Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Here I am Drunk Again or the Top Ten Reasons I am now in a 12 Step Group
# 10 – My Truck was Stolen 1975
I was drinking at the Oxford in downtown Missoula. I parked near the old library and walked the block to the Ox. I went back to the truck, drove around and parked in another spot. I went back to the Ox, drank some more, came out and couldn’t find the truck near the library. I walked a couple blocks to the west to the city police station and reported my truck had been stolen. I sat in the lobby about half an hour. Then the dispatcher told me the truck had been located. I asked if it was okay and if the keys were in the vehicle. She told me where it was and I walked over to it. I guess I was really lucky they didn’t book me on public drunkenness, besides the fact they let me drive away in an obviously intoxicated condition.
# 9 – How I Lost all the Buttons on my New Shirt 1973
New Year’s Eve I went out wearing a shirt I had just received for Christmas. The destination that evening was the Wonder Bar in Anaconda. It was a full house and a wild evening and I remember asking Janie Frankovich to dance. I went home and woke up the next morning to find all the buttons ripped off my new shirt. For a short while, I imagined Janie or some other young girl had ripped them off trying to tear off my shirt at the Wonder Bar. I soon enough realized I had assumed, in my drunken state, it was a western shirt and the snaps would just open if I pulled on them, instead I had ripped all the buttons off.
# 8 – Wrecked Truck, Memorial Day Weekend 1976
I took a trip to Yellowstone with my friend Cathy. We headed back towards Anaconda on Sunday morning, and found out we couldn’t buy beer due on Sunday morning due to the blue laws. It was afternoon when we got to Livingston. I gassed up the truck and went in to pay and buy some beer. Cathy went to the restroom and also bought some beer. We picked up a couple of hitchhikers, but they had the good sense to get out on Homestake Pass. At the exit for Fairmont Hot Springs, Cathy said she would like to see the hot springs before we returned home. I was tired and wanted to head straight for Anaconda and call it a day. I swerved the steering from right to left and back again as if I couldn’t decide which way to go. The truck decided. We ended up rolling twice and landing right side up. A Silver Bow Sheriffs’ deputy was driving by. He said to go into Anaconda and tell the police there what had happened. We had almost reached the Anaconda exit (with no windshield and an obviously wrecked vehicle) before the HP stopped and made us go back and clean the mess up. I had a camper that was in quite a few pieces and there were numerous beer cans around. The HP said “what is wrong with you people from Butte and Anaconda, you think you can wreck your car and just drive away.” He asked if we had been drinking. I said no and it was good enough for him.
#7 – Statistics - “Pass/ Fail”- What are the Percentages? 1975
I had to take Statistics to graduate. I took it “Pass/ Fail” figuring I could get probably get a passing grade. I had a “C” average going into the final so I proposed to the instructor that I be allowed to skip the final as I had a fifty/ fifty or better chance of doing equally well on the final and he could just give me a “Pass” as the statistics indicated I would probably pass. He said no! I did terrible on the test, so I went out that weekend and bought a bottle of Muscatel before the final was scored to drown my disapointment I lay under the Higgins Street Bridge in the late afternoon spring sun on the grass and drank the strong wine out of a brown paper sack. A young lady crossed the bridge and saw me. She asked if she could have some wine if she came down there. I said sure. The bottle was drained fairly quickly as I had had a good start already. We walked up to Stockman’s Bar to get another. She started talking to two other guys and soon we were all in a car together going up Pattee Canyon. Before long, I was so drunk and obnoxious the other two guys wanted to get rid of me. They dropped me off up the Canyon where the police soon found me and brought me back to the apartment. No charges, but I had messed myself up pretty bad. I did pass the statistics class against all odds!
#6 – Jumping into a Moving Vehicle 1972
We were cruising around a friend’s jeep in downtown Missoula on a week night and enjoying a few beers. The jeep stalled and wouldn’t start again. I suggested we push start the jeep. It started and I ran to catch up. I jumped into the rear cargo area. Unfortunately, I jumped in head first and hit my head on a tire iron. My friends had to take me to the campus health center to get some stitches. It didn’t interrupt our partying for long however.
#5 – Sleeping at the OX 1975
I was at the Ox one night feeling sorry for myself and trying to identify with the working class. I spent the evening there and ended up falling asleep in the shoe shine chair and waking up there the next morning. My contacts were still in my eyes and hurt pretty bad. I figured I couldn’t stay there any longer, so I walked the block to the Palace Hotel. There were some pretty comfortable easy chairs there and I sank into one and soon fell asleep again. It was only too soon that I was awakened by the Hotel staff telling me I could go downtown, uptown or take an out of town Greyhound, but I couldn’t stay there! Another time I partied too much and forgot to take my contacts out. When I awoke I put a spare pair in. I couldn’t figure out why my eyes were so irritated and went to see the eye doctor. It wasn’t hard for him to discover the second pair.
#4 – An Eye doctor Appointment in Missoula 1976
Having gotten a social work job in Anaconda, I was becoming well established with a regular salary and a degree of respectability. I thought I should get my eyes checked and made an appointment in Missoula for a Monday in early spring. I arranged to take the day off and planned to drive over on Friday night after work so I could spend the weekend enjoying culture in a University town. However, a fellow social worker of mine encouraged me to have just one beer at the Reno Club across the street from our office. One beer led to another and about eight thirty I decided I needed to be making my way to Missoula. I made it up to Georgetown and down the Flint Creek Pass with no problem. About ten miles north of Phillipsburg I missed a curve and went off the road. I somehow sailed over a ten foot deep ditch and landed on the railroad tracks. I tried to back up, but the truck wouldn’t move. I hiked back up to the road and started to walk towards Maxville hoping to find some help. About half an hour later someone stopped, gave me a lift back to the truck and took a look at the situation. They couldn’t figure anyway to get the truck back on the road. All four tires had popped and the rear window was out. He took me back to Phillipsburg and called a few folks to see if they could help but, to no avail. Finally he took me to the County Jail. There the Sheriff said he would help me. The Sheriff kindly let me spend the night in the jail and the next morning we went out with a wrecker to retrieve the truck. We towed it back to the ‘Burg where the Ford garage was able to repair it in a couple of weeks.
#3 – Christmas in Yellowstone 1974
I spent the summer working at Old Faithful. Several years previous, there had been a big snowstorm in August. The park was pretty nearly shut down. The staff were all sad because in a few days the season would be over and they would be going back to their homes and wouldn’t see each other again. They decided since they wouldn’t be together at Christmas time they should celebrate it early in the midst of the snowstorm. It was great fun and a tradition was born which included decorating a tree and exchanging gifts. There was great anticipation to this celebration every year and 1974 was no different. I don’t think alcohol was intended to be part of the celebration, but it was a part of almost everything I did. So I had a few drinks with my friends and before I ever got to the celebration. I had so much to drink I passed out and missed all the festivities.
#2 – A Trip to Riverton, WY 1977
My friend Mike and I decided to take a road trip to Riverton to see my high school friend Bill Sydow, and also stop in Livingston on the way home and look up a former college instructor. We left Anaconda on a Friday night and consumed a six pack by the time we got to West Yellowstone. We slept in the camper in his truck outside of town and in the morning drove into West. We bought a six pack and decided to drive through the park to get to Riverton. We had a flat tire near Canyon, changed it and threw the flat in the back of the camper. We got to Riverton and attempted to look up Bill. He didn’t answer his phone after several attempts. We were both members of the Elks so stopped in at the local club. We asked around to see if anybody there knew Bill who worked for Amoco. Someone said he had gone back to Nebraska for the weekend. We saw a sign on a local grocery that said Pearl Beer was on sale for $3.99 a case so we stopped and got two cases and headed back out on Highway 20. We took turns driving Mike’s Ford Ranger. When we were traveling through I think it must have been Thermopolis or Worland, I was driving and I hit the median between the traffic lanes. I quickly corrected and recovered without incident. It wasn’t too long later, I reached for another beer and Mike grabbed my hand and said I had, had enough. I calmly reached out with my other hand and took the beer with that hand. Mike grabbed that hand also and said no more. At that point he had both my hands, which occupied both his hands also and left nobody’s hands on the steering wheel. Needless to say we drove off the road. Again there were no major problems and we continued the journey after Mike assumed the responsibilities of driving. We made it to Billings late that evening and decided to sleep at the Pictograph Caves state park outside of town. When we woke up in the morning, we found we had another flat and since we hadn’t repaired the first flat there was no spare! Mike said he would walk into town and get it fixed. I said I would try to cook some breakfast. He came back several hours later with the repaired tire and I had cooked a bunch of eggs. We drove back to Anaconda and postponed the visit with former professor.
# 1 – Another Broken Record 1978
I had made two attempts to quit drinking at this point and been to several AA meetings. I had also gotten married during one period of sobriety and taken a promotion as social worker II in Deer Lodge with responsibility for Granite Co also. We were contemplating a move to Deer Lodge in the summer, but I was commuting during the interim. My supervisor lived in Butte and would make weekly visits to Anaconda with bi-monthly visits to Deer Lodge. It so happened that this particular day, Nancy was coming to Anaconda and I was preparing for my weekly trip to Phillipsburg. Nancy had called the day before and said I should plan to meet her for lunch at the Hofbrau west of Anaconda after a quick trip in the am to the Burg. I said sure. We met and had lunch with a pitcher or two of beer which extended into the afternoon. I called my young wife to tell her I had met Nancy for lunch and would be home later that afternoon as there really wasn’t any need to go back to Deer Lodge at that point. The hours crept by and we had a few more pitchers. I made a few more calls to my wife to tell her I would be home sooner or later. About seven or so, Nancy said she really needed to get back to Butte, but I should follow her over there and have another drink or two. We stopped at the District Office which was in the Executive Village on Front Street and at that point she realized I had had quite enough to drink. She said she needed to make a couple of calls, take care of some things and then she would drive me back to Anaconda. While she was calling in the other room, I slipped out the back of the EV and somehow drove myself to uptown Butte where a girl I knew from college lived. She was entertained for a while by my behavior. I did some Indian dances, some rock stomps and a few other jigs I knew for her. She decided eventually I was way too intoxicated to be on the highway and called a mutual friend that MaryLynn and I knew. He convinced her she should drive me back to our house in Anaconda. My wife was pretty upset by this time. She had broken a few records from my collection and they littered the floor of our living room. She had decided to break one record every half hour I didn’t come home, then upped the ante to one every fifteen minutes. When I walked in I didn’t even see the broken records and just walked across them to the bedroom. This was the beginning of the end of my drinking. Yet it would be another 20 months or so before I took the steps necessary to find sobriety and serenity.
# 10 – My Truck was Stolen 1975
I was drinking at the Oxford in downtown Missoula. I parked near the old library and walked the block to the Ox. I went back to the truck, drove around and parked in another spot. I went back to the Ox, drank some more, came out and couldn’t find the truck near the library. I walked a couple blocks to the west to the city police station and reported my truck had been stolen. I sat in the lobby about half an hour. Then the dispatcher told me the truck had been located. I asked if it was okay and if the keys were in the vehicle. She told me where it was and I walked over to it. I guess I was really lucky they didn’t book me on public drunkenness, besides the fact they let me drive away in an obviously intoxicated condition.
# 9 – How I Lost all the Buttons on my New Shirt 1973
New Year’s Eve I went out wearing a shirt I had just received for Christmas. The destination that evening was the Wonder Bar in Anaconda. It was a full house and a wild evening and I remember asking Janie Frankovich to dance. I went home and woke up the next morning to find all the buttons ripped off my new shirt. For a short while, I imagined Janie or some other young girl had ripped them off trying to tear off my shirt at the Wonder Bar. I soon enough realized I had assumed, in my drunken state, it was a western shirt and the snaps would just open if I pulled on them, instead I had ripped all the buttons off.
# 8 – Wrecked Truck, Memorial Day Weekend 1976
I took a trip to Yellowstone with my friend Cathy. We headed back towards Anaconda on Sunday morning, and found out we couldn’t buy beer due on Sunday morning due to the blue laws. It was afternoon when we got to Livingston. I gassed up the truck and went in to pay and buy some beer. Cathy went to the restroom and also bought some beer. We picked up a couple of hitchhikers, but they had the good sense to get out on Homestake Pass. At the exit for Fairmont Hot Springs, Cathy said she would like to see the hot springs before we returned home. I was tired and wanted to head straight for Anaconda and call it a day. I swerved the steering from right to left and back again as if I couldn’t decide which way to go. The truck decided. We ended up rolling twice and landing right side up. A Silver Bow Sheriffs’ deputy was driving by. He said to go into Anaconda and tell the police there what had happened. We had almost reached the Anaconda exit (with no windshield and an obviously wrecked vehicle) before the HP stopped and made us go back and clean the mess up. I had a camper that was in quite a few pieces and there were numerous beer cans around. The HP said “what is wrong with you people from Butte and Anaconda, you think you can wreck your car and just drive away.” He asked if we had been drinking. I said no and it was good enough for him.
#7 – Statistics - “Pass/ Fail”- What are the Percentages? 1975
I had to take Statistics to graduate. I took it “Pass/ Fail” figuring I could get probably get a passing grade. I had a “C” average going into the final so I proposed to the instructor that I be allowed to skip the final as I had a fifty/ fifty or better chance of doing equally well on the final and he could just give me a “Pass” as the statistics indicated I would probably pass. He said no! I did terrible on the test, so I went out that weekend and bought a bottle of Muscatel before the final was scored to drown my disapointment I lay under the Higgins Street Bridge in the late afternoon spring sun on the grass and drank the strong wine out of a brown paper sack. A young lady crossed the bridge and saw me. She asked if she could have some wine if she came down there. I said sure. The bottle was drained fairly quickly as I had had a good start already. We walked up to Stockman’s Bar to get another. She started talking to two other guys and soon we were all in a car together going up Pattee Canyon. Before long, I was so drunk and obnoxious the other two guys wanted to get rid of me. They dropped me off up the Canyon where the police soon found me and brought me back to the apartment. No charges, but I had messed myself up pretty bad. I did pass the statistics class against all odds!
#6 – Jumping into a Moving Vehicle 1972
We were cruising around a friend’s jeep in downtown Missoula on a week night and enjoying a few beers. The jeep stalled and wouldn’t start again. I suggested we push start the jeep. It started and I ran to catch up. I jumped into the rear cargo area. Unfortunately, I jumped in head first and hit my head on a tire iron. My friends had to take me to the campus health center to get some stitches. It didn’t interrupt our partying for long however.
#5 – Sleeping at the OX 1975
I was at the Ox one night feeling sorry for myself and trying to identify with the working class. I spent the evening there and ended up falling asleep in the shoe shine chair and waking up there the next morning. My contacts were still in my eyes and hurt pretty bad. I figured I couldn’t stay there any longer, so I walked the block to the Palace Hotel. There were some pretty comfortable easy chairs there and I sank into one and soon fell asleep again. It was only too soon that I was awakened by the Hotel staff telling me I could go downtown, uptown or take an out of town Greyhound, but I couldn’t stay there! Another time I partied too much and forgot to take my contacts out. When I awoke I put a spare pair in. I couldn’t figure out why my eyes were so irritated and went to see the eye doctor. It wasn’t hard for him to discover the second pair.
#4 – An Eye doctor Appointment in Missoula 1976
Having gotten a social work job in Anaconda, I was becoming well established with a regular salary and a degree of respectability. I thought I should get my eyes checked and made an appointment in Missoula for a Monday in early spring. I arranged to take the day off and planned to drive over on Friday night after work so I could spend the weekend enjoying culture in a University town. However, a fellow social worker of mine encouraged me to have just one beer at the Reno Club across the street from our office. One beer led to another and about eight thirty I decided I needed to be making my way to Missoula. I made it up to Georgetown and down the Flint Creek Pass with no problem. About ten miles north of Phillipsburg I missed a curve and went off the road. I somehow sailed over a ten foot deep ditch and landed on the railroad tracks. I tried to back up, but the truck wouldn’t move. I hiked back up to the road and started to walk towards Maxville hoping to find some help. About half an hour later someone stopped, gave me a lift back to the truck and took a look at the situation. They couldn’t figure anyway to get the truck back on the road. All four tires had popped and the rear window was out. He took me back to Phillipsburg and called a few folks to see if they could help but, to no avail. Finally he took me to the County Jail. There the Sheriff said he would help me. The Sheriff kindly let me spend the night in the jail and the next morning we went out with a wrecker to retrieve the truck. We towed it back to the ‘Burg where the Ford garage was able to repair it in a couple of weeks.
#3 – Christmas in Yellowstone 1974
I spent the summer working at Old Faithful. Several years previous, there had been a big snowstorm in August. The park was pretty nearly shut down. The staff were all sad because in a few days the season would be over and they would be going back to their homes and wouldn’t see each other again. They decided since they wouldn’t be together at Christmas time they should celebrate it early in the midst of the snowstorm. It was great fun and a tradition was born which included decorating a tree and exchanging gifts. There was great anticipation to this celebration every year and 1974 was no different. I don’t think alcohol was intended to be part of the celebration, but it was a part of almost everything I did. So I had a few drinks with my friends and before I ever got to the celebration. I had so much to drink I passed out and missed all the festivities.
#2 – A Trip to Riverton, WY 1977
My friend Mike and I decided to take a road trip to Riverton to see my high school friend Bill Sydow, and also stop in Livingston on the way home and look up a former college instructor. We left Anaconda on a Friday night and consumed a six pack by the time we got to West Yellowstone. We slept in the camper in his truck outside of town and in the morning drove into West. We bought a six pack and decided to drive through the park to get to Riverton. We had a flat tire near Canyon, changed it and threw the flat in the back of the camper. We got to Riverton and attempted to look up Bill. He didn’t answer his phone after several attempts. We were both members of the Elks so stopped in at the local club. We asked around to see if anybody there knew Bill who worked for Amoco. Someone said he had gone back to Nebraska for the weekend. We saw a sign on a local grocery that said Pearl Beer was on sale for $3.99 a case so we stopped and got two cases and headed back out on Highway 20. We took turns driving Mike’s Ford Ranger. When we were traveling through I think it must have been Thermopolis or Worland, I was driving and I hit the median between the traffic lanes. I quickly corrected and recovered without incident. It wasn’t too long later, I reached for another beer and Mike grabbed my hand and said I had, had enough. I calmly reached out with my other hand and took the beer with that hand. Mike grabbed that hand also and said no more. At that point he had both my hands, which occupied both his hands also and left nobody’s hands on the steering wheel. Needless to say we drove off the road. Again there were no major problems and we continued the journey after Mike assumed the responsibilities of driving. We made it to Billings late that evening and decided to sleep at the Pictograph Caves state park outside of town. When we woke up in the morning, we found we had another flat and since we hadn’t repaired the first flat there was no spare! Mike said he would walk into town and get it fixed. I said I would try to cook some breakfast. He came back several hours later with the repaired tire and I had cooked a bunch of eggs. We drove back to Anaconda and postponed the visit with former professor.
# 1 – Another Broken Record 1978
I had made two attempts to quit drinking at this point and been to several AA meetings. I had also gotten married during one period of sobriety and taken a promotion as social worker II in Deer Lodge with responsibility for Granite Co also. We were contemplating a move to Deer Lodge in the summer, but I was commuting during the interim. My supervisor lived in Butte and would make weekly visits to Anaconda with bi-monthly visits to Deer Lodge. It so happened that this particular day, Nancy was coming to Anaconda and I was preparing for my weekly trip to Phillipsburg. Nancy had called the day before and said I should plan to meet her for lunch at the Hofbrau west of Anaconda after a quick trip in the am to the Burg. I said sure. We met and had lunch with a pitcher or two of beer which extended into the afternoon. I called my young wife to tell her I had met Nancy for lunch and would be home later that afternoon as there really wasn’t any need to go back to Deer Lodge at that point. The hours crept by and we had a few more pitchers. I made a few more calls to my wife to tell her I would be home sooner or later. About seven or so, Nancy said she really needed to get back to Butte, but I should follow her over there and have another drink or two. We stopped at the District Office which was in the Executive Village on Front Street and at that point she realized I had had quite enough to drink. She said she needed to make a couple of calls, take care of some things and then she would drive me back to Anaconda. While she was calling in the other room, I slipped out the back of the EV and somehow drove myself to uptown Butte where a girl I knew from college lived. She was entertained for a while by my behavior. I did some Indian dances, some rock stomps and a few other jigs I knew for her. She decided eventually I was way too intoxicated to be on the highway and called a mutual friend that MaryLynn and I knew. He convinced her she should drive me back to our house in Anaconda. My wife was pretty upset by this time. She had broken a few records from my collection and they littered the floor of our living room. She had decided to break one record every half hour I didn’t come home, then upped the ante to one every fifteen minutes. When I walked in I didn’t even see the broken records and just walked across them to the bedroom. This was the beginning of the end of my drinking. Yet it would be another 20 months or so before I took the steps necessary to find sobriety and serenity.
