Lizbeth Pérez-Cázares of the Adrian District Library is pictured with Joel Walkowski, author of “Honolulu Blues,” at Walkowski’s Sept. 26 presentation at the library. (Photo by Renee Lapham Collins)

ADRIAN — Joel Walkowski’s father didn’t have much to give him.

He had little money, lived in what his son describes as a hoarder’s shack in rural Indiana, and carried the effects of severe childhood trauma. Walkowski said his father struggled to show him how to make his way in the world.

But he did give him one thing.

“The one thing he did have to give me was the Detroit Lions,” Walkowski said. “The team that never won.”

The line drew a laugh Sept. 26 from the small audience gathered in the basement of the Adrian District Library for Walkowski’s talk about his book, “Honolulu Blues: How Loving a Losing Football Team Created a Winning Man.”

Walkowski is funny — disarmingly so — even when talking about addiction, grief and the death of his father. Despite the title, “Honolulu Blues” isn’t really a book about football. It is about what happens when disappointment is built into something you love and you keep showing up anyway.

By 2017 and 2018, Walkowski said he had come to expect the same cycle from the Lions: raised hopes, a late collapse, anger and disappointment. Because he was in recovery, he began planning for those emotions. After 1 p.m. games, he would meet friends to play basketball at 5.

“It gave me a reason not to drink,” he said.

Eventually, he realized the Lions were teaching him how to anticipate disappointment, build safeguards around himself and turn toward community instead of addiction.

“I realized that I looked at the Lions a certain way and I looked at them in the way that they would serve me most,” he said. “It was that process that I started to look at my dad the same way.”

His father, he said, was never going to offer career advice or conventional life lessons.

“He talked to me about banjos, leather and the Lions, and I needed to make that enough.”

Walkowski is a recovering addict.

“My dad was an addict. My mom was an addict. My parents’ parents were addicts,” he said. “I like to think that my family tree has a car wrapped around it.”

He chose Self-Management and Recovery Training, or SMART, which asks participants to examine their lives, choices and values. Eventually, recovery gave him another goal.

“I thought the coolest thing I could do would be to write a book sober,” Walkowski said.

He began writing longhand in journals. After leaving one on top of his car, he found pages scattered along the road — including some in a sewer.

He reached down after them “acting like Pennywise,” the sewer-dwelling clown from Stephen King’s “It.”

“That’s hard because I have the same haircut,” the bald Walkowski joked.

At the same time, his father was nearing the end of his life. Walkowski moved to Indiana to care for him and kept writing.

The father who had given him books by Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson became one of his first readers.

“It became the last thing we worked on together,” Walkowski said.

And then something unexpected happened.

“The Lions got good.”

Walkowski eventually moved his father into an assisted living facility in Taylor and moved in with him. The book helped carry him through a period he had long feared.

“When everything that I ever feared happened to me, I didn’t crumble,” he said.

His father had taken him to Lions games at the Pontiac Silverdome beginning when he was 6. They arrived early, stayed for autographs and collected returnable cans until they had enough for a pepperoni pizza. His father’s rule was simple: Never leave a game early.

Late in the 2023 season, Walkowski finally did, after getting word during a game that his father was on life support.

His father survived the crisis. When he was alert again, one of the first things he wanted to know was what the playoff bracket looked like.

As the Lions advanced through the playoffs, Walkowski twice wanted to stay with his father rather than attend the games.

Both times, his father sent him.

“Tell me how it feels to be there,” he said.

At halftime of the NFC Championship game in San Francisco, with Detroit leading by 17 points, Journey played “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” in the stadium.

Walkowski let himself believe.

“The Lions are going to the Super Bowl,” he remembered thinking.

They weren’t.

Detroit lost, and Walkowski returned devastated. For Lions fans, the consolation had always been the same: There’s always next year.

But this time there wouldn’t be another season for his father.

“It was a pretty good season,” his father told him.

He died about a week later.

Walkowski had a custom Lions jersey made for him with the number 1 and the words “BEFORE I DIE” across the nameplate.

“He got pretty close,” Walkowski said. “He got 75 percent of a storybook ending, which is more than most people get.”

Walkowski sent his father off wearing the jersey.

“Almost getting there — well, it’s a pretty good journey after all,” he said.

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Detroit Lions give rise to author’s powerful recovery story