Archives for August 2015

Below is something I wrote in 2010. A little over five years ago. Five years later there are still times I feel like the thoughts I wrote on the evening of July 26, 2010. Often I feel “All prayed out.” You?  

Just some thoughts:

Tonight I have been sad. Very sad.

A number of factors enter into this feeling, but mainly I have friends, good friends, that I know are sad. No, some are more than sad. They are really hurting, the kind of sad that aches. One is in a hospital not far from here and sadness for a family because their child, grandchild only lived less than two days.

 James Braddock was a professional boxer that lived and fought during the depression days of the late 20s’ and into the 30s’. In a recent movie, “Cinderella Man”, Braddock’s life is depicted. He and his family experienced some real hard times. At meal time one evening, his wife asked him to say a prayer before eating. Braddock gave her a look that spoke volumes and said, “You pray, I’m all prayed out.”

You ever felt that way? Who hasn’t, if one is a praying person? I’ve reached my bottom.  I have no more words.  

Some time ago our small (church) group was meeting in one of the homes, a good friend of ours asked me to read a prayer she had found some place. I have kept it on my desk in my “in” box. There are times when I feel like Braddock, all prayed out, and thus have referred to it. Tonight is one of those nights.

                        Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight
                            And give your Angels charge over those who sleep tend to
                            Your sick ones, O Lord Christ, rest your weary ones, bless
                              Your dying ones, soothe your suffering ones, pity your
                               Afflicted ones, shield your joyous ones, and all for your
                                                              Love’s sake.

                                                                    Amen

Just some thoughts:

(The picture below is yours truly in a class room—once upon a time— setting trying to explain government to a group of students. I’m sure they were spell bound/ not.)
 
VALUE OF BEING A MENTOR
 
One of my favorite books, by one of my favorite authors, is My Losing Season, by Pat Conroy.
 
I have gone back to this book on numerous occasions; sometimes even listening on tape. The book is about Conroy’s experiences as a student and a basketball player back in the early 60s’ at The Citadel; a true story. While Conroy had less than the basketball career he would have liked, he did have many positive experiences there, both as an athlete and a student. He writes glowingly of one of his teachers, Colonel John Doyle. Years after his graduation, Conroy continued to stay in touch with this teacher, this mentor to him, who helped create his love of writing. Most every occasion, Conroy would end his conversation with Doyle by saying, “You know how much I love you? Thanks for finding this lost boy.” To which Doyle would always say, “No, Pat we found each other.”
 
Often, if one has been on the receiving end of much good from someone older, sometimes they only think of the experience from their standpoint, what they received. Generally, they don’t think of what the mentor received in return from the mentee. From 1964 to 1976, I was a teacher and coach in Indiana, and 1967 found me at my first high-school teaching and coaching level. The three previous years I had been at a junior-high level. This year, I was a junior-varsity coach at a very small, rural school in central Indiana. I was pretty much left to myself with this group of young men, and that year turned out to be one of my most memorable years I ever coached. I knew “some basketball;” anyone who grew up in Indiana, who had played, knew some basketball. But still, I was “wet behind the ears,” so to speak. I was on my own; these kids now looked to me. In years previous, the junior varsity had not had a great deal of success. I think these kids ended their season, that year at 13 and 8.
 
Here is my point: without question, I learned more from those kids than they probably ever did from me. I might have been “their coach,” but they provided the opportunity for me to learn on my own, as they did also. Still to this day, I can remember the names of the starting group. I wrote them in a score book, many a Friday night. Steve Vandiver, Jimmy Martin, Greg Modisett, Jim Mullins and John Duffy. I also remember most of the reserves. I would like to see all of these guys, these 50-year-old-plus guys and their families, today.
 
If you have the opportunity to be a mentor, I encourage you to take on the task, as you will gain from the experience. This past year, my wife and I have been part of a marriage mentoring program at our church. Without question, we have enjoyed and learned from this experience.
 
“No, no Mr. Conroy, we found each other.”
 
January 27, 2011
Keep on,
Larry Adamson  

This coming August 27th Chubby Checker along with the Drifters and the Duprees will be appearing here in Nashville. They will be appearing at the beautiful new symphony hall in the heart of downtown Nashville. yes…Barb and I have tickets.  Danny and the Junior’s once sang to us “Rock n’ Roll” is here to stay it will never die.” True….very true.

LA

Just some thoughts:

ONE CAN BE REPLACED
 
“You want to talk to Chubby Checker?”
 
Not too long ago, I was in an old record store here in Nashville, a place I often go. I have a record collection of old albums. This collection would have rivaled all the records stocked at Page’s Music store on Wabash Avenue when I was a teenager in Indiana.
 
I was going through an old bin of albums, mostly from the late 1950s’, my- preference. I pulled out a Chubby Checker album and was reading the liner notes when the lady standing next to me said, “You like Chubby Checker?” I said, “Yes, I like him, saw him a couple of times in my younger days.” I remember, one night in particular, I saw him up on the Roof at Lake Shaffer in Monticello, Indiana. It was a great place; I saw lots of acts there.
 
Back to the lady, she said to me, “You want to talk to him, Chubby Checker?” Now I do a double take, “Did you say talk to him?” I’m thinking, Who is this gal, some kind of voodoo lady? Then she said to me, “I’m a booking agent for acts that come into the South.  I booked him and I just got off the phone with him minutes ago. He is on his bus making his way back home to Philadelphia from a show he did last night in Florida. If you want me to, I will call him.” She pulled out her cell phone, dialed him up and I talked to Chubby Checker!
 
Now, as Paul Harvey used to say, “Here’s the rest of the story.” Most people are familiar with the song “The Twist.” The song was first recorded by a guy named Hank Ballard and his group the Midnighters. In the 50s’ one of the most popular teenage television shows was Dick Clark’s afternoon American Bandstand. Oh yes, Justine! Justine and Bob used to dance together.  Clark had booked Ballard to be on his show to do his song “The Twist.” For some reason, Ballard did not show up, but Clark knew of this kid in Philadelphia, Ernest Evans. Clark called Evans and said, “Why don’t you come down here and do this song, “The Twist,” as Ballard, for some reason, is not going to show up.
 
The rest is history; 17- year-old Evans showed up and did the number. The next day, Clark took Evans into a recording studio and recorded “The Twist.” Within days, the song was a hit and played all over the country. Today Ernest Evans, whom we know as Chubby Checker, is known worldwide all because a guy did not show up.
 
Lesson for us all:  if you are supposed to be somewhere, you best show up, or your replacement may permanently replace you.
 
P.S. I did talk with Checker that day. He was very nice and appreciative of the recognition.
 
March 28, 2010
Keep on,
Larry Adamson 

Just some thoughts

Below is something I wrote in 2012. I still find life can be like a knuckle ball.
 

A KNUCKLE BALL
 
I think a knuckle ball can equate with life.
 
If you look up the definition of a knuckle ball, it will be described:
 
 “A slow baseball pitch that moves erratically, unpredictable and that is thrown with a little spin by gripping the ball with the knuckles.”
 
This week, my wife and I had the good fortune to hear baseball player R.A. Dickey speak. He was the featured speaker, with Vince Gill and CeCe Winans as the entertainment for the evening. Quite an evening — Winans, Gill and Dickey!
 
Dickey was the 2012 Cy Young Award winner in the National League just a few weeks ago. Dickey has revitalized his career by learning to throw a pitch called a knuckle ball. Very few pitchers in the history of baseball have been able to perfect this particular pitch.
 
Dickey’s thoughts for the evening were not just about baseball, but a story of beating back personal demons and overcoming extraordinary odds. His story is told in his current best-selling book, Wherever I Wind Up.  As I sat at our dinner table listening, Dickey said something that made me think when he talked about his famous pitch, the knuckle ball. He said:

 “The knuckle ball is like life. When you throw it, sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down; sometimes it goes over the batter’s head, sometimes it goes in the dirt, sometimes it hits the batter, and sometimes it goes right where you want it to.”

That’s a pretty good athletic description of life. Life is sometimes up, down, over, in the dirt, hits and hurts and sometimes right where you want it to be.
 
He went on to say, “It is a pitch that is so hard to throw perfectly. Standing on the mound, you never really know for sure what is going to happen. You just go into your windup and throw.”
 
Again, isn’t that life?  You’re not sure what’s going to happen.  Life’s hard and you just stand there, windup and throw.”
Never really knowing for sure where it’s going.
 
 
December 3, 2012
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Just some thoughts:
 
Often we parents/grandparents have lamented about certain things that our children and grandchildren would not have the opportunity to have some of the same experiences that we had as a kid. Maybe there is at least one experience that we might not lament over, and that is the demise of drive-in theaters.
 
Recently I was playing golf with some golfing buddies near Lewisburg, Tennessee. We came off one of the greens and in the distance we saw the huge screen of a drive-in movie theater. Not too many of them around anymore. I immediately smiled and began to chuckle. I think it best that I not share the comments of my golfing partners.

 

“The land on which the former Joy Land sat is now occupied by a giant church whose members may or may not be aware of the thousands of carnal transgressions committed on the property during its former life.”
                                                  
(Tom McDonald-Dirt Road Memories)
 

The first drive-in theater was started in 1933 in Camden, New Jersey. It was the brain child of a guy named Richard Hollinghead. The first drive-in charged twenty-five cents a car. The largest drive-in was in the state of New York; it covered twenty-eight acres and had spots for 2,500 cars. The 1950s’ was the hay day of the drive-in and there were over 5,000 such theaters at one time. Today the guess is there might be five hundred.
 
In my teenage years there were four drive-ins that I can remember, the Eastside, the Northside, the Corral and a theater in Sullivan that I cannot remember the name. I was a participant at all four. If you were going to the Sullivan Theater you could stop off at the Knotty Pine and get a cold root beer before the movie. Often they had special nights and allowed a car load in for a dollar, regardless of the number in the car. Also, many a teenager made their way into the grounds by means of hiding in the trunk of the car.
 
I once read that in Florence, Alabama there was a drive-in named Joy Land; yes, the Joy Land Drive-in. Imagine a few minutes before you pick up your date for the evening and the mother asks her daughter, “Where are you going to the show tonight?” Can you imagine the mother’s reaction when she hears two words, Drive-in and Joy Land? Not a good combination for a mother to hear. 

I won’t share with you the conversation and where it went when the subject of drive-ins was discussed recently at my coffee place; but the group did like the name: Joy Land.

August 8, 2014
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Just some thoughts:

 
It was a very early summer morning and I had just left my nephew’s house. I had been in southwestern Indiana for a few days of golf, and just generally visiting some of the old haunts. I was about eight or nine miles south of Terre Haute traveling highway forty one when I came upon a small road sign that read: Pimento. Immediately I smiled.
 
The evening before I had taken a leisurely drive around some of the areas of my youth. One of those evenings to steal a line from an old Statler Brothers song, “I had time on my hands and memories on my mind.” 

First a drive down Wabash Avenue. The strip as it was called in the late 1950s’. I drove past where once there had been three or four drive-in / car hop places, a teenage hang out called the Wassell’s Inn (2800 Wabash Avenue) and a few other places that once had significance. Sadly the car hop places are no longer there. They are just boarded up buildings with weeds in the parking lots. Wassell’s is now a restaurant barbeque place. I then drove by a couple old high schools, a couple gyms (basketball places), by an old baseball field and by a place once called the Toasty Shop near another old school. I ended my old memory jaunt driving some streets and by houses I once had so often found myself.
 
On this morning, as most summer mornings, I had the top down on my convertible; it was just a very pleasant early Indiana morning. Just about that time I was approaching the highway sign  that read Pimento, which was the actual area where I had lived growing up, a song came on from  a Bobby Vinton cd  I was playing on my car player. I smiled as I listened to the lyrics of the song he was singing, and I got to thinking… hum… 

HOW OLD?
 
How old are you before you regret the things you never done
You lose and you win you start over again it goes on and on
How old are you before you regret the things you never done
How long do you wait before it’s too late—you think the night is young?
 Life is a game it’s never the same till you’re dead and gone
Sooner or later it ends and all you can count on are your friends
You laugh and you cry life rushes by and it’s the only one
 How old are you before you regret the things you never done?  
 

Now there’s a question for you… how old is one … before they regret?
 
That thought stayed with me for a considerable distance as I drove on toward Tennessee.
 
August 17, 2014
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Just some thoughts:
 
It was not a comedy to me.
 
This past week I was at our local library thumbing through a book of poetry. Yes, poetry. I turned the page and there it hit me, Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dante Alighieri wrote what some would call an epic fourteenth century poem. Just seeing it there and seeing the word epic, I thought, “Oh yeah?”
 
My freshman year in college, 1960-61, was one of the worst and most difficult years for me, for a lot of reasons. I had a three o’clock class with Dr. Miller for freshman English. I remember very little about his class other than how difficult and how miserable I felt in this class; again for various reasons. During that class we were assigned to write a paper, a rather lengthy paper on Dante’s Divine Comedy. I didn’t have a clue.
 
 Not too long ago I was rambling through some old papers and found my college transcript. Evidently Dr. Miller was not impressed with my thoughts on Dante’s epic. I noted the grade I received was a D plus.
 
Turning a couple pages in this book I was reading today, I came upon something that I do remember Dr. Miller once talking about in his class when he referenced William Shakespeare.
 
So Dr. Miller, I guess your efforts on my behalf were not a total waste, but close.

Good night, good night
Parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good night till it be morrow
Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast
Would I were sleep and peace so still at rest
It seems to me most strange that men should fear
Seeing that death will come when it will come
Cowards die many times before their deaths
Only the valiant taste of death but once
 
           (William Shakespeare)
 

March 17, 2014
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Just some thoughts:

Something I wrote in 2011….what a generation that came before many of us…and can you imagine what a day this must have been….

 
Today, August 15, 1945, Japan’s Emperor, Hirohito announced that he accepted the terms of surrender for ending WWII.
 
That was sixty six years ago.
 
While having my coffee and reading the paper this morning, I saw it on the third page, bottom column in just two lines.
 
Peanut is the name I call the little Vietnamese gal who works at my coffee place. She brought my coffee to me this morning saying, “No charge. You in here all the time. You get free cup today.” Well, today my coffee may be free, but the freedom that I live with in this world to drink my coffee did not come FREE. The world and the United States had to pay a terrible price for that freedom. May we never forget what our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and many others did many years ago.
 
Personally, I would like to see a reminder of this day somewhere other than on the third page, bottom column of my paper. If we do not keep history alive, I am afraid it will never appear in the papers at all. I want all of us to always remember what happened and the sacrifice others made for our freedom.
 
August 15, 2011
Keep on,
Larry Adamson                                

Just some thoughts:

Yesterday/August 11, 2015/ I had the good fortune to caddie for these two young men at a Special Olympics golf tournament here in Tennessee. The young man on my right is Jeremiah Doane from Senatobia, MS and Andrew Williams is on my left from Chattanooga,TN. They played their 18 hole round in 3 hrs. What a privilege I was given to caddie and spend my day with them.   LA

Below is something I wrote a couple years back.

================================= 

I retired from the United States Golf Association in late 2002. Shortly thereafter my wife and I moved to Franklin, Tennessee, which is just outside Nashville. At that time I had no particular plans other than to slow down, relax, and enjoy life and the grand kids. At the beginning of 2003 I accepted a one year employment with the Special Olympics program in Nashville. It proved to be one of the most fruitful and fulfilling times of my life. My basic responsibility with the organization for that one year was that I would be involved in their various athletic programs, in particular their golf program.   

One of the programs we did that year was a weekend golf camp held at the Tennessee State Golf Association facilities and golf course. Special Olympic athletes from all over the state came for a weekend golf camp. They were housed, fed, and cared for at this facility. We spent the total weekend with them, eating, sleeping, and helping them with golf skills for these days.   

The first afternoon of camp I was with a group, and I gave one of the athletes, Kenny, a set of golf clubs that the Tennessee State Golf Association had provided. He was so pleased, but the best was yet to come. Most of our time there Kenny was “attached at the hip” with me. Late Sunday afternoon when the athletes were leaving, Kenny came running up to me. Kenny had his golf clubs with him and he handed them to me. “Thank you, Mr. Larry, thank you.” I looked at Kenny and said, “No Kenny, these clubs are yours to keep and take home; you don’t have to give them back.” The look on his face was one of puzzlement. I don’t think I will ever forget what he said next. His answer to “No, Kenny, these are yours,” was “Mr. Larry, you don’t understand; nobody has ever given me nothin’.” I walked Kenny to his bus to go home and told him what a good time I had and wished him well. As the bus pulled from the parking lot Kenny held up his clubs and waved.   

The following week I received a hand written letter from whom else but Kenny. On the outside of the envelope he had drawn two stickmen. By one of the stick men there was an arrow pointing and it said “Larry.” The other stick man likewise only said “Kenny.”
  
I ask you, “Who do you think got a better lesson in life that weekend?” Let me tell you, I know the arrow points to stickman Larry.   
  
“It is not enough to give the handicapped life; they must be given a life worth living.”