Reflections from the back nine
Just some thoughts:
In the category of “wishes” where would you fall?
In your life would there be more:
“I wished I had done more of” Or.. “I wish I had done…less of?”
Are there more “I wished I had………. or more wished I hadn’t?”
=============================================
January 6, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson
Posted April 30, 2019
Just some thoughts:
I love days like this.
Early spring when temperatures begin to rise. I go to the garage take the cover (grand kids call them blankets) off one of my old cars. Back out of the drive and tell my wife “I’ll be back later.”
I then head for Leipers Fork. It is about a fifteen mile drive from our house out to Pucketts Grocery store. I take the back roads always.
Coming back home I take another of the back roads. Slowly I make my way, top down and music playing. I come around this curve and I can see Tim and Faith’s (McGraw’s) house and farm. Large acreage, just beautiful.
I am made to think of one of his songs. The lyrics run thru my mind slowly like water down a mountain stream.
“Thought about You”
Saw your Mama laugh and talkin’ on the phone
With a girl workin’ on an ice cream cone
Drippin’ on her shoes/ And I thought about you
Saw a spring break Honda hell-bent for Daytona
The boys in the back hiding their Corona
Like kids do/ And I thought about you
I thought about songs that make us feel better
I thought about faith that ties it all together
I thought about now, then thought about forever
I thought about fire and how we walked through it
The times I got it right, the times I blew it
I thought about real, I thought about good,
I thought about true/ And I thought about you
I saw “hungry” misspelled on a cardboard sign
And a dirty tee shirt that said “Roll Tide”
So I gave him a few/ And I thought about you
Ran into a buddy, he said “How long’s it been?”/
I said “A couple years,” he said “Boy, it’s been ten”
That’s what time will do/ And I thought about you
I thought about songs that make us feel better
I thought about faith that ties it all together
I thought about now, then thought about forever
I thought about me/ I thought about God
Everything love is/ And everything it’s not
I saw a red balloon somebody just let fly
I watched it gettin’ smaller up in the sky
For a minute or two/ And I thought about you
Tim McGraw/ Neon Church
Ever wonder if anyone should see a balloon flying in the sky that they might think of you?
The “You’s” of life….you got any?
=============================================
March 28, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson
Posted April 30, 2019
Just some thoughts:
It was a Saturday morning and I was in my drive-way vacuuming out our cars.
I hate driving/riding in cars that are dirty so each week I vacuum all of our cars, my wife’s, my convertible and my old Corvette and Thunderbird. That’s when I heard her scream. Fortunately it was not a scream of “help” but a child’s scream of excitement. If you have raised kids you know the difference.
I looked up and down the street came a little girl trying to master the art of riding a bicycle. There she was pink bicycle, helmet on and next to her holding on to the back of the child’s bicycle seat was a man, I would learn it was her father. From side to side she went, she was wobbling worst than Otis trying to make his way to the Mayberry jail.
She was unsteady to say the least. I stopped what I was doing, leaned against my car and just watched. Neither of them were aware I was watching. I heard the man call the child by name and then I heard him say those most supporting words, “Come on honey you can do this, you can do it.”
They had made their way from up the street to the corner then turned around and walked back to the drive-way of their house. Again they started the routine. She again was on the bike, dad by her side offering those encouraging words. Then all of a sudden she took off, no dad at holding her steady. She had straightened her path and was now on her own, she was riding a bicycle by herself for the first time. She truly was solo. Again she screamed and I heard her yell out, “I got it Daddy, I got it, I got it.”I
As I stood and watched two thoughts came to me for this child. One, that she always has at her side the support of her parents, someone telling her “you can do it.” Two, she always carries that spirit of trying to do something she has never done and those word, “I got it, I got it,” can always be a part of who she is.
Don’t we wish that for all our children.
===============================================================
April 6, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson
Posted April 27, 2019
Just some thoughts:
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
Viscount Morley of Blackburn–John
Silence does not mean approval.
Sometimes one learns silence as a means for survival.
=============================================April 12, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson
Posted April 27,2019
Just some thoughts:
Lenny Wilkens has an honor that few others have or will ever duplicate. Wilkens is in the Basketball Hall of Fame in Worcester, Massachusetts, not only as a player but also as a coach. On my visit to the Hall of Fame standing at his plaque I realized how rare that is.Very few other can say that.
At one of the practices during the time Wilkens was coaching professional basketball he was trying to explain a skill, a floor matter to one of the rookie players on his team. The player was getting very frustrated regarding his coaches instruction when he said to the coach: “Do you have any idea how hard it is to do what you are asking?” The rookie’s teammates all fell out laughing and one of the teammates said to the player, “Do you realize who you are talking to in asking such a question?” It was evident the rookie did not know the fame and reputation of his coach. Possibly if he did he might have spoken or acted a bit differently.
Howard Hawkes the famous movie producer had invited William Faulkner to a gathering of Hollywood folks. Faulkner had been asked by Hawkes to come to Hollywood and write the screen play for one of Faulkner’s famous books.
During the gathering Hawkes and Faulkner got to talking books. The actor Clark Gable was in the mix and said to Faulkner, “Mr.Faulkner, what do you think someone should read if he wants to read the best modern day writers?” Faulkner replied with a list of names, “Hemingway, Wila Cather, Thomas Mann, Jo DosPasso and myself.” “Oh” Gable said, “Do you write?” “Yes Mr.Gable I do” was Faulkner’s reply. Then Faulkner said to Gable “And what do you do?”
I think it might be in one’s best interest to always know whose company they are in and who they might be talking to. Agreed?
=============================================
April 16, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson
Posted April 26, 2019
Just some thoughts:
When my wife and I first moved to Nashville we attended church with the son of one of the famous vocal group the Jordanaires.
Often I would talk with him and would hear of an interesting story. It is said that the Jordanaires were the most recorded voices in all of music. The were back up voices for more recordings than could be numbered.
RCA records had just signed a new artist and he was scheduled to come to Nashville for a recording session. The artist had requested that the Jordanaires be in the studio and do the backup vocals on these session.
The producer of the session had contacted only one of the group the artist requested (the Jordanaires) and told him that he had just signed another back up group and would be using two singers from that group in the session. The producer asked the one member of the Jordanaires would he mind working with those two from the group other than the remaining Jordanaires. He told the producer “Well I know them but I’ve never worked with them.” The producer said “Oh well it won’t make any difference who the back-up is on this guy coming into the studio. This kid that’s coming in for his recording session he isn’t going to be around very long anyway. He’s just a passing fad. You just come on in and do some oohs and ahhs.”
The producer that was legendary Nashville music man Chet Atkins. The kid coming in for the recording session, oh that was Elvis Presley.
You know sometimes we are not as good at making judgement of others as we think we are.
Sometimes even those who are very good in their field, which Mr. Atkins was, are not as good as they might think regarding evaluation of others.
=============================================
April 5, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson
Posted April 25, 2019
Just some thoughts:
All because they had the same first initial in their last names afforded him something special.
Can your remember when where you sat, or got in line, when you were called to do something often was determined by the first initial in your last name? I can.
Once upon a time polio was a disease that was the rage and especially of young children. Then a cure or prevention was created for it by Doctor Jonas Salk. I remember very early in my grade school years when it was announced that the coming week students would be receiving their polio shots and it would be done in the school library. The mere mention of the word “shots” to young children struck fear in their hearts.
I well remember that day in getting to school and seeing the school library set up differently than most days. The medical folks had moved in. It was announced that morning that students would be called to the library to received their shots by alphabetical order. Also our grade would be called first. This was not good. I readily understood what the initial “A” meant. Yes I ended up being called first to receive the shot.
A fella tells that because of his last name initial he ended up sitting next to what he thought was the prettiest girl in all of his college days. “She was beautiful, so, so pretty and I was so scared, all semester I never said one word to her even though I wanted to so badly.”
This “Scared to say anything to the girl guy” would go on and become a very well known author and writer. Some time later while he was in the hospital he received a get well card from her with a hand written note. She said she remembered him, sitting next to him in college and reads the things he writes, books, columns and all.
He said he could have kicked himself for not making some kind of move, acknowledgement on her twenty years ago. But the real reason he never made move on her he said was cause he was realistic. In his words, “He was no day at the beach when he was in college.”
I thought about that beach line. I could college days identify. I most often felt that way, “I was no day at the beach.” I did a lot of comparing and in my mind I didn’t match up.
Kinda reminds me of a song I once heard:
“Is it better to say too much than not to say anything at all?”
You know if the truth be told, I bet most all of us had someone that we wanted to or wish we had said something to, but for various reasons never spoke a word.
How about you? I know I did.
=============================================
April 18, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson
Posted April 24, 2019
Just some thoughts:
“I used to look at her more that I listened to the sermons.”
A quote from one of our Presidents. Seems at a high school age he and Margaret became an item.
By the way that quote could probably still be applicable today. I think I know of a few who looked more and listened less in church. I think ole Billy “G” himself or even the Apostle Paul might have been expounding from the pulpit and not had everyone’s attention. I’ve even known—of course I was told this— of a fella or two that held hands hidden under “Great Songs of the Church,” one of them old blue hymnals.
Margaret’s father was the minister in a small Illinois town and the two of them became a couple, boyfriend, girlfriend. In fact their class mates felt they were destined to later marry and be life long partners. For nearly six years they were this special couple.
Then things began to happen.
“How could we know it would truly be a farewell romance of youth. Our lives began to travel into diverging paths, we would find that it was true that before and after age twenty-one, people are often different. At any rate our lovely and wholesome relationship did not survive growing up.”
Where’s the Rest of Me?–-Ronald Reagan
Over the expansion of time I wonder how many other young relationship, once thought as very special found themselves, they did not survive and ………. “traveled into diverging paths.”
Hum….
=============================================
April 14, 2019
Keep on,
Larry Adamson
Posted April 22, 2019
Just some thoughts:
One of the things I taught when I was teaching was driver’s training was the art of backing a car. How did get in and out of parking spaces. I have a few stories of those driving experiences that might curl your hair.
Something I always remembered is one of the oldest guys we taught driver’s training with he always did something most of us found strange.
The very first thing he would do with his students is he would take them to a rather large and empty parking lot. Once each student of his got behind the wheel he would teach them how to go in reverse before he would let them go forward. He always made his students go in reverse before he would let them go in drive.
We all found this strange and when asked “what are you doing?” He said “If a kid can master keeping a car on a straight line going backwards, going forward will be much easier for them.”
I guess it’s kinda like… if one can/ has managed what’s happened to them in their past… then probably they can pretty well manage what will happen to them in their future, what’s in front of them.
Hum..learning from one’s past…what a novel idea.
=========================================
April 14, 2016
Keep on,
Larry Adamson
Posted April 22,2019
Just some thoughts:
“THE SUMMER WIND”
The summer wind came blowin’ from across the sea
It lingered there, to touch your hair and walk with me
All summer long we sang a song and then we strolled that golden sand
Two sweethearts and the summer wind
Like painted kites, those days and nights they went flyin’ by
The world was new beneath a blue umbrella sky
Then softer that a piper man, one day it called to you
I lost you, I lost you to the summer wind
The autumn wind, and the winter winds they have come and gone
And still the days, those lonely days, they go on and on
And guess who sighs his lullabies through nights that never end
My fickle friend, the summer wind
The summer wind
Warm summer wind
The summer wind
Hans Bradtke, Henry Mayer, Johnny Mercer
You ever experienced a summer wind?
(Love this song–LA)
=============================================
June 5, 2009
Keep on,
Larry Adamson
