June 12, 2004

Ambiance

Few places in my experience can even approach the ambiance of a hotel bar. There’s the piano player in the corner playing one ballad after another from the Great American Songbook. And there’s the gentle murmur of lonely people talking, sharing, homeless, seeking warmth, seeking to still their spirits with one more for the road.

It was such a place some seventy years ago that drew Bill W, a New York stock broker, past its doors over and over, yearning, until finally stopping at the lobby’s church directory to phone a strange parson in a strange land who led him to Bob S, an Akron, Ohio, surgeon. The rest is history, the rest is Alcoholics Anonymous.

Been there in that hotel and done that bar and all the places like it. Called a friend twenty-five years ago last night. The rest is history one day at a time, the rest is “My name is Lane D, and I’m an alcoholic.” It’s a new ambiance. Thanks be to God.

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