Friday Evening, August 15, 2008

Hi Y'all, I'm Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkk!

Wow. So much has happened in our lives the past two and a half weeks. We all know what happened to most of you, but I've been on hiatus. I've enjoyed visiting your blogs and leaving comments. So I do not need to go back over any of that. Suffice it to say we have all survived and are still on the blogosphere. And we are all still sober. Now that's the shared blessing.

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Today, Mary Christine was talking about baking pies and it reminded me of when I had a summer job between my junior and senior high school years during the summer of 1958. My Mother had just come home from her stint in the Texas Prison System in Huntsville - Goree Women's Prison. We got a small apartment and it was a block from my summer job that I had gotten through a friend of my grandpa. I was the dishwasher. The owner was this huge man, about 6"6" and weighed about 450. BIG. He was a kind gentle soul but I was scared of him. He never gave me reason, I just was. I worked 6 days a week and we were closed on Sundays.

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About three weeks into the job, he sold to these two sisters. The one that ran everything was Mae. She was a hoot and she really liked me. Her sister was kind of cool, but a total mess. At 16 even I knew this. There were four of us in the kitchen: the cook - a big black woman who was funny as hell; the pie baker who was a divorcee who made the best pies; another part time cook; and me, the lowly dishwasher.

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The pie lady came in at 7 AM and began the pie making. She always made 3 each of chocolate, pineapple cream, banana cream, and coconut cream meringue pies. I was in hog heaven. I came in at nine and she had saved the four pots for me to lick. I usually arrived about 8:30 to get the lickings, put them on a plate, get a cup of coffee and chow down. It was equivalent to a very large piece of pie sans meringue. Then I went to work. About the time I got the breakfast dishes done, and all the pots and pans done, the lunch rush occurred and I did not leave the damned ole dishpan until about 2 PM. Mae would come back, tell me to get what I wanted for lunch and pie of choice. Then she and I would have lunch with the pie lady and just have a fun time. Don't remember much about what we talked about, except I always enjoyed the time with them.

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Summer ended and I was off to school. We moved back out into the Aldine School District and I finished my Senior Year. It was a very fun year, too quickly gone, and then I was out into the world to become an instant Alcoholic that started on my first job that started on my 18th birthday, 08-03-1959 and ended when I had my last drink on January 19, 1992. The first day of sobriety was January 20, 1992 and I did my first meeting on Wednesday, January 22, 1992 . I was told to keep coming back, and I have And January 20 1992 is my one and only sobriety date. It just don't get much better than that.

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Today I am Grateful for:

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My Higher Power, God.

My Sobriety.

Mamie, my little schnauzer.

My sponsor.

Continued sobriety.

Serenity.

My friends.

Memories.

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Y'all be pretty now, ya heah.