Sober 25 years since 1979 at age 28, a good ole country boy, Buckwheat grew up no lights, dirt floor, eight kids poor. Even the school bathrooms were outdoors.
"I am kin to everybody in N.E. Georgia."
Many of his kin are in AA. They have meetings rather than reunions.
His mother was a nut, strict, part Choctaw, and his dad had a drinking problem that turned at times to rage.
His grandmother would have spells and they would have to get her out of the pear tree. She died in the state mental hospital in Milledgeville, GA.
He was the first in the family to graduate high school.
One of the real characters in AA in North Atlanta (which is saying a lot), Buckwheat has been very active in AA.
He describes himself as living on borrowed time - a low down, bottom drunk.
He killed two people in a head on crash in a drunken stupor but he served no time because of politics and the one that lived refused to press charges. He had to deal with that in his ninth step.
His wife Ann died five years before this talk.
He worked 39 years at Lockheed - retired three years before this.