Archives for January 2016

Just some thoughts:

We are going to give you a bit of relief from “Larry Grams.”
 
 My wife and I will be in Florida for the next few weeks so for the month of February probably you will not see any postings. We thank those of you who have endured our ramblings, postings and pictures. We hope they may have sparked a bit of interest and enjoyment  for you. Check the blog in mid March and maybe/ hopefully we will be back. To those of you we have heard from thank you. It is nice to know when something is read.
 
A few weeks back my wife and I were visiting our oldest daughter and her family just outside of Washington, D.C. One Sunday afternoon we attended a music program of our oldest granddaughter, Sloan. Her  high school choral group closed their program with this Irish Blessing. We do likewise.

​May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
And rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Something I wrote in August of 2010. I still remember the young lady.

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Just some thoughts: 

I gave her the biggest tip I have ever given anyone for such service. My kids and some others I know would surely faint from disbelief.
 
Thursday night I went to a double-header baseball game. I stopped on the way to my seat at the concession stand to buy a coke. Later in the evening the young lady who sold me the coke came and sat next to me as the seat next to her was occupied by her boyfriend. I had already been in conversation with her boyfriend, and then the young lady after she arrived. I learned she had recently graduated college: four-point student athlete on a scholarship, some academic and some athletic. She said she was quite discouraged as she had graduated and could not find a job. So for some income she was working a concession at ballgames and had various other odd jobs.
 
The following day I was working a Tennessee golf event as a starter at a very nice, private country club when I saw a young lady come up driving the drink cart. I walked over to purchase a drink and as I did, the driver said, “Hey, I met you last night at the ballgame; you’re the guy I waited on and later sat by.” It was the concession girl. I did not have my billfold with me, and I asked if I could pay her at the end of my assignment. “Yes,” she said.
 
Later that afternoon, before leaving the course, I found her. I gave her money for my drink, which she didn’t want to take. She said,” Wait, I’ll get your change.” I told her I didn’t want any change back. She looked at me and said, “Are you sure, I don’t normally get tips like that,” and she reached for her change pouch. 
 
I then asked her if she had a minute. She looked puzzled, but said she did. “Young lady, our paths have crossed twice in less than twenty-four hours, and both times I have seen you working at less than glamorous jobs, especially for a college graduate with honors. Evidently, no job is beneath you. Your example and attitude brings encouragement to a guy my age and stage in life. If I owned a business I guarantee you would be the first one on my list to talk to. Too many people these days consider certain types of work just don’t measure up to who they are and what they think they are worth; this is not you, evidently. If I were a rich man, I’d tip you even more and I’d call some of my rich friends who own businesses and tell them that I met a young lady they need to interview for their company. So good luck to you, stay with it because you’re going to be successful.” Tears came to her eyes as she thanked me again. “Nobody has ever said something like that to me, thank you.” 
 
Now, don’t anyone read this and think, “Oh what a nice guy he was.” No praise to a sixty-eight year-old guy who tips a cart girl twenty bucks. I tipped her for being a twenty-one year-old with great potential that is not afraid to do work of any kind.
 
There are a lot of young people out there who need our support and encouragement. Not all kids are “lazy and indifferent.”
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 August 27, 2010
 Keep on,
 ​Larry Adamson

Just some thoughts:

Songs often make us think of people, especially those people who have been a part of our lives in some way through the years.
 
The other night I was listening to Gary Morris sing a particular song, and I was reminded
of Ruth. Ruth lived just down the street from my parents and me in the small community where I grew up. All the years I knew her she had been a widow. I was told she had two older sons, but seldom did I ever see or hear of them visiting her.
 
I’d stop in to check on her most evenings after school. Often I ran errands for her, to the store to pick up milk and bread or I’d carry in some coal for her stove. In the summer I cut her grass for seventy-five cents. She was always very nice and kind to me, and I always wondered about her because she seemed lonely. The words of Morris’s song brought her back into my memory. She was one of those elderly people we see on a regular basis, but she often seemed like she was one of the forgotten people.    

“Better Than the New”
 
She was somebody’s mother, but no one ever bothered to call/
She has sisters and brothers, a picture of her loving husband on the wall/
And she lived in the last house on a dead end street alone for the years I walked
Thru her yard to school/ I guess that’s why she seemed to like the old better than the new
 
And she lived out of the garden and mended broken fences with his tools/
And I’d help her on the week-ends with what she had to spare and I could do/
I’d mow her yard in the summer time for nothing and kept her a path in the woods
To the church she went to/ cause I knew how she liked to walk the old ways better than the new
 
Oh, life you’re so cruel to older people/ what do they have to look forward to/
You’re just so cruel to older people/ is it any wonder she gave up believing in you?
 
I remember her last Christmas, I took her a gift and I shoveled a drift of snow/ and
I could hear thru the window country music on her brand new radio/
And we listened to the year’s sad song and I heard her humming along to a few/ then
I heard her say how she liked the old songs, better than the new
 
Oh, life you’re so cruel to older people/ what do they have to look forward to/
Your just so cruel to older people/ is it any wonder she gave up believing in you
 
She was somebody’s mother, but no one ever bothered to call
 
 
So true…life can sometimes be so cruel…and in some cases even more so to old folks. 
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April 28, 2011
Keep on,
​Larry Adamson

Just some thoughts:

If you participated in athletics in your youth there are memories from those times that never leave. I care not what your skill or level of competition might have been those memories remain.
 
In Tom Brokaw’s book A Long Way From Home you find these two stores about his high school athletic playing days and how they have never left him.

 “As I loped along I could see a car turning out of a family driveway
about a mile away. I thought of Dirty Glennie and how he’d given
 me that one moment of glory. I knew he had returned to the family
​place after playing football at a local college. The car skidded to a
        stop beside me, and sure enough, Dirty Glennie tumbled out. ‘What the
hell are you doing, running in this heat?’ He asked. I pointed to his
sizable middle and kidded him about his weight. And then we fell
     into an awkward silence, separated by so many years as we were now,
and with different lives.”
 
“Then Dirty Glennie did something I’ll never forget. He raised his big
beefy forearm and said, “Hey, Brokes, if you ever need me, I could
still clean them out for you.” I laughed and told him I’d keep that in
mind. As I turned to continue my morning run between the fields of
   corn and soybean, I was misty with the sentiments of a time gone-by.”

​Brokaw was the back-up quarterback on his South Dakota high school football team. In his own words he seldom played, but one time when his team was winning by a large margin Brokaw’s coach put him in the game. Upon entering the game in the huddle Brokaw said, “Dirty, get me a hole to run through, just once I’m gonna get me a touchdown.” Dirty got him the hole, and that was what he referenced when offering his help.
 
There are some bonds and deeds that are done for us, some “holes” opened for us by others that even with the passing of time are never forgotten, nor should they be.

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November 6, 2014
Keep on,
​Larry Adamson

​
Something I wrote in June of 2012.

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Just some thoughts:       

I still remember the day Dr. Kahn wrote on my paper, “See Me.”
 
It was my junior year in college. Since social studies was my minor, I had Dr. Kahn for several classes. A few days previous we had a test in Dr. Kahn’s history class. Generally the tests consisted of essay-type questions and students’ answers were written in what were called Blue Books that they brought to class. The essay questions were not always the easiest in the world. Often he would write a selection of maybe eight or nine questions on the board and students’ could pick six questions to write about.
 
The day following our essay test he handed our Blue Books back with our grades. He had written four words on mine, four dreaded words: “See me after class.” Those are words that can strike fear in the heart of a student. Following class I went to his desk and said, “You asked to see me?” “Yes, follow me to my office,” were his return words. Oh, oh…now what?
 
We reached his office, and he motioned for me to sit down and closed the door. “Mr. Adamson, I was surprised by your poor showing on this test.” He was not condescending or rude when he spoke to me. “True you are not the strongest student I have in this class, but I have always found you to be prepared when coming to class. You never cut class and you always  appear to have the read the material. I was taken back a bit by your results.” Rather than continuing talking, he asked me a question. “Is there any reason for you not doing as well on this particular test as you normally do? Anything happen that might have affected your preparation for this test?”
 
 I was hesitant to answer, but he did ask, and he seemed sincere in asking and had showed fairness to me in the past. A few days prior to the test, my mother had serious surgery. I lived at home during my college years, and my dad and I took turns staying with her at the hospital during her five or six days of recovery after surgery. Generally I was the one to stay during those nights with her. I also worked  40 hours a week while carrying a load of 15 college hours. As I said, I was hesitant to tell him of my mother’s surgery, but after I related this information to him, what he said next took me by surprise. “Well that possibly explains some of the cause for your grade.”
 
He then asked how my mother was doing and said, “In light of what you have told me and based upon your past work in my classes, why don’t we throw this test grade out?” What? Had I heard correctly? He told me that in the next couple days he would have some work for me to do that would be in place of that test. He said we would make up the results of this showing in that manner.  I was surprised by his generosity, even shocked.  He had asked; he had listened, and he had believed what I told him.  College professors listening to a student had not been my experience, as most professors I knew didn’t take the time to know you or ask questions, and some showed they could cared very little.
  
What impressed me was that he was a person in authority, a person in charge who took the time to ask some questions and was not indifferent to a lowly “college kid.” He did not use his position of authority to come down on another. On that day I appeared before a “reasonable and fair” judge.
 
 I hope two things for you and me in our life time. One, our actions have been and will always be before a reasonable judge. Two, in turn you and I will try to always be reasonable in our judgment of others. 

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June 14, 2012
Keep on,
​Larry Adamson

Something I wrote after one of my trips back home to Indiana and being at a holiday high school basketball tournament. The “Pizza Classic.”

 
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Just some thoughts:
​
Recently I was back in my hometown attending a three day holiday basketball tournament; a real treat if you are a basketball fan. Games start each day at nine a.m. and the last game starts at eight p.m. A great three days. A holiday basketball tournament in Indiana can be a number of things, and one is a reunion. A reunion of old coaches, old players, friends, and classmates. You see folks from years past at a basketball game that otherwise you would not normally see.
 
One evening between games I sat down to visit with a guy I knew back in our high school days. As we were talking, an attractive older lady walked by, and she was close enough that it caught our attention. As she walked past, he smiled, and I did also. The lady who had just walked by us had been my friend’s high school girlfriend. As she moved on and made her way up the bleachers to her seat, he said, “Well, there goes a girl I used to know; you remember that she and I dated?” Actually, they had been quite an “item” nearly all their high school years. He said it with half a smile and a touch of what appeared to be a little sadness. “Yes, I remember you both: you the basketball player and she the cheerleader. You were quite a couple, weren’t you?” Privately I thought “some thought you would get married, always be together.”  
 
The following day as I started my drive back to my home to just outside of Nashville, Tennessee, I slipped in an old Buck Owens cd. I always carry good music with me in my car. When Buck started to sing the third song on his cd, it made me smile and think of the visit with my old acquaintances from the previous evening. As I listened to the lyrics I thought of my friend.

“There Goes My Love”
 
There goes the girl I used to know/ there goes the girl that I loved so
There goes the arms that used to hold me tight
There goes the reason that I sigh/ there goes the reason I cry
There goes the lips I used to kiss goodnight/ there goes my love
There goes the girl

I got to thinking; I wonder how many times a scene similar to the one at last night’s ballgame has played out in the lives of so many people? You ever had a similar experience? “There goes the girl/guy I used…I used to know.” 

In the words of a song one of my golf playing, songwriting friends’ once penned:                                        

“Old sweethearts always stand out in a crowd.”
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December 29, 2012
Keep on,
​Larry Adamson

Something I wrote in January of 2012. We all have those “hard” good-byes…

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​Just some thoughts:

“Do you think we might have enough money for me to buy an
old pickup truck and a fishing boat?” 

​I still remember sitting at the kitchen table in the small four-room house I lived in with my parents on South 11th Street, Terre Haute, Indiana and hearing my dad ask that question to my mom, as he was thinking about retiring.
 
This morning as I stood brushing my teeth, my wife looked over at me and said, “I’ve been awake since 5 a.m. I couldn’t sleep.” “What’s the problem?” I asked. “All I could do last night was move furniture around and think about making changes.” My wife is in the process of some household changes: carpet, hardwood floors in some new areas, bathroom changes, updating, painting, etc. “Bet you didn’t sleep much either, did you?” she asked me. “You probably laid there all night jumpin’ around, thinking about your drive today to Alabama and trading for that next Corvette.” Old Corvette, 1962– guilty, I plead.    
 
Much later that day as I was driving home from Alabama in that Corvette, I was thinking about our morning conversation, and it made me think about my dad. As my dad neared his retirement, all he wanted was “an old pickup truck and a fishing boat.” Sadly, he never got either one. Just a few weeks before he was to retire he got cancer; diagnosed in November and died the last day of January, 1975, at age 64.  He never saw retirement and never got his “toys.” That’s really what they are, old cars and home updates, in a sense. They are toys we give ourselves.
 
I once sat in an audience where Chet Atkins was playing. I could sit all evening, and just listen to him. Before he played his closing song that evening he talked about the song’s meaning and remarked that it was the few biographical songs he has done. He went on to say, “It is one of the most difficult songs for me to do, not because of the playing of it; it’s the thinking about it.” With that he played.

“I Still Can’t Say Goodbye”
           
When I was young, my dad would say, come on son, let’s go out and play
Seems like only yesterday, when I was all by myself, I’d climb up the closet shelf
Find his hat and fix the brim, pretending I was him, no matter how hard I tried
No matter how many tears I cried, no matter how many years go by, I still can’t say goodbye
He took good care of mom and me, we all cut down the Christmas tree, and he always had some
time for me 
 
Wind blows through the trees, streetlights, they still shine bright, and most things are still the same, but I miss my dad tonight, I walked by a Salvation Army store, saw a hat my daddy wore
Tried it on and fixed the brim, still trying to be like him, no matter how hard I try
No matter how many tears I cried, no matter how many years go by
I still can’t say goodbye

Chet, I, we understand why the song is hard for you.

​It’s been thirty-seven years for me saying goodbye and it still doesn’t get much easier.
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January 21, 2012
Keep on,
​Larry Adamson

​Just some thoughts:

Who among us has lost someone from death or a broken romance and wondered if we would ever know true happiness again?
 
In 1862 President Lincoln wrote a letter to the daughter of his long-time friend, William McCullough. Word had reached Lincoln that McCullough’s young daughter was so grieved with the news of her father’s death that she had gone into a state of serious depression. Relatives worried about her condition.
 
McCullough had been a very good friend of Lincoln’s as he had been sheriff and clerk of the McLean County Circuit Court in Bloomington, Illinois when Lincoln was a circuit lawyer. He served in the Civil War as a Lieutenant Colonel and was killed December 5, 1862, in a battle in Mississippi.
 
Lincoln wrote the following to his grieving friend’s daughter.

 ​Dear Fanny,
 
It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart; of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.
 
Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.
 
Your sincere friend,
 
A. Lincoln
 
When one suffers certain losses, regardless of the circumstance, knowing that someone else cares, means a great deal. Oh yes, it means a great deal.
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December 5, 2012
Keep on,
​Larry Adamson

Below is something i wrote in December of 2010. The last line is the thought of  importance..there is someone…I am sure..

LA
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Just some thoughts:

 ​I don’t know if you believe in prayer or not. I’m not trying to convince anyone, but…
 
Forty years ago this month in 1970, I walked into a doctor’s office for what I assumed would be a routine check-up. It ended up being a December and a Christmas I will never forget.
 
Two years previous, my thirty-five-year-old brother had died of cancer. Since that time, I had promised my wife and family I would have a checkup each year.
 
The following day, after my checkup, I was called out of class. At the time, I was teaching and coaching in Rockville, Indiana. My doctor called for me to come immediately to his office. “Larry, we found a spot on your lung. I have set up an appointment for you to see a doctor at Union Hospital, and you are to go there now.” Wow, I hadn’t even mentioned to my wife that I had gone for the checkup the day before.
 
As I sat down in the chair at the specialist’s office, his words, which I have never forgotten, were “There’s a spot on your lung about the size of a half dollar, and we need to go in there.”  “How soon,” I asked. ” Soon, like this week.”  His words, “go home now, have Christmas and I will see you next Monday for surgery.” Even though it was the week of Christmas, I underwent lung surgery. Obviously, we were quite anxious. I was just twenty eight years old, married with two small children, a four year old and one nine months old. All came out well and forty plus years later, I am still here and very blessed.
 
Now for the second half of my story, at that time, there was a person; we’ll call him Bill, who attended the church where my wife and I, along with my parents, attended. His wife shared this story with my family much later.
 
Bill was a farmer and often his wife took lunch to him in the field around noon. On this particular day, he was in a field bush hogging, mowing.  As she walked from her car into the field where Bill was supposed to be, she didn’t see him at first. Then she saw him sitting on his tractor appearing to be “slumped over.” His head appeared bowed and, at first, she was alarmed, thinking something bad might have happened to him. Heart attack? She called his name and he looked up at her. Only later did Bill share with her what he had been doing. He told her he thought he knew about what time “that young man (me) was to go into surgery, and he had stopped to say a prayer for him.” That was what he was doing at the time she approached him with his lunch. Only years later I learned of this story. Sadly Bill was gone.  
 
Probably if the truth be known, there are a lot of prayers others have said on our behalf. Hope the practice continues, and also we do likewise for others-stop and remember them.
 
I am sure there is someone out there today that needs a remembrance from us.

================================================================================================December 4, 2010
Keep on,
Larry Adamson
 

Something I wrote in March of 2011. Can you remember when there was only AM radio and the push button car radios? 

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Just some thoughts:                  

If you were a kid growing up in the late 50s’ you know how important the radio was to our generation, especially the car radio.
 
I never will forget my dad coming home after trading cars and telling me to go to the garage and see what he bought. Off I go, while I was thrilled with the car, a 1957 Chevy, I could not believe my eyes when I got in and looked at the dash. No radio! This is impossible, a cool car like a ‘57 Chevy and no sounds. I went in the house and announced my disappointment to my dad, “Dad, there’s no radio in that car!” His reply, “If you wanna listen to the radio, come in the house.”
 
Today, I was listening to the country duo, The Kendall’s. I had to smile when I listened to a song they once had as a hit called, “Thank God for the Radio.” If you listen to the lyrics and are from that era, the most important thing was a radio in your car, no less; radio, music and DJs. Today’s generation would ask, DJs, what’s that? Most every town, city or community had a local station the kids listened to, and on that station would be a guy who played records, a DJ. Generally he came on the air every day at the same time, often with a recognizable record as his theme song to bring him on the air. In my home town there was a guy who went by the initials of J.A. Jim Austin.  One time he locked himself in the station’s control room (supposedly) and for two straight hours played the same record; Sheb Wooley’s “The Purple People Eater.” We were so naïve that we did not realize it was just a promotional gimmick. Years later I was fortunate to meet Sheb Wooley.
 
Some Friday and Saturday nights in Terre Haute, Indiana we pulled into the carhop places on Wabash Avenue, rolled all our car windows down and tuned our radios to WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee. There we could listen to John R., Hoss Allen or Big Hugh Baby. In the afternoon we could turn the dial to WIBC which was out of Indianapolis and listen to Bouncin’ Bill Baker; and many of us did. Often these local disc jockeys would come out to various places and play records at what we called sock-hops. How mild they would be in comparison to today’s happenings, oh my! Or some nights we’d stop at Wassels on Wabash Avenue and listen to music and watch the kids dance. A radio was very important in the life of a teenager in the 1950s’.

     “Thank God for the Radio”
                                
There’s a song we first danced to
And there’s a song they played the night we met     
And there’s a song we first made love to   
There’s a song I’ll never forget
Playin’ all the songs
That meant so much to me and you
Thank God, for the radio

 

​Is there a song and someone you can remember? 
 
 Sometimes the song remembers “you.” You ever wonder if “anyone” remembers you?
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March 8, 2011
Keep on,
​Larry Adamson