Deacon Jones, You've Been Gone Too Long

After an early morning of house cleaning (so not my strong point) and then five very frustrating hours at work, I left the office, stopped at the store and came home. I chatted with my mom and caught up on her fun visit today with her friend, Gaylene, who stopped by earlier today. She had a wonderful time! Then I changed out of the corporate "uniform" and into comfy "real people" clothes (jeans and t-shirt) and started to make dinner. I turned on my fab little kitchen TV to catch the news while cooking. Now, I am NOT a sports fan at all and get rather bored when sports is on the local news, but tonight was a bit different. Deacon Jones was on the news!

When I was a kid, my dad was a fan and follower of two sports teams - The Los Angeles Dodgers (baseball) and the Los Angeles Rams (football). For those of you that do not follow these teams, The Dodgers are experiencing much drama now with their current owner and the Rams left Los Angeles years ago. But back in the 60s and 70s when I was growing up, those were the local teams. I grew up at a time when one TV in the house was the norm and that TV was usually tuned in to the sporting event my dad was interested in. Surely, that seems odd by today's standards where most houses have TVs in every room!

One of the LA Rams players I remember (besides Joe Namath) was Deacon Jones.

He played on the Rams from 1961 to 1971 and is a Hall of Famer. Not sure if I remember him because he was a great player (again, I didn't follow, but it was a part of my childhood) or because of his catchy name! But, when I was a kid, he was a household name. He was on the news tonight speaking at a luncheon in Los Angeles and the minute I saw that and heard his name, I had major childhood flashbacks!

There was this very popular girl group called The Supremes (you might remember them)! They had many great and memorable songs. They were also fronted by a "diva" called Diana, until she left the group in 1970 to pursue a solo career and "replaced" by Jean Terrell. Of all the wonderful Supremes' songs, the one that always stuck with me was Nathan Jones (released in 1971). I actually thought it was called Deacon Jones, for some strange reason (and I attribute that to the house I grew up in). Even today, after seeing Deacon Jones on the news, I walked through the house singing "Deacon Jones, you've been gone too long" knowing damn well it was actually "Nathan Jones". LOL. Just in case you're not familiar with this song, I'm sharing it as it really is too good not to share! I hate to think of something this cool being lost in this day of say, Oops, I Did it Again or the like.