Page 269 - The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

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254 ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
myself selling women’s hosiery and men’s made-to-
order shirts. This gave me the freedom to do A.A.
work and to rest for periods of two or three days when
I became too exhausted to carry on. There was more
than one occasion when I got up in the morning with
just enough money for coffee and toast and the bus
fare to carry me to my first appointment. No sale—no
lunch. During that first year, however, I managed to
make both ends meet and to avoid ever going back to
my old habit-pattern of borrowing money when I could
not earn it. Here by itself was a great step forward.
During the first three months, I carried on all these
activities without a car, depending entirely on buses
and streetcars—I, who always had to have a car at my
immediate command. I, who had never made a speech
in my life and who would have been frightened sick
at the prospect, stood up in front of Rotary groups in
different parts of the city and talked about Alcoholics
Anonymous. I, carried away with the desire to serve
A.A., gave what was probably one of the first radio
broadcasts about A.A., living through a case of mike
fright and feeling like a million dollars when it was all
over. I lived through a week of the fidgets because I
had agreed to address a group of alcoholic inmates in
one of our state mental hospitals. There it was the same
reward—exhilaration at a mission accomplished. Do I
have to tell you who gained the most out of all this?
Within a year of my return to Detroit, A.A. was a
definitely established little group of about a dozen
members, and I too was established in a modest but
steady job handling an independent dry-cleaning route
of my own. I was my own boss. It took five years of
A.A. living, and a substantial improvement in my