March 13, 2009

It's Just Nostalgia

Back to the 40s

It was some time in the year 2002 when Whiskey Bill came into the shop with a big pile of paper in his hand. “Here” he says, “is a book we need.” This “book” was a bunch of photocopies, some several generations away from the original and most of them in very bad shape. His instructions were something like, “You print and we’ll buy it.” Those were the same instructions I’d gotten 10 or 12 years earlier when I’d started printing “The Tablemate” for Whiskey Bill and his friends.
Whiskey Bill was really excited about his find and was anxious to use it at a Saturday marathon in his garage where he held meetings every week. So I tried to clean up the pages that he’d given me. Some were in such bad shape that I had to reset them, and all were crooked on their page, but on the light table I was able to line them up fairly well and get them printed straight on the page.
Later he brought in some more photocopied pages that he wanted to use with the Back to the 40’s book. These were “The Pamphlet” and “Selection From Grapevine and. . .” Whiskey Bill said that he wanted everyone who attended his meetings to know the history of AA and how well it had worked back in the early years when The Big Book was diligently studied.
With Whiskey Bill’s promotion we sold out the first printing of 500 in less than a year. He’d stop in once or twice a week, just to chat or maybe have me print some “Why I swear” cards or to pick up a stack of Tablemates which he insisted worked best if the guys stole them.
Occasionally he’d remark “What did I tell ya? As long as you print them we’d buy them.” So I’ve kept Back to the 40’s in print, and even though Whiskey Bill left us in December of 2005, his promise of, “You print them and we’ll buy them” has held firm.

Contact HQPress@att.net for ordering information.