Chapter One
Alcoholism and isolation
1925-1950

1925

Lois W. had a secret motive when she and her husband, Bill, left New York City in 1925 for a year as “motorcycle hobos.” Bill wanted to discover investment opportunities by visiting companies across the country and learning about them first‑hand. Lois wrote:

My reasons for wishing to take the time off were quite different. Although I thought Bill’s stock theories were sensible, I wanted to get him away from New York, with bars (saloons they were called then) on many corners, and away from his buddies, both of which I considered contributed greatly to his excessive drinking. A year in the open, which we both loved, would give me a chance to straighten him out.¹

Lois believed she could change Bill by changing his environment and removing him from the bad influence of certain friends. She had been married to him for seven years. She was 34 years old. Her expectations were unrealistic, as several incidents on the motorcycle trip showed.

One weekend, they were camping out in the country—far from the saloons, drinking buddies, and other negative influences of the city. However, Bill had supplied himself with enough liquor for the weekend. Lois did not admit that her plan to straighten Bill out had failed, at least for that weekend. Instead, she herself got drunk—in an attempt to teach Bill a lesson. She wrote:

As there was no one to see me “get potted,” I thought it was a splendid opportunity to hold a mirror up to him and to show him what a fool a person appears when drunk.

However, the moment was not auspicious after all, for Bill thought it a great game, and encouraged me to drink more and more until I was so sick I couldn’t hold up my head. In the morning, he had only a little hangover—mine was excruciating, and all for nothing.²

Another incident on the motorcycle trip highlighted the contrast between Lois’s expectations and the reality of Bill’s uncontrollable compulsion to drink.

As we were about to cross the international border from Canada to the United States, we stopped at the entrance, because Bill said he wanted to get some cigarettes. This was nonsense, as cigarettes were more expensive in Canada—but liquor was cheaper. I could do nothing but wait and wait, hour after hour, parked on the bridge plaza, with no car keys or money, since Bill, who had been sober for some time, had them with him. I had no idea where he had gone, but finally started out on foot to find him. It was getting dark and the area was full of saloons. I searched every one of them until, at last I found him, hardly able to navigate—and the money practically gone!³

Nearly 50 years later, in the film, Lois’s Story (1971), Lois recalled that day. There was still hurt and pain in her voice as she blinked to hold back her tears and maintain her composure on camera.⁴

Another woman might not have stood there waiting for so long, before trying to find her husband. Another woman might not have stayed so long in such a relationship, after such hurtful neglect. However painful this incident might have been, in all, Lois still considered the motorcycle trip to have been an improvement over what she would have experienced with Bill had they stayed in New York City. “The trip was a partial success from my standpoint … because it slowed down Bill’s drinking temporarily,” she wrote nearly 50 years later.⁵

Lois had been inclined to see the trip as having been a partial success because at that time she had not yet let go of her belief that Bill’s drinking was at least somewhat manageable—by her. She saw the trip in a hopeful light, but she based her hope on the unrealistic expectation that she could eventually straighten out Bill’s life—or at least improve it a bit. She had not yet accepted that she was powerless over alcohol.