Robert Adame, RIP

another take- away from Mercedes days

he went by BA, to his friends

and he was my friend,

though I am sworn to secrecy as

to what those two letters meant to him,

 stood for.

he was number 65 

on the fighting Tigers football team.

of 1964.

he played on one side of me, 

Brian Schwarz ,number 67

played on the other, both guards,

I was at center.

I was the lightweight

of the interior line.

I guess coach Hild

though it better to have 

the best blockers, guards, do the

hard work, while 

my job was snap the ball

to the quarterback, either

Darius  Herold or Jesse Villareal,

 and then get in the way

of defensemen trying

to get into the backfield.

we thought we had a pretty good team, 

won some games we had been

picked to lose, and vice versa.

but that is not what the thrust of

this piece is about, no.

basically Bobby and I grew up

at the same time

but he was years ahead

in the category of worldly wisdom.

OK, maybe not wisdom,

but experience.

junior year in high school, 

sixty years ago, nineteen sixty two,

we both raised pigs

for the stock show

under the guidance of

Mr. James Dollary.

I had a Duroc, Bobby had

a Poland China.

time came for us to enter them

and we both made it past the sifter,

Mr. Bob (big Bob) Frix

and we were shown

in  which stall to put them.

 Bobby and I were to be “pen pals”, 

as were our pigs.

the big deal was

we got to spend the nights

at the stock show with them

and sleep on the hay

in the stalls.

wow! two nights away from 

home and parents.

 we had our foot long hotdog

suppers and went

back to the pen.

Bobby was bored,

and the carnival was about to close,

 so he said ‘come on, let’s go do something’.

the  ‘something’ was to drive his old blue car

to the Blue Bar, which his father Joe  owned.

 I waited in the car while he went in.

 he came out shortly with two Listerine bottles. 

only it was not Listerine

they were filled with ,

 it was tequila.

he said not to open them, as if I would… 

so he put them under the front seat.

we went back to the pigs

where I watched Bobby take a swig,

 so I did the same thing.

it was my first ever drink of straight alcohol,

my ears still ring.

in ten minutes my world

went sideways, my pig Hamlet, 

was up in the air and I had

to hold on the fence to stand up.  

Bobby asked if I had ever had tequila before,

 no, nor anything else…

I swore there and  then

to never repeat that, and have not,

 though I like a diluted  margarita,

every now and again,

when it is hot.

at least twenty five years ago,

 I was in San Francisco

on business and decided to call

Fred Johnston, an orthodontist now,  

just to say hey, 

I was in town.

Fred was Tiger number eighty five, then.

he came to the phone and told me

straight away that

Bobby Adame  had died the night before.

 I was stunned, stopped still.

 Fred and I talked about him, B.A..

I had little to say

except I wished I could go

to his services 

which I did not, couldn’t,

but he nor his life would not be forgotten.

it has not been.

I read my Enterprises and keep up

with his brother Rodger, 

now the Tiger’s  headcoach,

I believe, and what a great job

 he is doing, and of course

 think of the one and only B.A..

so I write this remembrance

of Robert Adame, today.

who passed at age  fifty one, 

a number familiar to me…

Que le vaya con Dios bien, eh?

Lentz

Number 51