Back to the Future

Even after the wonderful Sunday my wife and I had on the banks of the Mississippi River, one of my first thoughts this morning after waking before sunrise (not by choice) was how much I still miss Los Angeles. I love the beauty of nature, but I love a city more. Sitting beside the Mississippi yesterday reminded me of the canoe/camping trips I'd taken as a boy on the Tennessee River near Chattanooga, Tennessee. I went to a summer camp for six weeks in each of four summers, and that was one of our activities. I was as much an outdoor kid as any. But somehow over the years, I fell in love with the idea of a city, and every visit to Los Angeles only confirmed what I felt.

So, when I moved to L. A. in 1987, I felt at home. Of course, when my wife and I decided to leave Florida, we could've gone other places. But as I obliquely mentioned in an earlier blog, the deciding factor for us was the quality of the Alcoholics Anonymous program as we saw it in the city on a visit six years earlier. Because we have a daily reprieve from our disease, we knew that it was important for us to be in a place where our recovery program was strong. It was strong in Los Angeles and still is. As for anonymity, I break no traditions in revealing my own membership in A. A. My wife allows me to identify her as a recovering drunk, too.

Just after we arrived in our new home, I returned to a place where we had attended meetings during our 1981 visit, the Radford A. A. Clubhouse on Radford Avenue, adjacent to the CBS Studio in, of all places, Studio City, California. I soon discovered a Monday night Men's Stag meeting at Radford, which I attended each week for years after. What I found in this gathering was a fellowship of men which I hadn't felt since the Marine Corps. The Men's Stag at Radford was a sometimes racous, sometimes somber meeting of men who wanted to recover. There were laughter, tears, and sharing with one another at surprisingly deep levels, and there was that wonderful feeling of belonging, of family.


The Radford Clubhouse has since been evicted from the old location because some of our members couldn't respect the neighbors sufficiently. Their noise and other infractions caused the city to force us to leave after people living nearby complained, and even with free legal help from one of our members, it was a lost cause. There is a new Radford Clubhouse on Ventura Blvd. in Studio City. It's nice but doesn't have the history, the feel I used to get just walking into the old place. And there is a Monday night Men's Stag in the new place, but the bulk of the men who used to populate the old meeting now meet in a church in Sherman Oaks, which I attended regularly before I moved to Minnesota. I miss it mightily, and even though it's not what we once enjoyed, it's still the best meeting in town.

Now you know. My wife and I are recovering alcoholics. It's been many, many years since I was an active drunk, my wife, too. Today I'm especially grateful to A. A. for always being there for me to use, participate in, and occasionally, do some good outside myself. And when one of us goes to a strange town, he or she automatically has a temporary "home" to go to. Last weekend, my wife and I attended the Gopher State Roundup, a huge gathering of members and friends from all over Minnesota and nearby Wisconsin. One of the speakers we heard share his story was from Covina, California, just outside Los Angeles. It was almost like being truly home again.