons, I was in the Marine Corps in World War II.

And I came out of the Marine Corps in October in 1943. And uh I went had thank or Christmas dinner in San Quentin prison in in uh California. Thank you.

I'd like to tell you some big John Dillinger story about what a badass I was when I come to time to go to prison. But what actually happened? I'm out drunk with some buddies of mine and one of them had a gun and we ran out of money and the market was there and that looked like a good place to borrow some money with that gun, you know.

And so we did. And as we fled the scene, the guy that was driving the car, he was drunk, the drunkest one of the five of us. He run a boulevard stop sign.

And the cops started chasing us for running the boulevard stop sign. And we knew we were caught. They didn't even know the goddamn market had been robbed yet.

And you know, this is how we're getting caught. And so anyway, they we stopped and Jimmy Goff, the guy that had the money and the gun, took out running. They nailed him and nailed the rest of us.

And of course, I didn't know any better. I pled guilty and uh got a public defender. Public defenders are the best friends that the the county attorney or the city attorney has cuz they can turn a guy around real quick like.

But anyway, I they sent me to prison and I did three and a half years and got out. Never straightened out completely. Still drinking.

First thing I did was get a jug when I got out and uh went right back to the same way of living when I was living before in trouble and everything. I was married to my second wife when I got busted on a big restitution thing, but my first wife divorced me while I was in prison. And things were pretty bleak and and down like and it wasn't any heroic big shot deal at all.

It was just a stupid bunch of guns that we didn't know what the hell we were doing. You know, I uh went to jail a second time for robbery. I held up the Southern California Gas Company.

Now, they have money there because people used in those days, they didn't send checks or have credit cards or anything like that. they you'd uh pay in cash and so they always had a lot of cash and that's where this 9,700 bucks came from and I got caught on that deal and uh but I I hired an attorney and he got me out of this particular jam and uh got me probation and restitution and all this kind of stuff. And I when I got out of jail I was looking for work and I had all kinds of things happened.

Things would begin to look good and then they turn bad and then all at once they look good again and I wouldn't know exactly what the hell was happening. But I wasn't drinking. I had read the book Alcoholics Anonymous and gone to that first meeting and I continued to go to the hole in the ground and listen to what these people had to say and uh things I stayed sober in spite of myself.

if I really, you know, because most of my thinking was I uh got a drink and make things all right, you know, but I listened to what these guys said and uh I was 2 years and 5 days on the program and staying sober and got a steady job, not knowing I was going to be a steady job when I uh your age, not knowing uh uh Uh, I was going to get a job. It just so happened one Saturday night, my wife and I were going to the movies and we were going to the cheapy movie, the 15 or 20 cent movie, I forget what it was, but we were uh standing in line and the guy that I used to work for was standing right behind us in line and uh I didn't know I when when I quit him, I challenged him to come outside and fight and all this kind of stuff, you know, really left a good impression, you know, you could. But anyway, we were talking and he says, "I understand you don't drink anymore." And I had a reputation of being one of the wildest drunks in the trucking business.

And and I said, "No, I haven't had a drink for a year." He said, "Well, good for you guys like you shouldn't drink." And I looked up yours, you know, talking, you know. But I I continued to stay sober and coincidentally, one year later, I'm standing in that same line in that same theater and this guy and his wife are standing behind me. I had just it was a Friday night and I had just finished a job that day.

I'm going to be out looking for another job. I' been doing carpenter work at the time. Couldn't get a job driving truck cuz I couldn't give any kind of a reference.

And this guy standing in line again. He says, "You're still sober?" And I says, "Yeah." He says, "What are you doing?" I said, "Well, I'm out of a job. I just finished a job today, but I'm going to be looking Monday." He said, "Why don't you come by me?" And he said, "I got four trucks now." He had one when I worked for him before and he says, "Uh, come on by my place and talk to me." And I did and he put me to work.

coming out on a truck that night and I retired from that company 30 years later as general manager of the outfit and couldn't tell you how it happened other than I didn't drink one day at a time and things turned around and slowly but surely I began to make a little progress and things were the goose hang you know it was things were were pretty good and I'm going to a lot of meetings and I'm finding out what makes me stay sober and it was working with younger people and other people when I say younger I don't in age, but they were older than me and alcoholic synonymous. And uh old Duke was the secretary of the hole in the ground at that time, the Chinese smuggler. And uh he would have me haul him around.

So, hey bud, what are you doing tomorrow afternoon? I don't know. I think you can come take me over to court.

I got to go see the judge about something. And he knew all the judges are on there. He was a real con man of the worst kind, you know, and so he could get anybody to take him over there, but he said, "But I want you to do it." And I would go and I'd take him and I got to meeting judges.

I used to be scared of judges, you know. I get up in front of them and they me find me guilty and find me or put me in jail or whatever. And I wasn't wasn't really didn't like judges too well.

But u I would do whatever he told me. And by doing this, I met these judges and I began to gain a little of their confidence. I time went by and I'm staying sober.

I'm working hard. I'm gone from driving truck. I'm in sales and then I'm in the top management of the company.

And and these guys are uh treating me real well in the in the business. the uh judges are treating us well given lots of drunks probation. We started the court cards that uh they're universal now.

Everybody every court has them all over the country and all over the world I do believe. But Judge Emerson and I started that. But I uh had things going just so so good for me.

I bought a house, got my wife satisfied. We got another baby in the house and things are are looking pretty good. All because of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I tried to take the credit for it and I couldn't. It was you people, you know, the people in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I began to understand what the 12 steps meant and what they meant to me.

I looked at that first step, admitted I was powerless over alcohol, that my life would have become unmanageable. Well, all I had to think of is any one of the many times that I'd stopped to have a drink or two on my way home and wind up drunk against my own better judgment and not know why. I'd wind up drunk against not intended to.

All I was going to do is stay sober. And so that kind of showed me that I didn't know how to handle alcohol. There was something I was missing because other people kept their jobs and they kept things going their own way and uh I couldn't do that.

I uh my life was unmanageable. I couldn't pay bills. I couldn't keep a job.

Uh got divorced my first wife. My brothers wouldn't speak to me. You know, all this kind of stuff was happening.

And so I knew that I didn't know the first thing about managing my life. And that second step says, "Came to believe that a power greater than herself could restore us to sanity." Well, the insanity they talk about is that crazy idea when you're sitting on the edge of the bed wondering why, why, why do you do it? You're drinking beer and Joe boy took the double shot and you went off the deep end again.

The next time I'm drinking beer whiskey, I'm not out of the jam I'm in and I'm planning the next one. You know, that's nutty. Bill.

Bill in the book talks about the the jwalker. This guy is a compulsive jaywalker. He gets out in the middle of the street and somebody knocks him on his ass.

One day he gets all healed up and my god, he's back out there jaywalking again. Then he gets knocked down again. Gets healed up and he's back out jaywalking again.

That guy is crazy. He's not a jaywalker. He's insane.

And that's what they're talking about in it. That came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. The only power greater than me that I knew of was a prison guard or a cop or somebody, you know, some kind of a financial hold over me, like a boss or somebody like that.

That was a power greater than myself. But when I put the plug in the jug and just kept it in there, things began to get better. I didn't have to sit on the edge of the bed wondering why, why, why, and I I might begin to straighten my life out a little bit.

And we were still trying to pay off all this restitution that I owed and everything else. So, I changed the third step a little bit. I made a decision to turn my life, my will, and my paycheck over to the care of my wife.

By God, the bills got paid, you know, and slowly but surely these things began to happen. I looked at that fourth step in the book, made me a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. I asked, "Duke, what the hell does that mean?" And he said, "Well, you know, anything immorally wrong." He said, "You ever done anything that you're ashamed of that you don't want to tell anybody else about that you think it's that dumb?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Write it down.

Mhm. >> So I wrote it down, you know. Then I found some other things that I didn't like about me and things that I'd done and I wrote them down.

Some of them were financial amends, some were apologies, some were that I couldn't make amends for, but other than to just be right about what I'm doing now. These were the good things. And so I knew what that fourth step meant.

And Duke and I sit in the shade of a pepper tree over in Walnut Park, California in my little 1937 Chevy. And I had this notebook pad and he's batting it on his knee there. He had cataracts at the time.

Maybe that's why I picked him to be my sponsor because he couldn't read, you know. But but he took but we talked about what I'd written in there. And I I evaluated the things that I could do something about then and try to make amends for the things that I'd done.

That's what the fifth step says. admitted to God ourselves and another human being the exact nature of these wrongs. And I talked to Duke about it and he steered me the right way because I began to make some amends.

And I began to forgive myself as well as other people forgiving me for the things that I'd done. My older brother and I didn't speak for 8 years. He hated my guts and I hated his.

He was so narrow-minded. He I sold a credit card of his and went to Florida and back home one time. He he couldn't see the fun in that.

I stole his golf clubs and sold those, but he couldn't prove it. But he had given up on me. But I eventually ran into him, this was about 4 years after I was sober, and told him, "Don, I got your name on a list of people I've harmed, and I I owe you some amends." And he said, "Bud, you don't owe me nothing.

Mom tells me you're sober and alcoholics anonymous, and I'm just tickled to death that you're like you are. you keep doing what you're doing. And I thought he hated me and he loved me all the time, you know.

And that fourth and fifth steps made that possible. My kid brother and I made up for a lot of things. I made some little petty things that bothered me.

I would have got 27 bucks in the service station for charging gasoline there. The guy had been a friend of mine and I'm I owe him this money and and I can't drive through the intersection of that service station without feeling guilty. So I went to him and paid him the 27 bucks and told him why and made him happier than hell to get the 27 bucks but to renew my friendship and I could buy gas in his station again.

He wouldn't give me credit but I could give, you know, but I' I could buy the gas there, you know. And so that was part of making those amends. And the humbly asked God to help me remove these character defects, you know, was another thing I had to uh I became entirely ready to do it.

And I was ready to do anything I'm supposed to be ready for, you know, but doing them is another thing. And to humbly ask God for help to do something I didn't seem to be able to do for myself was a tough one for me. But I found I got in a situation where I didn't know what I had a guy that had been at the hole in the ground one Sunday night and talked and I gave him my business.

I told him that if I could help him in any way, give me a call. If he decided he wanted to do something about it, he didn't think AA was for him. He's a Navy officer who had been kicked out of the Navy because of his drinking in actions and things like that.

And so I gave my card to call me back to my office one day. I'm at this time I'm managing this. My guy's down in California and uh and we didn't have cell phones at that time.

But I uh stopped to have lunch and the secretary called me. She said, "You better get back over. He's talking to someone suicide and he's calling you for help.

So I said to the he was he was over about 5 miles from where I was and it was no use or even stuff. So I told him hang on till I get there. I went over the kitchen and got there.

Then he hits me. This guy's got a gun. He's going to blow his brains out.

and he'd been drunk and drinking about I don't know how long, a long time and I don't know what I'm walking into and he lived in a garage apartment upstairs over a garage and I parked the car and I walked up there and I didn't turn around. I got halfway up the stairs because I didn't know what I was going to was open and I came two people pistols at the coffee table in front of me. We started talking.

I don't know what I said. I have no idea what I said to him or anything. And I said to him, I said, "I'm going to take what to do." And we talked and he decided he wouldn't get anything if he was willing to military personnel.

This guy was had been kicked out of the Navy, but he'd been an officer. And I called that I knew I told him I said I got up was in the Navy and he wants some help and he don't qualify. I got him down and for the first time in many times that I'd been in that place.

I didn't even have to stop at the guard shack on the way in. They give me the high ball and I'm through there. I went back and got him fixed and by God he got well.

He went well and I didn't have a damn thing to do with it other than be the messenger, you know, the carried carried the drunk and carried the message. He left those two Peretta pistols with me when I left him at that Navy place. As I told you, I'm an ex-convict and that's all I needed was the cops to catch me with those two pistols.

I can go back to the penitentiary real good. that I took them over to a captain on the Southgate Police Department where this guy lived and gave them to him and told him who they belong to and the whole bit. And the guy is is still relaxing.

He's still alive and he's got 30 some years of sobriety. And uh it's just one of the things that happens that you don't plan for. You have no idea what to do or how to handle it and it handles itself and we don't know what to do about it.

that seventh and eighth step or sixth and seventh step become entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character and humbly ask him to remove my shortcomings and humbly asked him to help me. God, I don't know what to do. You're going to have to take over.

You know, the eight staff made list of all persons we had harmed and became willing willing to make amends to them all and made direct amends to such people wherever possible except one to do so would injure them or others. We used to years ago have a thing called the 12step play and Si was the one that got this thing started and uh she had a guy that looked like a real executive businessman and Leo Kelly and he was Bill Wilson and she'd be Ruth Hawk who was Bill Wilson's secretary who typed up the transcript of the book Alcoholics Anonymous and they would pick out uh a guy for each step and they would tell about that step and then they would cast the part of Jimmy Burwell and Jim Burwell was the guy who is responsible for appendix 2 in the book God as we understand him and the chapter to the agnostic. He was the atheist that came in that build like elected rule Bill is crazy in New York and but Jimmy Burwell I got to know him.

We were both on the conference committee one year and became a lifelong friend. I got to be a Paul at funeral. He was just one hell of a guy.

And so that eighth ninth step we would get there and Bwell would be button in and tell him you're crazy and this man the other thing. And when we got to the eighth step this guy that got up and told how he made this list of all people he'd be he became willing to make amends to them all. And then George, this little fiery Mexican, jumped up and he, "You crazy son of a You told me don't that I got to make amends to these people and everything and apologize." And he said, "I told my wife I was playing around and yell down the hall and she went down and told her husband and he beat the hell out of me and the mother of me and all and he would carry on about this goddamn thing in this play." But it tells us, you know, that except when to do so would injure them or others.

I can't do this to, you know, just get myself loose from this. It uh I can't involve the other people. I can't tell somebody something that's going to hurt them or break up their marriage or anything like that because that's what it means when it says, you know, except when to do so injured them or others.

We have to be careful about those things. that 10th step. I don't really like the 10th step.

Well, I don't I back off from that. There's one word in there I don't like. It says we continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, and here's the word I don't like, promptly admit it.

I don't like to promptly admit I'm wrong about anything at any time. But I do know that no matter what, if I'm wrong, the easier or the sooner I can get rid of it, the easier it is to get rid of. And it, you know, the greatest argument stopper in the world is two words.

I'm sorry. And if we do it soon enough, you can really get away with it. You know, and so I know what that 10th step means.

And that that I I have learned from that and it's kept me out of trouble so many times that uh that this uh admit I'm wrong. The 11th step was a real churchy sounding step. Last time I went to church some stole my hat.

I didn't want to be around those kind of people. in our world. But we sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him.

Praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. Thought through prayer. Well, a prayer is nothing but a good unselfish thought, a good wish for the guy next to you.

That's what a prayer is. And meditation is to direct my thinking along a positive line. get alone and quiet with me and just meditate on what it is that's bugging me direction meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him.

I didn't understand him too good but I did know there was something and I don't know there's God Buddha Shindu Allah or what it is but there's something there that seems to protect me from getting in trouble. I just back off and you have to go to God cuz I don't know what to do. Everything I do is wrong.

And a lot of times doing nothing is the best thing to do. And then there are other times. But there are other times that I must take some action.

And when I meditate on that 11th step, I know what it's about. The 12th step, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. And this is where I got my spiritual thinking that there is something there.

God, there's a Buddha or Shindu or Allah, whatever that power greater than I am is that seems to direct me in the way I want to go. And I know what it is. I try to carry this message to alcoholics and practices principles in all my affairs.

This is what I'm doing tonight, telling you a little bit about my story, a little bit about what has happened to me in my life and how these 12 steps have affected me. I uh I think about my life as of March 10th, 1953 only more money they could ever hope to repay. I got a marriage hanging by a thread by why my wife kept hung up with me.

I will never know. If anyone ever treated me one/10enth as badly as I did her, I would have killed him. I never physically abused her, but boys psychologically I did.

And I was that kind of an And uh slowly but surely things began to change and I began to change. I can remember sometimes and I thought about going back to robbing people and stuff like that cuz I knew how to do that and how to get the money and stuff like that. And I learned more in the penitentiary about that than I did any place else.

And but I u I remember one time I was at a meeting on a Sunday night and I'm having a hell of a time getting a job and keeping one and keeping working and I'd been doing carpenter work and stuff and friend of mine that I spent time with happened to be there and he says uh how's the work looking bud? And I said got to go out looking tomorrow. It's Monday and I'm going to be out knocking on doors.

I forgot to tell you. So, I got a friend in Downey. He's a bu building contractor and he's got a job for you.

You go tell him that I told you to come by there and he'll have a job for you. I I go to Johnny. He's got a job.

And I went home feeling good that night. Next morning, I'm out there and Johnny at this guy's address bright and early and I wake the guy up. You know, contractors usually up early anyway, but he ain't up.

And I says, uh, Johnny told me to come and see you had a job for me. Oh, he says, "You know that crazy Johnny how he is. Good God almighty." And I'm thinking, "Oh, Christ.

What am I going to do? I ain't got no job here." You know, and we talked for a little bit. He went back in his house.

And I sit out in front and thinking, "What the hell am I going to do? I don't have enough money in my pocket to buy gas to get home hardly. I don't have any cigarettes.

My family is hungry. We got I don't know where we got it, but we had a whole bunch of spaghetti. We've been been eating spaghetti and oil margarine and cheese and that's what we've been eating for about 3 days.

I got the two little babies and my wife and uh don't know what the hell I'm going to do, but I'm getting embarrassed sitting in front of his place. I fired this old Chevy man up and headed east on or west on Third Street in Downey. And I got about two blocks from Old River School Road.

And when I got there, it's a dead end. And I got to either turn right or left. If I turn right, I'm going home.

But then I'm locked in. Got no money to get gas. Got no nothing to do.

And if I turn left, I'm going down to Holly and I'm going to tie up with my old crime partners and they'll know how to get some money. and rubbing and drinking, drugging and drinking and all this kind of stuff. And about two blocks before I got there, I saw an old man digging in his front yard.

This about 7:00 in the morning. And I don't know why. To this day, I couldn't tell you why.

But I stopped my car, backed up, said, "Oh, man. I'll take your job from you for a dollar an hour." And he handed me that shovel like it was on fire. He couldn't get and he was putting in the sprinkler system.

And so I dug the lawn and set the thing aside and dug the ditch and everything. Got ready for the pipe and the pipe wasn't there yet. And I worked 7 hours and I'm telling him what a big shot I am.

I don't really need this job and everything. I'm doing all this for you and blah blah blah blah blah blah. But now I'm finished and I need to collect this seven bucks that I've earned that day for 7 hours work and I got to tell the guy what a liar I've been and I didn't like that.

But I told him I I don't have enough money to buy gas to get back here. So he reluctantly paid me the $7 that I had earned that day and promised him I'd be back in the morning. We get to putting this pipe together and everything.

And uh he really didn't expect me to come back cuz I had worked real hard that day. And uh I got home and my wife went and got some hamburger and some tomato paste and we had spaghetti with some goodies in it and some French bread. I had some cigarettes and and uh put a couple of gallons of gas in the car.

In those days you could buy gas for about two bits a gallon or less. And uh I was in good shape going back to work. Next day my wife fixed me a meatball sandwich.

And I got back here and we finished that job up in 11 hours and we had that grass all replanted and we're admiring our work and the sprinklers are working and it's just been absolutely wonderful. And the guy handed me a $20 bill and I said, "I don't have any changes. That's all right, bud.

You keep it. You've earned it." And from that day to this, I've never worried about money. I have never worried about money.

God put that old man in that lawn in front of me. I had nothing to do with it. And so I know that whatever is going to happen is going to happen and I'm going to be able to deal with it.

And I don't have to drink over it. And the drinking was just the symptom of my problem. My problem was not thinking the fear that I had all the time.

Uh no good about myself. But they just wonderful. you to find this program and new people and the people in it and these people have been the best part for me.

My wife, she passed away uh 1996 on September April 4th and uh she was a beautiful, wonderful girl. My best friend. She was the best I ever had in my life and he had my head up and down here and uh they're good friends of mine.

I flip around the door and eat frequent flyer miles. My son is senior vice president of Contin, which is the publishing company that publishes the New Yorker magazine, uh uh Golf Digest, all kinds of stuff. They pay him a lot of money for doing that.

He's well off. He's had a beautiful foot two ground hills in Brooklyn. That's where I stopped before coming here on his frequent flyer miles.

See, I don't have a lot of money, but I can fly all over the place on his frequent fly miles. a friend of mine friend of mine was raised by my wife and she was the difference between her mother and her and her mom was the one to be a lady and that lady is an attorney and she's one of the finest that I know I ever got in trouble I'd sure as hell want her to come and she practices in Reno Nevada and has a beautiful home there and I have my own room and bath at her home in Reno about it. And she thinks that Alcoholics Anonymous is about that much higher than the Catholic Church and the Democratic Party combined.

And my youngest daughter, she's a character. She's a she tried to be a musician for a lot of years. Had a woman and she plays the saxophone, clarinet, and keyboard and uh percussion instruments and everything else.

And could never make it. she always had to have a second job. And so she finally decided to go back to school and her older brother and sister put her through college and and got a master's in marketing research and and does that kind of stuff in sociology and does real real well.

And she's a good friend of mine. She's my the one that keeps me laughing all the time. She's a real sweetheart.

And I have those people left that this woman left me with. I have the wonderful people in alcoholics and non 1920 or 1920 but I I went to the international convention at the that's the first one I ever went to my wife my wife and I was the 4th of July and then by the I went to the anniversary we could have a little some place on our way We came a big shindig for us and on the 25th, the 30th, the 35th, the 40th, the 45th, but the 45th got she died for me. She died in April 4th and our wedding anniversary would have been uh be.

But um I had these people. I had the love of my two brothers who had nothing to do with me. My mother died.

My mom might house an apartment for her and she got because he did this and my mother and I and the love we had for each other was restored. I had to give a forgiven of a lot of my people that I knew before. I'll be on the last Friday of July.

I'll be at a shooting dig at the high school that I got kicked out of. I hold a record of being the only guy that ever got kicked out of that high school that they never let come back. Now, they got all pissed off cuz I and Willie Campbell and Bob Evans locked the teacher of the gardening class in the tool shed and set fire to it.

You know, he got out of there without getting hurt. But they kicked us out of school and wouldn't let me go back there go back to school, you know. >> That hurt my feelings.

On the last Friday in July, the Gathering of Eagles, which is the Bell High School, son of a that ever was around there. And they they still they claim they're legends, but they just a bunch of lies they tell about me, but I was able to stay on a job for 30 years and retire. It's because of you people and what I learned from you and how to live.

And I didn't have to drink over any of the situations that came up. I've had drivers die on the road. I've had all kinds of things.

People that are close to me that I've lost. And uh all the things that have happened, my mother and uh all the rest of these people, I've been protected and and taken care of. And it's because of this program, as I say, and you people.

So if I continue doing what I'm doing, I may make it to 50 years. You know, it's uh it's really easy to do. All you do is don't drink and don't die.

But I think of all the people that I've learned from and had the blessings of knowing uh guys that have gone high and and alcoholics anonymous and other guys that have have uh done great things in their lives and it's because of them and because of you because you're here listening to me tonight. Now, I don't know whether I'll see any of you again, but at the international convention in Minneapolis last year, back in 1975, Judge Emerson and I started a place called Cider House. We rented a big building from the state on the grounds of Metropolitan State Hospital.

It's a insane asylum. We got this big building. We started a a group called Cider House and they it's a livein drying out place but there's a program as well as just being a sober living house and the guys that come in there they got 60 days to get themselves straightened out.

We left it to 90 days for some. They get themselves straightened out and uh they uh are able to find themselves it seems like in this place. We opened Slider House in March 1975 and uh it works because this is just and uh they had the countdown and everybody stood and those were the years they gone 5 years 10 years and everything and we went down into the 40s in the top 40s and I'm still standing with about maybe 15 other people in 56,000 people in that place and I feel pretty good and I'm still standing.

Then I had to sit down and as I left the place I'm walking across the plaza and I hear a voice. This tear me up sometimes cuz I hear a guy yelling, "Hey bud. Hey bud." And I turn around the guy's going house.

Cider house. And I stopped and he come up and I his face was vaguely familiar. He was a guy who had gone through a cider house 19 years before and I didn't know what had happened to him.

He got clean and sober and left. We didn't know what happened. Got no way of checking up on him or anything.

We didn't know what he stayed till we got drunk. What he did and here he is in Minneapolis and telling me about what he's doing there. He is the delegate from the state of Montana to the international convention.

went through Cider House. That's payday. That's what pays things off.

Makes the whole thing worthwhile. So, we had a guy named that uh he used to say that I can't even remember what he used to say. Thank you.

>> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.