Cars

My first car was a 1958 Chevy Delray.  I bought it in the spring of 1965.  I was 18 years old. I needed a car to drive to my first real job working for the Phone Company. 

The car was huge and it smelled bad, a sort of vinyl seats, horsehair stuffing and too much sun smell.  The main body of it was blue and then a light blue on the side panels.  Or it was green with light green side panels, or blue with light green side panels.  Whatever it was, it was badly faded.  Besides being huge, smelling bad, being an odd color and a gas guzzler, it was ugly.  I told people my 1958 Chevy¹ was General Motors gearing up for an impending war and this was the car they made before they transitioned into tanks. 

The first car I looked at was a 1953 Chevy Convertible.  It was white with gold highlights and very cool looking.  Rick Sharp, my best friend and I saw it at a used car dealer's.  It was only $500 which seemed reasonable.  I’m not a mechanic and I just thought I wouldn’t be able to keep it running.   It was a pipe dream more than anything else.  I didn’t know how to buy a car by myself and I didn't even talk to the salesman.    

My mother found the 1958 Chevy and we went to see it in Hollywood.  The owner was a youngish gay man who was selling it to buy something new.  She decided it was the car for me and we bought it on the spot for $800. 

My mother made the decision and she was an irresistible force when she decided.  My mother made all of my father’s decisions for him and she was doing the same for me before I learned to get out from under her.  My mother would get these ideas into her head and that was it.  At the time she decided Volkswagens and small cars were dangerous.  It wasn’t good enough that I should get something bigger than a Volkswagen, I needed a behemoth just to be sure.  There wasn’t much on the road bigger or boxier than a 1958 Chevy. 

Five days a week I drove the Chevy to my job in Reseda about 20 miles away.  I think it got 12 miles to the gallon but gas in those days was about 25¢ a gallon.  It was a big roomy car and great for making out with somebody.  My first girlfriend after the seminary asked me how I felt about French kissing.  I said I thought it was a sin.  That was stupid, we never French kissed.  With my second girlfriend I kept my ideas of sin to myself.  We French kissed and even after awhile made it into the backseat of the Chevy which was very roomy. 

A side note here, being Irish, Catholic and an ex-seminarian it was a long time before I ever got laid and even longer time before I ever made it in the back seat of a car.  10 years later my wife and I decided to try it and we made it in the backseat of our car, a Volkswagen Van. 

I drove the Chevy to work until September, 1965 and then I left it at home while I went to college in Westchester, near the airport.  I think it was about then I bought a Suzuki 50cc motorcycle, a zippy little thing that maxed out at about 35 miles per hour, 40 with the wind at my back.  It was a two stroke engine which was always smoky and fouled.  I lived with my sister in an apartment in Mar Vista and used the Suzuki to get to school.  I drove it across town to Burbank when I went home.  I rode it in all kinds of weather including torrential rain when I got soaked to the bone.  I also slipped and went down a couple of times while riding it on slick streets.  In those days helmets weren’t required and no one wore them.  I certainly didn’t have one, it never occurred to me. 

I think when I went back to work at the phone company in the summer of 1966 I drove my Chevy again.  It was the summer after that, 1967, when my father decided that since he had driven it all winter and made some repairs to it that it was now his car and I had no claims on it at all.  Even I was a little surprised at how arbitrary and unfair that decision was.  My father was adamant and at 20 it didn’t do any good to argue with either of my parents. 

That summer I went in the service and and in the spring got married to Cathy Bruemmer.  She joined me in Bedford, England and I worked 12 miles away at Chicksands.  We used a bus to get to the base when we needed to and by myself I hitchhiked to work.  Public transportation in England was good and we didn’t get a car until our second winter there.  I bought a 1956 Ford Popular². It was cool.  It was a pre-War design and looked like a miniature gangster car.  I drove it a few times and then it stopped running.  A friend on Dog Flight  said he would help me get it running again.  We got it torn apart in the base auto shop and that was it.  We never got any further.   

That spring I bought a 1963 Volkswagen from a sergeant who was going back home.  The Volkswagen was wonderful.  It ran and ran and ran.  I found a mechanic, a Pole in Bedford to work on it and on cold days I learned to jump start it by running beside it and jumping in. 

We drove the Volkswagen to Italy and all over the Midlands and southern England.  It was a wonderful car and our first son, Sean, loved it more than we did.  Volkswagen was among the first words he learned.  

When we got back to Los Angeles we needed a car.  One can live in England without a car, but no one can live in LA without a car.  I found a Volkswagen advertised in the newspaper, went to see it and I bought it for $500.  Our Volkswagen in England had been a deep shiny blue, the new one was Volkswagen pale green.  The English VW had been a 1963³ and the car I bought in LA was a 1968, but they were just about the same car. 

I drove my Volkswagen from North Hollywood to UCLA in Westwood every day.  I looked for cheap gas and found a place where it was about 22¢ a gallon.  I put gas in it and I drove it.  Sean, 3 years old and Ted 1 year old bounced around in the back seat.  There were seat belts in the car but in those days we didn’t use them.  If you came to a stop suddenly there was this reflex arm movement with the right arm to the passenger if they were a little person to keep them from flying forward. 

I remember driving down Venice Boulevard and coming to a sudden stop and both boys in the back seat tumbling forward into the foot well.  A very clear voice, every word distinct, said, “Don’t do that.”  Ted was talking. 

Something finally went wrong with the car.  It was overheating and someone told me it needed a regulator or some part.   I called around to see how much it would cost and reached a Volkswagen garage in Glendale where the owner quoted me the lowest price to repair it.  The day I was supposed to pick it up I got a phone call from Julius, the mechanic.  He told me that he had mispriced the item and in fact it was more expensive than he had quoted.  I made some sort of sighing comment and he said, “Oh no, he wasn’t going to charge me more.  He just wanted me to know.”  I went to Julius and then his son Rich for the next 20 years. 

When I got a job, I could afford to service the Volkswagen regularly and repair things as they wore out.  I even bought new tires for it.  I could tell I needed them; I was getting flats and seeing white ribbing in the tires.  Julius kept my Volkswagen running until 1981 when I finally gave up on the Volkswagen after two rear end collisions.  The second one did it in and it didn’t seem worth it to put a new engine in a 13 year old car.  I sold to it to Sean who was 12.  He wanted to work on it and get it to running again one day. 

In 1976 we bought a used Volkswagen Van as our second car.  It was great for family vacations.  The engine was a little more touchy than the Volkswagen Beetle and the van took more servicing and mechanical work, but it ran well.  It was a great car, blue and white.  It even looked cool.  I drove the van most of the time and Cathy drove the Beetle. 

When the Beetle died in 1981 we bought a brand new Honda Civic.  Hondas were the new Volkswagens.  It had a small engine, was very well designed and zippy like a sports car.  I liked it. 

In the beginning of 1983 the transmission on the Volkswagen Van gave out and we decided it was time to get another car.  I think Cathy was already planning our separation and she wanted to get a new car before I left.  We bought a Toyota Tercel station wagon for her.  It was an odd little thing, four wheel drive and a boxy look.  When we did separate later that year she kept it.  I made payments on it until it was paid off.  I think she drove it well into the 90s.    

By 1989 with a 135,000 miles on it, the Honda was beginning to show its age.  Ted, my second son, was driving it one day and we started out on a green light across Riverside Drive and a Ford Bronco went right through the red light and plowed into us.  Thank god, Hondas are sturdy little cars.  We weren’t injured.  Ted was a little bruised.  The car still ran but it was mashed.  I gave the Bronco driver’s insurance company a chance to pay me off and they took the car.     

I was ready for a pickup truck and I bought a 1989 maxi cab Toyota with a camper shell on the back.  Toyotas run forever.  I never liked the look of it, but it was practical for camping and carrying bicycles. 

I took it north when I moved to the Bay Area.  I left Rich in Glendale and got it serviced elsewhere.  In getting the service done somewhere new, it wasn’t checked for preventive things and on a drive back from LA, the timing chain gave out.  Now on my list of things to do with a car, is to change the timing chain around 175,000 miles.  The engine froze up and I had it repaired for $1200 but it never ran the same again.  Also Susan, my wife at the time, had one of these who goes first collisions on the front left fender that left it looking sickly.  I replaced it, but never painted it. 

With Susan’s input we bought a 1998 Honda CRV, much bigger than I would have wanted and with leather seats.  At least we didn’t buy the Mercedes Benz she proposed to get at first.  In 2004 we bought a Honda Civic Hybrid.  I loved that little car, as fun as my first Civic and you could watch the readout on gas consumption and try for more than 50 miles to the gallon on a trip. 

When Susan and I divorced she got the Civic.  I still drive the CRV.  Hondas today last much longer than they used to last.  The CRV has 203,000 miles on it.  I changed the timing chain at 175,000 miles.  The car runs great.  It will be another year or two before I buy another car. 

In 2008 I bought a Honda Rebel Motorcycle⁴.  I like small cars.  I like small motorcycles.  The Honda is a 250cc.  It tops out at 75 or 80 mph and keeps up with traffic on the freeways.  It has a four stroke engine and runs like a top.  I appreciate my CRV.  It has done well by me for 14 years and over 200,000 miles.  I love my Rebel.  And I wear a helmet.

^1.  http://stormpix.deviantart.com/art/1958-Chevrolet-Delray-167853227

²  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Popular

³  http://www.remarkablecars.com/main/volkswagen/1963-vw-001.html

^4. My own photo

My AA Story

From the 12 Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous:

Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.

This is my personal story.  I can’t write my own biography without talking about my alcoholism, how I stopped drinking and what it means to me.  I am not a spokesman for AA.  There is nothing official about this, it is just my story.  The AA members I mention in the story are deceased and their anonymity is no longer an issue. 

I had my last drink December 13, 1983.  I haven’t had a drink since.  I went to my first AA meeting a week later, December 22^nd, 1983.  

I grew up in alcoholic family.  My grandfather, my mother, and my father were all alcoholics.  I started drinking at around age 14.  My father drank red wine with his meals.  Our family’s self image was that we were sophisticated drinking red wine like Europeans.  My mother bought the wine by the case, Pride of Cucamonga, four large gallon bottles in a cardboard box from the Monte Carlo Italian Deli.  It was a Zinfandel that left a red stain on my teeth.  I started having a glass of wine with my mother in the afternoon.  

After that I could pour myself a glass of wine whenever I liked and I drank a little wine with my meals.  At first a half glass, we used water glasses, of the Zinfandel was enough.  By the time I was senior in high school I would have a full glass or maybe two if I felt like it and I began to go places with a bit of buzz on.  At 16 I started drinking beer with my dad and by the time I was 17 I was going with my sister who was 21 to the liquor store to buy a six pack of beer.  My father, my sister and I would drink it until it was gone and sometimes go for another.  One time in a liquor store in Glendale the clerk stopped us.  He wasn’t going to sell me a six pack of beer.  I deferred to my 21 year old sister.  He wasn’t going to sell her the six pack either.  Other than that one time it was never a problem.

By the time I got to college, I could drink pretty well.  I still drank beer as much as was available, but I eventually learned to stop sometimes when there was still beer left.  I remember one wedding I attended I got so drunk I tried putting the make on the groom’s sister.  She was married and much older than I was, and I think she may have thought it was funny.  I don’t remember ever seeing the groom again.   

At college there wasn’t much opportunity to drink beer.  By this time I drank mostly at home.  Sometimes there was a jug of Red Mountain wine at a party and I always drank my share.    

I went in the service at 20.  On the base servicemen could drink 3.2 beer on base at 18 and in Mississippi we could drink 3.2 beer off base.  I turned 21 a few months later and I could drink hard liquor but mostly I stayed with beer.  After Mississippi I was stationed in England and I became a regular at the local pub, the Gordon Arms.  My new wife and I drank red wine, Volipacella from Italy in half gallon bottles in baskets.  We bought it at the Class VI store on base.  We had quite a collection of empties hanging on the kitchen door.  We used them as candle holders and gave them to friends. 

There were a few parties or events where I drank too much, but most of the time it was just fun.  I loved the pub.  For less than a pound, I could drink all night and most nights that was 3 or 4 English pints, 20 ounces each.   In the service we didn’t think anyone drank too much.  I remember being a little shocked at Sergeant Welch drinking bottles of Ripple as he drove me home one Sunday morning after our shift.  And Sergeant Irving, an older man in Personnel, had an alcohol problem. 

I came home from the service and went to college.  We lived on the GI Bill, $240 a month and my wife and I could barely afford the Safeway Chablis gallon bottles we bought weekly.  On weekends I drank my fill of beer at my in-laws house or at my parents.  When I went to work at Bank of America drinking was a regular part of the job.  My first boss got a DUI, driving under the influence, and quit LA and went back to San Francisco. 

In the PR Department we often went downstairs to a bar after work.  As the newest and youngest member of the department I would freeload the best I could from my better paid co-workers.  At one time, one coworker and I made regular visits to a Carl’s Junior in the Broadway Department Store basement mall where they sold pitchers of beer for $4.  It wasn’t very dignified drinking pitchers of beer in Carl’s Junior, but it was cheap.   

By the time I got sober my drinking had progressed to a quart of wine every night starting with a glass at dinner.  I drank martinis when someone else was buying and sometimes I had a bottle of gin at home.  Every so often we’d discover something new like putting cheap scotch in coffees or using tequila to make margaritas.  Scotch and tequila never lasted very long in our house.  So while I didn’t think of myself as a hard drinker, just a little beer wine, I was drinking hard liquor frequently and beer and wine all the time. 

One of our favorite things to do was to make fondue with white wine.  We dipped our bread in the cheese and drank Chablis while we did it.  Afterwards I’d make margaritas in the blender and we’d get really blasted.  Like the red wine when I was a kid, the fondue pot made us feel sophisticated. 

I had friends I drank with and friends I didn’t drink with but most of my friends were people who enjoyed a few drinks and what I thought of as convivial company.   I drank a lot of what I didn’t think of as drinking.   Beer and wine didn’t really count.  When I worked in the bank branches my regular lunch was to go to a mini-mart, buy some cheese and an apple and a can of beer.  I gave the beer a lot of thought.  Sometimes it was a 16 oz can but sometimes a 12 oz can because I had to do something at work or needed to be more alert or maybe it was a couple of 12 oz cans because I deserved them.  These decisions included a lot of factors and subtly balancing them out.  I didn’t get much work done in the afternoon, but I don’t remember anyone complaining.   

Occasionally I found myself drinking too much in the wrong company.  I seemed to have offended my wife’s co-workers at a party at someone’s house I can’t remember.  I thought of myself as just flirting with pretty women, but I may have been just boorish.   I tried to avoid those situations that would get me in trouble, but sometimes I just couldn’t.  One time I invited my friend Burton Katz to join me and my drinking buddy Bill Kline at the Sportsman’s Lodge.  Bill and I could down a few and it was with Bill, who always bought, that I indulged my taste for martinis.  The next morning Burt called me at work and told me how shocked he was at my behavior and he didn’t want to ever see me drink that much again and how I shouldn’t hang out with people like Bill.  I never invited Burt to drink again.

I was embarrassed by Burt’s call.  It was like a pebble in my shoe, something I couldn’t forget.    

After that I was working at our Century City branch.  It was not a good situation.  One morning I came in to work smelling of wine. I can’t remember who pointed that out to me.  After that I was more careful about when I stopped drinking.  I made a new rule to stop at midnight on weeknights.  I had a lot of rules around drinking.  One day the Regional Vice President came to the branch and announced to the staff that I was transferred from Century City to Loan Administration Department.  In the Loan Administration Department I was a replacement officer for loan officers in the branches who were on vacation or sick.  My friend Bill had just barely saved my job for me. 

Shortly before I got sober I was invited to a party at a customer’s house.  By that time I had figured out it was better sometimes if I didn’t drink.  I did OK that night, but after the party I bought a six pack of beer and drank it in the car as I drove home.  I had learned to put my beer in a large coffee mug and drink it that way in the car.  I took an accounting class at UCLA Extension and before the class I would have a beer in the parking lot.  When my wife drove me to a football game at the high school she taught at I put a healthy serving of gin and a little vermouth in a travelling mug and arrived at the football game blasted with my face numb from the gin.  

I drank and I drove.  I drove to the places I drank and I drove back from the places I drank.  Sometimes when I had too much to drink, driving was a struggle.  There were things I could do, close one eye, hug the line, things that always got me home.  I was never stopped by the police.  I think those were different days.  I don’t remember any checkpoints.  Even among my drinking friends drunk driving arrests didn’t happen or no one knew about them.  My first boss was the only one I knew personally.   

A week before I got sober, I called a priest my wife and I were seeing for marriage counseling.  I don’t know what I said to him, but at some point he said, “You’re nothing but an alcoholic” and that I was nothing but a self-pitying drunk.  I didn’t think he was much help, but he was the first person who ever called me an alcoholic to my face. 

It was preying on my mind.  The 13^th of December I went to my estranged wife’s house and dropped some boards off I thought she could use.  She gave me a beer, I had a second and then I went home to my parents’ house.  For some reason I decided not to have any more to drink that night.  I never drank in the morning before going to work and I didn’t drink at lunch the next day.  That night as usual I stayed at work late after everyone left.  I found myself at work alone, writing in my journal.  After my wife and I separated I lived at home with my parents and most nights I stayed late.  I made tea in the bank lunchroom.  My parents were alcoholics and were bad company in the evenings.  Dinner with them was a dismal affair, so I normally waited until I was sure they had gone to bed before I went home.  They went to bed early, thank god.   

Writing in my journal I admitted I was an alcoholic.  Writing makes me honest.  It was almost a joke.  I was Irish and Scotch Irish.  Both my parents were alcoholics and I drank every day.  Of course, I was an alcoholic.  Years before I had attended training for supervisors in which an Employee Assistance person told us how to recognize and deal with the alcoholic among us.  I remembered the class.  That’s where I had first heard alcoholism is a progressive disease.  For the first time looking at myself I finally admitted, I was an alcoholic.   

That summer I had decided my Saturdays were lost in a beer haze and I decided to stop drinking for awhile to see how that was.  It was OK for a couple of days and then I went to a party and was doing just fine until they brought out champagne left over from a wedding.  Well just a glass of champagne and my short days of sobriety vanished.  For the first time I realized I needed to drink.  I didn’t think about it after that, but it was always there.  I was drinking hard liquor now.  I was drinking and driving and drinking had caused a number of problems.  My boss made pointed remarks about my drinking.

The next morning I called EAP, the Employee Assistance Program, and talked to a counselor.  He agreed to come out and see me.  “How was next Wednesday?” he asked. 

I told myself I wouldn’t drink before I saw him.  My last drink had been a beer at my estranged wife’s.  I didn’t drink that week.  I didn’t drink that weekend.  I went out to lunch with a friend and when I normally would have had a beer I didn‘t.  It was easy. 

The counselor came the following Wednesday and gave me a schedule for Alcoholic Anonymous meetings in Los Angeles.  It was a thick little book.  He told me I sounded like an alcoholic to him and there were different programs I could go to but the only one that worked in his experience was AA and he said that’s where I should go. 

I spent a lot of time poring over that little directory looking for just the right meeting.  Finally I decided on a meeting at St. Francis of Assisi Church on Brunswick Avenue in Atwater.  Eleven years before I lived on Brunswick down the street from St. Francis.  The little Episcopal chapel always seemed to be a place of peace and tranquility.  I had been to St. Francis High School and afterwards a Franciscan monastery.  The image of St. Francis was familiar to me.   

I waited at work until it was time to go.   I arrived in Atwater early and went to the Brown Keg Liquor Store across the street and bought a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes.  I usually didn’t smoke cigarettes but it seemed like a cigarette night.  I was wearing my banker’s blue pinstripe suit.  I went in and found a seat in the chapel and waited to see what would happen. 

My marriage had fallen apart.  We had been separated a month.  I was living at home with my parents.  My job was about as bad as it got.  I worked for Joe Bent who was later fired because he was out of control and a petty tyrant.  He seemed to take satisfaction in torturing the people who worked for him.  I was an Assistant Vice President.  The Assistant Manager, another AVP had recently been fired.  Joe told me I was never going to be the Assistant Manager and it was true. 

I think I had been placed at Joe’s branch because Joe and I were both problems.   I was known to give supervisors a hard time and they didn’t really care which one of us crashed and burned.  The smart money was on Joe but if they were lucky they’d get rid of both of us.

My life was a disaster.  I needed to start doing something about it.  I thought Alcoholics Anonymous was like going to yoga, a self improvement class.  I figured I had a lot of problems and it wouldn’t hurt to stop drinking.  

The format of the meeting was three speakers who shared.  The first two speakers were probably newcomers and gave short 10 minute pitches and then a regular speaker with a little sobriety telling his AA story.  One of the speakers went through a list of woes in his life.  It was a laundry list of things gone wrong, mostly good intentions failed and he ended each failure with the refrain, “And if I don’t drink, it will get better.” 

I heard that.  If I don’t drink, it will get better, no matter what and I believed it.  At the break, everyone was friendly and they gave me the two books I would need to get started, Alcoholics Anonymous and 12 Steps and 12 Traditions.  The books were for sale.  I only had a couple of dollars and some change on me.  They said that would be OK, I could pay the rest later.  They also pointed out that the meeting I was at was a gay meeting and that I might be more comfortable at other meetings.  They told me about a place in Glendale where there were meetings every night.  

That was Thursday, December the 22^nd.  I went to my next meeting Saturday, December the 24^th.  Later people asked me how it was to get sober at Christmas time.  Christmas time?  Hell, I didn't care what time of year it was.  I had more important things to worry about than Christmas that year.   

On Christmas Day I did go to my ex-house and see my sons.  I told them I had stopped drinking.  My middle son, Ted, who was 12 at the time, said, “That’s a very brave thing to do, Pop.”  I didn’t think it was brave but when he said that I thought this is something I’d better stick with.

My sons were 14, 12, and 8 when I got sober.  I tried to be as good a father as I could be.  I never thought about it before I got sober, a few beers was who I was, but alcohol did not contribute to my being a parent.  I wasn’t there a lot of the time for them.  It takes a lot of time to drink.  I came home late.  I spent time on the couch barely conscious.  My moods were unpredictable.  Even when I wasn’t drunk I could be volatile and angry without provocation.  As a person I was unreliable.  I drank and I drove with my children in the car.

It’s hard to admit, but drinking was probably more important to me than parenthood. 

A Start in AA

The first few days were easy.  I just didn’t drink.  I read the books they gave me.  I drove down to San Diego on the day after Christmas and visited with my Uncle Ed.  My uncle had been sober since 1946, though there was a short time in the 1960s when it seems he might have gone out again.  It was either the booze or a manic episode or probably both.  My Dad got involved, no one explained it, and he was found in San Francisco.    

My cousin was there for the holidays and I learned she had gotten sober a couple of years earlier.  She and I were only a few months apart in age and she always made sure I knew she was way ahead of me in just about everything.  She sneered I was still in the pink cloud phase of sobriety and that it would go away.  Out of spite to my cousin I kept my pink cloud through good times and hard times.  I claim it never went away. 

I drove back to LA and went to a meeting in Atwater on my way home.  I remember in that meeting people tried to warn me about slippery places.  I thought I didn’t need to worry, I had this program and it was easy.  I started going to meetings once a week or so at the Windsor Club in Glendale.  Club Houses and there are thousands of them are separate from AA; run and funded by their own boards, usually AA members.  They provide a place for people to hang out and rooms for AA meetings.  The Windsor Club is a two story brick building with a lounge and café in the first story and meeting rooms upstairs.  It even had a parking lot and when there were meetings the parking lot and the streets around the club house filled with cars.  It was a popular place.   

The Monday night meeting at the Windsor Club was called the Gong Show.  It was a large raucous meeting with 150 people or more.  The room was packed, every seat taken and people standing up along the walls and in the back.   It was the standard LA format, a reading from the Big Book and the 12 Traditions, cakes for anniversaries and chips for newcomers at their first meeting, and chips for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days and six months.  There was a 10 minute speaker, usually someone new, and then a circuit speaker, one of the AAs well known for their pitch and invited specially to give it.  

Most AA meetings are pretty informal but the Gong Show took informality to an extreme.  The meetings were rowdy with bikers, punks, suits and street people, mostly on the younger side.  I attended regularly and it seemed like everybody knew each other.  After a few weeks I still felt isolated and out of place.  I didn’t know anyone and no one talked to me.  It just wasn’t working.  I realized I couldn’t even make it in AA.   

I went home devastated.   I opened up the Big Book and read the Fifth Chapter, “How It Works.”  I just wasn’t getting it.  I read the chapter; I read the 3^rd Step prayer.  I did everything I could think of.  I don’t believe in God, but I’ve always believed in the power of prayer.  I don’t know who I was praying to and I didn’t care.  If it worked it worked.  The 5^th Chapter didn’t tell me who was in charge.  It didn’t tell me how to become part of it.  It didn’t tell me what makes it work or how to get started?  It didn’t answer any of my questions.  It just gave me the Steps and recommended I work them.  Exhausted I finally went to bed. 

The next day everything seemed to change.  It seemed like a weight had been lifted.  One of my friends, a customer, called to see how I was doing.  That day I had this feeling that people cared about me.  It wasn’t anything major, just small things.   

At the Gong Show there was one gentleman, who like me wore gray slacks, a blue blazer and a tie.  Church, as he was called, seemed to always be around and he seemed to get the program.  He seemed comfortable with himself.   

When I got him aside I asked him to be my sponsor.  He told me he was gay. 

I asked if that made any difference.

He said, “I don’t think so.”

I said, “That’s fine with me.”

I think he said, “If it doesn’t work out, I’ll help you find a new sponsor.” 

Church was my sponsor until he died 9 years later.  At that time he had about 5 years of sobriety.  He worked for a commercial insurance brokerage downtown.  He was comfortable with himself and he worked a wonderful program.  Under Church’s guidance I began working the 12 steps.  He also recommended I find another meeting.  He recommended a meeting in Pasadena known as the Women’s Club.  The Wednesday Night Speakers Meeting met in the South Pasadena Women’s Club for fifty years or more. 

I went to the meeting and came back and told Church it seemed like everyone there was blue eyed, well dressed, and they were all lawyers and bankers.  He said, “Yes.” and looked at me.  I realized maybe instead of the bikers and down and outs at the Gong Show; I should start hanging out with people like myself.  Of course, there were more than just white people and professionals at the Women’s Club but overall it was a more gentle and sophisticated meeting. 

I started attending meetings regularly at the Women’s Club. 

I still went to the Gong Show but not as often.  One night I came in late and was standing in the back of the room.  There was a young man there dressed in white jeans and a white turtleneck.  He looked pretty cool, but he didn’t seem to be able to stand still and nervously he backed up to the counter in the back of the room.  There was a coffee urn there and as he backed up he hit the spigot and hot coffee poured down his white jeans.  I felt sorry for him, he was trying to be cool and it wasn’t working.  It reminded me of myself.  By this time I knew the Gong Show was mostly newcomers like I had been.  The court card people, people ordered to attend AA by the Judge, hung out in the back and that's where I had been trying to make friends.

The place to find AA is not in the back of the rooms, but up front where people are getting it and not in meetings where everyone is a newcomer but in meetings where people keep coming back.  It doesn’t happen overnight.  In South Pasadena I got a job pouring coffee and I didn’t just stand around anymore.  I became one of the regulars who stuck my hand out when I saw someone uncomfortable.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.   

In Pasadena I got to know people.  I worked the steps, gradually I became very comfortable with this meeting and sometimes even comfortable with myself.  After awhile I began to sponsor people.  Eight years later I was the secretary of the South Pasadena Wednesday Night Speaker’s Meeting known as the Women’s Club.  At work where I was just another bank Vice President I wondered what people would think if they knew I was the head drunk for the Pasadena area including San Marino.  Of course, the secretary of an AA meeting is not that important, as the book says “Our leaders are but trusted servants.”  Most importantly I belonged and AA worked for me. 

It’s been 28 years since then.  I don’t attend AA meetings much.  I’ve never connected in the Bay Area with AA the way I did in Pasadena.  My job and weird schedule made meetings hard to do and I don’t have much in common anymore with newcomers.  Even some sober AAs aren’t comfortable with cops.  I’ve been sober so long I look like the middle aged white guy that doesn’t have a clue. There are enough new people who are cool and who are getting it to take care of the newcomers. 

I’ve taken the concept of service as I learned it in AA and done it elsewhere.  I worked as a counselor at San Francisco Juvenile Hall.  As a Park Ranger and cop I was always open to helping people in need, especially people mired in addiction with no way out.  Sometimes the best way to help is to arrest them.

When I got sober it took a long time to recover the trust I had squandered with my sons.  I tried to be there for them.  I tried to control my own anger, fears, and rage.  I tried to listen and I tried to support them.  Most importantly I tried to insure that nothing came between me and them.

Years later I have a very satisfying relationship with my adult sons.  I appreciate them.  We are friends and they are part of my life.  With Paloma I have another chance to be a parent and I think I’m better at it than I was the first time.  I have my sons as good examples for being a parent and they give good advice.

My life has been good and the first principle of my life today is I don’t drink.  The speaker 28 years ago was right.  If I don’t drink, everything gets better and better.