Sunday, October 4, 2009

A meeting in every state & my experience in Akron, Ohio

I have had a few blog postings I have been meaning to write on varied topics, but I will enter them separately as I can! The internet availability has proven to be a bit of an obstacle, but I intend to be able to get internet somewhere, somehow!! The first week has actually gone really quickly. I was hoping to get to a meeting in every state. To be really honest, this is not going to be possible. Our new proposal is to get to a meeting in every state that we stay at least one night in! Honesty...progress, not perfection....

We got to a meeting in Lincoln (NE), Iowa City (IA), Princeton (IL), and Akron (OH). Our meetings have been amazing and I could not have been happier to meet people all over the place. We got to Akron on Saturday. I got goose bumps just being within 30 minutes of Akron, the birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous. The emotions are incredible. Just pulling into Akron and locating Ardmore was amazing. The street is still cobblestone and the home is a nice corner property. We parked the RV and walked up 12 steps (is this a coincidence? I think not) to 855 Ardmore. We walked in and a friendly volunteer (who happened to be a Friend of Bill W.’s) said, “Welcome Home”….Wow!! As I moved into one of the rooms, I can't explain how amazing it was to see an artifact from history in front of me...an artifact used by the typist to complete the Big Book's manuscript....I got to see the actual typewriter used to type the text for our Big Book and the stories that were in the back (of course it wasn't really termed the Big Book back during the manuscript production). The foundation apparently archived enough documents to get the house next door and a lot of them are housed right next to Dr. Bob’s home. We went up stairs and saw some of Dr. Bob’s secret hiding places for his stashes of booze….very ingenious doctor (ha!). He used one of the rooms for his surrender room and a newer copy of the big book was open to the third step prayer, though the room reportedly was where he really originally decided he was done with the whole drinking business. I guess I still had to be a tourist (in awe) because we put our chips down near the book and took a picture. This was such an amazing experience. We then went and saw a reprint of the original Saturday Evening Post article by Jack Alexander (that’s mentioned in the Big Book). Very intense. I felt that I was stepping into Bill’s story….I felt I needed more of Bill’s story and really wanted to go the meeting held at the old Hotel Mayflower, but not before I had Jeff take a picture of me on the 9th step in front of Dr. Bob’s home.

With Jeff’s expert detective work, we knew the Hotel Mayflower was no longer operational in its original form-it was now housing for senior residents and those with special needs…or something. When we went into the city of Akron and found this place, it was evidently sad and depressing. This large building, this old antique hotel, apparently very special back in the day, is now more or less dilapidated and neglected, lacking much of the security for its residents that I was told it had. The economy of Akron is definitely not what it used to be (as I can imagine). When we stepped inside, we got to the lobby and saw “The Phone” and the Church Directory!! WOW! Even though the bar is no longer there, I still felt like I was back in 1935 and I felt the emotions that possibly every other AA feels when standing right in front of a piece of critical history. I try not to get into the “what if’s” that I constantly asked my sponsor(s) in the first years of my sobriety (“what if Bill just went to the bar anyway?”, “what if Dr. Bob kicked him out and wouldn’t even give him 15 minutes”). What if what if what if????Shut up shut up shut up. We aren’t really in the “why” business anymore, right?

Then we went to the meeting at 6pm on Saturday at the Mayflower. Jeff knew this was not the safest part of town. I think I was probably naïve, even though I saw that the dilapidated architecture closely mirrored the apparent saddened economical state of the city. The meeting, regardless of its surroundings was awesome…its always great to be in a meeting of AA anywhere in the country. Welcome home!

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