Bill's Story (Continued)
 
J: About the same time that summer
Ebby, who came from a good family, was kind of down on his luck. Booze had
Ebby. Ebby had got in a little difficulty that summer too. It seems that
Ebby was driving his father's car down the road. His father had passed ...
and his family had given him one of the cars. He was driving this car down
the road. It seems like he ran off the road, and ran into a lady's house.
Even more importantly he actually ran into the kitchen of the lady's
house. The lady was in the kitchen. Ebby got out of the car right in the
lady's kitchen, and said, Madam, how about a cup of coffee. (laughter) It
seemed like some narrow minded judge didn't get the humor out of it, and
wanted to put Ebby in the nut house. (See "Pass It On", pp.
114-115)
Rowland, who we'll talk about a little bit later, who had been to Dr. Carl
Jung. Dr. Carl Jung had told him about the spiritual experience, had told
him about the solution, in Zurich, Switzerland. He heard about Ebby. He
had come back and got in the Oxford Groups, and used their program, their
planned program of action, to find the solution that Dr. Carl Jung told
him about. So they had this information. The judge turned (Ebby over to
Rowland). Rowland took Ebby to his home and kept him for a couple of
weeks. Then he took him in to New York City to Sam Shoemaker's mission
which was at that time really the headquarters there of the Oxford Groups
movement. There were some Oxford Groupers that hung around the mission,
and took care of the people that came in there at night, ten or twelve of
them.
Ebby had about three months sobriety. He was one of the disciples in the
Oxford Group there at the mission who worked with people at night. He had
been on Wall Street before, too, during the day. (He) decided to go down
on Wall Street. When he got down there, some of the people told him about
Bill, and what kind of shape he was in. Ebby said, I believe I'll call him
and see if he's interested in this new thing I've found through the Oxford
Groups. Bill had the problem. On (page) eight, he had taken Step One. (p.
8, par. 2) And that's all he had. But Ebby brought him a simple religious
idea, which is Step Two, and a practical program of action, (p. 9, par. 7)
which became Steps Three through Twelve, the recovery Steps. Ebby brought
him the other two pieces of the puzzle.
I've always said, when Ebby walked into the kitchen, it was where the
problem found the solution, and the planned program of recovery. He said:
(p. 9, par. 8 p. 10, par. 1) 'He had come to pass his experience along to
me--if (top of p. 10) I cared to have it. I was shocked, but interested. Certainly I was interested. I had to be, for I was
hopeless.'
See he had taken Step One. (p. 10, par 2) 'He talked for hours. Childhood
memories rose before me. I could almost hear the sound of the preacher's
voice as I sat, on still Sundays, way over there on the hillside; there
was that proffered temperance pledge I never signed; my grandfather's good natured contempt of some church folk and their doings;
his insistence that the spheres really had their music; but his denial of
the preacher's right to tell him how he must listen; his fearlessness as
he spoke of these things just before he died; these recollections welled
up from the pact. They made me swallow hard.'
|
Quick Links
|
