Larry Grams

Reflections from the back nine

Larry Adamson

Archives for March 2017

HE WOULD KNOW

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Just some thoughts:                                     
 
                  “History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.”
 
Very fitting words for our time from one who would certainly know. 
 
Interesting these words were spoken sixty-four year ago (January 20, 1953) in Dwight Eisenhower’s inaugural address. 
 
Leaves one with a lot of thoughts…
 
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January 19, 2017
Keep on,
Larry Adamson 

IS IT BETTER?

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​Just some thoughts:
 
Is it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?
No one ever tells you what’s it’s like to love and lose,
How it feels to waken and have breakfast with the blues.
Someone tells you later all is fair in love and war,
But no one ever tells you before.
 
“No One Ever Tells You” – Carroll Coates & Hub Atwood
Recorded by Frank Sinatra – April 9th, 1956
 ​When Abraham Lincoln was a young man living in New Salem, Illinois he met and fell in love with a young lady, Anne Rutledge. Sadly she took ill with typhoid and died August 25, 1835.
 
Twenty-five years later in 1860 just before Lincoln left Illinois to begin his Presidency he slipped quietly away from Springfield and went to Farmington in Coles County to visit his aged step-mother. Here he met with surviving members of the Hanks and Johnston families. While there a number of people from the small village of New Salem came to see him one last time.  Lincoln also inquired about a number of families he had know while living in New Salem. It is said at that visit he admitted  to an old friend of his love for Anne Rutledge. Some historians say Lincoln never got over this loss and the effects of it remained with him until his death.

                                             “I cannot bear to have the rain fall upon her.” 
                                                                   Abraham Lincoln
 
“I have loved the name of Rutledge to this day. I have kept my mind on their movements ever since. I loved her dearly. She was a handsome girl, would have made a good and loving wife. She was natural and quite intellectual, though not highly educated. I did honestly and truly love the girl, and think often of her now.”                        
                                               Herndon’s Life of Lincoln – William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik
 
As the line says… Just some thoughts.
 
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January 30, 2014
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

BOB COUSY

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​Just some thoughts:
 
                               
He was early “Magic.” So few of you will even recognize the name. 
 
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November 15, 2013
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

I DON’T KNOW WHY

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Just some thoughts:
 

“I don’t know why they won’t let us be together. 
I’ve tried to tell them It’s certainly more than puppy love.”
 
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January 28, 2017
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

My Own Bat

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Just some thoughts:
                                                 MY OWN BAT

If you are my age or thereabouts you might remember when you were a kid and played sandlot baseball. 

You went to a community diamond (field) and played. You either walked or rode your bike. No parents driving you.  Probably had your ball glove thrown over your bike’s handlebars. No parents, adults, umpires, at the field. Just kids. Often these were  just pickup games. Who ever might show up, choose up and play. I can even remember sometimes in an effort to have more players a girl might be asked to play. Hum….generally she got sent to play right field. If you are a baseball fan, you get that. One thing  common at most all those games seldom was there an abundance of equipment. Someone had a ball and you were lucky if you had more than one bat. The ball and the bat might even have a bit of tape on them from prior use.

This past March 23rd, my birthday, our good friends Rob and Cathy Kramer from Louisville, Kentucky and the Kramer family gave me a special gift. Now I have my own Louisville slugger baseball bat. Personalized and all.  The company that made that bat is now 132 years old.

That company has an interesting history. Bud Hillerich worked in his dad’s company that made butter churns. Yes, butter churns. Young Bud was a baseball fan and one afternoon he skipped worked to go watch his favorite baseball team there in Louisville. His favorite player, Pete Browning was mired in a hitting slump After the game Bud told Browning, ” You need a new bat and I can make you one.” Hillerich made Browning a new bat with which the next game Browning got three hits. Browning proceeded to tell his teammates about his new bat and from there the rest is history. Other players begin asking Hillerich to “Make a bat for me.” In 1854 Hillerich put a trademark on his new creation calling it “Louisville Slugger.” Since that time over 100,000,000 bats have been sold under the name Louisville Slugger and today 60% of all major league players use Louisville Slugger bats.

Do you think I should come out of retirement now that I got my own bat ? Hey I once did hit a home run during my Little League days. Also, truth must make me say, it was my only one. I never rivaled The Babe. 

But now I do have my own personalized bat. I bet you there is not another soul from that sandlot diamond of those days in Pimento, Indiana…….. can even come close to saying that.

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And…how about you….you got a personalized bat? I bet not.
==================================March 24, 2017
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

YOU CAN’T MAKE A HEART

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​Just some thoughts: 
 
Recently I was sittin’ in one of Nashville’s libraries of culture. A placed called the Station Inn.
 
A music place, or as I often refer “a library of culture,” some might call it a honky tonk.  I go to this one place often as it is one of the last real places where you can still hear traditional country music and bluegrass. Finding that in Nashville now days is becoming harder. Folks like to label stuff “country” but I think often that is miss advertisement.
 
On occasion I was sitting with this one group of folks. All of them are younger, some much younger than me. I like sitting with these guys, a couple of them are song writers, they just come at life from a different street than I so often have traveled. I definitely am the senior of the group. One of the fellas sitting at the table often refers to me as “history.” “Hey history what do you think?”
 
A bit before the show started one of the young guys got up and left the table. One of the fellas at the table called him by name and then said, “he’s had a rough week.” He went on to say that his friend had been dating this girl for sometime.This week had bought a ring and proposed to her.  “It didn’t go well, she as graciously as she could, she turned him down.” Sad.
 
About midnight that evening as I left to come home I got in my car and slipped in a George Strait cd. The second song that came on told the following story. It was almost like I had heard earlier that evening.
​                                             “You Can’t Make A Heart Love You.”
 
                                      At a table for two/ With candlelight and wine
                  That diamond burnin’ holes in his pockets/ Thinkin’ now’s the perfect time
                    When he popped the question he could see/ The teardrops fill her eyes
                       She said I knew this was comin,’ and I’m sorry/ But I hope you realize
 
                           You can’t make a heart love somebody/ You can tell it what to do
                          But it won’t listen at all/ You can’t make a heart love somebody
                                 You can lead a heart to love/ But you can’t make it fall
 
                                Then she reached for his hand/ And said I want you to know
                                 I’ve done everything that I know of/ to make the feelin’ grow 
                       I’ve begged and I’ve pleaded with my heart/ But there’s no gettin’ through
                                 My heart’s the only part of me/ That’s not in love with you
 
                           You can’t make a heart love somebody/ You can tell it what to do
                             But it won’t listen at all/ You can’t make a heart love somebody
                                     You can lead a heart to love/ But you can’t make it fall
 
                                   You can lead a heart to love/ But you can’t make it fall
 
                                                   (Johnny Macrae–Steve Clark)
There is a lot of truth in music…you know sometimes there are things in life one wants so badly….but they just can’t make it happen…..
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Novermber 30, 2016
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY

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​Just some thoughts:                     
 
Hey Dean Martin used to sing about this…..”Everybody Needs Somebody.”
 
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February 4, 2017
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

I WANT THE REAL THING

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This afternoon driving home from golf course…I slipped in a cd and this song “Rocket 88”  came on…good stuff…

LA

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Just some thoughts:

I’m glad I was around for  the birth of rock-n’-roll.

Supposedly the first rock-n’-roll song recorded was a little ditty done by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats called “Rocket 88.” I am sure one can get debate on that matter.  Ike Turner (Ike and Tina)
played the lead guitar on that song. 

There has been and still is today a lot of stuff folks put out there that they  want to call rock-n’-roll. Personally I don’t think  much of what has come out since about the time Elvis passed away.
Exception, Bob Seeger. Fabrication is what it is…

Give me the real thing….like the song says…

THE REAL THING

I was on a bus comin’ back to us
from Atlanta in ’53
And I picked up a Rhythm & Blues magazine
Layin’ underneath my seat
And I found out the stuff they’d
been playin’ us
 Wasn’t made from grits and bone
]And it would take more than the Crew Cuts
And Pat Boone to take me home

I want the real thing/ Work with me Annie
Or the songs they’s sing/ Annie had a baby
I don’t want you under my roof with
your 86 proof
Watered down “till it
tastes like tea
You’re gonna pull my string
Make it the real thing

I remember old Elvis when he forgot
To remember to forget
And when young Johnny Cash hadn’t see
this side of
Big River yet
 And old Luther and Lewis and
Perkins was pickin’
And playin’ them songs for me

I want the real thing/ Give me
the real thing
Make it loud I’ll make you proud
Or the song they’d sing
I don’t want you under my roof
with your 86 proof
Watered down ’till it
tastes like tea
You’re gonna pull my string/
Make it the real thing

Thanks be to song writer Chip Taylor for the lyrics to this song and reminding us from whence came the roots of rock-n’-roll.

In my (humble) opinion today there are too many “one string guitar”pickers who have only one knob on their amps..(up) give me the real thing…like ole’ Chuck, Jerry Lee and  them early boys…now that’s just my opinion….you don’t have to agree….  
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September 17, 2016
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

LEARN TO PLAY THE DRUMS

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​Just some thoughts:

Maybe one should first learn to play the drums and then later buy a ’57 Chevrolet.
 
In the mid 1950s’ he was seventeen years old growing up in Memphis, Tennessee. He had an interest in learning to play the drums, but he also had a serious interest in buying a used car. You must remember how important a set of wheels are to a teenager. He had worked for some time on a paper route and had saved six hundred dollars. He bought the drums.
 
He started to play in local rock-n’-roll bands while still in high school. One day he received a call from Sam Phillips who owned Sun Records recording studio there in Memphis. Phillips told him that he had a guy scheduled that week for some recording time but he (Phillips) needed someone to come in and play on this recording session. No big deal, so the young man agreed. On that day Jerry Lee Lewis recorded his famous song, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” From that session this young drummer, J. M. Van Eaton, was asked to also record with Lewis on numerous other hits of his. Also from that day, Van Eaton became a part of the house band at Sun Records and recorded on more rock-n’-roll records than we can count.

This past week I heard J. M Van Eaton tell that story. He went on to say that in about a year from the time he purchased those drums and sat in for those one or two sessions, he made over ten thousand dollars. He then went out and bought himself, not a used, but a NEW 1957 Chevrolet. Forget the used car. One might call that delayed gratification. What he got when he made the decision to buy the drums was a life and career in music; with the car he would have gotten transportation. You know, sometimes what is best is just to begin and not worry too much about what we think we need next.

​Every year thousands of young people graduate from high school or college; talk with them and see what they are thinking. In many cases they think they have an idea of what they want, but often they don’t understand the process of getting there. Sometimes before you get that ’57 Chevy you want so badly, take some lessons and “learn to play the drums first.” Often we hear a great deal about the word career. It is my opinion that an awful lot of folks have started out in life and the matter of a career comes to them.   
 
When I was young and working in Doyle Gunn’s grocery store one of the older guys who previously graduated from our local high school was about to graduate from Purdue University. He was in the store talking about his “career” and all that he wanted in his future. One of the local brain giants in the community was standing behind the old coal stove listening to all this, and his take to the young man was, “Get a job first, then you can find out about that career stuff.”
 
There are many lessons that can be taken from this young drummer’s experience. Before we buy the things we think we need or want, maybe we best make some preparation about how to deliver on those wishes. Sometimes one has to get a “job” in an effort to start or sustain a “career.” 
​                          
                                  “Learn to play the drums first and then you can buy that ’57 Chevrolet.”
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November 13, 2012
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

HELP

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Just some thoughts:

 
            “Help. She’s about to choke me.”

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January 29, 2017
Keep on,
Larry Adamson