Got up this morning and walked in the cold rain. My wife looked at me like I was stupid or something. It started me thinking about my time in the Wheelhouse on Elbridge, also the 19 years or so we spent next door at 206 W. Helgra.

Today makes 34 years and 6 days since I walked into the house on Elbridge and looked down to see the worn place on the floor just inside the front door. It had a good start on becoming a hole; not quite, but if I would have put all my weight on it, I probably would have had to yank my foot back out of it. It would have been a real hole then. Once someone had grown familiar, they would unconsciously step over. God, the things you remember.

I immediately turned and looked at my wife; she was waddling toward the red Blazer she drove. She sped quickly away without a glance my way. I raised my hand to stop her, but she wasn’t having it. A pregnant woman running kind of looks like the Penguin in the Batman TV show.

I went on in. 34 years and 6 days ago today.

In the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life” there’s a sign on Peter Bailey’s wall at the Bailey Building & Loan that reads, “All You Can Take With You Is That Which You’ve Given Away.” I have had that same sign on my office wall for years. A Board member gave it to me.

I used to speak of Paul Austin Saylors with some sadness for what might’ve been. I used to shoulda, coulda, woulda sometimes. I suppose it is unavoidable, truth be told. It has been 34 years now, and it is much more likely today that I will look at what miracles I have experienced. I look much more often at the wonders God has performed.

I remember telling Richard the Lionhearted that I just wouldn’t believe in something that I couldn’t see or feel in the flesh. Nope, wasn’t going to happen! He just said, “Yes, you will.” To me he seemed smug. Now, that’s a kick in the head, isn’t it?

Oh, and it did. And it has happened a lot. I have seen. I have felt. Grasped. Held onto it. In the flesh. Yes, I have. I believe in it so strongly now that I’ll tell you I know.

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the Saturday morning Early Bird Meeting and I just glanced into the kitchen, and I could see all of the items on the shelf above the restaurant grade stove. RESTAURANT GRADE is a term that does not seem to fit when I’m thinking of the old days at the Wheelhouse. We had a 100 lb. bag of rice and a 50 lb. bag of beans, some powdered eggs and powdered milk, some Quaker Oats, and that was what we called a fully stocked kitchen. During the Early Bird Meeting the kitchen guys were putting out fruit, cereal, gallons of whole milk. There were kolaches on big trays, piping hot just like the Pilsbury Doughboy himself had come to life and was about to tickle our bellies. Good smells were coming out of there!

I remember eating those powdered eggs, and some bites had the consistency of chalk. I can hear it now, “CLEAR CUT DIRECTION, YOU DUMBASS! YOU COULDN’T POUR PISS OUTA A BOOT WITH THE DIRECTIONS ON THE HEEL!” That big, tall, goony Chris Leach would come flying out of that office like a pissed off badger. “YOU DIDN’T MIX UP THEM EGGS! CAN’T FOLLOW CLEAR CUT DIRECTION!”

When we were moving into 210 W. Helgra, Ralph Russo said to me, “It might’ve been a bad idea putting the Board Room in the Wheelhouse.”

I didn’t know what he really meant, but I looked at him, shaking my head. “I think it shoulda been done a long time ago maybe,” I said. Some of the Board members had never actually been in the Wheelhouse much. But Ralph Russo’s enthusiasm was highly contagious. I remember we were all so excited. We had scrimped and saved for so long. I remember when they were talking about furniture for 210 W. Helgra and I asked if it was possible to get couches made of concrete. RESTAURANT GRADE KITCHEN? Wow!

One of those early Board Meetings, Jo Elaine Key was walking beside me on our way into the Wheelhouse. My cousin Bobby Royal – Yes, I’ll claim him now, but back then I might’ve found it difficult not to deny it – had come roaring around the corner in the Wheelhouse truck. He slammed them brakes to a screeching halt, jumped out of the truck and hollered, “DONATIONS!” Like terrified ants the Wheelheads came streaming out of the house and began lugging the boxes inside. Bobby waved at us and smiled fit to split. I looked down at Jo Elaine and she looked back up and asked, “What is wrong with him?” I answered with the same thing my first sponsor had told me was wrong with me. “A lot.” She laughed.

They got it. They understand too. That’s why they’re here. That’s why they do what they do.

I am alive today only because I stepped atop the shoulders of giants. Those men that came before me. Their lives, some of them, had been much worse than mine. They stayed sober. That meant that I could too.

Those Board members who gave so much of their hearts. Giants, every one of them. With a strong faith that I swear I could touch, that I could grasp and take hold of, just like that God idea that I had refused to believe in. And the ones who have passed on will live forever because folks like me will always speak of how they had a faith so grand and alive that it guaranteed success. It says in the Big Book, “And no later vicissitude has shaken it.” Man, what a deal.

For many years I had spoken with mothers on the phone who pleaded for us to help their sons. It sometimes felt as if someone’s face was stuck to the bottom of my shoe. It is horrible to hear a mother cry. When the old timers told me, “Why don’t you just go get a drink and put us all out of your misery,” Geez! I get it! I do!

But I’ve also watched mothers crying tears of joy as they are handing their sons a chip celebrating some milestone of sobriety, that man’s father dressed in a coat and tie out of respect. I have seen children smiling so pretty. I watch as the little girl runs happily to her father, not away from, and the father, so proud, sweeps her up and hugs her close. The little boy sitting quietly next to his daddy while the meeting is going on. Men speak today of how they “GET TO.” These young men have careers. They own homes. God said, “I will cause men to find favor with my children.” God has brought the love and respect of our fellow man to us.

So, 34 years and 6 days later I tend to think of Paul Austin Saylors, not in sadness, but as the start of something I could not have dreamed of even with my most vivid of imaginations. I’m sorry that might be what it took to beat my ego down just long enough that I decided to ask for help. But that is not on him or on God, that is on me. He lived for 5 days and that is indeed long enough to dream. Maybe Paul dreamed of this life for his daddy? Maybe he sat at the right hand of God and asked for it? I don’t know. But that is none of my business.

I remember I acted the ass and Bobby Garrett started the Magic Number. I played the educated scholar, and he made everyone start looking up words in the dictionary. And that is what I was thinking about as I walked in the rain and the cold this morning. Which brings me to my closing.

At the Wheelhouse on Elbridge they had an old, torn canvas covered Collegiate Dictionary. I say had because I have had it since we moved to 206 W. Helgra. Some took bricks or other things, I took that dictionary. Anyway, shortly after Paul’s funeral, Bobby made me look up the word “miracle.” Of course, there were several definitions having to do with religion and spirituality. There were some even to do with magic and sorcery. But the last one was the one that I have held onto the entire time that I have been a member of the largest organization on Earth that no one wants to be a member of – Alcoholics Anonymous. It simply reads, “A wonderful thing.”

This is a wonderful thing.