Author Archives: Woody

Friend Turns Floodwaters Into Sunshine

by Woody

What a difference a day makes.

More accurately, what a difference a friend can make on a day. Such it was on recent back-to-back afternoons that for me were as polar as sunshine and flooding rain, figuratively and almost literally.

Let me begin with the rainstorm. My Much Better Half and I are having our kitchen and downstairs guest bathroom remodeled. “Don’t expect smooth sailing,” we were forewarned. This proved a portentous metaphor because returning from my daily run I opened the front door and found myself in need of a boat.

While I was out, a worker clogged and broke the toilet – a toilet that was not to be used for it was covered by protective plastic during painting – and it runneth over continuously for an hour or more. Floodwaters overtook the entryway, dining room, family room, and most of our primary bedroom. The tide even surged into the kitchen and garage.

With hardwood floors ruined, carpet too, my spirits the following day were soggy as well. When I went on a run that afternoon, for a rare time during my running Streak of 7,341 consecutive days, I felt like cutting my intended miles shorter. But then…

“Hi, Woody!” came a voice from behind my left ear, so close and loud and unexpected that I flinched. Because I was wearing earbuds, the greeter’s volume was purposely turned up to be heard. However, because of a dead battery I was not listening to music. As a result, I may have yelped as if startled by the sight of a slithering rattlesnake two strides ahead.

Instead, it was a friendly face that I have seen from time to time at Kimball Park. Brody, a handsome young man with sharp features and a soft smile, grew up in Ventura and is a recent graduate from UC Santa Barbara, my alma mater, where he was in the ROTC. I learned all this, and more, on previous occasions he joined me for a few miles when our running paths crossed.

This go-round-and-round around the soccer fields he updated me about his enlistment as an officer in the Army (the Irish meaning of Brody is “protector,” perfectly fitting for someone safeguarding our country); that he is now married; and is stationed in Texas, which he said has been so Hades-hot lately that this 80-degree Ventura day felt chilly to him.

And just like that, like morning dew under August sunshine, my soggy mood over “The Great Woodburn Flood of ’23” quickly evaporated. My heavy feet that felt like I was slogging through a muddy boot-camp obstacle course suddenly had Hermes-like wings on their ankles and the next two miles breezed by. Brody’s pace was surely slower than he wanted, mine a tad too fast, for isn’t friendship sometimes a compromise?

The last time I had seen Brody was in a rainstorm, the showers so steady that the park’s fields then coincidentally resembled my downstairs floors only 24 hours earlier. On that rainy day we had laughed as we splish-splashed along; this day now, I suddenly felt winsome and recalled a poem titled “On Friendship” by John Wooden:

At times when I am feeling low, / I hear from a friend and then

My worries start to go away / And I am on the mend

No matter what the doctors say – /And their studies never end

The best cure of all, when spirits fall, / Is a kind word from a friend

Indeed, a kind word – better yet, a couple miles of friendly conversation – can turn rain into sunshine.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Legacy of Books and Writing

by Woody

My maternal grandfather was born in May but was named August. In full, August Heinrich Emil Rahn, which is a stately mouthful of syllables.

However, he felt August was too starchy, which is richly ironic because he was a gentleman who, according to my mom and aunt, would come home from the office and mow the lawn in his tailored wool suit and polished shoes.

Lest you get the notion of excessive genteelness, were it a hot summer day in the suburbs of Chicago he would remove his suit jacket. If very hot, loosen his tie. And on truly sweltering occasions, off came the cufflinks with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow.

All of which seems like August should have rightly gone by the even more formal variant, Augustus. Instead, even as an executive in the boardroom of Field Enterprises, Inc., he went by Auggie. I think that is extremely cool.

Grandpa Auggie, the father of the bride (my mom).

What is not so cool is that I have zero memories of Grandpa Auggie because he died when I was quite young. Today – August 4 – is the anniversary of his death, which made me think I should write about him. After all, I have often done so about my other grandfather, Grandpa Ansel, a small-town physician who, by the way, authored a number of medical journal essays.

But truth be told, if there is DNA in my family tree responsible for me becoming a writer it comes from Grandpa Auggie. For starters, at Field Enterprises he was responsible for putting out The World Book Encyclopedia which was The Google of All Information in its time. Too, he oversaw limited editions of myriad other books featuring sheepskin covers and special color illustrations and linen pages and so on.

And so, thanks to Grandpa Auggie, I grew up in a home filled with his volumes, from A to Z encyclopedias to an exquisite edition about Afrika (not Africa) to a handsome collection of Mark Twain’s works.

Most important of all, Auggie raised my mom to love books. Hence, she read to me when I was little; took me to get a library card before I was in kindergarten; and later encouraged me to become a writer.

While he published books instead of authoring them, Auggie had a gift with his own written words. This I know from my inheritance of a handful of his letters written to my mom, their prose nothing shy of elegant. One is a Robert Frost-worthy poem, in rhyme, for her 21st birthday and another missive shortly before her college graduation contains a passage that is an inner North Star to follow:

“Above all things, Audrey, resolve to be yourself; be fair; be just; always be sure you know the facts; never take things for granted; exercise patience; be tasteful; be kind to other folks and you may be sure the world will be a better place for those who are near and dear to you; learn to develop and use your abilities for your own happiness and the happiness of loved ones.”

Moreover, proving to be a down-to-earth Auggie rather than an austere August, he concluded: “Such has been the philosophy of my life. I may not always have achieved to the fullness I desired. The degree of my accomplishment in this direction I must leave to the judgment of others. My acceptance of this fact is a constant challenge to do better.”

I may not have known him, but I know this: Grandpa Auggie remains one of my greatest role models – except when it comes to mowing the lawn.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

X Marks The Spot of Paradise

by Woody

The thorn in the Rose Bowl – parade and football game – is that the weather on New Year’s Day is invariably picture-postcard perfect, so sunny and warm it entices waves of people watching the telecasts in their Midwest igloos to pack up like “The Beverly Hillbillies” and move to Southern California.

Similarly, the downside of Ventura hosting the X Games last weekend is that the TV coverage with our gorgeous ocean backdrop and pastel sunsets that seemed painted by Monet were the equivalent of a skywriter spelling out: “Hey, world! Move here! The 805 is paradise!”

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Speaking of the X Games, the “Moto X Best Whip” competition – basically daredevil astronauts on motorcycles launching themselves into orbit off a giant ramp and doing dizzying spins and twists, and even front or back flips, before safe reentry back down on earth – makes Evel Knievel’s “death defying” jumps in the 1970s look like a kid riding a tricycle off a curb.

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Pulling into my driveway the other day, on four wheels not on an acrobatic motocross bike, it struck me that the instant gratification of today’s music platforms offering most every song on command have stolen the magic of hearing a favorite tune that makes you stay in the car after arriving at your destination and listening to the end.

Now you can just go inside and simply say, “Play it again, Sam/Siri/Alexa/etc.”

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Now in my 60s, but age 6 at heart, I still get a small thrill and a big smile when I’m out on a run near railroad tracks and a train comes rumbling along and I pump my fist up and down in the universal “honk!” gesture and the engineer, bless his soul, blows his LOUD! horn.

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I like the challenge of scraping, scraping, scraping an empty jar of peanut butter to get enough for one last sandwich. Even more, I love being the first to dig into a brand-new jar – and hate it when doing the former means someone beats me to the latter.

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Add gooey silliness. My wife and I have an unspoken challenge where we squeeze, squeeze, squeeze the life out of a tube of toothpaste in order not to be the one who opens a new one. For the record, I’m usually more stubborn.

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A note from a reader regarding my unromantic wedding proposal that I shared a short while back gave me a laugh. My recap…

College Girlfriend: “I’ll go wherever you go after graduation.”

Me: “I guess we might as well just get married then.”

She (Now-Wife-of-40-Years): “Okay!”

Wayne Saddler confesses he, too, popped his “inglorious proposal” in unacceptable “Jeopardy!” fashion of not being in the form of a question: “Well, I guess we should get married.”

To which his girlfriend responded: “Let’s do this right – go ask my father for permission.”

“I was nervous during my 45-minute drive to her parent’s home,” Wayne continued. “When I asked him he responded, ‘You’re asking the wrong person.’ That was almost 47 years ago.”

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Lastly, and bestly (not a word, but should be), thanks in no small part to so many of you dear and generous readers, Erick Aleman, a track and cross country athlete at Rio Mesa High School, will be getting a state-of-the-art $15,000 “blade” prosthetic and promises to be running faster than ever with it by summer’s end.

As Erick’s coach Garrett Reynolds relayed to me to relay to you: “A massive THANK YOU. Erick and I are at a loss of words for how grateful we are for everyone’s support.”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

“Erick the Great” Needs a Little Aid

by Woody

Early in my career as a sportswriter, so long ago we still used typewriters, I met a high school student whose competitive mettle remains unforgettable. Paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident, he decided to do a 5K in a wheelchair.

Alas, his hospital style wheelchair was a bulky, heavy tank ill-suited for a road race. It was like paddling a raw redwood log instead of a kayak. Despite wearing leather workman gloves for training, his hands quickly became blistered and bloodied and he was close to giving up on his dream.

Then something wonderful happened. Readers of a column I wrote about “Iron Mike,” as I called him in print, rallied to his side like the residents of Bedford Falls for George Bailey. A large basketful of donations poured in and Iron Mike was soon spinning the wheels of a sleek, low-to-the-ground sports chair made of aluminum and titanium.

Erick Aleman, a role model for overcoming challenges…

Here is what I most happily remember: that racing chair changed Iron Mike’s life by giving him self-esteem and confidence and a can’t-stop-smiling smile he lacked when I first met him. He not only crossed the finish line in his first 5K, he did more road races and soon began entering para-athlete meets.

Thinking of Iron Mike always reminds me of two other high school students I once wrote about and have never forgotten. They were brothers who lived in such poverty they shared one pair of shoes. Moreover, that single pair was a little too small for the older brother and a bit too big for the younger one. Worse still, one flapping sole was being held on with duct tape.

Worst of all, the boys alternated days going to school because shoes were required for attendance. Again, readers stepped up and the boys soon each had his own school shoes – and also his own basketball shoes, opening up a whole new world for them on their school’s team.

I have a new story in need of a happy ending, a real-life version of the old allegory, “I felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.”

Erick Aleman, a junior at Rio Mesa High School, was born without his left foot and lower leg due to Hanhart Syndrome. Despite this, he has been competing against athletes without disabilities in track and cross-country races since middle school and now does so for the Spartans.

Even more remarkable than usually finishing up in the middle of the pack, this modern-day “Erick the Great” has done so while running in a clunky prosthetic leg designed for walking and thus lacks the lightness and mobility and energy return of one designed for sports. Imagine world-record holder Eliud Kipchoge running a marathon in hiking boots and you get an idea of the disadvantage.

 A high-tech “blade” prosthetic would level the uphill lane, slightly at least, that Erick continually faces. Unfortunately, these are not cheap, easily costing $15,000.

Fortunately, however, Erick’s coach at Rio Mesa, Garrett Reynolds, has set up a fundraiser: go to GoFundMe.com and then search “Prosthetic Running Leg for Erick.”

“I can genuinely say that Erick is one of the hardest-working young men I have seen,” Coach Reynolds, a three-time Ventura County Runner of the Year, says on the GoFundMe page. “Erick never complains or has excuses. He truly has a natural gift for running, and a running prosthetic would allow him to compete on an equitable level, and would empower him to reach his full potential as an athlete and as a human being.”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Tiny Grads and Big Emotions

by Woody

For the past week I have had a song stuck in my head. More accurately, a stanza from “Turn Around” and it goes:           

“Turn around and they’re two. Turn around and they’re four. Turn around they’re a young man heading out the door” – or a young woman, of course.

Wayne Bryan, father of the legendary tennis tandem Mike and Bob, shared these lyrics with me back, back, back when my daughter was born. It remained on my mind, and in my heart, until Dallas and her younger brother Greg headed out the door as young adults.

Maya marches in to “Pomp and Circumstance.”

Wayne, who had these lines of wisdom hanging on a wall at home as a constant reminder of how fleeting the time he would have with his twin sons was, later explained in his parenting book “Raising Your Child to be a Champion in Athletics, Arts, and Academics”:

“I found this to be so true. Mike and Bob hit their first tennis balls at age two on Monday, went to kindergarten on Tuesday, entered high school on Wednesday and graduated on Friday. At Stanford, they went up there on Monday and they were going out on the professional tour after their sophomore years on Tuesday.”

By Thursday, Mike and Bob were retiring with 16 grand slam championships and 119 tour titles together after spending 438 weeks ranked No. 1 in the world, and by Friday had their own children to turn around and see grow as if in time-lapse.

It’s no different for grandparents. One day I turned around and my first grandchild, Maya, was born; the next day I turned around and she was two; and yesterday – last week, in truth – I turned around and she was four and graduating from preschool and headed to pre-K.

Grownups sometimes, oftentimes actually, forget how little things are amplified into big things for youngsters. Indeed, I don’t think I have ever seen Maya happier, not even on Christmas morning, smiling so wide she almost sprained her face with joy at her recent graduation ceremony.

The happy and proud graduate and parents.

Nor seen her more proud, for she was beaming like human sunshine. To her, the certificate, rolled up like a baton and tied with a red ribbon, might as well have been a diploma from Harvard.

I wish you could have seen Maya and all her classmates in their miniature full-length gowns of royal blue and matching mortarboard caps, complete with gold tassels, as they marched in among balloons and “Happy Graduation” banners while “Pomp and Circumstance” played.

Beforehand, I would have thought all of this was over-the-top silly. It proved to be as wonderful as fresh strawberries in wintertime. I dare say there wasn’t a pair of eyes in attendance (or watching the video afterwards) that weren’t moist, some even spilling over a little. To be sure, additional lyrics from “Turn Around” gripped my heart and squeezed gently:

“Where have you gone my little girl, little girl, / Little pigtails and petticoats where have you gone? / Turn around you’re tiny, turn around then you’re grown / Turn around you’re a young wife with babes of your own . . . Turn around and they’re young, turn around and they’re old / Turn around and they’ve gone and we’ve no one to hold.”

After the little honorees had all walked across the stage, the principal announced, “You finally did it! The Class of 2023!” Again, at first blush this might seem grandiose silliness for preschool, and yet—

—turn around, turn around, Maya and her friends will be marching with their high school graduating Classes of 2036.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Wearing Theater’s Two Masks

by Woody

Anniversaries, like the two masks of the theater, can come with laughter and celebration or tragedy and tears.

Today, July 7, I will wear both masks simultaneously.

First, the celebratory anniversary. Or, as the United States Running Streak Association terms it, my “Streakiversary.” Simply put, I have run a minimum of 3.1 miles every day, without fail, for the past 20 years. The math adds up to 7,306 consecutive days and 83,337 miles, more than three times around the Earth, and more than 100 pairs of shoes, for a daily average of 11.4 miles.

With humility, I must point out that 106 runners have USRSA-recognized Streaks longer than mine, including four surpassing 50 years!

Sometimes we don’t fully appreciate something until it is taken from us. So it was for me with running after I was rear-ended at a stoplight by a drunk driver speeding 65 mph. While I was fortunate to have walked away from the wreckage, my neck required a diskectomy and fusion of two vertebrae, and I feared I would never run another marathon.

Six long months later, my doc finally gave me clearance to go on a short run of one mile. I gleefully, also slowly and painfully, went three-plus miles. Before I knew it, I had unintentionally run 100 consecutive days and decided to try for 365 and like Forrest Gump just kept going.

As with U.S. postal workers, I have not been detoured by rain nor sleet nor snow. Nor by injury and illness, Covid-19 and a kidney stone, wildfire smoke and a wildly painful cracked rib.

I have run at all hours to accommodate family plans, vacations, time zones. On the streets of London after a long travel day, I kept The Streak alive as midnight neared, causing one Englishman to holler, “Hey, bloke! You must be a Yank ’cause you’re bloody crazy.”

Crazy, perhaps, but psychoanalysis might reveal something else at play. While I did not realize it until a couple years later, it now seems beyond coincidence that my Streak began on July 7, 2003 – the due date of my wife’s and my third child. A baby lost to miscarriage. Was my Streak’s birth a subconscious response to death?

The pregnancy was a surprise, a wonderful one infused with champagne bubbles, but because my wife was 44, a high-risk one infused with worry. Only after making it safely into the second trimester did we exhale and allow ourselves to get fully excited.

Then the heartbreak of no heartbeat.

“You can try again,” family and friends say at such times. And: “At least you already have two healthy children.” They all mean well, but the heart does not listen to rationalizations.

We chose not to know the gender, perhaps trying to protect our hearts just in case, although we had picked out Sienna for a girl. A few years later, my wife had a powerful dream of a child on a playground swing. The girl, the same age our child would have then been, smiled and waved. Rather than being overwhelmed by renewed grief, my wife felt deeply comforted.

Surely thus influenced, even though it came a few years thereafter, I too had a real-as-can-be dream where I was running on the beach bike path, perhaps my very favorite route, alongside a child the same age ours would have then been.

She was smiling and happy.

I will think of heras I extend my Streak today, on her summer birthday that never was, imagining Sienna also turning 20, my eyes assuredly as salty as the sea.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Students Create Own 7-Point Creeds

by Woody

“I finally read ‘Wooden & Me’!” Matt Demaria, an eighth-grade teacher at Mesa Union School in Somis, emailed me recently regarding my memoir about my life-changing friendship with Coach John Wooden. “I thoroughly enjoyed it.”

Naturally, I thoroughly enjoyed Matt’s compliment, yet what I liked even more was the rest of his letter with photos included.

For starters, around the classroom Matt has posted quotes to inspire his students and center stage, side by side above the white board, are gems from two of the most important mentors in my life: Wooden and Wayne Bryan, father of Mesa Union’s two most famous alumni, Mike and Bob, the greatest doubles team in tennis history.

Wayne, on chocolate-colored construction paper, offers: “Don’t tell me about your dreams of a castle; show me the stones you laid today.”

And on plum paper, Wooden’s wisdom: “Remember this: the choices you make in life, make you.”

To my great pleasure, Matt holds these two heroes of mine in such high regard that their words are flanked on the left, on tangerine paper, by the great Ralph Waldo Emerson – “Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain” – and on the right, on forest-green paper, by no less than Benjamin Franklin – “Hide not your talents; they for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?”

More important than posting a new motivational quotation weekly from writers and poets, artists and actors, sports figures and scientists, Matt displays wisdom from his students.

Specifically, inspired by John Wooden’s 7-Point Creed – “Be true to yourself / Make each day your masterpiece / Help others / Drink deeply from good books / Make friendship a fine art / Build shelter against a rainy day / Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day” – Matt had each student create their own seven personal points.

On 3×5 note cards of yellow and blue and pink, and displayed under the headline “Words of Wisdom from Mesa 8th Graders,” here are some assorted examples:

“The best competition I have is against myself to become better.”

“Not everyone deserves a second chance” and “Ask for help.”

“Saying you have no motivation is an excuse to be lazy” and “Quality over Quantity.”

“Having fun is one of the most important foods for your brain.”

“Being yourself is the best person you can be” and “Don’t worry about what others think of you, worry about what you think of yourself.”

“Friendships are like goldfish: they will die off quickly if you don’t give them love and care.”

“Goals won’t be accomplished by wishing” and “You can’t take it easy on the way up.”

And, “You decide how you roll with life’s hills and valleys.”

This final nugget rang true to me the other day when I figuratively stood atop a hill with a gorgeous view of a valley blooming with poison ivy. The hill’s summit was a reader buying five copies of “Wooden and Me” as gifts and asking me to sign them with personalized inscriptions.

As I was doing so, the gift giver mentioned she already had a copy of the book for herself and when I asked if she would like me to sign it as well, she said it was already inscribed. Sheepishly, she confessed it was actually personalized to a different name than hers because she picked it up at a garage sale.

She offered to show me the name, but I decided to roll with life’s valleys and declined on the ego-bruising off chance it was someone I knew!

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Devilish and Sweet Typewriter Tales

by Woody

Although it will go widely unrecognized, today is an important date in history for it was on June 23, 1868, that Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for the typewriter.           

Three years later, Mark Twain saw one of these newfangled machines in a store window, in Boston; in he walked and out he came having paid a whopping $125 – equivalent to about $3,000 today – for a Remington model.

It proved to be a love-hate relationship for at one point Twain insisted Remington, which originated the QWERTY keyboard layout, cease and desist mentioning him in its advertisements, writing: “Please do not use my name in any way. I don’t want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker.”

Mr. Twain on my Olivetti Lettera 32 model favored by Cormac McCarthy.

Twain also claimed these new typing machines were “full of caprices, full of defects – devilish ones.”

And yet, according to literary scholars, Twain was the first author to submit a typewritten manuscript – “Life on the Mississippi” – to a publisher in 1883.

In honor of today being National Typewriter Day, I would like to share the story of another QWERTY machine, this one bought not brand new for a princely sum, but secondhand at a pawnshop for $50. Even back in 1963 that was bargain for a top-of-the-line Olivetti Lettera 32 portable model.

The purchaser was Cormac McCarthy, legendary author of “The Road” and “All The Pretty Horses” and “Blood Meridian” and a long shelf of other best-seller page-turners, who died earlier this month at age 89.

McCarthy banged away on the black keys of that blue-bodied typewriter for nearly a half-century until the Italian-made machine wore out beyond repair. No small wonder it finally became roadkill considering the Pulitzer Prize-winner estimated he had put about 5 million words on its odometer.

Here is where McCarthy’s typewriter story gets even better, in three ways.

One. Whereas Twain surely would have tried out the caprices, defects and devilishness of a computer, McCarthy remained true to Christopher Latham Sholes’ invention.

Two. McCarthy, despite his fame and riches, did not buy a typewriter restored to mint condition for the burgeoning collector’s market that now sees machines priced as high as MacBooks. Rather, a friend gave him a replacement, another blue Olivetti Lettera 32, for which he paid all of $11 and which McCarthy used for his next million words.

Three. In 2009, McCarthy, who wrote in an authentication letter, “I have typed on this typewriter every book I have written including three not yet published,” put his original Olivetti up for auction.

The pre-bid estimate of $20,000 proved wildly wrong as an anonymous collector paid an eye-popping $254,500 with the proceeds, in a rare happy ending for a McCarthy tale, going to a non-profit organization.

I am happy to say that the entire handful of typewriters I have accumulated cost well below $254,500. This includes a blue Olivetti Lettera 32 identical to McCarthy’s, albeit a 1969 model with about four million fewer words of wear on its typebars and no New York Times Best Sellers to its credit.

Like McCarthy’s replacement Lettera 32, mine was a gift, not from a friend but from my little sister a couple years ago. For writing notes and letters it has the most pleasant touch and action of all my typing machines.

Even so, I dare say it is not the sweetest typewriter I own. That honor goes to another one My Li’l Sis gave me last month for my birthday, a replica of a Hermes Baby used by John Steinbeck, or so it seems, as it is quite small…

…and made of gourmet chocolate.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

The Rest of the Story About ‘Bruno’

by Woody

And now, as radio legend Paul Harvey used to begin his popular segment, the rest of the story…           

Back in December when my second granddaughter, Auden, was born, I mentioned in this space that her older sister Maya calls me Bruno instead of Grandpa or some other variation of.

Readers continue to ask me where this nickname came from and Father’s Day weekend, since my daughter and son originally gave me this pet name, seems an apropos time to share the answer.

“Masterpiece Maya” and her “Bruno.”

To begin, let me go backwards. I had a great aunt named Wibbie – well, that is what my siblings and I called her because that is what my dad called his aunt ever since he was a little boy because that is what came out when he tried to say Elizabeth.

Another nickname from a boyhood, mine, that stuck – my oldest brother, in reference to a character in the B.C. caveman-era comic strip, began calling me Grog and still does.

Shakespeare’s Juliet famously says, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet.” Similarly, what’s in a nickname can smell as sweet as any rose.

Sweet names I call my son Greg include Little Grog or Grog, Brunjun (a contraction of Bruno Jr., stay tuned), Gregburn (a contraction of first and last names) and its abbreviation GB, Funcle (because Maya does), and Greggie, but rarely Greg.

My daughter Dallas once asked me why I have so many nicknames for her – Dally, Dalburn, Bingo-bum (a word she made up at age 4 and often called me), and Meatloaf (as obscure as Wibbie for Elizabeth) to name a handful – and I answered: “Because I love you far more than a single nickname can possibly hold.”

“Why Meatloaf?” you now ask. One long-ago day I was picking Dallas up at kindergarten and as she came out of the classroom I overheard her best friend, a boy she had gone to daycare with since age 2, tell her, “Bye, meatloaf.”

On our drive home, I asked why the boy had called her meatloaf and she giggled and explained, after very likely first calling me a “silly bingo-bum,” that he had actually said, “Bye, my love.”

I thought that was just about the cutest thing ever and my favorite private (until now) term of endearment for my daughter was born. She in turn still calls me Meatloaf and Bingo-bum and Daddy; my son calls me Big Grog and Pops; they both call me Dadburn and Bruno and, by extension, to them my wife and I are sometimes The Bruns. So many sobriquets, I like to think, because of so much love.

Now back to Bruno and its origins. When my daughter and son were quite young, about 6 and 4, there was a TV commercial for a local pizza chain that ended with the cartoon mascot declaring, “Bruno’s hungry!”

Kids being kids, they thought it was spit-your-milk-out hilarious when I began announcing dinnertime by saying in a loud mascot-mimicking voice: “Bruno’s hungry!”

They playfully started calling me Bruno and all these years later Maya now does as well; as will Auden, who by the way carries my mother Audrey’s nickname; as will their future cousin, Woodchip, which is how my son and his wife Jess – GorJess to him, Jessburn or JB to me – refer to their baby daughter due in three months, so loved that even in the womb she already has a nickname.

And now, as Paul Harvey would conclude, you know the rest of the story.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Li’l Sis With a Big Heart

by Woody

“Tell me again about the time you partied with Eddie Murphy,” I can ask my little sister and she is apt to ask back, “Which time?”

Or she might simply begin by recalling a quiet one-on-one conversation with the famous comedian-actor, back in his “Saturday Night Live” and “Beverly Hills Cops” days, in his kitchen while the rest of the mansion raged on.

My Li’l Sis also has personal stories about hanging out with Princess Stephanie of Monaco and Prince, not a prince but the Prince of rock-and-roll fame, and Paul Stanley from the rock group Kiss, too; Chevy Chase, John Wayne, Rob Lowe and the most of the Brat Pack; and on and on. She met Hugh Hefner and dated Dean Martin’s son, Dean Paul Martin, and all of these are just off the top of my head.

Me and My Li’L Sis back when…

Interestingly, MLS claims to have been starstruck only once. That was in a small restaurant in Montecito when she found herself seated at a table directly next to Oprah Winfrey.

“Can you believe it? Oprah!” MLS recalls, and yes I do believe it. “Of course I didn’t ask for an autograph because honestly I didn’t want to be disappointed if she wasn’t everything I imagined. Sometimes I think it’s best to think of your idols just the way you want them to be.”

What surprises me is not that My Li’l Sis didn’t ask for a selfie, but that Oprah didn’t somehow invite MLS to join her for lunch.

But my favorite story of My Li’l Sis, of a million memories that make me smile and laugh, is not Hollywood related although it does belong in a rom-com movie.

To set the scene: Owen Wilson (me) has brought his college girlfriend (Rachel McAdams) home for the weekend to meet his family. Around midnight there is a knocking on the front door.

And, “Action!”

Owen groggily answers the door and is greeted by two uniformed police officers (Samuel L. Jackson and Liam Neeson).

Hard cut to Owen knocking on the bedroom door of My Li’l Sis (Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods in “Legally Blonde”) where Rachel is also staying. Owen mumbles, “Elle, the cops are here for you,” then pads silently back to bed.

Rachel (who became my wife) laughs to this day at how matter-of-fact Owen was, as if real-life episodes of “Adam-12” happened all the time to Elle.

Flashback an hour earlier: Some of Elle’s high school friends dine-and-ditch at a 24-hour diner, the waitress only recognizes Elle, and she thus mistakenly gets blamed.

Cut to the present. I actually misspoke – miswrote? – about that being my favorite MLS story. Rather, it was the time she turned down Christmas dinner at my house and instead spent the evening passing out cheeseburgers and bottled water to dozens of homeless persons who slipped through the cracks of being fed elsewhere.

Despite my misgivings of the dangers it is a kindness she routinely performs, alone, throughout the year not just on holidays. Too, she organizes neighborhood food drives with the donations going to various organizations.

Indeed, My Li’l Sis has the biggest heart imaginable and is the best sister anyone could wish for. She not only reads my column without fail, she texts or phones to praise them all, and often even quotes from them years later. That kind of cheerleading is no small thing.

It is fair to say that in my eyes and heart, MLS, who celebrates a milestone birthday today, is a bigger superstar than any famous celebrity she has ever met.

Happy birthday, Li’l Sis.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.