How Harold Quit Drinking

told by Harold Brighton to Dixie Brighton Conger (niece)

 

Uncle Harold took his family to West Yellowstone, Montana, and they stayed there some time.  He noticed how every dime he'd get, he'd run over to the bar and drink.  The kids wanted him to stay with them.  Then it dawned on him, "I'm just like my Dad." 

 

Back in Firth, Idaho, Harold was good friends with the bar tender.  Harold was his best customer.

Harold noticed, too, that the bar tender's children had nice clothes to wear, and the bar tender drove a nice car and lived in a nice house.  Uncle Harold didn't have money enough to live the same.

 

One day Harold asked the bar tender, "Do you want a drink?" 

 

He said, "Oh, no, it's to sell, not to drink."

 

Harold hesitated a minute.  Then he said, “What in the world am I?  I got to thinking that the bar tender’s kids had everything they wanted.  He was driving a big new Buick.  His wife was wearing furs and everything, and hell, I couldn't afford to buy my kids shoes, hardly, but I could afford to help him buy his.”

 

So after a little while, Walt Packard came in to Harold, and Harold told Walt, "I quit drinking."

 

"Good," he said and he went right into Grant and told Grant that Harold had quit drinking.

 

"You know, Walt, I've been around these places, and I've seen a lot of these alcoholics, and my gosh, I've never seen one quit." 

 

It went on and it went on.  People pretty much got used to me not drinking.  Grant, one day, I walked in and nobody there in the morning.  He said, "Say, Harold, will ya have a double shot?" 

 

Before, when I was drinking one morning I said, "Give me a double shot and put it on the tab."  He reached over to get the bottle and when I said tab, he put the bottle back.  

 

“Got enough on the tab," he said.  “Go in and cut a head of hair and come in and pay for it." 

 

That got me.  So, when he asked me, "Have a double shot, Harold?"  I said, “What?”  I called him everything I could think of.  I said, "Grant, the only way you'll ever get me to take another drink is to stand me on my head and pour it in my butt."

 

A friend said to Grant, Harold's quit drinking for good, and Grant said, "I think he has, too."

 

So it went on for quite awhile, for a year or two.  Do you remember Phil Harris?  He had a notable orchestra.  He was on TV, and he came to Idaho Falls  They put notices around and put a sign in Grant's window and gave him tickets to the dance.  He was trying his best to get me to drink again, you see, cause he lost his best customer.  And in the meantime, I had a few dollars in the bank, see.  And I could get my kids something they wanted and I could see it growing.  So this night he came to me and I rented part of the pool hall and he said, "Say, I got some tickets to Phil Harris orchestra.  Would you and Bertha like to come with us?"  So I asked Bertha, and she said, "Yes."  She kinda liked Melba, his wife.

 

So it came that day and he said to me, "Say, you've never gone out without having a drink or two.  And when he said that, it was like he hit me in the head--you know, what was his big idea? 

 

So I just went along with him and said, "No, I never did." 

 

And so he said, "What kid do you like?

 

I said, "I always liked the best." Oh, then, he was walking around like he was on a cloud in the pool hall.  So that night he went down and got Bertha.  I took a bath in the barber shop and got ready.  While I was shaving, he was in the pool hall, and the same furnace heated the pool hall and the barber shop. My register was on the floor and his register in the pool hall was up by the counter.  He and another fellow was talking and I never knew who the fellow was, but I could hear his voice just like I was talking to you. 

 

And I was shaving and he said, "Well, tonight's the night."

 

And this fellow said, "What?"  Tonight's the night that Harold's going to go off the wagon.”

 

“No.”

 

“What'd ya want to bet?  I only got a dollar.”

 

“I'll take the dollar!”

 

I still don't know to this day who that guy was.  I should have given him $l00 to bet. 

 

We got in the car.  Bertha said, "Harold, go get me a pack of gum."  Grant jumped out and said he'd get it.  He takes his new l936 Buick, and he was treating it just like a mother with a baby.  I knew he was going to have me take a drink, even had I not heard him talk to that guy.  We drove up about l/2 mile. 

 

He said, “Melba, open that bottle.” 

 

I passed it over and he said, "What's wrong, Harold, aren't you going to take a drink?"

 

I said “No, not now.”  He took a drink, and Melba did.  He went another two miles and he said, "Maybe you'll have a drink now."  I handed it to Bertha, and she passed it back, and he took a drink.  He said, "Well, aren't you going to have a drink?"

 

I said, "No, I don't want one yet.”

 

No, I got over it.  I didn't want any.  It'd make me mad inside to see what he was doing, what he was taking me for.  So we got up to within a little ways of the Wanda Mary and there were trees and a drive in there and he said, "My GOSH--aren't you going to have a drink?"  Then I started in on him and I called him every name I could think of.  Then he got mad, took the bottle and gurgled it down and he was getting lit up himself.

 

I was afraid to ride up with him the little ways to the dance hall.  We got him in the dance hall, and he was so lit up he went up on the stage and made a horse’s butt of himself in front of the orchestra, and they had to take him off, and he come down and set on the side in a chair, and he didn't dance.

 

After Melba said, "Well, I guess we better take him home."  So we put him in the back seat of the car, and he laid down.  We went to eat and parked on the opposite side of the street.  Nobody was on the street.  They were all at the dance, see everybody at the dance.  We went in and ordered what we wanted and when we ordered, Melba said, "I think I'll go out and see how Grant is."

 

I said, "I'll go out."  I was still seething inside.  I can't explain how a person feels in a situation like that.  He was laying there, and I called to him, I cussed him, I said, "Oh this will make you well."  I grabbed him by the hair and put it in his mouth and he gurgled it. 

 

He had to drink it, and I said, "This will make you feel better."  He threw up all over the place.  He couldn't even talk but could hear what I was saying.  I went back in and they said, "How's it going?"  Oh fine.  In about an hour she said, "I think I'll go out and see how he's doing."  I said, "I'll go out."  He brought some wine, a bottle of port wine.  He was laying there.

 

“How are you, Grant, how are you?” He mumbled.

 

“I'll give you something else to get better.”  I grabbed him by the hair again and put that wine in his mouth, and he gurgled it down and up it come and oh, talk about stink!  You could smell it across the street.

 

And I said, "Oh, you'll feel better after awhile."

 

I went back and she said, "How is he?"

I said, "Fine."

 

When we left we went over to the car and on the way over Melba said, "Oh, my gosh!"  I said, "He must have gotten sick."  You know, he wouldn't speak to me for three weeks!  A friend said to him, "I think Harold's quit drinking.”

 

He said, "I know he is."

 

He never offered me another one--nope.  He just died on the 3rd of this month.  For eight years I never touched a drink or nothing.  Then in l955 I went to the doctor with heart trouble and I was smoking then, too.  He said, "Harold, I think that with your type of heart trouble, two high balls a day would be a great help for you--one at noon and one at 5 o'clock.

 

When he said that, Bertha said, "Oh, doctor, you don't know what you're saying.”  And then she told him.  I did get a bottle, and I did take one and as soon as I took it, up it come.  Throwed it right up.

 

He said, “Try some wine.”

 

He was trying to get me to quit cigarettes.  That would be your biggest help.  I started a shot of vodka for a couple of three years, two a day, but never got the effect of it.  Then I quit smoking and I told him, “I didn't quit everything.  I started chewing snuff.”   I told the doctor and asked him what he thought of that and he said, "Well, one thing for sure, it won't hurt your lungs."

 

But I never took another cigarette, and that's what cured my heart trouble and then I took no more Vodka or medicine.  That was over 30 years ago. 

            

Elliott came up one time, and he told me he wanted to quit.  So we went fishing on the South Fork, and he had a Mercury car, and when we got back he said, "That is the best day that I have had for years and years.”

 

I said, “Let me drive back.”

 

He said, “This car has power steering, and it's hard to steer.”

 

But it drove good.  But he'd work it, and he wasn't used to that, I guess.  I said, "Heck, there's nothing wrong with this car."  But anyway, it didn't  last.  But he wanted to, but you got to just say, “No!”  You got to get mad within yourself.