HERE’S TO YOUR HEALTH
This week’s Here’s To Your Health is a continuation of Bud’s story: My A.A. birthday is April 21, 1971, and when a big guy in my home group called me a “spring baby”, I wanted to punch him out.
My parents left the sovereign state of Texas when I was three years old and moved to the panhandle of New Mexico and I vividly remember that place. Everybody had outdoor facilities and ours was about 100 yards from the house to escape the smell. When I was new to A.A. my younger brother embarrassed me in front of friends when he asked, “Do you remember the night you burned down our two-holed privy?” My friends asked how that happened, and I said, “Well, it was a dark, cold, scary night and I was certain the boogie man was out there somewhere and was going to get me. I stole a few wood matches from the kitchen stove, posted my younger brother outside the door as lookout, crumpled up a few pages of the Sears & Roebuck catalog (toilet paper), and built a small fire on the floor next to the inside wall. I was sitting there taking care of business when the darned heater got away from me. And, up in flames the outhouse went!”
I did well in school because I was fascinated by indoor facilities. When we finished our business we turned and flushed it and were amazed to see it swirl around and disappear; I wondered, “where does it go?” At home the stuff piled up and smelled until we dug a new hole, moved the privy and covered up the crap.
The schoolhouse had electric lights too that beat the heck out of kerosene lamps. In my family, if you made it to the eighth grade and graduated, that was it; you were finished with schooling.
Until me, my family never had a child graduate from high school, but then again, they never had a child so fascinated by indoor plumbing as me and so, I became the first sibling to graduate from high school.
In my hometown, if your father was a Dr., the son became one, if the dad was a dentist, the son became one, if the dad was a lawyer, the son became one, and so I was expected to become a drunken carpenter. Jesus was a carpenter too, but my Dad wasn’t anything like him, although he always used his name to make a point. I kept going to school after high school and after several more years of formal education, I proved that if you like indoor plumbing well enough you can end up with a couple of college degrees.
But, my A.A. sponsor wasn’t impressed by me degrees because he said, “A rectal thermometer has a lot of degrees too?” I became a Catholic at age four days, nobody asked me if I wanted to be one, they just sprinkled me with water and made me one for life. But the Baptists converted me at age eleven, they weren’t supposed to drink alcohol, smoke or chew and they didn’t recognize the Pope, but they never recognized each other in the liquor store either? The Baptists had me sign a pledge swearing I wouldn’t do what most of my friends did and therefore I wasn’t a Baptist very long before I went back to being Catholic.
The so called, “Korean Police Action,” started and the Army sent me a draft notice. I thought since I had all those degrees I wouldn’t have to be drafted, but the Army thought different and so, I instead went to the Air Force recruiter who was so impressed by my degrees that six months later I became an officer, and a gentleman, and then shipped-off to California. I celebrated New Year’s Eve at the officer’s club that year and everybody was drinking and kissing each other. A colonel’s wife kissed me, she was 32, he was 42, and I thought what she needed was a young 22 year old officer like me? I soon learned that when you’re a lieutenant, the worst thing that can happen to you is to get caught making out with the colonel’s wife. To be continued…
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