Old Tom Was Right

The old clubhouse on Twenty-Fourth Street was a mess. Volunteers painted it, answered the phone, then went home. The place stayed filthy. Drunks slept in it at all hours, in every condition. Bill W. wrote: "Plainly enough we needed a caretaker." So they went after Tom, a retired fireman with a pension — no leverage, they figured. They offered him a nice room. Seven days a week. Make the coffee, walk out the bad ones, sweep the place. Tom listened to the whole pitch and said what you would say: what you guys want is a janitor. They agreed that they did. Then Tom asked whether they were going to pay him anything, and A.A. — young, frightened, and very sure of itself — said no, because "that would make you a professional. This is Alcoholics Anonymous. We must not mix money with spirituality." Tom's reply is one of the most useful sentences in our literature: "no money, no work. I'm doing my Twelfth Step work free, but if you're going to have me here as a janitor, you're going to pay me, see?" There it is — the whole Tradition, from a man with a broom, years before anyone wrote it down. He would carry the message for nothing, forever. He would not sweep the floor for nothing. Bill's verdict, written long after they had haggled the old man down to the last cent: "But old Tom was right. In order for A.A. to function, we had to hire some help."