Archives for July 2015

Happy 50th Anniversary Barbara!
1965-2015

Few pictures of the past…

Just some thoughts:
                       
WHAT A DAY YESTERDAY WAS

I’d just stopped by Publix supermarket.

A couple days previous I had stopped by and made arrangements with the bakery to prepare a cake for me. A cake, chocolate, Barb’s favorite. I think chocolate must be a favorite of most all women. That’s been my experience. It would be a 50th wedding anniversary cake. I was picking it up as the plans were for the next evening Barb and I along with another couple to have dinner out and then come back to our house for desert and coffee.

Just as I sat the cake down in the passenger’s seat and turned the ignition on in the car an Alan Jackson song came on from the car cd player. I had been playing his music. I smiled and thought how appropriate. Here I am picking up a cake for our 50th wedding anniversary  and the timing of this song.

“What A Day Yesterday Was” 

Looking through these old photographs
Don’t they bring good memories back
Some of them make us laugh
And some make us cry
I’m glad we’ve kept all of these souvenirs

Look at how happy we were
Pictures don’t lie
Here’s one of us with you calm and cool
But look at me acting a fool
And here’s one of us on the ferris wheel
At the fair
Hey, haven’t we had some fun
The best may be yet to come
We may have a hundred years
Still left to share
But….  

If forever should end today
And there’s no tomorrow for us
What a day yesterday was

Let’s close this book of photograph
And let’s turn out the lights
And love the moment
As if it were the last
And…

If forever should end today
And there’s no tomorrow for us
What a day yesterday was

Yes what a “day” yesterday  it has been…what a fifty years. Thank you Barbara.

July 25, 1965–July 25, 2015

July 22. 2015
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Below is something I wrote in July of 2014. Yes the picture is a post card of the actual Henri’s that I reference. This July 25, 2015 will be our 50th wedding anniversary. 

LA

Just some thoughts:
 
PICK-UP LINES
 
What’s the best pick-up line you have ever heard?
 
I was having coffee this past week with one of my coffee place friends and he shared a great story with me. He was in college at Vanderbilt and played on the basketball team; in fact he was a very good player. He had been a member of the Indiana high school all-star team, played four years at Vanderbilt and he later played professional basketball.
 
One day he was walking to class when he felt a tug, what he described as more like a grab, on his shoulder. Someone then spun him around and said to him, “If you would learn how to go to your left more you would score more.” The party said nothing more to him and quickly went on her way. Much to his surprise, the party who made the evaluations of his basketball skills was a young co-ed who was also attending Vanderbilt. I think one would have to say that was a pretty clever line. Was it truly a player evaluation or a “Hey, I’ve noticed who you are” statement?
 
On a hot summer night in 1962 my good friend, Cohort, and I were driving up and down the strip in our Indiana hometown. If you have ever seen the movie “American Graffiti,” that was exactly the scene. We pulled into our usual restaurant-car hop place, Henri’s, out on East Wabash in my friend’s 1956 Chevy convertible. Yes, the top was down. Across from where we parked was a car with two young ladies. We had seen them earlier that evening as we drove the strip. My friend Mike backed his car into the parking spot and then he said to me, “Okay Cohort, you take the one drivin’, I’ll take the blond.”  

We got out of the car and started walking across the parking lot. On the way we intercepted two car hops who were on skates. I kid you not, yes, roller skates. They did that back then. We took their order pads and pencils and walked to the girl’s car. By then the two girls had begun to take some notice of us. Their car windows were down so I walked up to the driver’s side of the car, the one my friend assigned to me, and I said, “Uh, may I take your order?”
 
Well evidently we both had some creditability; the coed who gave some basketball advice and me with my “May I take your order” line. My coffee drinking friend said he and the coed have been married for thirty plus years. And as for me, tonight, “the girl who was driving” and I are going to a show and dinner to celebrate our forty-ninth wedding anniversary.
 
What’s the greatest pick-up line you have ever heard? Or maybe one you’ve used or responded to? Come on, don’t be so vain.
 
July 27, 2014
Keep on,
Larry Adamson   

Just some thoughts:                            
 
There are countless things I appreciate about my wife.

One typical morning not long ago, I pulled out of our driveway. It was a great, early morning around six a.m.; the top was already down and Haggard came on for my tunes. I began thinking about my plans for the day, not only the day, but into the evening. As they ran through my mind, a word kept coming to me. The word was “space.”

After a bit of coffee my day would begin with eighteen holes of golf, pretty good way to begin any day, and then follow with two appointments (college kids) before noon. At noon, I am having lunch with a fella I often meet with for, “food and a bit of encouragement.” Following that, another meeting with a friend, and then I needed to stop at the local library for some research I was doing. At four that afternoon, I was to be at Lipscomb University for a two-hour class I am taking; and at six in the school cafeteria for another meet and eat. The day would end with a visit to the Station Inn, a local honky-tonk, to sit and listen to one of my favorite groups which would take me up to a home arrival of midnight or later. During the day, I checked in with my wife, called her to see how her day was going and if she needed anything. Also, she knows she is always welcome anytime to join me in any of these activities should she so desire.

As I said in the beginning, there are a countless number of things I appreciate about her, and yes, one of them is “space,” the space she gives me; and I trust she feels she receives in return. Something very important in a relationship is just that,space. Space to be and do who you are, while also being considerate of another’s desires and needs.

    “If you hold love too loosely,
       It will fly away. If you hold
       Love too tightly, it will die.”
              (Tom T. Hall)

The following day will also find my wife at an afternoon college class she is taking at Lipscomb. After her class, she and I will meet for a dinner out and a movie. Learning how to give another space, whether it is a spouse, a child or just a good friend, often is not easy, but can be very important to a healthy relationship. 
 
As I said, I appreciate her for “countless things;” space just happens to be one of many.
 
 
October 11, 2013
Keep on,
Larry Adamson 

Just some thoughts:
 
“I AM NOT GOING TO CHURCH CAMP”
 
“I told you, I am not going.” I once said those words to my dad when I was about fifteen years old. He came home from a meeting and told me I was going to camp; a church camp. Efforts were being made to begin a new camp and my parents were going to be supportive of that effort.
 
The housing arrangements at the camp where the boys stayed were pretty rustic. Two boys were assigned to a tent with several tents arranged in a circle. Mike Chumley and I shared a tent, and Kent Cottrell and Stu Ringer were in the tent next to us. I had known Mike previously, but we had not been friends or had really been around one another very much before this week. I would not have had that experience if I had been given my preference not to go. We developed a friendship and a bond that still exists today. I will only say, you have never lived until you have spent a week in a tent with Mike Chumley. Today I would pay good money to be able to re-live many of  the experiences of that week.

That week became very important to me because of the things I learned, others I met and relationships that have had a lasting effect upon me throughout my life. Looking back, I can say that week proved to be one of the best weeks of my life; and it all happened because my dad would not allow me to say no.
 
Interestingly, years later as our family was living in New Jersey this experience was repeated; only now I was the dad and our oldest daughter was the one voicing her disapproval with being told, “You are going to church camp.” Likewise for her, that week proved to be a very positive experience with friends and relationships were formed for life, as it did for me, her father.
 
Maybe the lesson to be learned here is… sometimes in life we are told something that we have decided we are not going to do and we balk at such; but we should give it a second thought. It could end up being an experience you learn from, really like and one that plays a very important role throughout your life.
 
 Who knows, it could be one of the best weeks of your life.  
 
 
January 4, 2014
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Just some thoughts:
 
 “Figured that’d be impossible for an Indiana farm boy.”
 
During the years I taught school I was often assigned to teach driver’s training. All those experiences are a separate chapter (book) within themselves.
 
Near the end of the six weeks training, I required each student to plan a trip. It had to be a trip totaling at least one hundred miles round trip. I would have each student use a road map and write out the routes and highways they would be taking. They had to list the mileage they would be driving and figure the gas mileage they would be getting. They could choose to go where ever they pleased. 

I had a student who, after planning her trip, was asked where she would be going, and she said, “To the cemetery.” “What?, to a cemetery?” “Yes, a cemetery,” she answered.  She said there was a grave there she wanted to visit. I asked her if it was a relative and was told no. “You’ll see when we get there.” She drove us to the cemetery.
 
The cemetery was in Grant County in eastern Indiana. When we got there it was similar to any other flat land cemetery you might see in Indiana. As we drove in I thought of my grandfather’s resting place a few miles south of Terre Haute. When we got out of the car the student told me there were two graves here she wanted to see; one was a school teacher the other had been a student of that teacher.

The school teacher was Adeline Nall. She lived into her nineties, one of her students living to only age twenty-four. The student once offered his teacher a cigarette during class. “I wanted to pop him,” was her reaction. The teacher once cast him in a school play as an old man, only to be told by the student that she didn’t know anything about casting. “I’m a perfect juvenile” he told her. Well, evidently both the teacher and the student were right. Later her student went on to play one of the greatest juvenile roles, and he also played a great role as an aging man in two very famous movies. The student was actor James Dean. Dean was killed in a car accident in 1955 and now lies in Park Cemetery just outside of Fairmont, Indiana. Fans still visit his grave today.
 
“There wasn’t anything very different about him except
that he had a strange ability to take you along with his feelings.” (Adeline Nall)
 
For six years Nall taught Dean literature, Spanish, math, and speech. Dean once told Nall that someday he was going to be in the movies. “Course I didn’t pay attention, figured that’d be impossible for an Indiana farm boy.”
 
Speaking from personal experience, you never know the abilities, the desires, or the outcomes of some of those boys or girls who came from rural Indiana. A lot of folks have miscalculated what would be the outcomes of others.

I know.

March 15, 2014
Keep on,
Larry Adamson   

 
Just some thoughts:
 
You just don’t take advantage of people. You just don’t do that to your friends.
 
It is one of the rarest of guitars. A Martin B-45. They made less than one hundred of them.
 
Bottom line he needed money. Needed it badly. So he called up his old friend living in California at the time. “Hey I’m havin’ a bit of some bad luck at this time would you consider buying my guitar?” He own one of the rarest of guitars ever made. He owned a Martin B-45 and it was said less than a hundred were ever made of them. His friend had a reputation of buying guitars and over the years he had quite a collection of guitars. He would buy them with one stipulation, ” I will keep your guitar. I will not sell it and when you get on your feet and want it back call me.” So the down and out picker sold his rare possession. The year was 1977 and he was paid $7500 for the guitar. 
 
Roughly twenty years later the seller calls his old friend. “Hey any chance you might still have that guitar I sold you years ago?” No telling how many guitars this old friend had in his collection and sitting around his recording studio. Many. “Yes, I still have it.”  
 
Well now nearly twenty years had passed and the value of the old Martin guitar had vastly increased. It was now estimated to be worth six figures. Pretty good investment one might say. Hum, $7500 and now six figures. Hey what’s the old line, “finders keepers losers weepers.?”The one time purchaser of the guitar (Vince Gill) returned the guitar to seller for his original price of $7500.  
 
Bottom line: You just don’t take advantage of others. You know there are some people whose word is good. They do what they say they will do.
 
“I’ll keep that guitar and someday when you get on your feet you can come and get it for what you sold it to me for.”

 “The best portion of a good man’s life are his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.”
                                    (William Wordsworth)
 
April 30, 2015
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Below is something I wrote when our youngest granddaughter started school. She now will be in the 4th grade when school begins this year.

LA

Just Some Thoughts: 
 
This week saw our five-year- old granddaughter, Delaney, attending her first day of kindergarten. Needless to say, her mother, father and, yes, grandparents all wondered what this first day of a new world would be like for this child.
 
The first day of school was finally over and Delaney arrived home. Her mother asked her a series of questions about her day. She related very little to her mother, but she did say, “This little girl came up to me and said she didn’t have anyone to play with, so I played with her.”
 
Hum, no questions on the part of the children, like, before they can go further with the business of playing with someone I must ask, “Are you a Democrat or Republican? What is your position on?, do you go to church? If so, where? What do you think about global warming, the Tea Party, President Obama, former President Bush? In what neighborhood do you live? Did your parents go to college, your parents are from where? Where do you buy your clothes?” She said, “We just played.” Guess all those question of “Whether I can play with your or not,” come later, like when we “grow up.”
 
It’s interesting how we draw lines in the sand regarding who we might associate with. To our five-year-old grandchild and yours it’s pretty simple, isn’t it?” “She didn’t have anyone to play with, so I played with her.” Simple as that.
 
Guess all those questions about gauging whether or not I can play with you were not so important; oh, that comes later, when we grow up and become adults.
 
 
August 19, 2011
Keep on,
Larry Adamson 

Just some thoughts:
 
Our oldest grandson came by our house the other day, and he had a different look. As he prepares to move from the college years into the real world, his first job, he got himself a haircut; a real honest-to-goodness haircut, one where you can even see his ears. He said he had been to the barber-shop. Let me correct that, he had been to some place I might call one of those girlie hair-cutting places. This generation of kids don’t know what a real barbershop is/was and the value it once offered to society especially small-town society. Nowadays they are called hair salons and guys with names like Pierre, etc., “style” their hair for them.
 
One of many things this generation of kids is missing is growing up in a small town in the late 50s’ and getting their hair cut at a real barbershop. Most every community of any size had a barbershop, or at least someone who cut hair somewhere. My last barber was ol’ Tiny (anything but) Huntwork, and he cut hair in the back of his grocery store in Blackhawk, Indiana.
 
In a small town barbershop you could get advice, not asked for but freely given and ball scores, always listened to the Cub games, as they never played home games at nights because they had no lights.  If you saw the movie “Hoosiers” you might remember the scene where the decisions of the basketball coach Norman Dale were often up for review. From a large plate-glass window, in many shops, you had a full view of the town happenings. Often, there would be a congregation of people at the shop, whether they wanted a haircut or not.

When one of the local honeys walked or drove by, the word today would be ‘hottie’ you knew a comment was coming. At this particular shop I used to go, when Sharon in her ‘59 Chevy convertible drove by, I can still remember the classic line someone would say, “How would you like to have a pup from that litter?” When the town rascal would roar by on his Harley, handlebars ten feet above his head, cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of his T-shirt, ol’ Bob would say, “Guys, folks better grab their girls and lock their doors.” The attractiveness of the local and visiting team cheerleaders would always be up for Saturday-morning debate and discussion after the game the night before. One of the local retirees, who spent much of his day in the shop, would often say when there was a discussion about the virtues of one of the opposite sex, “Many a man has fallen in love with a dimple, only to make the mistake of marrying the girl.”
 
Like many things today, the old barbershop is a thing of the past and not necessarily for the better. My grandson got himself a haircut, but not with the benefit of barbershop knowledge and wisdom. In those days, you always got more than your money’s worth when you went to get a haircut.
 
A few of you fortunate souls know what I am talking about having grown-up getting your hair cut at the local barber shop.
 
January 12, 2011
Keep on,
Larry Adamson