Archives for May 2016

Just some thoughts:

Unheard of, especially in this day and age.

“Darling, I can’t stand this any longer,” he said to Mae. “It just tears my heart into little bits to see you and the babies suffering for want of food and clothing. I’m going over to the relief bureau and see if they can’t make us a loan until I can get something to do.” That was late 1932.

“Excuse me, sir, you want to do what?” “I’m here to pay back my loan.” “What loan?” “Sometime back I came here, as I was down and out. My wife and babies had no food and me, no job. You, this office, gave me some money for a period of time; you gave me relief. Now I am here to pay you back.” “But sir, you don’t pay back that money, that was money given to you by the government to help you through the hard times.” “OK, then I am here to pay the government, or whoever, back.” And he did.

In my opinion James Braddock did two very unusual things. He defeated an existing world boxing champion, Max Baer in 1932 when all odds, ten to one, were against him. But even more impressive to me, during the time of this country’s Great Depression, he did the last thing he wanted to do; he took relief money, welfare. Then, when he won his next fight he went to that same office and paid back the money given him. He was a champion in more than one category.

“This is a great country that helps a man when he is in trouble. I thought I should repay it.”
 

(James Braddock 1933)

​The amazing thing about this is that it is a true story. Read Jeremy Schaap’s book, Cinderella Man. Also, the book was made into an excellent movie.

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I recently read that today, 2013, in eleven states, there are more people receiving government support than people who are working in that state. One does not have to be very smart to see the outcome of that picture if that continues.

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June 1, 2013 
Keep on,
​Larry Adamson

Below is something I wrote May 30th of 2011.

On one of my visit to Normandy I can still remember walking in the cemetery high above the bluffs and the start of taps being played at 5 P.M. Everything stopped. No words to describe.

LA

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Just some thoughts:

TOMORROW IS MEMORIAL DAY
 
“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.” Sid Collins was the voice of the 500, and it would be on the radio within earshot most of the day.
 
There are twenty-two American military cemeteries where over 125,000 American soldiers are resting in eight different countries, 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.

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May 30, 2011
Keep on,
​Larry Adamson

Below is something I wrote in January of 2014. Old friends, old ties and for some reason often we let them go…. By the way this book is a good read….I wish it would be made into a movie….old relationships…read it..see if there is not some identification factors for you. Was for me…

LA
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Just some thoughts:

I wonder how this happens.  
 
One of my favorite John Grisham books is one of his lesser known, but still a favorite, Bleachers.
 
In the book Bleachers Neely Crenshaw returns after being away from his hometown for fifteen years. Crenshaw was one of those high school wonders; he was a local football hero and some said, “The best that ever played for legendary coach, Eddie Rake. He was one of Rake’s Boys.”
 
Upon his return to his old hometown, the first place Crenshaw goes is to the old football field. He makes his way high into the bleachers to sit alone at the field where he made Friday nights come alive for the locals. He sat alone, with his thoughts. He had never played in a game on this field where he lost. Thousands of thoughts begin coming back to him. Not just of football but also his first, and probably his only real love, his old girlfriend, Cameron. From that thought came so many memories, some good and some not so good. Off to his right he could see the old scoreboard. Next to it were green placards with white lettering with the numbers of Messina, his hometown, players whose numbers had been retired. His number, nineteen, was among them.
 
As Crenshaw left the bleachers and made his way along the sidelines to his car in the parking lot, he saw Paul Curry walking toward him. Curry spots Crenshaw and they greet.

“Paul Curry caught forty seven of the sixty three touchdown passes Neely threw in their three year career together. Crenshaw and Curry, time and time again, practically unstoppable. They were co-captains.”
 

Then Grisham said something of the two that probably can be said of thousands of others from the past, “They were close friends who drifted apart over the years.” Drifted  apart.    
 
Close friends who had drifted apart over the years. You ever wonder why this happens?  I have. Why someone we were so close to at one time in our lives, someone who meant so much to us and was so much a part of who we were, and just drifts apart?
 
The book deals with the matter of looking back at life and dealing with some things from someone’s young beginnings that have never left him. Maybe they never will. Most all of us have something or someone from our past that we continue to deal with in the present. Some never leave us, they remain like dust on an old book stacked on a shelf. 
 
There is a line in a song from one of my favorite groups, The Statler Brothers. The line says     

 
“Life gets complicated when you get past eighteen.”

​So… why do we let that happen?

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January 23, 2014
Keep on,
​Larry Adamson

Just some thoughts:

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The development my wife and I live in has a number of trails and walking paths. I have laid out about a four mile walk for myself that I try to do almost every day. The other day I was walking when two young guys pulled up to a stop sign in their cars and as they pulled away they sounded like jet engines taking off, loud mufflers. Well into a quarter of a mile away I could hear one of the cars go through all four gears. My first thought was “knock off the noise, boys.”

Then I smiled and thought… hey, you old guy have you forgotten? I grew up in a community and a time when we could identify whose car (s) was coming into the school parking lot by the sound of the mufflers as far away as half a mile. Let’s see there was Don Snyder in his ’49 Mercury, Phil Reisner in his ’54 Ford, Donald Ray in his no mufflers at all old ‘48 Ford. Donald Ray was the one who had a cigarette with smoke curling up painted on the driver’s side door with it saying “Girls put your butts in here.” There was Paul Snyder with his dual stacks just behind the cab of his pick-up truck. Norman Whitlock in his ’48 Pontiac and Freddy Hartman in his pick-up truck that sounded like judgment day when he started it. In the spring of the year when windows were up in study hall, we could have easily told you which one of them was coming on the scene as we knew the sound of each. And today I was now complaining about these two kids who just drove by me on my evening walk. Come on Adamson, think back.

Noise is synonymous with youth. When one of my teenage grand kids gets in one of my old cars they first reach for the volume button on whatever the music maker is in my vehicle. (Cassette players in both my ’55 Thunderbird and  the ’65 Corvette) Go to a restaurant today and see if you can hear yourself think. My wife and I went to one the other night. I kid you not, if Jimmy Hendrix had been in there playing the National Anthem or the Skynyrd Boys doing “Freebird” they would not have been heard. But when I think of music and noise my conscience does come a callin’ on me. The very first record I bought was a 78 rpm record with Little Richard from Randy’s Record Store in Gallatin, Tennessee, a mail order type place. At that time we lived in a house that had a screened in front porch. On the evening of the arrival of my Little Richard record I was letting the neighbors get the blessings of hearing his music, as I had my record player on that porch. I remember my dad stepping out on the porch and asking, “What is that?” I quickly explained that it was Little Richard. (Long Tall Sally she built’ sweet, she got everything that Uncle John needs) To which my dad said, “Well turn Little Richard down.”
 
We won’t even go there with the clothing fads of the day and how my mom did not like pegged pants. Remember them? Remember white T’s shirts, pegged Levis and white buck shoes? Some even cut off the belt loops on their Levis. 

 
Lesson here might be to us older ones, we might  ask ourselves about some of the fads, fancies, noises we had in our generation; and maybe cut the current kids a bit of slack on some of theirs. I did so on “some.”

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June 28, 2014
Keep on,
​Larry Adamson

Just some thoughts:
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​​“Even the voice of conscience undergoes mutation.”

​​Have you ever done something on a dare and the entire time you were doing it you were scared? Really scared?

Not too far from where I grew up in southwestern Indiana was an old airport air strip, but on Sundays it became a local drag strip. If you don’t know what a drag strip is, it is a place you can take your car and have it timed to see how fast it might go in a quarter of a mile. In the late fifties the drag strip for many of us was a big deal. If you have ever heard groups like the Hondells, The Rip Chords,  Jan and Dean or the Beach Boys do songs like, “409,” “Little Deuce Coupe,” or “Hey Little Cobra,” you know the picture. On a Sunday afternoon in many small towns in the 1950s’ such a place consisted of three of the most important elements in the life of a teenager. A car, music and girls (boys). And not necessarily in that order. Check out the movie “American Graffiti.”

One of the favorite cars of the time was a 1957 Chevy. In 1960, my senior year in high school, my dad bought a ’57 Chevy. It was the family car. What got into me I will never know for sure, but for some time I had been goaded by some of my buddies to run “my” car at this strip. “Come on Adamson run that thing; let’s see what she’ll do.” “You chicken.” It was a V-8 stick shift, and I’ll have to say, I always had a curiosity as to what she might do.  One Sunday afternoon I allowed what good reasoning I had to leave me for a while, and I fell prey to the challenge of my buddies. I ran dad’s car. That quarter mile seemed like it stretched from Terre Haute to Indianapolis. I cringed every time I shifted the gears through the run. All I could think of was “What would I tell dad if the transmission goes?”   

Today I was walking through a local privately owned car collection. A guy here in Franklin has nearly fifty, maybe sixty old antique cars in a local warehouse. I was told very few people get in to see his collection. Through some maneuvering and the goodness of a good friend my wife and I got in. For me it was like Chris Krinkle walking through Santa’s workshop. About fifteen minutes into my walking journey through the warehouse what did I come upon but, yes, a ‘57 Chevy. There she was, just like my dad’s. Well, with a few exceptions, dad did not, nor would he ever have fender skirts. If you are from the ‘50s’, you know the lingo, fender skirts. Also, no spinner hubcaps for dad. But otherwise it was the same car, color, and same hardtop.

As I stood by the car (picture taken) a big smile came over me, and I thought, “I never did tell my dad about the day I drag raced his car.” The day I took dad’s car to the drag strip.

You know, regardless of age, I guess there might be a few things we never told “Mom and Dad.” I bet you have some similar confessions, right?

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April 7, 2014
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Just some thoughts:

How often have you heard those words or heard someone say, “Well, it’s probably a blessing in disguise.”
 
Oh really? I have always found it interesting, amusing and a few times frustrating how someone can think they know best. “Oh, it’s best he/she didn’t get that job, it’s best they broke up, they never would have made it, it’s best they never moved, it’s best, and it’s best.” How it is that someone can be so qualified in all matters that they know what would be best for someone else?

One of the greatest leaders of the free world, Winston Churchill, who had led Great Britain so brilliantly during the darkest days of his country in WWII, was defeated in his bid for re-election as Prime Minister right after the war. Supposedly his wife said to him upon his defeat, “Winston, perhaps this is a blessing in disguise.” To which Churchill replied, “Yes, very heavily disguised.”
 
During my late high school and all my college years I worked in a bank and had some great experiences. There was a lady who also worked there who was always making comments, evaluations, and predictions about the affairs of others. Some of us guys, not too politely, gave her the name of “The Prophet.” I remember when her daughter “took up with” and married this one certain young man; “took up with” were her words. The Prophet was less than complementary of him and their affairs. “I am afraid my daughter has been led by this duck to a dry pond; it won’t last.” Well her daughter and the “ugly duck” have been married nearly 50 years. Both gained advanced degrees, raised what most would say a beautiful family and they seem quite happy with their lives and with each other.

 
Evidently the Prophet didn’t know much about ducks and “where they might lead one to find water.” Often we don’t know nearly as much as we think we do, and I think that is especially true when it comes to matters of the heart. The ole Prophet, well, thank goodness she was not leading or they may still be in the wilderness.
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October 15, 2010
Keep on,
​Larry Adamson

Below is something I wrote in December of 2014.

LA

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Just some thoughts:

It is the common denominator.

Today we hear a lot about the haves and the have-nots. There is one thing that the haves and the have-nots share and will always have in common.

I had been in Indianapolis the evening before for a basketball game at Butler. Possibly the best place in the world to see a basketball game; I am sure I have a little bias there. Hinkle Fieldhouse is the oldest active basketball arena in the country. It was built in 1923 and is still to this day a great place to see a game. This morning as I was leaving the city, I pulled up to a stop light and looked over to my left and saw this sign, Crown Hill Cemetery. It is the resting place of an estimated 190,000 people.

Some very famous well known people are buried in Crown Hill Cemetery. The famous gangster and bank-robber, John Dillinger is buried there. The famous poet, James Whitcome Riley and one time, President Benjamin Harrison; and also there is Cannonball Baker. Cannonball was a famous name associated in the world of speed and motor cycle racing in the early 1900s’. Numerous other famous folks from Indiana are buried there. The one thing we all have in common with the haves and the have-nots is we will all die.

Do you know who the most important people buried in Crown Hill or any cemeteries are? The most important people buried in any cemetery are the ones we know.  
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​“A sure cure for conceit is a visit to the cemetery,
where eggheads and boneheads get equal billing”

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December 29, 2014
Keep on,
​Larry Adamson

Below is something I wrote in 2014. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. Interesting that this man wanted his wife to know how important she was to him and that he was thinking of her. May we do like wise.
​Happy Mother’s Day…to all…

LA

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​Just some thoughts:

I saw something special this morning, really special.

My wife has been out of town all this week in the Washington, D.C. area. Our oldest daughter was traveling for the week and asked if “Mom” could come and stay with the kids (fifteen year old Sloan and thirteen year old Lawson) while she was away.

It was Sunday morning, and like many other mornings, I arrived early to my coffee place and sat down at an outside table with my coffee and paper as I had some time before heading on to church services.I had driven one of my old cars (Corvette) now found a place on the coffee places porch and sat down. For some reason I placed my cell phone on the table.

I had not been at my table long when a gentleman came out of the shop and took a chair at a table near mine. I noticed he began fumbling with his cell phone and mumbling to himself. We caught each other’s eye and both of us smiled. Then he said to me, “I see you have your cell phone sitting there. I got this new phone and I wasn’t very good at sending text messages with the old one, now I’m worse. Are you any good at texting?” I laughed; if he only knew.

I stepped over to his table and watched as he struggled to figure out what to do. “I wanted to send my wife at home a morning text. She won’t be up yet, but I wanted her to get a message from me when she did.” I was very little help, like zero. Fortunately a lady came along and saw his electronic struggles and helped. His message was sent.

We went on to exchange some conversation. I learned that he was from Chicago and in town on business. Like me, he was killing some time as he was waiting to attend services at a church across the street.

Oh, by the way I did see the text message he sent to his wife. It was short and simple, five words that read “Good morning, I love you.”

I thought as I left the parking lot, I wonder what each of our days might be like if we woke up and were greeted with:
​

​“Good morning, I love you.”

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May 5, 2014
Keep on,
​Larry Adamson

Below is something I wrote after a round of golf with some friends. It was a most enjoyable day in many ways.

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​Just some thoughts:
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                              WITH SOME, OUR REMEMBRANCE NEVER CHANGES
 
                          “Connor spoke of the provocative beauty of an East Carolina cheerleader
                          who would be fifty-five years old today. But for Greg and me, that pretty
                        girl will be twenty-one and glowing with radiant youth until the day we die.”
 
Pat Conroy – My Losing Season

After we finished playing a round of golf, we sat in the dining area of the country club. We had great weather, great company and a most enjoyable time. The four of us had all graduated high school about the same time, around 1960. An attractive lady came by and stopped beside one of the fellas at our table and they exchanged in conversation for a few minutes. She was very pleasant in her conversation and the years had been kind to her in her appearance.
 
When she walked away the man who she had been talking with smiled and then acknowledged to us that the two of them had gone to high school together. Then with some degree of melancholy he said, “Every time I see her I still see her as I did in 1960. She was the prettiest cheerleader I think I ever saw. Still to this day when I see or think of her, it is how she looked back then. Yes we dated during those years.” 
 
 I smiled and affirmed his feelings. I think we all understood what he had said and maybe even a bit of what he left unsaid. I got the feeling there was more behind the smiles as she touched him on his shoulder as she walked away.
 
You know there are some people who are or were once a part of our lives that we never forget and regardless of time, they will always appear in our minds as they first did. As Conroy said,    

“Glowing with radiant youth until the day we die.”

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Keep on,
​Larry Adamson

Below is something I wrote in May of 2012. Personally today—talk radio gets pretty old. I vote–bring back the afternoon or nightly DJ…more music and less talk…

LA
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Just some thoughts:

They were celebrities in the 1950s’.
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Every radio market of any size in America had one, a disc jockey.

​A DJ is a person who sat in a radio station studio and played records. Often it was music that appealed to the teenagers. These record spinners became local favorites of the young people. In my home area we had one who went by the initials of J. A., his name was Jim Austin. During my four years in high school I can remember the stunts he did. One year he sat high atop a pole at the local county fair and never came down the entire week. Another time he sat in the display window of Roots department store on main street (Wabash Avenue) to set a stay- awake record. We kids would drive by the window, stop to look at him and encourage him not to “go to sleep.” Another time he supposedly locked himself in the control room of the station (WBOW) and continued to play the same record for over six hours. He pulled this feat on a Friday night as we drove up and down the main drag of our town. Each time he would announce a record, but each time he played the same song which happened to be, “The Purple People Eater.” You can imagine the buzz on the strip that night. The word was that the police were going to have to break into the station to get him to stop. He did local high school sock hop dances, grand openings of various shops and businesses. He was definitely a local with a name and a following. Little did we kids realize the stories behind these record jockey personalities, as often they made their way from station to station and sometimes leaving town under not the best of circumstances. Harry Chapin once wrote and sang about such.

“W.O.L.D.”

Hello honey, it’s me/ What did you think when you heard me back on the radio?

What did the kids say when they knew it was their long last daddy-o?

Remember how we listened to the radio/ And I said “That’s the place to be”

And how I got the job as an FM jock/ The day you married me?

We were two kids and I was into AM rock/ But I just had to run around

It’s been eight years since I left you babe/ Let me tell you ‘bout what’s gone down

I am the mornin’ DJ on W.O.L.D/ Playin’ all the hits for you wherever you may be

The bright good-mornin’ voice who’s heard but never seen

Feelin’ all of forty-five goin’ on fifteen

So I drifted down to Tulsa, Oklahoma/ To do me a late night talk show

Now I worked my way down home again, via Boise, Idaho/ That’s how this business goes

I been making extra money to a high school hops/ I’m a big time MC

You should hear me talking to the little children/ And listen what they say to me

Sometimes I get this crazy dream/ That I just take off in my car

When you can travel on ten thousand miles/ And still stay where you are

I’ve been thinking that I should stop disk jockeying/ And start that record store           
               
Maybe I could settle down/ If you’d take me back once more

OK honey, I see/ I guess he’s better than me

Sure old girl, I understand/ You don’t have to worry I’m such a happy man
(Harry Chapin)

I  think a lot of DJ’s of that time identified with the line “Feelin’ all of forty-five goin’ on fifteen.”

Years later a lot of us who had listened to these jocks play music…well, we also might be feelin’ forty-five, yet remembering when we were in out teen’s

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May 2, 2014
Keep on,
Larry Adamson