My Sponsor—Sweet Pickle

At my inaugural meeting by way of the Portland Intergroup AA Hot Line, on Easter morning 1982, Norm was the first AA I met. He was tall, bald, with a very round head, and a goofy smile, and his face wore the lines of his 56 years. He usually dressed in a three-piece suit, bow tie, crowned with a cowboy hat sporting a pheasant’s feather in the hatband, and he wore richly tanned and polished Ostrich skin cowboy boots. His smile 1 was infectious, and his gratitude for what AA had given him was written all over his face. I wanted everything he had, so naturally I asked him to be my sponsor.