Page 249 - The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

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234 ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
boys I knew. For that reason, I believe, I married at a
much younger age than I would have, had it not been
for my home training. My wife and I have been mar­
ried for some thirty years now. Vi was the first girl that
I ever took out. I had quite a heartache about her then
because she wasn’t the type of girl that my mother
wanted me to marry. In the first place, she had been
married before; I was her second husband. My mother
resented it so much that the first Christmas after our
marriage, she didn’t even invite us to dinner. After our
first child came, my parents both became allies. Then,
in later days, after I became an alcoholic, they both
turned against me.
My father had come out of the South and had suf­
fered a great deal down there. He wanted to give me
the very best, and he thought that nothing but being a
doctor would suffice. On the other hand, I believe that
I’ve always been medically inclined, though I have
never been able to see medicine quite as the average
person sees it. I do surgery because that’s something
that you can see; it’s more tangible. But I can remem­
ber in postgraduate days, and during internship, that
very often I’d go to a patient’s bed and start a process of
elimination and then, very often, I’d wind up guessing.
That wasn’t the way it was with my father. I think with
him it possibly was a gift—intuitive diagnosis. Father,
through the years, had built up a very good mail-order
business because, at that time, there wasn’t too much
money in medicine.
I don’t think I suffered too much as far as the racial
situation was concerned because I was born into it and
knew nothing other than that. A man wasn’t actually
mistreated, though if he was, he could only resent it.