I JUST DROVE BY
I like Willie Nelson. Sometimes I feel like ole Willie picks out a song just for me.
Last week I went back home to southwestern Indiana, went back for my 50th high school class reunion, class of 1960. My hometown is just a speck, like a flea, about 9 miles south of Terre Haute, Indiana. I went to a very small high school in a very rural setting. We had twenty-seven in our class, and I think twenty-one or twenty-two of us went through all twelve grades together. The school is no longer in existence; the building is falling down and should be put out of its misery. I drove by my old house in the little village or what once had been a village area.
Driving back to my home in Franklin, Tennessee this morning, I slipped in a Willie Nelson cd and the song that came on is one I very much identified with.
I always go the other way,
but my car drove me down today
To a little house on the other side of town.
Back when things were never hard
I used to play there in that yard.
And I just drove by to see if things had changed.
Cokes were just a nickel then
And across the street at the five and ten,
A lot of things were cheap and square and strange.
And the life that we had, might have been,
It was one we loved believin’ in.
And I just drove by to see if things had changed.
I wondered now if love is still
the way it was back then.
I need to know that life is still
a place worth livin in.
There it is just like it was,
a house where there was always love.
I just drove by to see if things had changed.
In a world that’s seen its better days,
it’s good to know some things remain the same,
Though standing still is not time’s way.
Take to heart while in its spring
that love is just a fragile thing,
Oh, I just drove by to see if things had changed.
-written by Kimmie Rhodes
May 10, 2010
Keep on,
Larry Adamson