Archives for January 2019

Just some thoughts:

“It’s kinda of sad up there, isn’t it?” He told Turner.

“I get back there as much as I can but I don’t make a big deal about it. I get up there when I’m nearby and I slip in and go to the cemetery or whatever. When anyone ask me where I’m from, though I say Drew. I don’t ever say New Orleans. Drew has been good to me and I say thank you each day for my life and being fortunate to spend the happiest part of my life here.”

Thus said Archie Manning of his growing up days in Drew, Mississippi.

I smiled upon reading those lines from Mark Ribowsky’s book  In The Name of the Father–Family Football and the Manning Dynasty.

I know quite a few guys from my day and time who, well we all had  a “Drew, Mississippi” in our lives.  And like Archie…”we still do.” Even today we still look upon those years as fortunate years.

I’m still from Pimento, Indiana …always will be.

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January 17, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Just some thoughts:

“Has it ever stuck you, Connie, that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?”

The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore–Tennessee Williams

In answer to that question “Has it ever struck you that life is all memory?”

Yes, and even more so as I have aged.

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January 14, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Posted January 30, 2019

 

JUST  SOME THOUGHTS:

Some random thoughts I’ve had this past week sitting alone over early morning coffee. And so I wrote them down.

1. “Love blooms at night but often in daylight it dies.”

2. “Why is it some people let themselves become the old people they said they never would be?”

3. “It’s a sad situation when someone wants to leave as badly as someone wants them to stay.”

4.”Sometimes it’s easier to write it than say it.”
(Jim Croce==”So I Had To Tell You I Loved You In A Song)

5. “If you see a bargain you best buy it when you see it.”

6.  “A late said, ‘I’m Sorry’ is better than no said I’m Sorry.’

7.  “Sometimes the journey will mean more than the arrival.”

8. “A basketball game is not a ballgame  without a bag of popcorn.”

9 .”When a person knows only one way to handle/deal with people, they don’t know how to deal/handle people.”

10. “When  supposedly did loud become the measurement for good?”
(Chet and Les never played loud)

11.”Trying to have two fingers in two pies at the same time…is not wise.”

12.”Some may say the world is goin’ to hell in a hand basket but that does not mean one has to have their hands on the handle of that basket.”

13. “Sometimes in a marriage there can be too many assumptions.”

14 .”People often form opinions, good or bad, over too few experiences in a matter?”

15. “Be careful what you say to one at midnight–cause in the daylight they may remind you.”
(“Will you still love me tomorrow”)

16.”While a Rolex may be impressive on one’s wrist, it and a Timex give the same time.”

17. “If one doesn’t expect too much, then they won’t be as badly disappointed.”

18.”If within your life about 50- 60 per cent of it has turned out like you thought or hoped, you probably have been lucky.”

19.”Sometimes one has to remember past times to help cope with the current times.”

20. “Now”–may be all we have.”

21. “Far too often we want to compare.”

22. “In your memory is there a year (s) you return to more often than any other?”

23. “Some people can not live/think past the moment.”

24. “You ever wondered if anyone lost sleep over you?”
(other than your Mama)

25.”One of the best things is to be remembered, one of the worst is to be forgotten.”

 

What is it they say, “A penny for your thoughts?” Well how about a quarter in this situation. By the way I have been told “You think too much.”

Any of the twenty-five you can associate with? What numbers?

 

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January 25, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Posted January 29, 2019

Just some thoughts:

City fella decided one day he’d take a drive in the country. He did but  a deer crossed his path and he ended with his car in the ditch. What now?

Near where he ran into the ditch was an old farmer plowing with a mule. He called to the farmer, “Hey my car’s in the ditch is there anything you can do to help me?” Farmer looked a bit and then said, “Well I have  Dusty here my old blind mule he’s pretty strong. Let me hitched him up to your car and have him pull you out of the ditch.” Farmer brought Dusty from the field to the ditch, harnessed him up to the front of the city man’s car and then yelled: “Pull Dusty, pull.” Then he yelled again, “Pull Billy, Pull Babe, Pull Ribbon, Pull Fanny.” Almost immediately Dusty pulled the car from the ditch.

Wow. But the city fella was puzzled and said to the farmer, “Well, that is quite a mule you got there but I noticed you called him by five different names as he was pulling. You called him Dusty, Billy, Babe, Ribbon, and Fanny.” “Why” the city man ask the farmer. The farmer’s reply, “Well, you see Dusty is blind and he couldn’t pull the car from the ditch if he thought he was doing it by himself.”

Sadly too often man is like Dusty, the old blind mule, we think we can’t do it without someone else’s help. Sometimes we are stronger than we think we are.

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January 14, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Posted January 28, 2019

Just some thoughts:

No too long ago I sat with a party at a Burger King in a southern city and he said to me:

“When I tell you some things about me, you may not like me,
You may not want to ever have lunch with me again.”

And so he began.

Some time later when he finished I said to him, “Just the opposite, I want to know more about you.” I went on to tell him “You have given me a gift, anyone that will be that open and transparent with me, that says to me, I can be who I am with you also.”

When one can be who they are, with who they are with…… that’s good stuff.

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January 19, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Posted January 27, 2019

Just some thoughts:

Three young male college students were scheduled to take a  final exam. The evening prior to the exam the young men fell prey to  “wine, women and song.” They fell in such a manner that the wine, women and song lasted far into the night and even well into the early morning. So much were  the activities of the evening that they failed to show for their scheduled final.

The day following the scheduled exam the three young men went to see their professor. They told the professor the reason they had missed the exam was all three of them had gone out of town together and on the return trip they had a flat tire. In regards to the circumstances that caused them to miss the exam they asked if they could make it up the next morning. The professor told them, “Sure.” They were told to report to the professor’s office at 8 A.M. the next morning and they would be given the exam.

The following morning the three of them showed up. The professor then told the first young man to go to room 215 for his exam, the second young man to room 217 for his exam and the third young man to go to room 219 for his exam.

Each young man sitting down in his assigned room opened the test folder, noticed the test was only one sheet and only one question. The question was: “Which tire was it?”

I think all would agree the young men were asked a question for which they had not prepared.

Were you ever in such a situation?

Truth be told I think we all have been asked a question we were not prepared to answer.

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January 8, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Posted January  24, 2019

Just some thoughts:

“The first time I was ever called ugly, I was thirteen.”
Skeeter–The Help

Recently I was sitting in a small group setting and I heard a man say, “Regardless of our age most of us can still remember a time (s) in our lives in which we were really (emotionally) hurt. Times when hurt and we felt threatened.”

As I sat there the more I thought about what he had just said I agreed. I think all of us have been  hurt (emotionally) in some manner or way. In my book  Just Some Thoughts (I Wish They Could See Me Now–page eleven) I reference a couple personal cases.

The crux of the matter is how in our lives we come to deal with that hurt and threat. In the book The Help,  Skeeter’s parent’s black maid, Constantine, gives her some of the best advice in deal with such matters when she says to Skeeter: “Every morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision, you gone have to ask yourself,  am I gone believe what them fools say about me today.”

“Ugly live up one the inside, Ugly be a hurtful, mean person. Is you one of them?”
The Help—Kathryn Stockett

And often we may need to ask ourselves the same question:

“Are we gone believe what them fools say about me today.”

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January 12, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Posted January 22, 2019

Just some thoughts:

For sometime I have acted as a facilitator for a class (Bible) that a friend of mine has been teaching. In this class there was this older gentleman who was in failing  health.

Sadly all of the class were watching as each week his health continue to fade. We all  thought it remarkable that he even continued to get himself up and make the effort to come to class. One morning as we began the class I said to him, “Len, how are you doing this morning, how are you feeling?” Len did not say a lot, kinda a quite man, but when he did say something most often it  made the class smile, sometimes even laugh, and also later would give you  pause reflecting  on what he had said.

This morning as I ask him that question, he paused a bit (he was an avid golfer–or had been) and slowly he said to me for all the class to hear: “Well, I’ll tell you what, from where I am standing in the 18th fairway of my life, I’m not at the clubhouse just yet, but I sure can see it from here.”

A few weeks later as I sat in the audience at his funeral I recalled what Len had said on that morning. You know there is something to be said for one who knows what fairway in which they are standing and where the “clubhouse is located.”

“Father time is the only one I know to be undefeated in life.”

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January 10, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Posted January 22, 2019

Just some thoughts:

From his book  My Mother’s Favorite Song my friend John, tells this story.

“She was standing just inside the door as I rushed past, fishing rods in one hand, lunch in the other.  ‘Have a good time,’ she said, and although it was sincere, there was pain in it; but the pain escaped me–at least it escaped my consciousness. ‘I’m sure I will, you have a good time, too. ‘Sure’ she said.'”

My friend gets to his car….but something was nagging at him…

“She was standing right where I had left her—just inside the door–eyes wide open and huge tears rolling down both cheeks. She wasn’t shaking or sobbing; she was just standing there–hands at her sides, eyes wide open, tears running down–looking at me.”

“You never have time for me.”

“She didn’t yell, didn’t even raise her voice; it would have been easier if she had. It was a quiet statement of truth that left me convicted and heartsick. Everything just sort of went out of me.”

“A woman’s mildness often will provoke a man’s guilt far better than ever her wrath.”

Quote from Coach Gainer—The Coalwood Way–Homer Hickam

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January 21, 2019

Keep on,

Larry Adamson

Just some thoughts:

“Oh should I or shouldn’t I?”

That might  have been the question Charlie Hanger could have ask himself.

He saw this old junk looking yellow car and there it was plain as day,  it did not have a license plate. Earlier in the day Hanger had planned to go to an area where he felt he could be of more help, but was told no “we have enough help. You won’t be needed here.” So he was out doing what he did most everyday. Driving the highway.

He pulled alongside the car noticed a crew cut young man driving. They exchanged looks and he nodded for the driver to pull over. The officer then dropped back and put on his lights in his cruiser.

Charlie “Hangman” Hanger (his nickname cause some felt he was too harsh over routine minor infractions) had just stopped and thus caught the Oklahoma City Bomber, Timothy McVeigh. No major man hunt of hundreds of law officers combing the country side just one officer out doing what he was hired to do.

The one who had committed this unthinkable act had just been caught by one who was out doing his daily job. Just doing his routine. You know there is some wisdom in doing the routine. One never knows for sure when it can become anything but routine.

Laws. Some we may like, some maybe we don’t. In this case the officer did not debate about the merit of the law. When one begins  to decide what the law is for themselves then a society is in trouble. If a law is bad, not good, then work within the system to have it changed.

No man should be a law unto themselves.

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January 10, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson

Posted January 20, 2019