"Long Island" Pete B. entered AA in 1969, he shares the importance of love and service to the newcomer.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Un-Edited)
This is March or February 25th, 2018. My name is Mary G. And I'm representing the Archives Committee of Rochester, New York. And this is Jim Stevens.
He's also part of this interview. Today we are interviewing Pete B. So Pete, we're gonna begin with when and where did you sober up and get started in the day? Well, it was about eight o'clock on December 16th, 1969. Having tried to sneak out of the house, my wife was standing there ready to throw me out.
And so she insisted I do something about my drinking or I had to go. So I called, we looked up on the phone book and we called the National Council on Alcoholism. And I got a phone number of a guy.
And so I meditated for a long while what I was gonna do with this. Then I called him and he said, well, why don't you come over? And so I lived in Rockville Center, Long Island. And he was in Freeport, Long Island, which was nine miles away.
And he said, I'll see you at nine o'clock. So I went to the address he gave me and it was a hospital. But since it was a hospital and I wasn't sick, I had no desire to go in.
So I went away and went to the diner and made four phone calls. The first three phone calls were ex-customers of mine who drank the way I did, drank martinis all day long every day. They're all still alive.
They're all still at the same phone numbers, but nobody was in. So I called the guy again. He's a crotchety old guy.
And he said, well, where are you? And I told him, he said, why don't you come over? It's very difficult to save one's life over the telephone. And his first question when I sat down, he said, why are you here? And I told him what had happened the night before that I'd picked a fight with my 11-year-old son and my wife and my oldest son had thrown me out of the house. And he said, well, would you consider your life what was unmanageable at that moment in time? And I said, yes.
And then he started to tell me his story. As I know it now, I thought my wife had called him and told him my story, but every time he got to a critical point in his story, he'd say, did you do that? And I'd say, yes. And he said, was your life unmanageable? And I said, yeah.
He said, do you wanna do something about it? I said, yeah, because the wife is waiting to find out what I'm gonna do. And so he said, go home and don't drink. And I'll have somebody call you tonight.
And so this is the beginning of where and how. At 5.30, the phone rang. You can tell this story better than I can.
And it went like this. Hi, my name is John. I understand you have a problem with alcohol.
Are you drinking? And I said, no. He said, good. I'll pick you up at 8.30 and he'll know.
Meetings on Long Island in those days were nine o'clock. That was my beginning. Was that typical? Sorry to interrupt you, but was that typical at that time? Yes.
That they'd call and then the next thing you know, they're picking you up. Yes. And taking you home.
They never, in those days, they never asked anybody to meet them because 90% of them would not get there. And they knew I wouldn't get there. And so at 8.30, he picked me up.
And we went to our first A.A. meeting. And I've been coming ever since. So was this your first, so do you remember your first meeting in Rochester then? My first meeting in Rochester was in 1979.
I came to be here permanently and I was in the Holiday Inn. And the first night I came, I made a phone call. And I got a guy on the phone by the name of Whiskey Bill.
And he said, I'll pick you up. And he took me to the meeting in Henrietta, Guardian Angels. From that point on, he did not leave me alone, ever.
I mean, by that, he took me where I needed to go to show me where all the meetings were, whether they were in Rochester, Syracuse, or Buffalo, or wherever we were going, because I had nothing to do, so, okay. Was he your sponsor? No, it was just the call I made and he took care of me while getting things settled in to make sure that I knew where things were and so on like that. Made you feel welcome.
Yeah. Yeah. So other than Whiskey Bill, who were some of the important people in your early sobriety in Rochester? Well, there was, what the heck, I wrote his name down.
Roy, Roy M. Oh. I ended up being, early on, he asked me to be his sponsor. And we had a lot of rough times together.
Tell us about Roy M. Yeah. Tell us about him. Well, he was a very, very strong, opinionated, one-way guy, his way, whatever it was, whether it was good, bad, or indifferent.
We started, Whiskey Bill and I started the meeting on Vicks Park B on Wednesday night, the step meeting. Oh, okay. And Roy, as my sponsee, was part of that meeting.
And we had constructed along the way of the lines of the Long Island step meetings, not the ones here. And Roy couldn't wait to get in enough people in the group to change it. And then we had a party of a ways.
What was, how was the format different at that meeting than what was normal here? In Long Island? Yeah, you said you wanted to start a meeting that was like the Long Island? The Long Island meetings, step meetings, we would sit around and we would read the step paragraph by paragraph, each person reading it. And then we would discuss it when we got done reading it. And the reason that each person did it is so that everybody was involved.
We had one gentleman who was illiterate, he hardly could read. And we would always, when we looked around the room and saw, we counted off the paragraphs to see which one he was gonna get, hoping it wouldn't be the longest. No.
But you know something? At the end of the day, I knew more about what he said than anybody else. Because you know, you're mouthing the words with them, you're trying to help them and so on like that. You're really listening.
So that was that style. Here they just wanted to not do that, they just wanted to say, read the headline of the step and then go forward and just have a general conversation. And that was not a Long Island style.
What did you think of the, Jim and I were talking about big book meetings. How was the big book treated or handled in the early AA meetings that you remember? Was it? The big book was the big book, okay? We didn't use the 12 and 12 a lot. We stayed with the big book.
You have to understand the structure of the meetings down there. Can I go there? Oh, sure. Each, is that too hot? Are you too warm? I'm fine.
It's part of AA history. Each group had two meetings a week. One meeting was a speaker's meeting and the other group was a step meeting.
And it was a closed meeting. Most of my meetings were closed meetings. Other, the speaker's meetings were for anybody.
Designed to attract people in. Then had some questions whether they would be nurses or whether they'd be students. And so they would come and they were sitting in the back of the room and they would listen.
And those meetings, there were always three speakers from outside groups. It was very sophisticated. Every quarter, the Nassau County groups would all go to one high school gym.
And we'd all, all of us would set up little tables with calendars and what our speaker's days were available. And so they would, we'd go around and we'd pick where we were gonna go. It's done that way in Boston too.
Yeah. Yeah. So, that's the kind of speaker's meetings we had.
We rarely had any of our own people speak in the speaker's meetings. So how did that differ when you got here? How was the Big Book scene? Oh, was it kind of deified or was it? Well, the Big Book, it's all according to where you were, what meeting you were in. The men's group was always strict, basic.
AA from the Big Book and the 12 and 12. We talked about it at the meetings a lot. Other groups you go to, and it's very superficial.
It's old. The language is old. When you say old, what do you mean? The language.
A lot of the younger people don't want to read it because they don't understand some of the language. I see what you're saying. They're uncomfortable with the old language, right? And so the Big Book studies around here, or the Big Book meetings around here, I've not found very enlightening.
I used to love to go to the home group here in Rochester. And that was a great meeting. They had a lot of good speakers.
You could just sit and relax. You didn't have to think of what you were going to say. You could hear what you needed to hear.
You had people who were having fun. They enjoyed the sobriety. Can you describe the home group for people who will hear this, who did not? This was a Friday night group at what is now known as Allen's Creek Church.
And it was a big, big... Cafeteria, that's it. Cafeteria type of thing. It had a place where they had donuts and coffee.
They sat up for a couple hundred people and usually had close to that. And they had a lot of people. The people that ran it were fun people.
Some nights they would, if there were holidays, they sometimes like on Halloween and stuff like that, they would be dressed up and stuff like that. So it was a fun, it was taking the serious, not taking the seriousness out of sobriety, but it was lighting up the people who were having desperate times and had a chance to laugh and enjoy the sobriety. And then what I call the locust group came about and destroyed the group.
Do you know what I call the locust group? Can I say that? I think we're trying to avoid that, yeah. So who were some of the other old timers when you first got sober in Rochester area or when you arrived here, you were about 10 years sober? Bill Cross, Bill C, Ann L, Carl. Mm-hmm, Carl S. John G, who turned out to be my sponsor.
Did you know Frank D? Frank D. And it was a big meeting on Thursday night over in St. Jerome, which was another great meeting. And there's a lot of good people in there. That's where Ann L was and that's where Bill was and something like that.
It's hard for me to remember. Ed G was a very good friend of mine. We went to a lot of meetings on the West Side.
Henrietta, we went out to, used to go out to Mumford a lot. Had a lot of good friends in Mumford. Do you find that people traveled around a lot and got carried around a lot by old timers and friends and sponsors more so than now? Yes.
No, it's, I think unfortunately it's become such a clique thing that if you're not part of a little clique, then you're not part of their environment. They may go to a meeting and be at the same meeting with you, but you can't become part of that group. And there's too much of that in the Rochester area from my point of view.
I understand that in one group, they've done away with the traditions. They won't read the traditions. And I find that disquieting because without the traditions, there's no way.
So did you, who's the oldest living member that you know? Probably you. John. John, yeah.
And did you have a home group back then? A home group? Did we talk about that? That's the Tuesday Night Men's. Tuesday Night Men's. It was over in Penfield at the time.
Right. And it went through the sequence of events and spreading away when the smoking problem became an issue. Was it there in the meeting, the building where all the meetings were on Tuesday night in Penfield? Yeah.
Yeah, like a Coliseum type of seating and so on like that. Right, where the noon meeting was after it moved out of the storefront. So in the early days, or to your memory, how did AA treat newcomers? 13-steppers, constant slippers? Yeah, in Long Island, which I can talk to, if you walked into a closed meeting and said you were an alcoholic, you were immediately brought in and accepted.
We had a function. I try to institute that here in Rochester. The greeter was taught how to greet.
Special greeting type of approach. When you grabbed the hand to shake the hand, if it was clammy, there was something going on with the person, whether they were new or whether they had issues. And it was, my whole group then was the dual co-op.
And so on one side of the greeter would be sitting three ladies. And on the other side would be sitting three guys. So if a newcomer or a person from out of town came, they were automatically met.
And then if they were new, if it was a male, I would turn around and introduce them to the three people and then they would take them in tow. The same with the women. That's beautiful.
We do that in the home group now, my home group. Which is still the men's group? Yeah, we do that now. Because what drives me crazy, is when I look around and I see a face I don't know, sitting in the middle of the room, all by themselves.
With that deer in the headlight look. And nobody's talking to him. So we don't want that to happen in our home group.
Not in AA anymore. That's one of the reasons we have anywhere from 70 to 90 to 100 guys a night. Because they're all welcome, no matter who they are.
Do you want to take over? So, one of the questions that Mary asked was, relates to what Mary asked is, what about people who had issues outside of their alcoholism? Well, when people came into our home group, let's say it was a closed meeting, and they came in, and they wanted an alcoholist. We would let them stay, but they would sit at the back of the room, and we would ask them. Quite often what we would get would be overreaders anonymous.
Back in 69? Yeah. But their sponsors would tell them if they couldn't get to a meeting, to get to an AA meeting. And we would welcome them, but ask them not to say anything.
Mm-hmm. But that never worked. Yeah, right.
So, at the open meetings, the speakers' meetings, everybody was welcome to sit in. We never had a problem with anybody. The problems we did have, if there was some women or some men, both of them at the time were equal, they would come in, and they would be looking for companionship.
We would very casually go over and talk to the person. If it was a male, we'd talk to it. If it was a female, the ladies would talk to it, and tell her what the meeting, this is a meeting of all synonymouses.
And if you would like to stay and listen, that would be fine. But we would always put them in their place, which doesn't happen here. Doesn't happen particularly now.
Yeah. I've been to a number of meetings where there's been issues, and they don't want to do anything about it, especially at Allen's Creek. What about people with drug problems in addition to alcoholism? Other problems than alcohol? No, alcohol and problems with drugs.
It's so popular these days. We didn't have very much of that. We had a lot more of medical stuff.
You mean like mental illness or? Yeah, that plus the people would be drinking rem and things like that, and that was loaded with alcohol, and we would help people understand that that's part of what you need to watch out for. One lady, she tried everything to stay sober, and she couldn't. And one night she was coughing, and one of the ladies said to her, what are you doing about that coughing? She says, I'm taking rem.
What is rem? Rem is a cough medicine that has 60% alcohol. Oh. And so she was drinking alcohol, and she didn't realize she was doing that.
Does that answer your question? Yeah, that's it. We had a lot of those type of issues, like Listerine and things like that. If you could understand that in 1969 in Long Island, there was very little to do with the rehab service, okay? Chitchat did exist somewhere in Never Never Land.
So we would, if you were new, and most people without a rehab, most people walking in off the street, been a male, we would take you immediately to over to the local hospital where we had a connection, and get you a B12 shot. And then you'd spend three days there. So you're coming out, and then we'd pick you up.
We had a lot, not a lot, but we had a number of collapses, and fits and something like that, and the people would go in again. Did you introduce the program to them while they were in the hospital? Or did you just let them detox? No, no, we went, we would always visit with them. The whole thing about newcomers in the old time is we'd go over and sit with them.
We didn't leave people alone like they do today. We didn't. I mean, if my sponsor hadn't picked me up every night for a year, I wouldn't be here.
So where was the central office in Rochester when you came here, do you recall? No. I don't think it had anything to do with it. I didn't come in contact with it.
Didn't go down there at all? Do you remember who was in charge of it? Well, yeah, Paul. Was Paul in 79, yeah. And his wife.
Right, right. I have a painting by his wife here. She was quite a painter, you know.
She still is. Yeah. Yeah.
So what kinds of special occasions were going on when you came into AA in Rochester? What kinds of things, picnics, banquets? What was, what were the social? If you want to talk about Long Island versus Rochester, I'll be glad to tell you. Sure, go ahead. Our home groups in Long Island, well, here's the way it worked.
Every home group on an anniversary would have a party. And it would always be a dance. And it would be listed in the monthly thing where they were going.
And that became a Saturday night ritual for people to get together and go off to Beth's Place and go to a dance and go over here. We had, I think, 700 people at our anniversary every year. And we would bring all our food and we'd supply all the food.
And we'd have a meeting and we'd have a raffle and we'd have a dance. And I remember that first dance, the first time I went there as a sober person to assist putting the thing together, watching that night, women dancing on the table. And guys on the corner building castles to the sky with cans of soda.
Everything they used to do, drinking, they were all doing the same thing, but they were just having a better time. And I came to Rochester and Roy M. took us to a New Year's party, the last and only one I've ever been to in Rochester. It was downstairs somewhere on the low ceiling and a lot of smoke and stuff like that.
My first wife, Betty, after a while, she said, we got to go because I can't breathe. So that was the only one I've been to here. Outside of an occasional get-together, we had a lot of get-togethers.
And when I got sober in the first year and a half, two years of my sobriety, it was 21 of us in that two-year bracket. Last time I knew, 20 of us were sober. But we would travel together.
We would have parties together. We'd have a Fourth of July. We would have whatever excuse we could have.
We would have a party. Did you go to any of the picnics here in Rochester? Picnics, yes. I've been to a couple too.
I've been the one over where Nora has hers and stuff like that, but that's the only one I've been to. But not the ones that were organized by the central office? No. About the conventions.
Have you been to the convention? I went to the first convention. Oh, you did? Yes. And I said I'd never go back because it was a big eagle trip.
And they had a lot of brand new people dressed in tuxedos. And they couldn't afford it, but they had them on. Betty and I did not have a good time.
The next time and all the other time I went, there's one Mary Jean invited me to go to the convention. She had a free ticket. When we got there, the ticket wasn't free.
I had to pay for it. It was her way of getting a date out of you, right? She was taking me out. She was asking me out on a date.
Yeah. It was probably worth paying for, right? Yeah. That's the only time I've been involved with the convention.
I spoke at the convention a couple of times, old-timers things. So what contributions did you make to the growth of the fellowship in Rochester and the program in Rochester? You started the step meeting on Wednesday nights at Pitt Park. We were also instrumental.
The academy group was across the street in those days. Remember? Downstairs, those little windows and the smoke. So one night we were at a meeting.
The men's group had broken up and split and because of the smokers, the non-smokers went one way and the smokers went another way. You know that, right? Yes, I remember that. We were at the Commerce Conservatory over here on Penfield Road.
You know what I'm talking? Had to go through a bar to get to the meeting. We were in there one night and one of the high-level members of AA was talking about the need for them to move, the academy group. So Whiskey Bill said, well, look,