1965-2015
Few pictures of the past...
Happy 50th Anniversary Barbara! 1965-2015 Few pictures of the past...
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Just some thoughts: WHAT A DAY YESTERDAY WAS I'd just stopped by Publix supermarket. A couple days previous I had stopped by and made arrangements with the bakery to prepare a cake for me. A cake, chocolate, Barb's favorite. I think chocolate must be a favorite of most all women. That's been my experience. It would be a 50th wedding anniversary cake. I was picking it up as the plans were for the next evening Barb and I along with another couple to have dinner out and then come back to our house for desert and coffee. Just as I sat the cake down in the passenger's seat and turned the ignition on in the car an Alan Jackson song came on from the car cd player. I had been playing his music. I smiled and thought how appropriate. Here I am picking up a cake for our 50th wedding anniversary and the timing of this song. "What A Day Yesterday Was" Looking through these old photographs Don't they bring good memories back Some of them make us laugh And some make us cry I'm glad we've kept all of these souvenirs Look at how happy we were Pictures don't lie Here's one of us with you calm and cool But look at me acting a fool And here's one of us on the ferris wheel At the fair Hey, haven't we had some fun The best may be yet to come We may have a hundred years Still left to share But.... If forever should end today And there's no tomorrow for us What a day yesterday was Let's close this book of photograph And let's turn out the lights And love the moment As if it were the last And... If forever should end today And there's no tomorrow for us What a day yesterday was Yes what a "day" yesterday it has been...what a fifty years. Thank you Barbara.
July 25, 1965--July 25, 2015 July 22. 2015 Keep on, Larry Adamson Below is something I wrote in July of 2014. Yes the picture is a post card of the actual Henri's that I reference. This July 25, 2015 will be our 50th wedding anniversary. LA Just some thoughts: PICK-UP LINES What’s the best pick-up line you have ever heard? I was having coffee this past week with one of my coffee place friends and he shared a great story with me. He was in college at Vanderbilt and played on the basketball team; in fact he was a very good player. He had been a member of the Indiana high school all-star team, played four years at Vanderbilt and he later played professional basketball. One day he was walking to class when he felt a tug, what he described as more like a grab, on his shoulder. Someone then spun him around and said to him, “If you would learn how to go to your left more you would score more.” The party said nothing more to him and quickly went on her way. Much to his surprise, the party who made the evaluations of his basketball skills was a young co-ed who was also attending Vanderbilt. I think one would have to say that was a pretty clever line. Was it truly a player evaluation or a “Hey, I’ve noticed who you are” statement? On a hot summer night in 1962 my good friend, Cohort, and I were driving up and down the strip in our Indiana hometown. If you have ever seen the movie “American Graffiti,” that was exactly the scene. We pulled into our usual restaurant-car hop place, Henri’s, out on East Wabash in my friend’s 1956 Chevy convertible. Yes, the top was down. Across from where we parked was a car with two young ladies. We had seen them earlier that evening as we drove the strip. My friend Mike backed his car into the parking spot and then he said to me, “Okay Cohort, you take the one drivin’, I’ll take the blond.” We got out of the car and started walking across the parking lot. On the way we intercepted two car hops who were on skates. I kid you not, yes, roller skates. They did that back then. We took their order pads and pencils and walked to the girl’s car. By then the two girls had begun to take some notice of us. Their car windows were down so I walked up to the driver’s side of the car, the one my friend assigned to me, and I said, “Uh, may I take your order?”
Well evidently we both had some creditability; the coed who gave some basketball advice and me with my “May I take your order” line. My coffee drinking friend said he and the coed have been married for thirty plus years. And as for me, tonight, “the girl who was driving” and I are going to a show and dinner to celebrate our forty-ninth wedding anniversary. What’s the greatest pick-up line you have ever heard? Or maybe one you’ve used or responded to? Come on, don’t be so vain. July 27, 2014 Keep on, Larry Adamson Just some thoughts: There are countless things I appreciate about my wife. One typical morning not long ago, I pulled out of our driveway. It was a great, early morning around six a.m.; the top was already down and Haggard came on for my tunes. I began thinking about my plans for the day, not only the day, but into the evening. As they ran through my mind, a word kept coming to me. The word was “space.” After a bit of coffee my day would begin with eighteen holes of golf, pretty good way to begin any day, and then follow with two appointments (college kids) before noon. At noon, I am having lunch with a fella I often meet with for, “food and a bit of encouragement.” Following that, another meeting with a friend, and then I needed to stop at the local library for some research I was doing. At four that afternoon, I was to be at Lipscomb University for a two-hour class I am taking; and at six in the school cafeteria for another meet and eat. The day would end with a visit to the Station Inn, a local honky-tonk, to sit and listen to one of my favorite groups which would take me up to a home arrival of midnight or later. During the day, I checked in with my wife, called her to see how her day was going and if she needed anything. Also, she knows she is always welcome anytime to join me in any of these activities should she so desire. As I said in the beginning, there are a countless number of things I appreciate about her, and yes, one of them is “space,” the space she gives me; and I trust she feels she receives in return. Something very important in a relationship is just that,space. Space to be and do who you are, while also being considerate of another’s desires and needs. “If you hold love too loosely, It will fly away. If you hold Love too tightly, it will die.” (Tom T. Hall) The following day will also find my wife at an afternoon college class she is taking at Lipscomb. After her class, she and I will meet for a dinner out and a movie. Learning how to give another space, whether it is a spouse, a child or just a good friend, often is not easy, but can be very important to a healthy relationship.
As I said, I appreciate her for “countless things;” space just happens to be one of many. October 11, 2013 Keep on, Larry Adamson Just some thoughts: “I AM NOT GOING TO CHURCH CAMP” “I told you, I am not going.” I once said those words to my dad when I was about fifteen years old. He came home from a meeting and told me I was going to camp; a church camp. Efforts were being made to begin a new camp and my parents were going to be supportive of that effort. The housing arrangements at the camp where the boys stayed were pretty rustic. Two boys were assigned to a tent with several tents arranged in a circle. Mike Chumley and I shared a tent, and Kent Cottrell and Stu Ringer were in the tent next to us. I had known Mike previously, but we had not been friends or had really been around one another very much before this week. I would not have had that experience if I had been given my preference not to go. We developed a friendship and a bond that still exists today. I will only say, you have never lived until you have spent a week in a tent with Mike Chumley. Today I would pay good money to be able to re-live many of the experiences of that week. That week became very important to me because of the things I learned, others I met and relationships that have had a lasting effect upon me throughout my life. Looking back, I can say that week proved to be one of the best weeks of my life; and it all happened because my dad would not allow me to say no.
Interestingly, years later as our family was living in New Jersey this experience was repeated; only now I was the dad and our oldest daughter was the one voicing her disapproval with being told, “You are going to church camp.” Likewise for her, that week proved to be a very positive experience with friends and relationships were formed for life, as it did for me, her father. Maybe the lesson to be learned here is… sometimes in life we are told something that we have decided we are not going to do and we balk at such; but we should give it a second thought. It could end up being an experience you learn from, really like and one that plays a very important role throughout your life. Who knows, it could be one of the best weeks of your life. January 4, 2014 Keep on, Larry Adamson Just some thoughts: “Figured that’d be impossible for an Indiana farm boy.” During the years I taught school I was often assigned to teach driver’s training. All those experiences are a separate chapter (book) within themselves. Near the end of the six weeks training, I required each student to plan a trip. It had to be a trip totaling at least one hundred miles round trip. I would have each student use a road map and write out the routes and highways they would be taking. They had to list the mileage they would be driving and figure the gas mileage they would be getting. They could choose to go where ever they pleased. I had a student who, after planning her trip, was asked where she would be going, and she said, “To the cemetery.” “What?, to a cemetery?” “Yes, a cemetery,” she answered. She said there was a grave there she wanted to visit. I asked her if it was a relative and was told no. “You’ll see when we get there.” She drove us to the cemetery. The cemetery was in Grant County in eastern Indiana. When we got there it was similar to any other flat land cemetery you might see in Indiana. As we drove in I thought of my grandfather’s resting place a few miles south of Terre Haute. When we got out of the car the student told me there were two graves here she wanted to see; one was a school teacher the other had been a student of that teacher. The school teacher was Adeline Nall. She lived into her nineties, one of her students living to only age twenty-four. The student once offered his teacher a cigarette during class. “I wanted to pop him,” was her reaction. The teacher once cast him in a school play as an old man, only to be told by the student that she didn’t know anything about casting. “I’m a perfect juvenile” he told her. Well, evidently both the teacher and the student were right. Later her student went on to play one of the greatest juvenile roles, and he also played a great role as an aging man in two very famous movies. The student was actor James Dean. Dean was killed in a car accident in 1955 and now lies in Park Cemetery just outside of Fairmont, Indiana. Fans still visit his grave today. “There wasn’t anything very different about him except that he had a strange ability to take you along with his feelings.” (Adeline Nall) For six years Nall taught Dean literature, Spanish, math, and speech. Dean once told Nall that someday he was going to be in the movies. “Course I didn’t pay attention, figured that’d be impossible for an Indiana farm boy.” Speaking from personal experience, you never know the abilities, the desires, or the outcomes of some of those boys or girls who came from rural Indiana. A lot of folks have miscalculated what would be the outcomes of others. I know. March 15, 2014 Keep on, Larry Adamson |
About Larry
Larry Adamson was raised in Indiana. After teaching and coaching for several years he worked as Director of Championships at the United States Golf Association in NJ. He's retired, living just outside Nashville,TN. He blogs about his favorite things: sports, music, old cars, and the good ole days. Click on the about page for more information. Archives
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