I moved from a teetotaler home into a social drinking home. What a difference! They sat around the dining room table with an ashtray on one side and a coaster on the other while they played cards. They laughed when one of their little kids drank out of their glasses and staggered or fell on the floor and went to sleep. They drank a hot toddy for everything that ailed them. They drank to celebrate, and they drank to cry. And they firmly believed that everyone in the whole world drank or would drink, so let them drink at home and get used to alcohol. No one wanted to become an alcoholic or wanted his children to become alcoholics but it never seemed to occur to my husband's family that the only sure way to never become addicted was never to drink. My family and his never went together socially, for to them we were prudes and did not know how to have fun and to us they were a pack of drunks. Nothing separates people any more than alcohol and tobacco do.

     I tried to be sociable, but two drinks and I was either asleep or vomiting. Cigarettes to me smelled bad, tasted worse, were messy, and cost too much. I drank plain ginger ale for a while until I realized the kids would think I was drinking a high ball like the rest, so I quit. I wanted the kids to know that someone there did not drink. We must all set an example and be careful what we do, especially in front of children.

     At age eighteen, my father signed a temperance pledge at a Billy Sunday crusade and never touched alcohol. On the other hand, my father-in-law loved his drinks. He was very quiet and never appeared drunk. His son was high strung and drinking made him more so. They usually drank together and every Friday on the way home from work, they stopped at the beer garden for a drink, came home, had super, and then away they would go, from one beer garden to the other, until Sunday morning when they slept it off.

     We could never go to church as a family as I had been accustomed to, and we never did anything together on the weekends. Our son, my mother-in-law, and I had to go everywhere on our own. If we could have gone somewhere on Friday after supper and returned on Sunday afternoon, life would have been much better. On weekends our two men belonged to alcohol, and not to us.

     One of my most embarrassing experiences occurred on an Easter morning when I had made arrangements to pick up my mother and take her to church. I was all dressed up in a beautiful new outfit, drove out of the driveway, and had to stop to take the empty bottles out of the trunk. After church I was helping my mother out to the car and saw that someone had vomited out the passenger side window and that the whole side of the car was a mess. I got Mother in the car and drove away from there in a hurry. I could have cried, and needless to say, I could have killed my husband.

     The most frightening experience occurred one Saturday afternoon when I was cleaning up the dishes. I looked into the living room and saw my husband on his chair with our son on his lap with a pistol in his hand playing Russian roulette. I was afraid to go in or say anything for fear of getting shot. I stood at the sink and prayed. The gun went off, I rushed in. The bullet had gone into the baseboard. I thought I would die. You will never know what living with a drinker is like until you live with one.

     I should have left, but Sunday afternoon to Friday night he was the most wonderful man to live with that ever was, and my Bible said to leave only because of infidelity, so I stayed and prayed.

     After thirteen years of our getting nowhere, his eighteen-year-old secretary fell madly in love with him, and could not live without him. I decided I could. So, I got my teaching certificate, got a job, and our son, and I left. My son and I have had a wonderful life without alcohol.

     My ex-husband and his secretary married, and he continued to drink. He died at age 59 with cancer of the throat, and she at age 42, leaving eight children to fend for themselves.