SYNOPSIS OF THE BAD DAYS...

Okay! When I said earlier about the good with the bad. This is some of the bad. I will call this another lesson in life. God,I am tired of them.
About 1962 in L.A., sometime after my divorce, I was arrested on a DUI charge. It was over a disagreement with 2 police officers as to where to park my car on a street. They didn’t like my spot and I did. They won. Yeah, I had been drinking. Pleaded guilty and paid a fine. However, I spent the night in a drunk tank and trust me, you never want to wake up in one of them. At the time, you think that is probably the bottom of the barrel. Trust me again, that is not the bottom. I was arrested on 4 more occasions over the next 2 or so years. Every time for drinking connected offenses. The next time was in L.A. again, once in Rock Island, Ill., once in Davenport, Iowa and again in Tulsa, OK.
The one in Davenport was the only one that involved someone else directly and is the one I regret the most. I had just started working at a steel shop in Davenport and found that often on Fridays after work the boss would break out the booze and beer for everybody. It was a ritual. Bad one, albeit. They would sit around and play cards or checkers and party up and this was Friday. I could never pass up a party so I stayed and, of course, drank way too much. So much that the next morning I woke up in another drunk tank. I didn’t even remember leaving the shop. The accident I caused involving another car with a mother and daughter. I was told I went up the wrong way on a one-way street. Before I go any further it was not that bad an accident and no one was hurt, fortunately. Just the autos but all the horrible possibilities were there. When I look back I wonder why they let me get into my car in my condition and what about the other workers. They surely were too drunk to drive, also. In today’s world this would not happen. Companies are acutely aware of the liabilities. But back then it was not uncommon to break out the booze on a Friday night after work. My wages were garnisheed after I had returned to work which made me angry at the time. They were laughing about it all at work. I wound up quitting on the spot. I don’t think anyone really cared. Looking back, I deserved what I got at the very least. I could have killed someone as drunk as I was. I just left town for another beginning, again.
This drinking problem never started with my divorce, though it didn’t help. I think it started when I was in my teens. You really can’t blame a drinking problem on any one thing or person or circumstance. It really came down to me to look at myself and to listen to others trying to tell me that something is not right. Perhaps it could be the environment while growing up and in your teens and you are living in a drinking family situation but when you are grown it becomes your problem. In my case it was something that started like that and grew over 20 or 30 years. Just a little at a time. Ever so slowly. The Navy was good for me in so many ways but it was so easy to party when you are 17 to 21 years old and away from home. When I got out it should have stopped but it didn’t. I was still at the party.
In Rock Island, one night, I had been drinking at several clubs by myself. I had a hotel room in Davenport across the river but it was late and I was very sleepy and decided to crawl into a car’s back seat and sleep a little. Just an unlocked car I found on the main street. The next thing I remember was waking up in jail, again. This time for 2 weeks. Again, I left town.
This went on and off for a couple years until I wound up in Denver, Colorado by bus from Tulsa. I found a hotel on the corner of Broadway Blvd and 13th street. called the Howard Hotel. I’ve written earlier about the stint at the hotel so I won’t repeat except to say I worked there at the desk for free room and 1 dollar an hour. It was a good deal for me. A few months of that and I decided to find some work which I did in Edgewater, Colorado at a Iron Shop. Mostly building and installing Ornamental Iron fencing and stairways. I liked it a lot but the old Friday night routine was still there. Drinking and eating at the Edgewater Inn which usually extended into the week-ends and other bars.
After about 7 months I saw a help wanted ad in the paper for welders and fitters in Grand Junction, Colorado which sounded good. I called them and was told I had a job if I showed up so I gave notice and left on a bus within a week.
I found an apartment with a girl that I met on the bus which worked out good for a couple weeks. The job was a good opportunity for me and the pay was great. However, this was the beginning of the spiral to the bottom for me. There was this neighborhood bar just across the alley from my apartment. I began spending most every evening in there. After a while I branched out to other bars. Grand Junction back then was a lot smaller town. For the sake of brevity I will move along. I really began to acknowledge that I couldn’t go on like this. I was going nowhere.
I found a small building that was the meeting room for Alcoholics Anonymous about five blocks away which was about halfway to a bar I had been hanging out at. I started going to the meetings and found new friends to be around. We would spend evenings going to coffee shops and just talking about our problems. I was still working and making money. Things were looking up. A few weeks had gone by and, as the old saying goes, I went out to celebrate. I started to drink more and more often. I would still try to go to meetings occasionally but it wasn’t helping.
I finally found out what my ‘bottom’ was. I found myself going to a bar at six in the morning ‘when it opened instead of work. I had a friend that would pick me up every morning but towards the end he would pound on the door and the last time he did I answered and said I couldn’t make it. He never came back and I never went to work again. I remember one night when I was to drunk to make it home and I fell asleep in a business’s doorway. I woke up at daylight and made it back to my room. I stayed home without leaving for about four days and then one afternoon I went to the AA building. I told some one there that I was afraid to leave. And I didn’t. I ate there and slept there on a couch and that was against all the rules. But they let me stay and about the 3rd or 4th day we had a meeting and they all decided to give me a bus ticket to Denver and made an appointment for me at Fort Logan Alcoholics Section. I thanked them all and the next morning boarded the bus. I was to go to Fort Logan the next morning and report at 9:00 AM. It was the one of the longest nights of my life. There was a bar right below the hotel room I had found. But I made it thru that night by not leaving the room.
The next morning I found a bus to Fort Logan. I spent 3 weeks in treatment there. I met an Artist who helped me an awful lot. He got me re-interested in painting which I continue to this day. Among the others who helped me was a self imposed ‘hermit’ who would abandon himself and his wife to a cabin in the mountains and drink until the ambulance would bring him to Fort Logan. I met a gay who wasn’t sure he was gay but everyone else knew he was. Really a pleasant person to talk to. There were group meetings and one-on-one meetings most every day. It was singularly the best thing that ever could happen to me at that time in my life. I was allowed to stay the 3rd week which was not in the treatment plan but I needed to have a place to live. One of the female staff was really the one who helped me back on my feet. She drove me to an interview for an ad I saw in the paper at a place called Jeffco Steel Fabricators. I got the job and started 2 days later. She also helped me find a trailer to rent in a trailer park on a hill above the shop. I was there for 3 years as a welder then a fitter and eventually become the Shop Inspector. I think that was the beginning of my future. There were still a few tough times but I could handle them a lot differently. I don’t have enough words to express what Fort Logan and the people there did for me. It was truly a turning point in my life.