Author Archives: Woody

Oh Brother(s)! A Couple Book Tales

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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In honor of National Reading Month, which was designated in honor of Theodor Seuss Geisel, more famously known as Dr. Suess, who was born on March 2 in 1904, let me share a couple of personal book tales.

The other day, in a major bookstore on a prime shelf and displayed front-facing like a bestseller, I spotted my debut novel “The Butterfly Tree.”

“And what happened, then?” you might ask, reciting from a Dr. Suess book which continues: “Well, in Whoville they say that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day”—similarly, I confess, did my head grow-grow-grow.

Shortly thereafter, however, a sharp needle popped my overinflated ego when I came upon another book of mine—my memoir “Wooden & Me” about my longtime friendship with Coach John Wooden – in a secondhand bookshop, in the rear of the labyrinth of stacks on a high shelf, only its spine visible sandwiched between two other orphaned books.

Out of curiously I looked inside to see how much it was selling for and despite being “signed by the author,” as noted in light pencil in the top right corner of the title page, it was marked at less than half the cover price new.

Adding a bruise, the author—me—had personalized the inscription “For Lorraine” and suddenly I did not like her even though I have no idea who she is.

It was all a good reminder of this cautionary maxim from Coach Wooden: “Talent is God given, be humble; fame is man-given, be thankful; conceit is self-given, be careful.”

Frankly, the surest anecdote for conceit is to grow up with two older brothers, or so I believe from boyhood experience. If I had a great youth basketball game and bragged about how many points I scored, Jimmy and Doug, five and three years my elders, would see to it I did not score a single basket the next time we played hoops in the driveway.

Similarly, when I won a tennis tournament and proudly put my first-ever trophy on display on the fireplace mantle in the family room, by day’s end it had it magically moved into my bedroom. When I later repeated the transgression, my brothers put much bigger football trophies on either side of my suddenly puny-looking one.

Lesson learned.

A number of years ago, when I was writing sports for a newspaper in Torrance, the advertising department ran a billboard campaign with me juggling a variety of balls, two golf clubs, a tennis racket and hockey stick, with the proclamation: “Columnist Woody Woodburn: He Writes. He Scores. South Bay’s Best.”

Because I was commuting from Ventura, no one in my family saw the billboards. Until, that is, the managing editor mailed me a framed photo of one. My wife and two kids were mildly upset I had not told them about the ads.

“You never asked me if I was on a billboard,” I joked in reply.

In truth, the thought of coming home and announcing, “Guess what? I’m on a couple of giant billboards!” never crossed my mind. Oh brother(s), no! That impulse was wrested from me at age ten.

Had these billboards been in Ventura, Jim and Doug, to make sure my head in real life did not grow three sizes, would have been tempted to climb up in the dark of night and paint a mustache on me or change “He Scores” to “He Stinks!”

And so, instead of being hurt by faceless Lorraine, I am just happy the signed book hadn’t originally belonged to Jimmy or Doug.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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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.

First Day of School Goodbye Tears

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

From Woody’s column archives, August of 2012, the sentiments resurfacing recently while dropping his daughter Dallas off at the airport following a solo visit home from the Bay Area where she now lives.

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When it comes to saying hello to a new school year, the words of 19th Century French novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr seem perfectly apropos: “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.”

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

On her very first “first” day of school—at Ventura’s TLC Preschool—my daughter cried when I dropped her off in the classroom. It was a good 10 minutes before she was finally able to release me from her tight sobbing hug.

While the morning goodbyes slowly grew from tearful to cheerful as that school year progressed, the first day of TLC the following year was once again a messy runny-nosed red-eyed event.

Her first day of kindergarten at Poinsettia Elementary School was barely easier; fighting to hold back her tears with all her might, she failed.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Her first day of first grade was tearless, but certainly not fearless. Second grade was a little smoother still; her first day at Cabrillo Middle School better yet; and the first day of her senior year at Ventura High was a dancing cakewalk, but on her first day of college, or rather Move-In Day, my then-18-year-old daughter once again became a tearful 3-year-old preschooler. Instead of emblazoned with “USC” her sweatshirt could have read “TLC.”

My wife’s salty floodgates opened in turn, but I managed to maintain my composure as we walked away down the hall. My mistake was pausing to look back, hoping to see an empty doorway and thus my daughter inside her room having happily begun her college life. Instead, she was still in the hallway waving at me, her face sad and wet, her eyes red and puffy, her nose runny—and never have I seen her look more beautiful, unless it was on the first day of a school year when she was 3 or 4 or 5.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Do not be mistaken by her homesick hugs. My daughter is strong and confident and accomplished and embraces adventure. She has traveled extensively and thrice studied abroad. She loves arriving at new places—it is just she also hates leaving familiar old ones.

Yes, she has always been great at hellos and lousy at goodbyes and this is a lovely quality. Her tight hugs of greeting make one feel deeply loved; her wet envelopments upon parting somehow even more so.

Things change. Instead of a school bus, my daughter took an airplane this year on her way to her last first day of school, at Purdue, where she enters her final year of its M.F.A. creative writing program.

Things stay the same. At the Rubicon for passengers to continue on into the long security line at the airport it was a good five minutes until my daughter released me from her sobbing embrace. Over the years we have tried pulling-the-Band-Aid-off-quickly, but such hurried goodbyes causes more tears, not fewer. And so we linger, aging father and Daddy’s Little Girl Still.

After we eventually parted and I walked away a short distance down the terminal hallway, I did what I always do: I turned around for one final glimpse at her. I can never resist. Usually, she is well into the security line by then and can only smile and wave.

This time, however, she was not yet trapped. A grandmotherly woman watching the scene unfold said aloud, but not unkindly: “Rookie mistake. Never look back.”

I disagree. I was rewarded with seeing my 25-year-old daughter age 3 again as she rushed over to give me one last wet-and-wonderful first-day-of-school hug goodbye.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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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.

Some days glow with ‘Moonlight’

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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In one of the all-time great movies, “Field of Dreams,” one of the all-time great cinematic characters, Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham, recalling the one and only game he appeared in in the Major Leagues, a game that ended with him on deck without getting his first big-league at bat, makes an all-time wise observation:

“We just don’t recognize life’s most significant moments while they’re happening. Back then I thought, ‘Well, there’ll be other days.’ I didn’t realize that that was the only day.”

Yes, hindsight often affords the clarity to see that a seemingly common day was an “only day” that sparkled like midnight moonlight on a mirror-smooth pond.

Indeed, seven months after my eldest brother passed away, with the thick fog of mourning slowly burning away by the sunshine of warm memories, I realize the bright rays that are dearest to me are not the big moments – not graduation days or birthdays or weddings, even when I was his best man.

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wisely wrote. “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year and this time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”

The best moments, the most significant memories with Jimmy, were summer days swimming in a rural pond and nights catching fireflies; him teaching me to ride a two-wheeler and drive a stick shift; playing Euchre and laughing, playing board games and laughing, playing pranks on Mom and laughing; shooting pool and throwing darts and racing slot cars and HO trains, all in our basement; and so on, the ordinary coming into focus across time as special; halcyon day after day being an “only day.”

With this in mind, I recently wrote the following day in my heart, an ordinary day that even down the road I cannot imagine looking back at as being a day of significance, yet thanks to an Emerson-ian frame of mind it was a “very good one.”

The day started with a banana that was, to my taste, perfectly in the ripeness sweet spot – not a little too green and firm and slightly bitter as the day before; not a tad too brown and soft as would be the case tomorrow.

Next, at the keyboard, words flowed from my mind to my fingertips to the screen as effortlessly as water down a swift stream. Later, on my afternoon run, the miles flowed as easily as the typed words had and running an errand soon thereafter my car flowed through traffic like a flying magic carpet.

After initially just missing a left-turn green arrow, I altered my route home and went straight ahead when the red light turned green…

… and proceeded to make every single traffic signal, 17 greens in all, in a row, impossibly. (I counted the lights the next time I drove the route, faring much worse.)

Admittedly, twice I gamed the situation a wee bit by tilting the pinball machine, so to speak, slowing down noticeably so as to still be rolling along when a red light in the distance turned green by the time I reached it. All the same, it was remarkable and put a smile in my heart.

The rest of my day was similar, not because of big things worth recounting here, but rather, I suspect, simply because I was in the frame of mind to appreciate the moonlight shining upon small things.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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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.

Still Trying To Be Like My Grandpa

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

(One year ago today, Feb. 28, my father died at age 97. In his honor, from my archives in 2019, here is a column he greatly enjoyed about his own dad. The ending paragraph has been updated.

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Grandpa Ansel, the only grandparent I knew, died when I was only 7, yet he lives on clearly in my memories.

That my son’s middle name is Ansel goes a long way in telling you how much I loved and admired Grandpa. An art assignment when I was in the first grade further fills in the picture.

Grandpa and me and my two older brothers…

“And who is this?” asked Miss Bower, studying my crayon portrait response to her prompt: “Who is the most important person in the world?”

“My grandpa,” six-year-old-me replied, matter-of-factly, as though it were so obvious no answer should have been required.

“All your classmates drew portraits of President Johnson,” Miss Bower noted, adding: “Your grandpa must be very special.”

Me: “Yeah, he’s pretty ginchy.”

To be honest, the thought of drawing a portrait of the President of the United States never crossed my mind. In truth, I wondered why my friends had not drawn pictures of their grandpas.

After all, it wasn’t the President who patiently showed me how to bait a fishhook. Certainly the President had never set down his fly rod to calmly help me untangle a bird’s nest of fishing line in my backlashed spinning reel.

It wasn’t the President who taught me other important things a boy needs to know, like how to skip flat stones across the water; how to whistle; and how to pound nails without bending them.

The President never gave me a ginchy handcrafted wooden toolbox for my fifth birthday – or taught me funny old-fashioned words like “ginchy” which means “cool.”

“Grandpa, how come you don’t use worms like I do?” I once asked while “helping” him tie a fly in his basement fantasyland workshop of tools and endless jars filled with fishhooks, feathers, fur and other thing-a-ma-stuff.

“Oh, it takes a mighty skillful fisherman like yourself to catch a fish with a worm,” he answered. “That’s why you always catch big fish while I catch the little ones. I’d better stick to using flies if I want to have a chance to keep up with you.”

“Okay, Grandpa – but if you change your mind, I’ll share my worms with you.”

Grandpa shared lots of important things with me, like how to look a man in the eye when you shake hands; The Golden Rule; and that little boys in Russia are the same as little boys in America, this being during the Cold War.

“Which way is the wind blowing?” I would ask Grandpa whenever we went fishing. Before answering, he would moisten his index finger in his mouth and then dramatically extend it high in the air as I mimicked him.

Upon seeing which side of his finger-turned-weather-vane dried first, Grandpa would whistle-hum happily before responding: “I do believe it’s blowing from the west.”

Always, the wind was blowing from the west.

Always, this excited me and I would then recite by heart a poem Grandpa had taught me:

“When the wind is from the north, / The wise fisherman does not go forth.

“When the wind is from the south, / It blows the hook into the fish’s mouth.

“When the wind is from the east, / ’Tis not fit for man nor beast.

“But when the wind is from the west, / The fishing is the very best.”

Growing up, I wanted to be like Grandpa Ansel; six years ago, I truly became like him – a grandpa. With fishing as a metaphor, whenever we are together, I want my dear granddaughters Maya, Auden, and Amara to always feel like the wind is blowing from the west.

Water Bottles Filled With Kindness

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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Imagine being on the last day of a busy business trip. You again rose at the crack of dawn, began work at 8 o’clock, and spent the next 12 hours on your feet with rarely a break. At long last your long workday is over, although you still face a mile trek by foot back to your hotel.

Surely, as soon as possible, you would want to find some dinner. Even more surely, with your feet sore as a soldier’s after a blistering march, you would not want to instead spend the next two hours walking and stooping, walking and bending down, walking and picking up debris.

And yet that is what Robert Stratton did recently, not as punishment but on his own accord, after refereeing a gargantuan invitational volleyball tournament in Las Vegas. In the City of Sin, this Good Samaritan shone bright as a neon sign, a 25-year-old inspiration for young people and older ones alike.

Robert, a former boys’ varsity volleyball coach at Nordhoff High, admires Coach John Wooden and often recites Wooden-ism maxims, such as: “You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

On this occasion, Robert lived a perfect day by what he did at night for myriad someone elses. After working his last match of the long day, which was also the ending match of the entire tournament, as players and coaches and spectators were emptying out of the cavernous Convention Center, Robert began filling two large heavy-duty trash bags.

To do so, he canvassed all 80 courts, head down like a beachcomber on a shore of hardwood instead of sand, searching not for seashells or sea glass but for reusable aluminum water bottles and other expensive hydration flasks left behind by players.

The first time Robert performed a similar scavenger hunt at a smaller tournament, he gathered about 50 flasks; he doubled that the next time; and his most recent effort resulted in a whopping total north of 200.

What does Robert do with his hauls? He hauls them home to Seattle – in checked bags and carry-on luggage this last time, no small feat in itself with close to 100 bulky pounds of empty bottles – where he is in the University of Washington’s Doctor of Physical Therapy program. After washing thoroughly, he fills them with fresh water and personally hands them out, along with kits he prepares containing toothbrushes, toothpaste, granola bars and other goodies, to unhoused individuals.

“A lightning bolt hit me,” Robert recalls of the inspiration to round up abandoned bottles. “I realized that all these lost hydro flasks were going to wind up in a landfill. And if I give out one-time-use plastic bottles of water, they’ll also go to the landfill. But I can give new life to an expensive flask and keep two bottles out of the landfill.”

In addition to being ecologically good, it is good for the soul.

“A quality reusable bottle tops a disposable bottle in showing the recipient that someone cares,” Robert allows, explaining he keeps a small supply of filled flasks and care kits in his car. Whenever he sees a person in need, he stops and gives and takes a step toward living another perfect day.

“Spreading kindness takes so little effort,” Robert goes on, modestly understating the great effort his mission of goodwill requires. “But I think it can have big rewards – I certainly feel rewarded.”

Robert Stratton stands 6-foot-4, my height, yet I still look up to him as a role model of kindness.

This Rom-Com Stands Test of Time

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

For Valentine’s Day today, here is a love story from Woody’s column archives from four years ago…

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Upon meeting a married couple, from newlyweds to having celebrated their diamond anniversary, I love to ask how they met. Blind date or meet cute or online app match, they always light up in the retelling – as do I in the listening.

In the hopes that you feel likewise, let me share a synopsis of my in-progress screenplay with the working title, “When Woody Met Lisa.” Instead of starring dark-haired Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan with sunshine curls, the leading characters will be played by shaggy ginger-blond Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams as a brunette.

Our very first date at UCSB…

The movie opens on the campus of UC Santa Barbara, in a dining hall, at dinnertime. There are three hot-food lines and Woody intentionally chooses the longest one. When he finally reaches the front we see why: the server, even with cascading locks tucked up in a hair net, is the prettiest girl he has ever seen.

“Lasagna and tater tots, please,” the freshman boy says, swallowing any attempt to flirt because the sophomore beauty is out of his league. A short montage follows showing him going through her line the entire school year without even learning her name.

Fast-forward two years to a Christmas party at the off-campus apartment of two of Woody’s wild-and-crazy former freshman dorm mates. Across the crowded room, Woody notices a girl who makes his heart play a faster drumbeat. She is wearing a light-blue sweater, and no hair net, but no sooner does he finally try to strike up a conversation than the keg runs dry and the party breaks up and everyone decides to go to another friend’s bash.

Everyone, that is, except Lisa, who has promised a different friend she would drop by her party and heads off alone in the opposite direction.

…and still feel like were dating all these years later!

“Wait up. I’ll walk you there,” Woody quickly, and wisely, blurts out and the Nora Ephron-like fun begins. At one point, Woody gets Lisa a beer while she goes to the restroom – when she reappears he has cleverly positioned himself underneath a hanging sprig of mistletoe. Lisa accepts the red Solo Cup with one hand and with the other leads Woody onto the dance floor, thwarting his kissing bandit gambit.

All is not lost, however, as Woody steals a kiss later that night – with no assist from mistletoe – and the two go on a dinner date the following evening and promptly fall in love.

As in all good rom-coms, just when things are going perfectly a break-up strikes like a lightning bolt. Both start dating others and at this low point, with Woody KO’d by the flu, Lisa brings him an Easter basket filled with a chocolate bunny and other candy, his favorite fresh bagels and cream cheese, and an array of cold and cough medicines. Woody’s fever instantly soars even higher with lovesickness and to this day he counts his lucky stars he fell ill.

Also to this day, by the way, Lisa insists she never noticed the mistletoe the night of their meet cute.

Flash forward four decades, to upcoming September 4th, when the two lovebirds will celebrate their 43rd wedding anniversary: Woody raises a glass and offers a toast at dinner, quoting a line in a novel by one of his favorite authors, Brian Doyle, where the narrator, recalling his first kiss with his future wife many, many years earlier, says: “How can you not stay in love with the girl who was with you the very moment you were introduced to true happiness.”

Our movie ends, naturally, with a kiss beneath a sprig of mistletoe.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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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.

‘The Child is father of the Man’

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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Once upon a time, an 8-year-old boy and his father hiked to the summit of Yosemite Falls, the fifth-highest waterfall on the planet and record holder in North America with a total drop of 2,245 feet.

Afterwards, as he was being tucked into bed that night, the weary-but-proud boy smiled like it was his birthday and Christmas and the first day of summer all wrapped into one, and told his climbing companion: “This was the best day of my life.”

There is, of course, no single “best” day; no day that is the ultimate masterpiece above all others. Rather, there are days so perfect and special and memorable that they merit a hue in The Best Days Ever Rainbow.

This day had been a radiant shade of orange, the boy’s favorite color; or perhaps the brilliant blue of the cloud-dotted sky that afternoon; better yet, it was red like the cherry Squeezit the boy drank in celebration at the summit as if it were champagne on New Year’s Eve at midnight.

A quarter of a century later, precisely and recently, the boy and the father returned to Yosemite Falls to try and relive that Squeezit red red-letter day. En route, poet William Wordsworth’s worthy words came to mind: “The Child is father of the Man.”

In echo, Joe-El, father of Superman, says of his only child: “The son becomes the father, and the father the son.” So it was on this mountainside.

The first time they had climbed up, Up, UP the steep and rugged four-mile trail that would challenge a sure-hoofed Bighorn sheep, the father carried a backpack stuffed heavy with provisions for them both.

This time it was the boy, now a man of 6-foot-3 with broad and strong shoulders, who carried the full load of drinks and food. Time stutters and yesterday is today, and today is tomorrow, and in my eyes my son came into simultaneous focus as a small boy and a grown adult.

The Child further became father of this Man by leading our way on the trail. When a rising step was extra high, or the footing precarious, it was now the son who held his father’s hand to provide steadying balance and safety. Too, it was the son who made sure the father took consistent breaks to stay hydrated.

“The journey,” wrote another poet, Miguel de Cervantes, “is better than the inn.” Indeed, the ascending journey – and descending – was the best part of the day: talking one-on-one for seven hours, for a hundred switchbacks up and a hundred more down, all with no cell phones, no distractions, nobody but us, Child and Man.

Yet, with apologies to Cervantes, the inn – the summit – shared top billing. As with the first time we reached the picturesque peak, the son and father again enjoyed a picnic lunch of leftover pepperoni pizza, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and a cherry Squeezit for the boy and a Guinness for the father – and, this time, an extra Irish pint for the grown son.

Twenty-five years ago, I wrote a column about climbing Yosemite Falls with this prescient passage: “In thirty years, or perhaps forty, would these two come back here, this time with The Mountain Boy’s hand doing the holding and the steadying and the helping as the grown son and his aging father rise up the mountain again? As Hemingway’s closing words in The Sun Also Rises beautifully put it: ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’ ”

It was more than pretty. It was beautiful. Perfect. A bookend cherry Squeezit red masterpiece day.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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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.

Rose Rises From Fire’s Ashes

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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From Woody’s column archives, April of 2018, the feelings relevant anew following the devastating wildfires in Southern California…

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On its homeward voyage, the Apollo 11 capsule – like all spacecraft returning from a lunar visit – crossed an ethereal Rubicon where the moon’s gravitational attraction yielded imperceptibly to the faint pull of Earth’s gravity.

It seems to me there is a similar invisible line where the gravity of grief and loss is overcome by the growing pull of healing and happiness. The aftermath of the Thomas Fire, a heinous monster that claimed two lives and more than 700 homes and also turned a million collective photographs into ash, has reinforced this thought.

For some property victims, this Rubicon of Healing was crossed the moment they safely escaped the fire’s destructive path. For others, it came when they returned to their ruins and uncovered a keepsake piece of jewelry or a treasured heirloom miraculously intact among cinders.

Our Audrey Rose blooming…

For many, however, the Rubicon of Healing remains a point far off in the distance of their journey back from the dark side of the moon.

The Thomas Fire razed my childhood home in the small hours of December 5.  Come dawn, however, I honestly felt I had bypassed the gravitational pull of overwhelming loss because all that truly mattered was that my 93-year-old father, who had lived in the house for 44 years, fled harm’s way.

I was, it now seems fairly obvious, in denial. More than being my dad’s house, it was my late mom’s dream home. She died 26 autumns past, come October, yet inside the front door the overpowering aura and warmth was still of her.

The living room, decorated in her favored sky blue, was of her. The kitchen, where she rolled out pasta by hand, was of her. The dining room, with her cherished Wedgewood china displayed in a hutch, was of her. Her piano, her books, her presence in every room.

Every room gone now, burned, cinders and soot.

Because I have the memories, I did not want to see the ashes. Alone among my siblings, I chose not to go see our home that was no longer there.

I made a similar choice half a century ago. At age seven, at my first funeral, I refused to join the procession of mourners walking by my paternal grandfather Ansel’s open casket because I wanted to remember beloved Grandpa as I had always seen him, alive not dead.

Similarly it was with my childhood home and I stayed away.

But the gravitational pull of loss did not stay away. Finally, the day after Easter, I returned. I drove high into the foothills of Ondulando, turned into a familiar cul-de-sac I no longer recognized, walked up a short driveway leading to where a two-story white house once stood proudly.

Now, nothing. A moonscape. The basketball pole and hoop, gone. Chimney, gone. Even the cement foundation has been removed.

Actually, next to the “nothing” there is something. At the left side of the backyard, near where a hot tub had been, a round fire pit made of red brick remains.

In truth, it ceased being a fire pit a quarter-century back. The first spring following my mom’s death, my dad filled it with potting soil and planted a rose bush. Specifically, a light pink hybrid tea variety named after actress Audrey Hepburn and commonly called simply the “Audrey Rose.”

My mom’s name was Audrey.

In the fire pit-turned-planter on the day following Easter, in a vision filled with symbolism and metaphor, there it was rising from the ashes quite literally: our Audrey Rose bush in full bloom.

The gravitational pull of healing took full hold.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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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.

New Home For Cherished Old Photo

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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The current Southern California wildfires have me remembering seven winters past when satanic Santa Ana winds blew the Thomas Fire closer and closer towards my home with frightening swiftness.

Among the keepsake photographs I hurriedly filled a box with for evacuation was an eight-by-ten black-and-white glossy print, half a century old, in a nothing-special silver-painted wooden frame, of tennis legend Arthur Ashe stroking a backhand. A heavy black facsimile of his signature is in the right-hand bottom corner, but above that is a larger authentic autograph in thin ballpoint blue ink.

Its provenance dates to 1971 when Ashe was ranked No. 2 in the world and I was an 11-year-old tennis player with big dreams and a few small trophies in my bedroom bookcase in Columbus, Ohio. That summer, the day before a pro tournament began, Ashe gave a clinic for kids.

As good luck would have it, I was invited to participate. Better luck was to be dropped off an hour early and the only other person already at the courts was Ashe. My even greater fortune was to have him ask me if I wanted to rally – I imagine I nodded “yes” because I was surely speechless – and we proceeded to do so, just the two of us, for 10 or 15 magical minutes.

Afterwards, Ashe gave me a compliment on my game and also gave me the glossy souvenir photo, which he signed courtside.

Even before this masterpiece afternoon, Ashe was already my favorite player – tied with Stan Smith, actually, who a year earlier gave me a racket he broke on an overhead smash when I was a ball boy for one of his matches.

Ashe’s status as my co-hero was likewise secured in 1970 when he played an exhibition with fellow Davis Cup teammate Clark Graebner at a country club in Columbus. Again, I was a ball boy. I still vividly remember one of Graebner’s lightning serves getting stuck deep in the webbing of the net just below the top tape. As I struggled to pry it free, without success, the crowd laughed louder and louder until Ashe strode forward from the baseline to help me.

But here is my most unforgettable memory from that day, albeit sadly so. Beforehand, Graebner and Ashe had not been allowed to change into their tennis whites in the stately golf clubhouse. Instead, because there was no tennis locker room, they had to get dressed in the small green shed that served as the courts sign-up desk and racket stringing pro shop.

The excuse given for the snubbing was that all tennis players were barred from the golfers-only locker room, but that was a lie: Graebner had been welcomed inside the previous year before a match. The ugly truth was this time Graebner was with Ashe – and Ashe was Black.

When the Thomas Fire razed my teen-years home, where my nonagenarian father still lived, the lesson in the ashes was this: people, not possession, matter. And so I did not return the Arthur Ashe photograph to its nail on the wall in my study. Realizing I will always be able to see it in my mind’s eye no matter where it is, I carefully packed it in bubble wrap and mailed it to a dear friend.

More precisely, I gave it to his then-8-year-old son, Ashe – yes, named in Arthur’s honor. To know the old photo has a new home on a boyhood bedroom wall, cherished anew as dearly as my 11-year-old self long ago did, feels as wonderful as rallying with my boyhood hero.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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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.

Heroes Glow Brighter Than Wildfire

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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From Woody’s column archives, December of 2017, the sentiments ever as true now during the devastating wildfires in Southern California…

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When the Thomas Fire burned my father’s home down to the ground, my boyhood bedroom went up in flames.

Lost, among more valuable heirlooms, were posters of Jerry West and John Havlicek, Arthur Ashe and Bjorn Borg, Bart Starr and Leroy Kelly, and other heroes from my youth.

After the apocalyptic air cleared of smoke and ash, this clarity came: How misguided to consider someone a hero because he can hit a jump shot in the clutch, zip a backhand passing shot, throw a touchdown spiral.

Today, the poster I would want to hang up is an enlargement of a photograph I saw from the atrocious Thomas Fire. It is picture of a true hero. A firefighter.

Striding boldly through dense smoke filled with floating embers aglow, he is faceless behind a helmeted oxygen mask. His firesuit resembles an astronaut’s lunar spacesuit, except instead of pristine white it is soot-smudged tan with neon-green-and-silver reflective stripes.

The firefighter clutches a crowbar in one black-gloved fist, a red-bladed axe in the other. Deacon Jones, from another boyhood poster turned to charred dust, never looked more fearsome. The firefighter is ready for real battle, not the gridiron kind.

Hercules’ second labor was to defeat Hydra, a monster so devilish that every time the mythical Greek god chopped off one head, two would grow back. The Thomas Fire mercilessly seemed to multiply similarly.

Thousands of real-not-mythical heroes have been laboring to defeat this Pyra beast. Heroes from throughout California and also Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, and Washington.

Not only do firefighters, and other first responders, put their lives on the line – and frontline – helping others, but something that often goes underappreciated is they are thus absent from their own loved ones during times of calamity.

Another poster-worthy photograph taken during this Cal-amity features the black silhouette of a lone firefighter against an orange inferno backdrop, heading towards the flames because that is what these brave heroes do.

If the world were fair and just, firefighters – not superstar athletes – would be on bedroom posters and have multimillion-dollar salaries. Like pro athletes, firefighters too often wind up with prematurely broken bodies; often scarred lungs as well.

Firefighters should wear capes, like Superman or Batman, for they are real-life superheroes. I did not know it at the time, but I was boyhood friends with two such future superheroes and manhood friends with a third firefighter.

Thinking of Don and James and Hall, and their brave brethren, I am reminded of a parable about a man tossing starfish, one by one by one, back into the ocean after hundreds had been washed ashore by a fierce storm.

A second beachcomber walks up and says dismissively, “You’re wasting your time. There are too far many beached starfish for you to make a difference.”

Likewise, there have been far too many threatened homes and buildings for firefighters to possibly save them all, yet they battle on as indefatigably as the tide. If asked why, I imagine their answer would be the same that the first man on the beach gave while tossing a single starfish into the water: “I cannot save them all, but to this one I’m making a world of difference.”

One more photo: a small girl, wearing a disposable respiratory mask, stands in front of her family’s front door on which she has written, in neat block letters, in chalk of pink and orange and blue and yellow, with an added red heart: “Dear Firefighters, Thank You For Saving Our Home.”

I wish every fire station had a poster of it.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can