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IN THE OCTOBER 1986 GRAPEVINE, a report on the 27^th International Conference of Young People in AA contained an apocryphal story about an AA old-timer who happened to be a Texas Ranger. The Ranger, it was told, “sat by himself in the back of the AA meeting room behind a pair of dark sunglasses, with his silver spurs propped up on the table in front of him, and his hundred-dollar cowboy hat tipped back onto his sunburned forehead.

“Well, one day a young fellow showed up at the meeting in pretty bad shape. He was cut and bleeding, and what clothes he had left reeked of alcohol. Some of the older members of the group quickly got to their feet and ushered the ragged newcomer to the front of the room where they began to tell him what AA was all about. After a pretty good earful, the newcomer took a skeptical look around him.

“‘Maybe I’m too young for all this,’ he said. ‘You mean I have to stay away from the first drink, come to these meetings, and never have any more fun?’

“From the back of the room the Texas Ranger’s spurs clanked to the floor like a gunshot. He got up from his seat and a path cleared in front of him as he sidled up to the newcomer. The Ranger bent down, lifted up his sunglasses, and looked straight into the newcomer’s bloodshot eyes.

“‘Son,’ he asked, ‘just how much damned fun can you stand?’”

The Foundation

“How will I know if I’ve really hit my bottom?” I asked at my home group. “When you stop digging,” they told me. The bottom is only the bottom until we find AA. The day we begin working the Steps, the bottom becomes the foundation. By taking action and following the program, we begin to build our lives again.

Bob G.

Chelsea, Michigan

November 2002