Archives for May 2015

The Best Summer

May 28, 2015 By Larry Adamson Leave a Comment

when I was a kid…school was out and it could be and in many ways was some of the best times of my life….summer time

LA

From the Movie “Where The Boys Are”

Just some thoughts:

THE BEST SUMMER

What’s the best summer you ever had?

Another Memorial Day has passed. When I was a kid growing up in Indiana, Memorial Day would mark the beginning of summer for most of us. School was now out and a whole new world would be opening up to us. Oh, those summer teenage years.

My wife and I spent the past month of February in Florida, something we have been doing now for the past few years. She loves Florida, especially the ocean, and I think some of this love for the beach goes back to when she was growing up. As a teenager she often spent part of her summers with a cousin who lived in Florida. When I say the words “Linger Lodge” to her it makes her smile. A certain oldies song will come on and again she smiles and says, “That reminds me of Linger Lodge.” She almost breaks into a dance. There are even some names that come to mind with the mention of this place. “Boy, he was a good dancer.” She has some special memories of certain ones and certain times spent there at this teenage hangout of the late 1950s.

I once heard the late wise philosopher from Georgia, Lewis Gizzard say:

“We were all sixteen and just finished our junior year in high school. My mother must have experienced a momentary mental lapse and allowed me and three friends to have her 1958 blue and white Pontiac to drive from Moreland, Georgia, to Daytona Beach, Florida.What do teenagers do in the late ‘50s at the beach? They look for girls and rock-n’-roll bands. When a child is eight years old and taken to the beach, he goes into the ocean and builds sand castles, and tries to toss a ball in a clown’s mouth. But when you are sixteen or seventeen, in keepin’ with the scriptures, you put away childish things.”

Lewis said he met Kippy when the song, “Do You Love Me” was playing. He said they danced a fast dance, and then, thanks to the heavens above, they played a Johnny Mathis song, and they slow-danced. He kissed her; “A real kiss,” he said.

He went on to say that he and Kippy saw each other every night for that week. “We were free, we were young, and it was the most fun I think I ever had!”

What he was describing happened nearly forty years previous, but he still remembered. He said now he was too old for such beach trips and the music is much too loud. But the memories of Kippy and that time are not gone. Never.

Kippy, well, He says, “We promised to write, but you know about summer romances; today Kippy could be a grandmother. Time moves like molasses when you are young, but it rages like a river when you’re grown.”

I once sat in the audience at the Polynesian Hotel in Hawaii listening to Don Ho and caught the last line of a song he was singing. “I’ll remember you… long after summer.” It’s true. There probably are lot of things we remember………… “long after summer.”

I suppose most every one of us has had a “Kippy” in our past. Do you?

I hope the thought of a past summer brings you a smile. Hum…You ever wonder how your “Kippy” is doing today? Or if she ever wondered “how you were doing today?”

May 29, 2014
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Tomorrow Is Memorial Day

May 24, 2015 By Larry Adamson Leave a Comment

You may have read this before but thought it was appropriate to post again. LA

Just some thoughts:

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow,
between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.”

Tomorrow is the day our country calls Memorial Day. As a young boy, I remember it also being called Decoration Day. Why? One reason was it was a day when Americans went to their cemeteries to put flowers on the graves, in memory of our loved ones.

I have two special memories of this day. From early childhood, I can remember my family visiting the cemetery, and mom and dad would walk among the graves, often placing flowers and stopping, pausing to tell a story or share a memory about the one whose grave they were placing flowers on. It was there I often learned about certain family members I had not known, but learned of their importance and significance to our family. Dad would bend down and pull weeds or remove dirt, sometimes without saying a word. The second thing I remember about that day is “the race, the Indianapolis 500.” It would be on the radio, within earshot most of the day; Sid Collins, the voice of the 500.”

There are twenty-two American military cemeteries in eight different countries, where over 125,000 American soldiers are resting, and another 94,000 names are on the Walls of the Missing. I personally have visited eight of those cemeteries on my trips to Europe.

In the closing scene of the movie, Saving Private Ryan, he, Private Ryan, is kneeling down at the grave of one of the soldiers that lost his life in “saving” his. Ryan turns to his wife and says, “I hope I was worthy.”

I hope on this day and many more Memorial Days to come that we honor and remember the price that was paid for us to be able to visit cemeteries and listen to radios. I hope we Americans can try and live worthy of the price it cost for us to be able to do such.

May 30, 2011
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Baby, What Do You Want Me To Do?

May 22, 2015 By Larry Adamson Leave a Comment

Below is something I wrote back in 2011. Often we never know the pain and difficulties others are experiencing in their life.

LA

http://www.yodaslair.com/dumboozle/wlac/wlacdex.html

Just some thoughts:

“BABY, WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?”

Earlier this evening my wife, along with our good friends, “Cohort” and his wife, Phyllis, went to see the play “Memphis,” at the theater for the Performing Arts in downtown Nashville.

The theme of the play is about a disc jockey and the music of that time, the 1950s’. For you young folks, the term, disc jockey, applied to a radio personality who was sitting live in a studio talking and playing records. In our home area Mike and I well remembered a local DJ named J.A. on station WBOW. J.A. ( Jim Austin) was a piece of work.

The play took me back to growing up in Indiana in the late 50s’. About ten p.m., especially on Friday and Saturday nights, we all gathered at some local car-hop-drive-in place. We backed our cars in, turn the car off, but not the radio. All the cars along the row would tune their radios to the same station. Hey, early stereo! From the tallest building in the south at that time, the L&C building in Nashville, Tennessee, 1510 on your dial (AM of course) we would hear Hoss Allen or Big Hugh Baby broadcasting from WLAC. They would be playin’ those sounds we loved and selling that White Rose Petroleum Jelly. Each night about that time this station would increase its power and their signal went into about thirty-five states, all in the mid-west, up the east coast and into parts of the west. One time when I visited Cohort in Nashville, he and I walked into the studio while Hoss was live on the air; he even talked a bit with us. It was something like straight out of American Graffiti and Wolfman Jack.

For thousands of white kids it was our first exposure to black culture, or what was then called, “Race” music; we loved it and still do. Today I still love to hear Jimmy Reed with songs like, “Baby, What Do You Want Me To Do,” or “Honest I do.” Sitting not far from me right now in my record collection is every album Jimmy made on the Vee-Jay label.

http://www.biography.com/people/jimmy-reed-40889

Jimmy Reed kind of typified many of the black artists of his time. He was born poor in rural Mississippi and in 1955 he moved from the south and took a job in a meat packing factory in Gary, Indiana. None of us had any idea of his life and the issues he had faced. We just knew we loved his music. Alcohol and other matters were issues for him. So bad, in fact, that his sister would often have him arrested the night before a show to keep him in ja
il so he would be fit to perform the following day. He stayed on the music scene for only a short while and his fans never knew that in the 60s’ he was institutionalized in a Veteran’s hospital for three years. He was almost twenty years younger than I currently am now when he passed at age fifty.

Isn’t that often the case, we hear another’s “Music,” but we know nothing about their “Pain.”

That happens far too often in life; we enjoy another’s gift, but seldom listen or think past their talent and know nothing of their needs.

November 15, 2011
Keep on
Larry Adamson

Love Hurts

May 19, 2015 By Larry Adamson Leave a Comment

Below is something I wrote in 2010. Love can and does hurt.

Just some thoughts:

LOVE HURTS

I loved the Everly Brothers, still do.

“Dream, Dream,” may be one of the best all time songs from the rock- n’- roll era. Phil and Don, the Everly Brothers. Just hearing that song today can send me into an emotional funk. Saw them along with Simon and Garfunkel a few years back when they appeared here in Nashville. Also, saw them in other appearances during my high school, rock-n’- roll days.

One of them lives about twenty-five miles south of where I do. I have driven by his house. I would love to meet, sit and talk with him. They had a song called “Love Hurts,” somewhat of a hit for them many years ago. A lot of artists have recorded it over the years. Emmylou Harris and many others. The song tells the facts of how “love can hurt.” Anyone who has been in love and in particular lost at love will not argue that fact.

In recent years I have come to really appreciate C.S .Lewis and his works. Last year I even took a college course on the Life and Times of C.S. Lewis. Lewis once wrote:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart
will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to
make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies, and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is…Hell.

Love hurts. And when you are hurt while truly in love—it really hurts—sometimes a lasting hurt.

Love hurts, doesn’t it. That line does not need a question mark.

November 19, 2010
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Sometimes You Get More Than You Ask For

May 16, 2015 By Larry Adamson Leave a Comment

Below is something I wrote in October of 2012. As said “sometimes one can get more information that ask for.” LA

Just some thoughts:

SOMETIMES YOU GET MORE THAN YOU ASK FOR

You know, very seldom today can one get more for their money than what is expected, but, sometimes, one can get more information than what is expected.

“Whose red convertible Mustang is that sitting out there?” She had just stepped into the doorway of my coffee place and asked that question. “Whose car is this out here?” My first thought was, “Oh no, what’s happened now? Did someone back into it?”

The 1965 Mustang convertible she was asking about was mine. Often, I drive it to my coffee place, top down, some Elvis playing and my mind wandering. I was sitting not far from the door and I answered, “It’s mine.” She then walked over to my table and began talking to me. “That’s a pretty car you have. What year is it? Six or an eight, stick or automatic?” She seemed pretty knowledgeable about cars, for a lady, sorry ladies. She went to the counter to get her coffee and, as I prepared to leave, she, along with the fella she was with, asked if they could look further at my car. “Sure.” They both walked around the car, she talking and he saying very little. From their conversation, I could tell the car was from the time of her high school days. “Can we take a picture of the car?” she asked. Once again, “Sure.” Both got in the car, and I took a picture of them. “Take one of just me, please,” she said. She moved in behind the wheel and began smiling as I snapped her picture.”The radio, oh, look, the old push-button type.” “Boy, boy do I remember this,” she added.

She got out of the car, thanked me for my time and for allowing them to look and reminisce. She then walked a few feet toward her car. She stopped, paused, pointed back at the old car, a slight smile seemed to come to her lips, and, turning her head a bit, she said, “You know, years ago on an old gravel road in south Georgia, I lost something in the backseat of a car just exactly like that one—and it wasn’t my billfold.” With that, she and the fella locked hands and walked to their car. Me, well, I just stood there for a bit, thinking, “Did she say what I think she said?”

Sometimes, one can be given more information than asked for, but sometimes the information it can be rather insightful.

October 5, 2012
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Encourage It

May 11, 2015 By Larry Adamson Leave a Comment

Just some thoughts:

In fact if you see something being done positively, better yet, praise it.

We had a 9:50 tee time. It was cloudy, overcast and spitting a bit of rain. With ten minutes before our tee time no one from the group I was playing with that day had showed. Hey I am at a golf course I’ve played as a single before so I slip on a windbreaker and off we went.

As I came to the 5th tee I thought “oh no.” In front of me was a foursome. A foursome of girls. It was a college match going on in front of me. In fact I can now see four groups in front of me. I had zipped around the first four holes and now I am thinking “this will take forever.” Over the years I have worked various golf events. In recent years especially high school and college play. The pace of play for too many high school and college play is slow. No not slow, terribly slow. I have seen women give birth quicker, faster than some high school and college players play. I am not a very patient person (wife will confirm) and despise slow play on a golf course. I waited a minute for the four in front of me to hit their approach shots to the green and then I hit.

Well I was in for a surprise. For the next thirteen holes I followed these young ladies. They were in a golf match representing their schools. Two college teams. I was amazed at these young ladies. Each of them knew the etiquette of the game, they knew and were ready when it was their time to play. On the green they would mark their ball, read their putt and it did not take them an eternity to do such. I found myself enjoying my play behind them. When I finished play and took my clubs to my car I noticed I had played 18 holes in right at three hours. I said three hours. Unheard of and I had done it following a college golf match.

I was so impressed that before leaving the course that day I went and found the college coach and expressed my amazement and congratulations upon the play of the young ladies from the two schools. Later that night as I thought about the play earlier that day I sat down wrote the two coaches and the athletic directors at the respective schools a note thanking them and congratulating them on their girls play. I ask that they “please pass along my note to your team members of how impressed I was with their knowledge and pace of play.”

As I age I have come to the conclusion that when you see something positive occurring regardless of what it might be, praise it. We all know there certainly is enough of the other occurring far too often today in our society. Thank you ladies you were a treat to follow and watch.

“It is usually best to be generous with praise,
but cautions with criticism.”

April 3, 2015
Keep on,
Larry Adamon

To All The Girls

May 8, 2015 By Larry Adamson Leave a Comment

Just some thoughts:

It was a beautiful early summer morning as I pulled the cover off my old Corvette and backed out of our garage; one of those mornings when God and man had left the earth to nature and the animals.

My coffee shop opens at five thirty a.m. and that was where I was headed. As I drove from my neighborhood I slipped in a Willie Nelson cassette. Yes, I’m still using cassettes. As I drove along the lyrics to his first song began to sink in. In a way it is a love song, “To all the girls I’ve loved before who traveled in and out my door.” Do you ever think about the important girls in your life?

As I drove along the song made of think of all the “girls” who have been a part of my life. Now before you jump to conclusions I’m not just talking about girl friends, although they should have their just due, but maybe another time. I thought about a lady who came out onto her back porch and called out to her niece and two nephews, “Popsicles, popsicles are ready.” Whatever we were doing the three of us stopped and ran to the porch for popsicles. Earlier in the day she made kool-aid and poured it into a small tray to put in the “ice box” for freezing; now they were ready. I thought about another aunt who often took her two small children along with me, her nephew, to Oakley’s Drug Store after church. She let the three of us sit on stools at the counter and she let us order cherry and chocolate cokes. On some Sunday’s she would give each of us money to purchase a small gift. I still remember a very small plastic red and yellow Captain Video car she once bought for me.

I thought about another lady who was like an older sister / mother type to me during my teenage and college years. Those college years were not easy for me and she had no way of knowing how her words helped me. There were numerous times I sat at their kitchen table and she and her husband gave me counsel whether it was sought or not. Generally it was she. I remember she once said to me, “You’re problem is you are lookin’ for a girl with grandma’s morals and Marilyn Monroe’s looks.” I also remember her husband’s quip about her statement, “Sounds like a pretty good combination to me.”

This Sunday is Mother’s day, a time set aside to especially honor our mothers, our wives and also our mother-in-laws. I cannot imagine what my life would be like had it not been for my mother and my wife. And our daughters and granddaughters probably don’t have a clue the influence they also have upon us.

“To all the girls I’ve loved before
Who traveled in and out my door
I’m glad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all the girls I’ve loved before”

Most of us have a number of women who have played a vital role in our lives and some of them are still doing so today. A prayer of thanks might be in order for “all the girls we have loved” as sometimes we fail to properly express our love and gratitude as we should have more often.

Who are the special girls in your life?

May 5, 2015
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Am I That Easy To Forget?

May 6, 2015 By Larry Adamson Leave a Comment

Below is something I wrote in November 14, 2014 from a remembered experienced.

LA

Just some thoughts:

                               AM I THAT EASY TO FORGET?

Over early morning coffee these thought were prompted by an email I received the previous evening and Ray Price.

Am I that easy to forget? I once was asked that question.

No not someone asking me if they were that easy to forget but another party asking that question as I sat with them, “Do you really think I am that easy to forget?” “What we once had is that easy to forget?”

We were sitting talking and he was coming out of a “break-up.” They had gone together for a long time and in his mind they were serious. He had a lot of questions. I just sat and listened and felt like I was of little help. There were a lot of “whys” and “ifs” in his thoughts and conversation.

This morning on my way to my coffee place I slipped in an old Ray Price cd. Love Ray Price. The second song into the cd raised that question. I bet that is a question that may be almost as old as man himself. This song brought back the memory from years past of my friend, our conversation and his painful experience. I still don’t have an answer. I guess in some cases yes it is that easy for us to be forgotten. Then maybe in other cases not quite so easy.

                                      “Am I That Easy To Forget”

                               They say you’ve found somebody new
                                 But that won’t stop my lovin’ you
                                      I just can’t let you walk away
                                      Forget the love I had for you

                                Guess I could find somebody, too
                                  But I don’t want no one but you
                                  How could you leave without regret
                                          Am I that easy to forget

                                    Before you leave be sure you find
                                You want his love much more than mine
                                 ‘Cause I’ll just say we’ve never met
                                            If I’m that easy to forget

There is still a touch of sadness as I think back to that day and that question.

Have you ever thought about how easy or hard it might be for someone to remember or…….to forget you?

November 15, 2014
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Sam Cooke & What A Dollar Once Would Buy

May 4, 2015 By Larry Adamson Leave a Comment

Just some thoughts:

Late one recent night as I was driving home from one of my music encounters I slipped in a Sam Cooke cd. Sadly Cooke was killed in 1964 so many of you probably don’t know of Cooke. You should have. I wish Hollywood would do a movie on his life. Denzil Washington would be perfect to play this role. Perfect.

If Cooke were still living today he would be eighty-four years old. Does not seem possible. He was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1931 but shortly thereafter his family moved to Chicago. If you are a product of the late 50s’ and early 60s’ you remember such songs Cooke made famous like “You Send Me,” “Wonderful World,” “Chain Gang,” “Twistin’ The Night Away,” “Only Sixteen,” and many others. Near the end of his life he would record what became for many a song to be closely associated with the Civil Rights movement, “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

He got his start at the young age of seventeen singing lead with the famous gospel group the “Soul Stirrers.” He performed with them for six years before going out on his own. Often on a Sunday morning as my wife and I make our way to church I will slip in an old cd of Cooke and this group. It is a great way to begin a Sunday morning. They do amazing black soul gospel music.

Why does Cooke still seem to have such a hold on me? I have often wondered that myself. I saw Cooke perform once in my late teens. I still remember things about him. He did not give you the usual feelings of a rock and roller. It was one of those many packaged rock-n’-roll shows so popular at the time that would come through your town and play the local baseball park, armory or local small arena. Often there were as many as eight or nine acts on the bill. But there was just something different about Cooke. I remember the crease in his pants, his shined black loafers with tassels. How his white shirt sleeves they came just the right length past his coat sleeve. A silk handkerchief in his coat pocket, and I noticed he was wearing cuff links. The way he held the mike and slowly moved around the stage. His stage presences was different, he was class.

Now what does the one dollar have to do with Cooke? When I was growing up in Indiana during my high school and college days,(late 50s’/early 60s’) at the bottom of Allendale Hill on highway 41 there was a restaurant called the Terrace Inn. I can remember many a cold winter night date ending up there. I also remember when a dollar would get you and your date two cokes, an order of fries with a quarter left over. With that quarter you could get five plays on the juke box. Can you imagine a date for a dollar?

That quarter would give me five plays of Sam Cooke. The last play. Oh, that would always be his hit, “I Love You For Sentimental Reasons.” Still to this day when I hear that song I think back to those days. That was a dollar well spent. Yes, well spent. You got any one dollar memories? Well maybe you will need to allow a bit for inflation but any similar such memories? I would surely hope so.

You know a lot of great things in life to be remembered don’t really have to cost that much.

April 20, 2015
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Sam Cooke & What A Dollar Once Would Buy

May 4, 2015 By Larry Adamson Leave a Comment