Clarence S from Casselberry, FL -Wilson Club – Alexandria, VA 6/20/1982

(0:00 – 0:17)
Clarence, come on up, man. Hello, everyone. Can you hear back there all right? Don’t
want you to miss anything.
(0:19 – 0:41)
I am Clarence Snyder, and I am an alcoholic, a recovered alcoholic. I live in Florida, and
it’s certainly nice to see such a turnout for the opening of your wonderful new club here.
You really have a beautiful facility, and I know, I’m sure, that you’re going to make a
success out of it here.
(0:42 – 0:55)
But I imagine when you start a new club, somebody’s going to get mad and start another
one, too. This is a kind. Did it happen already? That’s what we call unity.
(0:58 – 1:10)
You know, it always kills me when I hear these people talking about unity. Unity to me is
a riot. AA starts in riots, and it grows in riots.
(1:10 – 1:20)
Nobody decides just to start a group because they need a group. Somebody gets mad at
somebody, and they choose up sides, and away they go. It’s been ever thus.
(1:22 – 1:43)
Well, you know, I’m rather a freak in AA. As Jim said, I’m supposed to be the oldest man
in AA. If there’s anybody older, I don’t know it because the thing is all the men who
preceded me were 10, 15, or 20 years older than I was, and time has taken its toll, and
they’re all gone.
(1:44 – 1:51)
I happen to be the next birthday. If I live this long, I’ll be 80 years old. You can see how
old the rest of these birds would be.
(1:51 – 2:03)
So they just didn’t make it. So I was fortunate I was only 35 years old when I arrived
here. So they thought I was too young for this thing at the time.
(2:04 – 2:12)
Why, I am a freak. I came to a fellowship that did not yet exist. There was no AA when I
arrived here.
(2:13 – 2:45)
When I met my sponsor, Dr. Bob, he put me in Akron City Hospital where I sobered up.
And when I was in that hospital, the alcoholics who were in the Oxford Movement at that
time, they were a minority, they came to visit me. And when I left the hospital that night,
he took me to the meeting of the Oxford Group at T. Henry and Clarissa Williams’ home
in Akron, Ohio.
(2:47 – 3:18)
And this was known as the Oxford Movement at that time, and it stayed the Oxford
Movement for 15 months until up in May of 1939 when we split away from the Oxford
Group, the Cleveland contingent, and we started our own group. It was the first group of
alcoholics anonymous in the world, in Cleveland, at 39. So a lot of this stuff you hear
about 1935, that is not exactly correct.
(3:18 – 3:54)
There were some people around at that time, a few of them, but they were strictly
Oxford Group. And I want to tell you something just to give you a little light on this
history of AA before I get into anything else because there’s so much confusion about it.
The Oxford Group was a religious fellowship, and it was a Protestant fellowship, and a
Catholic did not belong or could not because his church did not permit him to.
(3:55 – 4:14)
So there were no Catholics around when I arrived, and Doc told me to go back to
Cleveland when I left the hospital and I should spend the rest of my life fixing drunks as
an avocation. We didn’t call them alcoholics. When they called me an alcoholic, I was
being elevated.
(4:16 – 4:40)
We called them rummies in those days, and I still do. And so I went back to Cleveland,
and all my enthusiasm and my esteem and my ignorance, I started tackling rummies on
the street. And back in the 30s, there were plenty of them around because there was a
deep depression on, and there were a lot of them wandering around, didn’t even have
any homes.
(4:40 – 4:51)
So I’d walk up to some drunk on the street and tell him he should quit drinking. He
should be like me. Well, you can imagine the reception I got from some of these people.
(4:51 – 5:14)
I don’t mind telling you some of it was physical. But after seven long months and having
talked to hundreds and hundreds of assorted alcoholics, dipsomaniacs, rummies, drunks,
or what have you, I finally nailed my first baby. They call them pigeons around here.
(5:14 – 5:18)
We didn’t call them pigeons. We called them baby. I’d rather call them rabbits than
pigeons.
(5:18 – 5:33)
I think it’s more apropos. But anyway, I nailed my first fellow, and he happened to be
Polish. And after that, people came in real fast.
(5:34 – 5:41)
It took me seven months to get my first one. See, this was a selling job. You had to sell
this idea to people.
(5:42 – 5:55)
So after that, there was an invasion of Irish. The Irish invaded us. And out of the first
dozen people we had in this group, seven of them were Catholics.
(5:56 – 6:09)
I took them down to Akron to the Oxford group meetings, and they couldn’t accept that.
The church would not permit it. So I went down to see my sponsor about it and tell him
what we were up against.
(6:09 – 6:18)
And he said, well, we’re not keeping them out of the Oxford group. I said, no, you’re not
keeping them out, but their church keeps them out. It’s all the same, they can’t come.
(6:19 – 6:26)
He says, well, that’s their tough luck. I said, no, Doc, this don’t have to be their tough
luck. We now have a book.
(6:26 – 6:49)
We wrote this book in the fall of 1938 and it came out in February of 1939. And this is
May of 1939 when I’m talking to my sponsor and telling him how we should run his
business. And I said, no, we have this 12-step program now, and with the four absolutes
of honesty, unselfishness, purity, and love, anyone can live by that.
(6:50 – 6:57)
And he says, well, you can’t do that. I said, can’t do what? He said, you can’t break this
thing up. I said, I’m not trying to break anything up.
(6:57 – 7:04)
I’m trying to open it up so people can get in. He says, well, you can’t do that. I said, well,
we’re going to do something.
(7:05 – 7:15)
He says, like what? I said, you’ll see. So I had another Irishman in the hospital in Akron.
He was a lawyer, patent lawyer, Al Goldrick.
(7:15 – 7:27)
You’ll see his story in one of the later editions of the book. I think his story is called, He
Thought He Could Drink Like a Gentleman or something like that. But you’ll see my name
in that story so you’ll recognize it.
(7:28 – 7:36)
He was down there all smoked up with Peraldehyde in the hospital. I didn’t talk to him. I
went out to see his wife about using their home for a meeting place.
(7:36 – 7:47)
We had no money for meeting halls or anything, and we had been accustomed to
meeting in homes. So she was delighted with the idea. So here’s what happened.
(7:47 – 8:00)
Here’s how AA started. I went down to Akron the next Wednesday night and made this
statement. I said, this is the last time the Cleveland contingent will be down here as a
group.
(8:01 – 8:12)
We are starting our own group in Cleveland, Ohio, and I made the mistake of giving them
the address. I shouldn’t have done this. 2345 Stillman Road, Cleveland Heights.
(8:13 – 8:22)
I said this further, and this is not going to be known as an Oxford group. It’s going to be
known as Alcoholics Anonymous. We’re taking the name from the book.
(8:22 – 8:43)
And further, I said, this is what caused the real riot. I said, only alcoholics and their
families are welcome, nobody else. Well, being a minority in there, the rummies, you can
imagine what happened to all the rest of those people who had been so good to us and
everything, and they were shutting them out like that, keeping them out of our society.
(8:44 – 8:51)
Well, to say the least, the roof came off of T. Henry’s house. Clarence, you can’t do this. I
said, it’s done.
(8:51 – 8:54)
You must come down and talk about it. I said, there’s nothing to talk about. It’s done.
(8:55 – 9:23)
Well, if I thought that was a riot, you should see next Thursday night up at 2345 Stillman
Road, Cleveland Heights. That whole group came up and descended upon us and tried to
break our meeting up, and one guy was going to whip me, and as I said before, this is all
done in pure Christian love. But we stood our ground, and that’s how AA started.
(9:24 – 9:40)
That was a series of riots that got us started, and we have been rioting ever since. We
rioted to the extent that we have several thousand groups around the world now. You
know, it’s a wonderful thing, and I look back and look at some of these things that
happened.
(9:41 – 10:03)
I remember so distinctly one night looking at that group up at 2345 Stillman Road and
saying to myself, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we ever had as many as 35 members here?
Yeah. It wasn’t two years’ time we had 35 groups in Cleveland. I figured that out.
(10:04 – 10:16)
And now it’s gone all over the world. There isn’t any place you can go that you don’t find
AA in various stages of deterioration or otherwise, but it’s there. So it has.
(10:16 – 10:49)
It’s become an international situation, and you and I are part of this. You know, since I’ve
been in this fellowship, I’ve spent an awful lot of time working with people, organizing
groups, getting publicity, appearing before the TV and the radio, what have you. I’m not
an anonymous creature, and anybody tries to tell me to keep quiet, they’re talking to the
wrong guy.
(10:50 – 10:58)
Because if we’d have kept quiet like they talk about today, you wouldn’t have an AA.
Somebody had to go out and do something. So my anonymity is my own business.
(10:58 – 11:08)
It’s nobody else’s. So if I want to tell people I belong to AA, that’s my privilege, same as
yours. And I tell them.
(11:09 – 11:23)
And I’ve been around a good deal doing this, and I don’t see where it’s ever hurt anyone.
And I will continue to do that till I can no longer get around. The reason is this.
(11:24 – 11:36)
Over the years, I’ve discovered something. I’ve studied this thing of alcoholism. I have a
thick book about this thick at home about the history of alcoholism.
(11:37 – 12:08)
It was written back in the early 1800s, and it traces alcoholism back for several hundred
years and all the efforts that were put forth in trying to modify the alcoholic’s drinking
pattern. And every one of them failed. And in going further, I found that alcoholism is
probably the oldest malady that afflicts the human race.
(12:09 – 12:18)
It really is. You can read about alcoholism in ancient history. You can read about it in
mythology, and you can read about it in the Bible.
(12:19 – 12:36)
There’s some very good rummy stories in the Bible. Since this is Sunday, I think I’ll tell
you a couple of them. You don’t have to go any further than the first chapter, the first
book of the Bible, I should say, and you meet your first rummy.
(12:37 – 12:43)
You meet our friend Noah. He was one of us. And here’s the evidence.
(12:45 – 13:16)
You know, the world got itself into a condition about the way it is today, everything going
downhill and everybody accepting the philosophy if it feels good, do it, you know, and
the moral responsibility of people that insist about going to nothing. So God got fed up
with all this situation and decided the only way he could ever correct it was to wipe the
whole thing out and start all over again. But he needed some seed, so he had a plan.
(13:18 – 13:32)
So he went to his friend Noah, and he says, I want that you should do something for me.
He says, Yes, Father, anything, God. He says, I want that you should build a big boat, a
big ark.
(13:32 – 13:53)
And he gave him the dimensions of this. He said, I want you and your family to do this,
and after it is completed, I want you to put two of every living creature in there and your
family so we’ll have some seed because I’m going to flood this world and start all over
again. Okay, old Noah is right with him.
(13:54 – 14:14)
So Noah and his family get out there sawing logs and cutting down trees and making a
lot of racket and building this boat. And along comes the neighbors, and they say, What
are you doing, Noah? I’m building a boat. A boat? Out in the middle of the desert? Old
Noah is playing with a short deck.
(14:16 – 14:36)
So they criticize the old boy, and they go on their way, and they shake their head for
poor old Noah. But they kept this up for year after year, building this ark, and they finally
got it completed. And they, sure enough, they loaded it up as God had ordained with all
these animals and so forth, and they shut the door.
(14:37 – 14:50)
And finally there’s rains came, and it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and that old boat
came up and started to float. People were pounding on that door. They wanted to get in.
(14:50 – 15:01)
The ones that had laughed at old Noah, but they didn’t get in. No one else got in. That
boat floated around for a long time, and finally it came to rest on Mount Ararat.
(15:01 – 15:10)
The water receded. The land came up. And what was the first thing our friend Noah did?
He ran out there.
(15:10 – 15:14)
He planted a grape arbor. He raised some grapes. He made some wine and got drunk.
(15:17 – 15:28)
Well, that’s the first rummy in history, recorded history. I like some of those stories in a
good book about rummies. They’re so good.
(15:28 – 15:37)
I like the one about the prodigal son. This is a good rummy story. Here’s these two boys.
(15:37 – 15:40)
They’re both Jews. They keep this in mind. They’re Jewish.
(15:42 – 15:48)
And their father has a big spread. He’s a big farm. He’s got cattle.
(15:48 – 15:51)
He’s got sheep. He’s got goats. He’s got no hogs.
(15:51 – 16:09)
He’s got everything else. And these two boys are working for their dad out on this big
farm. And, of course, according to the ways things were in the society then, when the
dad dies, the boys come in to share the loot, you know.
(16:10 – 16:21)
Well, this one kid, the older boy, he always worked. Oh, boy, he was at it all the time,
working, doing more than he should be doing. He was the Al-Anon kid.
(16:24 – 16:39)
But the other kid, the young one, guess who. He was dissatisfied with all this stuff, and
he didn’t want to wait until some indefinite time when his father died. He wanted his loot
right now.
(16:40 – 16:54)
Did you ever hear that before? Just like yesterday. He wants it now so he can enjoy it
while he’s young. He doesn’t want to wait until some indefinite time to get it, so he
keeps bugging his father and bugging his father for his share of the loot.
(16:55 – 17:04)
So finally his father can’t take it anymore. He says, okay, take your share and be gone
with it. So he gives this kid his share, and away he goes.
(17:04 – 17:26)
Now what does it say in the good book? It says he went into a far country, and he
squandered his substance in riotous living. Did you ever hear of anything like that? He
blew the whole bundle. He’s gone.
He’s tapped out. And that isn’t the worst of it. He’s in a far country.
(17:27 – 17:38)
He’s a stranger, and a famine sets in. He can’t get a job. He’s about to starve, and he has
to exist, and he’s having a rough time.
(17:38 – 17:47)
So what does this kid do? He finally got a job where he could eat. He got a job on a hog
farm. Remember, this kid’s a Jew.
(17:48 – 18:00)
He’s nursing a bunch of hogs, and does he eat what the hogs eat? Don’t say that in the
Bible. It says he ate of the husks of the hogs. He’s eaten what the hogs wouldn’t eat, and
what they left over.
(18:00 – 18:10)
I’d say this kid pretty well hit his bottom, wouldn’t you? He did it. So finally, he says
something very important. It says there he came to himself.
(18:11 – 18:16)
He came to himself. This is what you and I had to do. We came to ourselves.
(18:16 – 18:25)
He says, I starve. My father has much. He says, his servants eat well, and I starve.
(18:25 – 18:29)
Then he said this. This is important. We had to say the same thing.
(18:30 – 19:00)
He says, I will arise and go to my father and tell him I’m unworthy, and I will be as a
servant to him. We had to do the same thing. So that kid got off his duff, and he started
that long journey, that long trek back home, beaten, whipped, sick, just washed out, and
he had to go face the music, and he started for home.
(19:00 – 19:14)
Did his father chew him out? Didn’t say that. He says, it says in there, the father saw him
coming afar off, and he ran to this boy, and he fell on his neck and kissed him. He said,
my son who is dead is alive.
(19:15 – 19:22)
Let’s put a ring on his finger, shoes on his feet, a cloak on his back. Let us have a party.
Let’s kill the fat cat.
(19:22 – 19:31)
Let us have a party. My son who is dead is alive. So they take this kid up to the house,
and they’re having a big blast.
(19:31 – 19:35)
They’re having a party. Boy, music going and dancing. Everybody’s eating.
(19:35 – 19:55)
Meanwhile, that Al-Anon kid’s still out there working. He’s out there going at it, and he
hears all this racket up at the house, and so a servant comes by. He says, hey, what’s all
that ruckus up at the house? He says, haven’t you heard? He says, heard what? He says,
your brother came home.
(19:55 – 20:04)
He says, oy, that dirty no-good. So he drops his tools, and then he went to the house and
confronted his father. Now, this is a very human thing.
(20:05 – 20:13)
He goes up to his dad. He says, father, he says, I have been a good son to you. I’ve
always done more than you ever required of me.
(20:13 – 20:25)
He says, I am this no-good brother of mine, took his inheritance out and blew it on wine,
women, and song. He comes back here. You have a party for him.
(20:25 – 20:39)
He says, dad, papa, you never had a party for me. Well, his father had to get him
straightened out. That’s a great story of the forgiveness, great story of the second
chance, you know? That’s a rummy story.
(20:39 – 20:46)
That kid, boy, he was one of us. I don’t have to explain that to you. Well, since it’s
Sunday, I’ll tell you one more.
(20:48 – 20:54)
I like that story of the good Samaritan. Here is a rummy story. Believe me.
(20:55 – 21:01)
Here’s this bird lying there on the side of the road. He’s stripped naked. Everything’s
gone.
(21:01 – 21:15)
And he’s all beat up, and he’s about half dead, see? And he’s lying there in the road,
alongside the road. And along comes a priest, and he sees him lying there, and he looks
at him. He’s a man of the world.
(21:15 – 21:22)
He knows what happened to this bird. He got drunk, and he got rolled. I don’t know if any
of you ever got rolled, but this kid did.
(21:23 – 21:31)
So he’s lying there, and this priest sees him, and he says, ugh, that dirty, no-good bum.
He got himself in that condition. Let him get himself out of it.
(21:31 – 21:44)
You hear that yet today, you know? So he crossed on the other side and left the fellow in
his misery. And along came a Levite, and he’s a man of the world, and he sees that bird
lying there. Same thing.
(21:44 – 21:50)
He says, good enough for the drunken bum. He got himself in that shape. Let him get
himself out of it.
(21:50 – 21:58)
So he crosses across the street and leaves him there. And along came this Samaritan
fellow. This guy’s a traveling salesman.
(21:58 – 22:02)
I’ll prove that to you. He’s out there. This is the territory he’s making.
(22:03 – 22:16)
So he’s coming along there, and he sees this bird lying there, and he’s a rummy, too, this
Samaritan. The Samaritans were not the chosen people around those days, but anyway.
Did he pass him by? No.
(22:16 – 22:22)
He got down off of his form of conveyance. It certainly wasn’t a Chevrolet. He’s making
probably a mule.
(22:23 – 22:32)
And what does it say he did with this fellow? He ministered to him. He gave him a drink.
He gave him that medicine he needed.
(22:32 – 22:42)
And did he leave him lying there? No siree. He picked him up, and he put him on his form
of conveyance and took him to the Holiday Inn. Well, he took him to an inn, it says,
anyway.
(22:43 – 22:59)
And here’s how I know they’re all rummies. This salesman takes this fellow to this
Holiday Inn, and he says to the innkeeper, he says, Here, take care of this fellow, and
here is some money. You see, he gave the money to the innkeeper, not to the rummy.
(23:01 – 23:17)
He knows. He says, You take care of this bird, and if there be any more due, I will repay
you on my next visit, which means he’s a salesman making that territory. So you see,
there’s a first 12-step call on record.
(23:19 – 23:25)
So that’s the first 12-step call we have in print. So that’s the way. So much for the
Sunday School lesson.
(23:28 – 24:05)
You know, when I came here, as I say, there was no AA at the time, and it was quite an
adventure in the beginning of all this. And there was an awful lot of experiences and a lot
of wonderful people I met, and a lot of things happened, and a lot of fears and phobias
came up. But somehow or other, things worked out, and we had to go out and make
contacts with social workers, with church people, with doctors, with hospitals, with dryout places, all kinds of things that we needed.
(24:05 – 24:14)
And it was just something to do. Really, we had to. And people there never, any of the
men around there, never squawked.
(24:14 – 24:28)
You give them a bunch of names to go out and chase, they’d chase them down. The big
thing that happened in Cleveland was we got a, I found this newspaper man out in a bug
house. His wife had had him probated.
(24:29 – 24:36)
L. Rick Davis was his name. And he’d been drunk. He’d been kicked off of most all the
newspapers in northern Ohio.
(24:37 – 24:49)
And she just had enough of him, and she had him probated and put away in this loony
bin. And he was out there. And some fella called me about him, not an alcoholic either,
some fella that knew him.
(24:50 – 25:05)
He told me about L. Rick, and he says, there’s a good man if we ever get him
straightened out. So he and I went out to see L. Rick, and I took the AA book out and
talked to him about getting straightened out. And boy, he was all for it.
(25:05 – 25:18)
He was going to do anything to get out of that loony bin. So I left the book for him to
read, and he wanted to get straightened out. So we had to go out and talk to his wife
about letting him out, which she did.
(25:18 – 25:30)
This was quite a sales job, believe me, worse than talking to him. So she finally agreed to
let him out. And when he came out, he wrote a series of articles that appeared in the
Cleveland Plain Dealer.
(25:31 – 25:49)
And man alive, we got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of inquiries from those
articles. Following those articles, another newspaper man wrote three days on a history
of alcoholism. Then some preacher that tried to fix me years before very unsuccessfully.
(25:50 – 25:57)
When I was sober a year, I went back to see this fellow. I thought I owed him something.
And, you know, it shocked me.
(25:57 – 26:11)
I was sober a year, and I went back and he didn’t even know me. That was quite a
change, you know? He’d never seen me clean, never seen me sober, never seen me with
civilian clothes on. I always had mission clothes on.
(26:12 – 26:31)
So he didn’t know me. He got so excited, he wanted me to bring some of the fellows up
to his house that evening or the next evening or something, which I did. I took three of
the boys up there, and he had some of the outstanding citizens in Cleveland there.
(26:31 – 26:36)
He had Dr. Bishop at the Lakeside Hospital Unit. He had the mayor up there. He had two
judges.
(26:37 – 26:46)
He even had the county coroner up there. And they were listening to us, to these stories
till 2.30 in the morning. They’d never heard anything about it.
(26:46 – 26:53)
There never had been anything the drunk had ever recovered. And here’s some guys
recovering. This was entirely new in history.
(26:55 – 27:14)
Well, that preacher got so excited, he preached a sermon on Sunday. And his sermon,
every Sunday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, used to, on Monday, they’d publish one of the
sermons from someone on Sunday, and they’d put his sermon in the paper. And he
preached on Mr. X and Alcoholics Anonymous.
(27:14 – 27:21)
He took the story of my life. And that was the first pamphlet I ever had. He had it put in
pamphlet form.
(27:21 – 27:47)
I just mention these things to show you how things start to work together and get
cohesion here. Well, when those articles come in from the Plain Dealer, those hundreds
and hundreds of them, they all came to me, and I would hand so many to you on Monday
morning, and you would give them to these fellas on Monday, and I’d tell them to report
to me on Wednesday what they did with them, just like a sales manager. And they’d go
out and do it.
(27:47 – 28:00)
And they were anxious to do it. So all of those people got covered. The ones that were
from out of state, I used to sit down at night and write correspondence courses in AA to
people out here in Milwaukee and what have you, you know.
(28:01 – 28:13)
This was a wonderful experience. When you look back on it, it’s unbelievable that these
things could happen, but they happened. I think this whole program has been, I know it
has been, God-directed from the start.
(28:14 – 28:25)
And, you know, God uses the most impossible creatures to do his work. He picks people
that nobody else would pick. And it’s true.
(28:25 – 28:38)
I often said, if I were to pick somebody to do the job I did in AA, in the beginning, I’d be
the last guy I’d pick because I had no qualifications for it. But I did it. It wasn’t that I’m so
smart.
(28:39 – 28:49)
I was just stupid. But it worked. And some of those people in the beginning that did
things you wouldn’t believe when you hear their stories.
(28:50 – 29:12)
But I found out that alcoholism is probably the oldest malady that afflicts the human
race. I found that out in my years of being around here. And I found this out also, that up
to the time that we started AA here, the alcoholic only had two options.
(29:13 – 29:32)
And this has been down through the centuries. Remember, there have been millions and
millions and millions of alcoholics who’ve stumbled across the face of this earth and have
existed and died in alcoholism and in misery, and in many instances carried some of
their friends and family down with them. This has been going on for centuries, really.
(29:33 – 29:52)
And up to this time, the alcoholic only had two options. He could go crazy or die or both.
About 40 years ago, when this program came into existence, the alcoholic got a third
option.
(29:53 – 29:59)
He could still go crazy. He could still die, but now he can get well. And this was never in
history before.
(30:00 – 30:37)
This gives us something to think about and something to realize and something to be so
thankful for. And it gives us a responsibility. Now, why do people, after all these
centuries of this misery, why do they walk into this group here, this meeting, or this
bunch, or this society of ours, and bingo, after all this tragedy they’re having in their life,
they turn around and swear cliency? Why? Why? Well, why didn’t this happen before? I
think, I really believe that one day God looked down on these rummies, and he said, I’ve
got to do something with those birds.
(30:39 – 30:53)
So this is the way this thing started. Well, anyway, we have a plan, and we have a
program. I hear all kinds of black about my program and his program or her program.
(30:54 – 30:59)
I don’t know what they’re talking about. To me, there’s only one program. That’s our
program.
(31:00 – 31:14)
Don’t tell me about your program or his program or her program. This is our program,
and there’s only one program. And by God’s grace, we have this program, and due to
this program, people now get well.
(31:15 – 31:31)
Anybody can get well that comes in here if he’s qualified. Now, what’s the qualification? I
don’t believe a lot of this garbage that I hear about the qualification is just to stop
drinking. Stop drinking what? Milk? That’s all hogwash.
(31:32 – 31:43)
Qualification for membership in alcoholics anonymous is this. You must be an alcoholic
who wants to quit booze and really means it. Really means it.
(31:43 – 31:58)
A lot of people come, they’re kidding themselves and kidding everybody else. They just
come in here for a ride or to get out of some immediate problem they’re into, but I have
a qualification myself. I don’t work with new people anymore.
(31:58 – 32:19)
I don’t have the chance or the time because I get new people, I turn them over to other
people that need that exercise. I don’t need that anymore. I work with people who’ve
been around AA, around it, drunk or sober, for months or years, some of them many
years, and they hear, some of them are awful miserable.
(32:20 – 32:43)
They hear about this freak down in Castleberry, Florida that has some way of fixing
drunks in two days, taking them through the steps and they never drink anymore and
everything changes. So some of them get curious, and some of them mean business, a
lot of them do, and they call me. I don’t get anybody from my own home valley, which a
prophet is without honor in his own home, you know.
(32:44 – 32:56)
You go 50 miles away, I’m an authority at home, I’m a monk. But this is always the way it
is. So they call from all over and they want to come down and get fixed.
(32:56 – 33:05)
We call it fixing. And they come and here’s my qualification. The person comes, man or
woman, girl or boy, whatever.
(33:06 – 33:13)
First of all, they have to be an alcoholic. They have to know it, I have to know it, and they
have to admit it. That’s first.
(33:13 – 33:27)
Bingo. Number one. The second thing I want to know from them after I’ve assured that
they’re alcoholic and they know it and they admit it and I know it, I ask you, what do you
want to do about it? Oh, I want to quit.
(33:28 – 33:42)
Oh, you do, huh? A lot of people quit and a lot of people quit for them. They don’t like
that too much, too well. So the third question I ask them, this is the important one, and I
have to get the right answer to this question or I don’t have anything for this bird.
(33:43 – 33:57)
I say, what are you willing to do to quit drinking forever? I don’t talk about 24 hours or 24
years or whatever. It’s forever. Brother, that’s a long time, especially for some dodo
that’s never made a week in his life.
(33:59 – 34:08)
Forever. You get some funny answers sometimes to that one. But I keep coming back till
I get the answer that I have to have.
(34:08 – 34:20)
And when he or she tells me they’re willing to do anything, then I’ve got somebody to
work with. If they don’t tell me that, I’ve got nothing to work with. See, they came to see
me to get what I have.
(34:20 – 34:25)
I don’t want what they have. They can have what they have. But they came to get what I
have.
(34:26 – 34:36)
And if they’re going to get what I have, they’ll take it on my terms. And my terms are
very distinct. I don’t brook any compromise.
(34:37 – 34:53)
I can’t afford that. They didn’t compromise with me when I started out and I’ve got over
44 years of sobriety to back it up. And I’ve got a lot of people running around this world
with many, many, many, many years of sobriety to back it up.
(34:53 – 35:03)
So I don’t compromise. This is an absolute program. So when they tell me that they’re
willing to go to any lengths… Now, I didn’t make that up.
(35:04 – 35:15)
That’s in the fifth chapter. You hear it read at most meetings. It says, If you want what
we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it, you are now ready to take certain
steps.
(35:16 – 35:19)
See? That’s where I get that. It’s out of the program. I didn’t invent that.
(35:20 – 35:37)
It’s that simple. So if they’re not willing to do that, they can go home. If they are, they
tell me they are, then I have the privilege of presenting this program in the way I know
it, in the way I believe it, and the way that it’ll be successful to them.
(35:38 – 35:50)
The first time they start to back up and I start telling them something they’re going to
have to do, nobody likes to be told anything they like to have to do. They don’t like this
kind of business. That isn’t my problem.
(35:50 – 35:55)
That’s their problem. They come here to get well. And I’ve got medicine for them.
(35:56 – 36:13)
And they’re going to take this medicine or don’t bother me. Because I only have so much
time, so much effort, so much interest, I’m just not going to bother monkeying with
people trying to play games. But when a person comes to me, I assume he’s not playing
games.
(36:14 – 36:25)
So he’s going to take it the way I give it to him. So my 12-step program is what I present
to him. The 12-step program is very simple.
(36:27 – 36:37)
But people can screw it up, an alcoholic can screw up a two-car funeral. I mean, what
they do to this program, it’s pinnacle. It’s so simple.
(36:38 – 36:54)
There are 200 well-chosen words in this program and any kid out of the second grade
can pronounce any word in it and understand it. There’s no five-syllable words in this
program. But there’s four phases to our program.
(36:55 – 37:09)
The first phase of our program is the first step. And that’s the phase of admission. I
admit it, I was powerless over alcohol, that my life had become unmanageable.
(37:10 – 37:26)
You know the problem with that first step? People never hear the second part of that.
They hear the first part and they get yammering about drinking and alcohol for the rest
of their life. For year after year they’re yapping about alcohol and how much they drink.
(37:27 – 37:34)
I didn’t come here to learn how to drink, I came here to learn how to quit. Everybody
knows how to drink. Nobody has to teach anybody here how to drink.
(37:35 – 37:44)
But they don’t hear that second part. That second part says that our lives had become
unmanageable. That is the most important part of that step.
(37:45 – 37:56)
The alcoholism is just the key that brings you, opens the door so you can get in here. But
getting our life manageable, that’s what’s important. And the whole rest of that program
has to do with that.
(37:57 – 38:08)
You don’t find the word alcohol anymore in those 200 steps. The first step it says alcohol,
you don’t hear it, but you never mention after that in this program. Not a bit about
alcohol or alcohol.
(38:09 – 38:19)
There was an awful lot said there about getting our life straightened out. So the first
phase is admission that we’re out of order. We want to get orderly.
(38:20 – 38:31)
So the second to the seventh step is submission. We admission, now submission. We
resubmit our will and our lives to the care of God.
(38:32 – 38:43)
Starts right off in that second step it says, I came to believe that a power greater than
myself could restore me to sanity. I came to believe it. It doesn’t say I believed that
when I arrived here.
(38:44 – 38:54)
Well how did I come to believe it? Those fellas told me something happened to them and
it would happen to me if I take it. I wanted to get well. So I was willing to do anything
they told me.
(38:54 – 39:10)
So that’s how I came to believe the influence and the example of the men who preceded
me. There were fourteen men who preceded me and they told me their stories. They
were all older than I was as I mentioned before.
(39:10 – 39:15)
Boy they impressed me. I wanted what they had. I was willing to do anything they told
me.
(39:15 – 39:25)
I had no choice. I was without everything. So I came to believe because they told me
they believed and it would help me if I did.
(39:25 – 39:38)
So okay, I believe. You know what Doc did to me in the hospital? Let me show you, let
me tell you how this thing was presented to me in the hospital. Every day those men
came in to see me.
(39:40 – 39:53)
They told me their stories and then after they concluded their story they all told me one
thing. They said they had the answer to my drinking problem and on that note they left.
Goodbye.
(39:54 – 39:59)
They didn’t tell me what the answer was. They went. So I’m lying in that bed wondering
what’s going to happen to me.
(39:59 – 40:11)
I was looking for an operation see. My sponsor was a doctor and he was a rectal surgeon.
I might say I was pretty much ready for anything.
(40:15 – 40:28)
So the last day I’m in the hospital after all these men had talked to me, Doc came in as
usual. Every afternoon he’d come in sit on the foot of my bed and look at me and I was
scared to death of this guy. Really I was.
(40:29 – 40:48)
Doc as any of you knew him was a tall lanky six foot four guy with real thin and he had
fingers on him this long. So I think we’re an asset to him. And he used to poke me in the
chest with his finger.
(40:48 – 40:59)
I hate a guy that pokes me when he’s talking to me. It’s almost as bad as those guys that
put their nose up against you when they’re talking. Well anyway he looks at me and he
says well young fella he called me young fella.
(41:00 – 41:10)
He always called me young fella until he was mad at me. When he’d call me Clarence,
Clarence I know I’m in trouble. I’m a young fella I’m in good stead with him.
(41:10 – 41:25)
He said young fella what do you think of all this by now? I said well Doc I think this is
wonderful. All these guys coming in they don’t know me from a load of hay and they tell
me the stories of their life and what happened to them through booze. But I’m puzzled
about one thing.
(41:26 – 41:40)
He says and what’s that? I says well they all tell me they have the answer to my drinking
problem and then they go. They don’t tell me. What are you going to do to me? What
comes now? He says see he threw me a real curve now.
(41:40 – 41:51)
He says well young fella we don’t know about you. You’re pretty young and we don’t
know if you’ve had enough yet. Here I’m coming off off the bum I weigh 130 pounds I
have no more home than a rabbit.
(41:52 – 42:02)
I have I’ve got one brown shoe and one black one. I think someone else had a pair like
that somewhere. But there I am.
(42:02 – 42:13)
I’m in I’m really the Bo Brummel. And he says I don’t know if you’re ready yet. He said
we haven’t had any luck with these young fellas.
(42:13 – 42:19)
They’re all screwballs. Well I’m not one to argue that with them. So I guess I try to
convince them I was ready.
(42:19 – 42:34)
He says all right young fella I’ll give you the answer to this. So he points that big finger at
me and this is something I never expected to hear. He says young fella do you believe in
God? Holy smokes that’s the last thing I expected out of a doctor.
(42:35 – 42:43)
I’m looking for that operation. So I have to I have to get around this. You know I can’t go
along with this deal.
(42:44 – 42:58)
So the best I can come up with out of this blubber is well what does that have to do with
it? I thought that was pretty bright. He says young fella that has everything to do with it.
Do you or do you not believe in God? Now I’m getting worried.
(42:58 – 43:13)
This guy’s not going to fix me unless I go along with him. But I’m not I’m not wanting to
go along with this deal. So he emphasizes do you or do you not believe in God? Well the
next best thing I can come up with is well I guess I do.
(43:14 – 43:21)
He says there’s no guessing about it if you do or you don’t. Now I am in trouble. See? So
I’m going to have to go ahead now.
(43:22 – 43:30)
So he asks me again I says finally I say yes I do. He says that’s fine young fella now we
can get someplace. He says get down out of that bed.
(43:30 – 43:40)
I said for what? He said you’re going to pray. I said who’s going to pray? He said you’re
going to pray. I said I don’t know anything about praying.
(43:40 – 44:03)
He says I don’t suppose you do but you get down there just the same and I’ll pray and
you can repeat after me that’ll do for this time. So he hauls me down out of that nice
warm nest on that cold concrete floor in his shorty nightgown and boy I am getting
scared again. He put his hand on my head and he prayed.
(44:04 – 44:25)
And I repeated after him. I don’t remember what it was but I have a pretty good idea
what he said but I do remember he shaking hands with me after that conclusion of that
prayer and he says you’re going to be alright young fella and he took me to a meeting
that night of the Oxford movement. That’s how I was introduced to this spiritual
foundation of AA.
(44:26 – 44:33)
Now why people squawk about all this stuff is beyond me. They come here to get well
and then they want to do it on their terms. It’s ridiculous.
(44:34 – 44:40)
It’s silly. So that’s how I started. Well now I do this.
(44:40 – 44:46)
I found out about this program. It has these different phases. The second through
seventh step.
(44:47 – 45:00)
The second step says that we came to believe that God could restore me to sanity. The
third step says we made a decision. We made a decision to turn my will and my life over
to the care of God.
(45:01 – 45:11)
That’s quite a decision. Believe me for somebody’s been running away from him for so
long. The fourth step here’s you know most people failed in AA in two places.
(45:12 – 45:22)
They well first of all they screw up step number one. They have to do that. Then they get
step three and step four all mixed up.
(45:23 – 45:33)
Step three it says I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God.
So they start to figure out who God is. And some of them they say he’s an electric light
bulb.
(45:34 – 45:41)
Somebody said he’s a chair. Somebody said he’s a group. Somebody said he’s something
else.
(45:42 – 45:57)
I’d hate like the devil to trust my everlasting soul to a light bulb or a chair or a table or
an AA group either. Believe me. So we have to define who this God is, you know.
(45:57 – 46:10)
And it’s the sooner we do this with a new person the better off everyone is. Because he
has to make a decision to turn his will and his life over to the care of his character. I used
to be I suppose like a lot of people.
(46:11 – 46:24)
To me God was some old man sitting up in the way up here with a long light white gown
and a long white beard writing dirty things in a book about me. Well that was my
conception. I had to get that changed.
(46:25 – 46:34)
To turn my will and life over to a creature like that you’re not about to do that unless you
hurt real badly. So alcoholics will never do any of this till they hurt. You know we don’t do
this by reasoning.
(46:34 – 46:40)
An alcoholic never thinks. The people that bring those think signs, you ought to take
those think signs down. You got them in here? No.
(46:40 – 46:43)
No you don’t. You’re lucky. You don’t have any think signs.
(46:43 – 46:51)
Don’t ever put that up. It’s an insult to an alcoholic. We don’t think we emote.
(46:53 – 47:01)
No alcoholic ever does anything until he hurts. If you hurt badly enough take the
program. If you don’t forget it you’ll make up your own program.
(47:02 – 47:11)
That’s exactly the way it goes. So we made a decision to turn our will and life over to this
care of God. That is quite a decision.
(47:12 – 47:26)
Then the next step, that’s one they fail on because they try to put everything in there
but God himself. The light bulb and the chair and all this garbage. Well, the fourth step,
this one they really get screwed up on.
(47:26 – 47:44)
Especially girls. These people come to our house, men and women, and it never fails
when some gal comes to take them through these steps in two days. She brings a sheet
of papers this thick with all the garbage written on there that she ever did in her life.
(47:44 – 48:04)
I don’t know how the poor souls remember all this stuff. I operated so much in blackouts
I never knew where I was yesterday let alone what happened nine months or nine years
ago like they have. But they have it all written down there, all the dirty goofy stuff and
all the bed bugs crawling and all the stuff they’ve ever done.
(48:05 – 48:12)
And I know what’s in there. I don’t have to read it. So the poor dears hand me this for
their fourth step and I turn around and drop it in the waste basket.
(48:13 – 48:26)
They faint. Well, that isn’t what this fourth step calls for. It isn’t the details of your
transgressions.
(48:26 – 48:46)
It’s what caused you to cause you, what put you together and made you this way. The
weakness is in our character and there’s twenty questions that I ask people on that
fourth step. I write them down on a piece of paper and I ask individually each question
and they tell me whether they have it or not.
(48:47 – 48:54)
So I go on with the bus. It has to do with self-pity, self-justification and hate and
resentments and all that. There’s twenty of them.
(48:56 – 49:09)
So usually people wind up with ten or twelve that they tell me they have. Well, that’s
what I call the fourth step. They have to find out what’s causing them to be the boobs
that they are.
(49:10 – 49:28)
So these are the things that cause us to be anything but what we should be on the
straight and narrow. So we have to get rid of those different things, these resentments,
these hates and these gossiping and all this sort of thing. So it says there we made a
searching and fearless moral inventory.
(49:28 – 49:40)
That’s the moral inventory. It’s not the details because the next step tells you it isn’t. It
says we admit it to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of
our wrongs, not the wrongs themselves.
(49:41 – 49:46)
I’m not interested in the wrongs. I know what they’ve all done. They’ve all done the same
thing as much as they can get away with.
(49:49 – 50:00)
So to admit it to God, to ourselves and another human being. It tells me in a good book
where two or three are gathered together in my name, there will I be also. So there’s the
three of us there.
(50:01 – 50:05)
All right. Then it says the next step. This is good.
(50:06 – 50:12)
We were entirely ready. Entirely ready for what? To remove these? No. We can’t remove
these.
(50:12 – 50:21)
To have God remove all these defects of character. All of them. Can you imagine that?
There’s some defects of character I’d like to keep.
(50:21 – 50:28)
They’re fun things. But the program don’t give me that option. It’s all or nothing at all.
(50:28 – 50:32)
I’m a rummy. I never do anything halfway. You’re a rummy.
(50:32 – 50:38)
You don’t do anything halfway. It’s whole hog or nothing. And we have to do the same
thing when we recover.
(50:39 – 50:47)
But people just don’t seem to want to do that. This is all or nothing at all this program.
We’re entirely ready to have God remove them.
(50:47 – 50:52)
I can’t remove them. I don’t know who he’s going to remove them. If I could have
removed them, I would have done it long ago.
(50:52 – 50:55)
So would you. But you can’t. It tells you that in the first step.
(50:55 – 50:59)
You admit that you’re paralyzed. Your life’s unmanageable. You can’t do it.
(50:59 – 51:07)
So you have to hire a manager. You hire the manager in step three. You have to depend
on this manager to do your work for you that you can’t do yourself.
(51:07 – 51:23)
How about that? Okay. That’s simple, isn’t it? So the seven steps, that’s why I humbly
asked him, humbly asked him to remove these shortcomings. When you go through the
steps with me, you’re on your knees in step three and you’re on your knees in step
seven.
(51:24 – 51:30)
You do it. And believe me, that’s step seven. When they’re down there, some of the
biggest people crack up.
(51:31 – 51:33)
They go all apart. They come apart. Some of them do, really.
(51:34 – 51:39)
So I kind of expect it sometimes. They just dissolve. Something happens to them.
(51:41 – 51:53)
After seven steps, I tell every person I ever take through, you are the cleanest person in
the world right now. The cleanest person because he’s asked forgiveness for everything
he’s ever done. And he’s forgiven.
(51:54 – 52:02)
The Lord will forgive you everything you ask him and you believe he’ll answer you.
They’re gone. The seventh step, all that stuff’s gone.
(52:03 – 52:11)
And I say, you’re the cleanest person in the world. I said, you haven’t had a chance to do
anything else yet. I said, but you’ll make mistakes.
(52:12 – 52:20)
That’s why we put rubbers on lead pencils. People will make mistakes. But we have a
provision in this program to take care of mistakes.
(52:21 – 52:47)
You see? We have to go and do our restitution on the eighth and ninth. After seven steps
I send them back to their room or wherever they are and tell them to write down the
names of every person in the world they owe any apologies to, living or dead. And
anybody they owe money to, anybody they’ve gifted, anybody they stole from,
whatever, they owe any restitution, write it down on a paper and bring it to me in the
morning.
(52:47 – 52:58)
And they bring me this list of stuff in the morning and some of them are really rough,
believe me. And I tell them what to do in every instance. And they take care of it.
(52:58 – 53:22)
So the restitution is taken care of. It’s very bad, it could be very bad for a new person to
go out and try to make restitution by himself because he can get, he can create carnage
out there, trying to get himself his own skirts clean at the expense of someone else. So it
needs someone there to help him.
(53:22 – 53:37)
So I tell him what to do. Obviously you can’t make amends to every person because a lot
of people are not here, they’re not in your orbit, they’re dead or they’re gone, you don’t
know where they are. What do we do in that case? We ask our manager to take care of
it.
(53:37 – 53:44)
Isn’t that simple? What do you got a manager for? Let him handle it. What you can’t
handle you let him handle. So you ask him, he takes care of that.
(53:44 – 53:50)
So forget it. So after nine steps we’re new people. We’re new people.
(53:51 – 54:03)
Now, after taking nine steps, hear that, get that in your head. After taking these nine
steps, not reading them, not listening to them, doing them, forget them. You don’t have
to mess with them anymore.
(54:04 – 54:13)
You’re done. See how the simple program I have, I don’t need to worry about twelve
steps. I live on three steps now because those other nine steps have cleaned me up.
(54:14 – 54:21)
I’m a new person. Now I live on the last three. Step ten is going to take care of me.
(54:22 – 54:31)
It says in there it’s another inventory step. It has nothing to do with step four or
whatever. People get those two steps screwed up.
(54:32 – 54:37)
Step four, step ten. Step four says a moral inventory. It doesn’t say that down there.
(54:37 – 54:48)
It says we continue to take personal inventory. And it also says something else in that
step. And when we were wrong, we promptly admitted it.
(54:49 – 55:02)
Boy, oh boy, I never wrote you to admit he’s wrong, not me. No, that personal inventory
has to do with our daily activity, how we live today. I have to have a very simple
program.
(55:03 – 55:15)
I’m not smart enough to go through all these programs that some of these monkeys are
tied up with, with all these psychiatrists and psychologists and yogi men or what have
you. I can’t handle this stuff. I have to have something simple.
(55:15 – 55:22)
I’m too stupid. So my program is very simple. Here’s what I do with my tenth step.
(55:23 – 55:28)
At night, my day is through. I’m all done. I’m in bed.
(55:28 – 55:32)
It’s my prayer time. Grace has hers. I have mine.
(55:32 – 55:39)
We have ours together. And then I am there alone with my thoughts. I think about my
day.
(55:39 – 55:51)
Where have I been? What has transpired? Who did I meet? What’s happened? Did I do
anything worthwhile today? If so, I give myself a pat on the back. Oh, boy, you’re going
to starve for that one. On the other hand, I may pay.
(55:51 – 55:58)
I may I hurt you, and I owe you an apology. I can’t wait. That has to be the first priority
tomorrow.
(55:58 – 56:10)
I’ve got to come and call you or see you and tell you that story that I did this and will you
forgive me? This is very important. And it says in that step, it says promptly. Not at my
convenience.
(56:10 – 56:20)
It’s promptly. It’s now. Why now? We’re the greatest people in the world for putting
things off, and it’s very easy to do that, and that’s not right.
(56:20 – 56:27)
We’ve got to keep things straight day by day. I don’t know how many people put that
discipline on themselves, but I do. I do.
(56:27 – 56:34)
And it’s worked wonders for me. If it can work for a stupid guy like me, it can work for
anybody. Believe me, it does work.
(56:34 – 56:53)
Now, the 11th step tells us we’re seeking something. The good book tells me that
something through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God,
praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out. Boy, I
heard a lot of words.
(56:53 – 57:10)
I’m seeking something through prayer and meditation. Well, what is prayer and what’s
meditation? To me, prayer is talking to my manager, and meditation is listening to him. I
have found out over the years that the good Lord gave me two ears and one mouth.
(57:11 – 57:18)
That ought to suggest something to us. So, I’m seeking through talking to him and
listening to him. If I don’t listen, I’m not going to get the orders.
(57:19 – 1:01:42)
What am I looking for? I want to improve my conscious contact with him. What does that
mean? That means I want to feel that he’s right here. He isn’t way out in the blue and I
don’t think there’s over 8 or 9 percent, perhaps, maybe 8 percent or less, of the
population who can become alcoholics.
(1:01:43 – 1:01:51)
Really. There’s a big difference between drunks and alcoholics. Every alcoholic’s a drunk,
but every drunk’s not an alcoholic.
(1:01:52 – 1:02:05)
I drank with a lot of drunks who don’t have sense enough to be an alcoholic. You have to
have something on a stick to be an alcoholic. Your characteristics are different than
those people out there.
(1:02:06 – 1:02:15)
Those people out there are thinkers. They go in, they contemplate their navel about
everything. Alcoholics don’t think about anything.
(1:02:15 – 1:02:18)
They act. They do something. You can bet on that something’s gonna happen.
(1:02:19 – 1:02:23)
Thinking is not our motive. That’s not us. We act.
(1:02:24 – 1:02:45)
The alcoholic has different characteristics than those people out there. I’ve never met an
alcoholic, a real alcoholic, in my life that was not a high-strung individual. I never met
one that wasn’t, oh, he’s very sensitive, so he’s always going around looking for
someone to hurt his feelings.
(1:02:47 – 1:02:56)
He’s the biggest liar that ever wore shoes. He’s quick. He’s not a deep thinker.
(1:02:56 – 1:03:08)
He’ll never pose for the statue of a rodent thinker, but he acts. He’ll do something. He is
a man or a woman of action, and his mental processes work different than people.
(1:03:09 – 1:03:15)
He’s always conniving. He’s always figuring something out. There’s something deal going
on here or going on there.
(1:03:15 – 1:03:25)
He’s got 14 irons in the fire all the time. Yeah, he’s something else. He’s a very
lonesome, lonely person.
(1:03:25 – 1:03:34)
He’d be lonely in the crowd. He really can. You see him walk into AA groups meetings,
you see him walk into these meetings and they’re sitting in that back row.
(1:03:34 – 1:03:47)
There’s a hundred people in the meeting and the guy’s lonesome. They’ll come in here
and sit around and they’ve got all this opportunity for fellowship here. And some of these
guys, these guys and gals are lonesome.
(1:03:47 – 1:03:53)
They really are. They’re lonely people. And they have great potential.
(1:03:53 – 1:03:59)
They have a terrific imagination. Alcoholics have a terrific imagination. They should all
write books.
(1:04:01 – 1:04:14)
And they have ingenuity. There’s no stopping a rummy. A rummy can operate on 30% of
his efficiency and beat the socks off of those earthlings out there.
(1:04:14 – 1:04:19)
They’re operating on 80%. Any day in the week, they’ll do it. I know I did it myself.
(1:04:20 – 1:04:29)
I remember that last job I had. My God, I worked for a bank and they made an officer
operate everything. And I just got fired.
(1:04:31 – 1:04:36)
One outfit I worked for seven years. They transferred me. They gave me a promotion.
(1:04:36 – 1:04:49)
I was running an office for them in Southern Ohio. They fired me for being drunk. I came
back to Cleveland and by a fellow that originally hired me in the finance business was on
the board of directors of that bank.
(1:04:51 – 1:05:01)
They had gone into the finance business and they were great. They’d taken awful baths
financially. They were crying the blues in their directors meeting.
(1:05:02 – 1:05:13)
He said to them, I know the guy that can clean us out of this mess. I know the best
finance man in the world. He didn’t tell him that I got fired.
(1:05:14 – 1:05:32)
He said, I think he’s available. So they sent that man down. So I went down there and all
the officers, they had hired me and I had to set up a department in that bank.
(1:05:33 – 1:05:37)
And I did. I worked for that office. Now, remember, I was drunk when they interviewed
me.
(1:05:37 – 1:05:45)
I was never sober. There’s two kinds of drinkers. There’s the periodic and there’s the
chronic.
(1:05:46 – 1:05:52)
I was not a periodic. I never suffered like those people. I was drunk all the time.
(1:05:52 – 1:06:00)
But people didn’t even know it. This is my normal way. I wasn’t falling down drunk all the
time, but I was always under the influence.
(1:06:01 – 1:06:16)
So they hired me and boy, they were in a panic and they hired me. And I went to work
for that office and they made me a junior officer, if you can imagine. And that, of course,
didn’t make a big hit with a lot of those old Irish who was working in that bank.
(1:06:16 – 1:06:31)
They’d been there for 20 years. What’s that guy getting that for, you know? Well,
anyway, I worked for there three years and a half. I cleaned up that mess and saved
them all that money, did them a wonderful job.
(1:06:31 – 1:06:43)
And I was never, as I stand here, I was never sober one night in that three years and a
half. I’d go in there every morning stinking them out with that, they’ll lose the mind. And
I did them a wonderful job.
(1:06:44 – 1:06:56)
Finally, they had to let me go because I was forgetting things. And they didn’t know what
I was doing there, but I was delivering. My desk was piled like this with stuff.
(1:06:57 – 1:07:03)
They didn’t know what was on their desk. I knew. When I wanted something, I knew right
where to pull it out.
(1:07:04 – 1:07:11)
And I never told this help of mine too much, any one of them too much. But they didn’t
know either. This is the way the Romney will do.
(1:07:13 – 1:07:29)
I’ll tell you something. The day came when I had to leave, and I was supposed to go
down to the President’s office and get my last checks. And I went down there, and he
wasn’t in his office.
(1:07:29 – 1:07:41)
I waited a long time. I’ll never forget this. Finally he came in, and I know now I think I
know why he makes me wait all that time, but he wanted to give me the last hurrah and
give me the last boot in the britches, you know.
(1:07:42 – 1:07:55)
So he finally told me what an opportunity I blew, what I could have become in that bank,
you know, that old stuff to give you. You know, you’re so great. And then finally he gave
me my checks, and I went upstairs to my office.
(1:07:56 – 1:08:04)
And what do you think was up there? I had two great big desks there, and they’re full of
presents. They’re having a going away party for me. I’m getting fired.
(1:08:06 – 1:08:17)
Nobody but a rummy can do this. Yeah, they fired me, and I stood there like a damn fool
involved, you know. And away I went.
(1:08:17 – 1:08:29)
I took my goodies in a basket, and away I went home to them. I never saw any of those
people again until 1942 when I landed in the Army down at Fort Knox. I ran into two of
these guys who used to work for me.
(1:08:30 – 1:08:40)
What a reunion. We had our pictures taken in those tanks and sent them up to the bank
and showed them we were winning the war all by ourselves, the three of us. Oh, it was
something.
(1:08:40 – 1:08:48)
But this is what happened. I cleaned them up. You know what happened to them? They
had to hire 13 people when they fired me.
(1:08:49 – 1:09:21)
Thirteen people. They had to put a whole new system in because they didn’t know what
it was. didn’t know what it was.
(1:09:21 – 1:10:23)
didn’t know what it didn’t know what it was. didn’t know what didn’t know it didn’t know
what didn’t know what it was. didn’t know it was.
(1:10:24 – 1:12:18)
didn’t know what didn’t know know what It didn’t know what didn’t know what it Didn’t
know what it did. In line… in line… who doesn’t know I have a new Ford and a new
Mercury for demonstrators, and they’re in my name if you can imagine this and these
other poor stops Driving these junkers or hooking rides with other ones as junkers or
something like this, and I’m driving around two brand new cars I’m hauling drunks
around in them This is rummies we do these things, you know As I say before it’s
wonderful talking to you and best of everything to you I could talk here all day You know
And I hope you all come to Florida sometime and visit us and You’ll find that a is pretty
much the same everywhere you go You have people who believe in it and you have
people who experiment with it. You have people that just flounder Get on the ball and
you who are not on the ball get on a stick it’s simple it’s easy And don’t make it tough on
yourself.
I try to take you know that easy does I believe that I Really do so that’s why I have an
easy program. I live on three steps, but I’ve taken those other nine That’s a secret well,
thank you very much for being for being a very attentive audience and listener. Thank
you and best to you