My Name Is--Rose

I BEGAN to qualify for AA membership when I was only eight. My step-daddy was a bootlegger; my mother, may God bless her, was one of the sweetest, most religious women in the world. She had been widowed while still very young and she had four children to raise. She remarried. It wasn't until after the wedding that she found out the man she had married was a bootlegger. He made a good home for us though, and it wasn't his fault I became a customer of his so soon. I'd been watching him hide some booze under the house one day. As soon as he was out of sight, I crawled under after it. I don't remember crawling out except that somehow I ended up on the floor of my sister's bedroom. My mother and stepfather found me there; I was tried and convicted. I got out of it by promising not to do it again.