Author Archives: Woody

Old Treasure Proves Quite a Bargain

by Woody

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

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“How much for this one?” I asked the proprietor of a time-portal-in-the-wall antique shop in the charming Ireland town of Kilkenny.

The hurling stick I held forth looked as ancient and weathered as the cobblestones of the narrow street outside the front door. This “hurley,” as the Irish call the bats used in the ancient Gaelic sport, had obviously been game used for many, many seasons before perhaps being forgotten in an attic for half a century.

Its age and scars only made it more attractive, not less so, much as my wife is more beautiful in my eyes now than when we first started dating in college for her laugh lines and smile crinkles illuminate her prettiness, not diminish it.

Having again fallen in love at first sight, this time with a hurley in a storefront display window, I was prepared to pay handsomely.

“Twenty’s fair, I should think,” George said, meaning British pounds which equated nearly equally in dollars.

It was so beyond fair that I felt obligated to buy something more as well to up my tab and decided on a “Guinness For Strength” tin advertising sign featuring a brawny man pulling a horse riding in a cart.

“I’m a fan,” I told George, raising my pants leg to reveal a tattoo of an Irish harp which is also the trademark symbol of the famous brewery. Throughout my Ireland trip the black body ink had been a Willy Wonka-ike Golden Ticket garnering me free Guinness pints from countless bartenders. Its magic expanded now.

“Aye, an Irishman at heart you be!” the true Irishman fairly sang and made it his gift to me.

I now felt like I was stealing from this wee elderly man with a big kind heart. Back, back, back into the bowels of the shop I ventured and returned with a second Guinness sign, this one larger and of heavy wrought iron weighing about what George charged me for it—30 pounds—and I felt our transaction was now less one-sided in my favor.

George told me a hurling stick can be a nose-breaker—“Busted it more times than I can count playing,” he said of is own beak—but my hurley quickly proved also to be a conversation icebreaker.

Still in Kilkenny, a bartender named Eoin admired my souvenir and noted, his pride emphasized at the tail end: “Had me nose broken a few times on the pitch, but never went to hospital!”

Later that day, in a taxi in Dublin, the driver pointed to his nose that zig-zagged like a slalom ski course, then traced a long, straight scar above his left brow and said: “Lucky I didn’t lose my eye. If someone has a pretty face, don’t believe ’em if they say they played the game.”

Earlier, down the block from George’s shop, a souvenir store filled with T-shirts, coffee mugs and refrigerator magnets also had a large offering of brand-new hurling sticks for it turns out the Kilkenny Cats have been a dynasty the past century, the New York Yankees of their sport.

Eying my old-but-new-to-me hurley, the clerk behind the counter asked to examine it. He flexed his fingers around the age-worn handle finding a comfortable grip, took a couple slow-motion swings, then offered to trade a new stick for it that cost 75 pounds.

I declined without hesitation and without hesitation he upped his offer to two pristine hurleys.

“No, thanks,” I again told the clerk who had the nose and face of a guy who has played his fair share of hurling.

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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.

Antique Man in Antique Shop

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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“How much?” I inquired, a hurling stick—“hurley” as the Irish call the flat-sided, fat-headed bats—cradled in my outstretched palms.

“Aye, that one near be old as me,” replied the proprietor of a Kilkenny antique shop, surely angling for a high price due to its vintage. “ ’tis certainly older than you, young man.”

That he called me, at age 63, a young man tells you that George, as he would later introduce himself, was himself an antique. Indeed, his thinning hair was snowy; his posture weary even before noon; his hands, covered by translucent skin as wrinkled as a shirt taken from a laundry hamper, had walnuts for knuckles.

Like his shop, a hole-in-the-wall he has owned for the past half-century—or nearly half his life, I guessed—George seemed worthy of the “Protected Landmark” plaque outside on the front door.

The hurley in my hands surely has not been protected from rough play, bad weather, or Father Time. Its white ash has turned a ghostly grey, much like George’s hands, and a steel protective band around the toe of hitting blade is spotted with rust. The shaft and handle bear scars from a thousand games.

And yet the ol’ stick is a thing of beauty.

And yet ol’ George had a boyish sparkle in his ice-blue eyes and a personality as warm as a peat fire in the evening. Hence, my quick step inside his shop turned into a rather long visit.

In appearance, George was as Irish as a leprechaun and not much taller; in speech, his brogue was as thick as the mash on a plate paired with bangers. Before giving me a price for the hurley, he said he had two more sticks if I was interested in a selection.

Thus began a child’s game of “hot” and “cold”—and “cooler” and “warmer”—as George, sitting on a stool behind a counter cluttered with jewelry and watches and other treasures, sent me weaving my way back, back, back through the bowling lane-narrow time capsule with Jenga-like stacks on the floor and over-packed shelves rising on the walls.

With George’s GPS-like guidance, I found the two needles in a haystack in surprisingly short order. Both hurleys were newer—“less old” is a more apt description—and less battle-scarred than the fossil that originally caught my eye.

I asked George if he remembered everything he had in the shop; and, if so, knew where everything was located.

“Aye, of course,” he insisted.

This was a tall boast from the wee man, for his antique emporium seemed to hold the relics of every estate sale in Kilkenny over the past century, all of it organized by a passing hurricane. Having just visited historic St. Andrews Golf Club in Scotland, an array of golf clubs caught my attention, especially the hickory-shafted “mashies” and “niblicks” and “spoons” that looked like Ol’ Tom Morris swung them in the 1860s.

There were also wooden tennis rackets from Bill Tilden’s era and 1970s aluminum ones; shelves of novels and vinyl LPs and 45s; phonograph players and rotary phones and typewriters; and on and on, everything in the world shoehorned inside the tiny shop that seemed as impossibly bottomless as Mary Poppins’ magic carpetbag.

 Everything in the world, that is, except a shoehorn—I actually asked George if he had one, playfully testing him; he didn’t, but instantly directed me to an antique wood-and-brass boot remover.

“How much for this one?” I asked again, my heart still stuck on the homely first stick.

To be concluded next week.

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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.

Old and Battered and Beautiful

by Woody

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

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This is a story of love at first sight and a second chance.

The first time I visited Ireland, a full decade ago, the national hurling championships were underway and I fell head over heels—much as the players often wind up on the grass pitch.

If you have never seen the ancient Gaelic sport of hurling, imagine soccer with 15 players instead of 11 per side; add in the bone-jarring-nose-bloodying physicality of rugby; then give the players wooden clubs that look like the offspring of a field hockey stick and a cricket bat. The “hurley”, as the shortened bats are commonly called, can be used for knocking out teeth as well knocking a baseball-sized sliotar past a goalie to score three points.

Even more exciting are the moonshots that would make Dodgers home-run slugger Shohei Ohtani proud, where a player swings from the heels, often while on the run, often too while being assaulted by a defender, and sends the high-seamed ball soaring cloud-high and nearly the length of the 150-yard field over the crossbar and between the uprights, much like a football field goal, for a single point.

A statue of hurling in action in Kilkenny
A hurling statue in Kilkenny.

Indeed, anywhere and everywhere on the field is a scoring opportunity. I dare say, and I mean this truly after spending three decades as a sports writer, championship-caliber hurling may be the most thrilling sport I have ever witnessed.

Upon returning home from the Emerald Isles, I hurled mild expletives at myself for not bring back a souvenir stick. Hence, when My Better Half and I recently returned to the land of my ancestors I aimed to rectify my lingering non-buyer’s remorse.

Opportunity knocked in Kilkenny, population 26,000, about 80 miles southwest of Dublin and once the great medieval capital of Ireland. Strolling a narrow cobblestone street en route to Kilkenny Castle, built in the 13th century, I spied a hurley in the cluttered window of a wee antique shop that looked nearly as old.

The stick was a sore sight for eyes. Age had turned the white ash—the same wood American baseball bats are generally made, prized for its hardness—grey as winter clouds. The ball-striking blade had a steel band, spotted with rust and dints, wrapped around the toe and tacked tightly in place to prevent the grain from splitting. Higher on the blade a bandage of black tape, now petrified by age, served a similar healing purpose.

Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder and I felt called to go inside and embrace it. Caressing the handle, its nub like that of an axe, the age-worn wood was burnished smooth as ivory by blood, sweat and years of play. Gripping it, my fingers settled into subtle impressions formed by the hands of time and players.

Appraisal along the shaft revealed dings and dents, battle scars from clashing with other hurleys wielded like dueling sabers. If this stick could talk, Oh, the tales it would tell! I imagined – of winning goals and celebrations, and heartbreaking losses too; of broken bones, broken noses, broken dreams.

“Aye, I played in my britches days,” said the shop’s proprietor, a human antique perched on a stool behind the front counter stacked with this, that, and other bric-a-brac. As Irish as Guinness, and not much taller than a poured pint, George, as I soon learned his name to be, traced his nose, battered as the hurley in my grasp, and told me proudly: “Busted it more times than I can count playing. Needed my fair share of stitches, too.”

To be continued next week…

* * *

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.

Bookend Phone Calls Speak Volumes

by Woody

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

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Two phone calls, bookends separated by a handful of years, have been on my mind, and in my heart, ever since my birthday two weeks ago—not because it was my birthday, but because May 27 was the deathday of basketball legend Bill Walton. At age 71, insidious cancer did what few defenders on the hardwood ever accomplished when he was young: stop him.

One of the phone calls echoed what myriad tributes to Walton have expressed since his passing, that he truly put into practice the life lessons his college coach and lifelong mentor John Wooden taught him, such as “You can’t live a perfect day until you do something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

Twenty years past, perhaps a full quarter-century, I was working on a column about the upcoming NCAA Tournament but had been unable to reach Walton for a quote I desperately desired. Turned out the phone number I had was wrong, a single digit off as I recall, probably my error writing it down without heeding the Wooden-ism to “be quick, but don’t hurry.”

With my deadline approaching at the Peregrine falcon-like speed of a 1973 UCLA Bruins’ fastbreak, I phoned Coach Wooden to ask his favor in calling Walton on my behalf and asking Bill to call me. A short moment later my phone rang and it was Walton and here is the remarkable thing: he was, right then, boarding an airplane but in “making friendship a fine art” to Coach he reached out, despite the inconvenience, to give me a rushed interview.

The second phone call also involved Coach Wooden. On this occasion we were sitting in his living room, chatting, during one of my pinch-me-I-can’t-believe-this-is-really-happening visits. Likely, I was prompting him to share basketball stories while he was more interested in steering the conversation back to me and my family, especially the “Little Ones” as he affectionately called my daughter and son.

Then the phone rang and Coach let it go through to the answering machine. The lesson here, for Coach was always teaching, was that I was his guest and thus merited his undivided attention. This unspoken kindness took on greater import seconds after the “Beep!” when a very familiar voice could be heard leaving a message.

“That’s Bill Walton!!!” I said with three exclamation marks of enthusiasm. “You’d better answer it!”

Coach, not moving towards the phone across the room, replied with an impish smile: “Heavens no! Bill calls me all the time. If I pick up he’ll talk my ear off for an hour—and you and I won’t get to visit. No, I’ll talk with Bill later.”

Thus our visit continued uninterrupted, the message delivered being if Coach had picked up and talked to Bill it would have been rude to me. Moreover, answering it would have also been unkind to Bill, whose former bright-red hair and current loquaciousness both suggested he had once kissed the Blarney Stone, because Coach would have had to cut their conversation shorter than usual in order to return his attention to me.

Despite a leaden heart over Walton’s passing, these two phone calls have buoyed me to smile and laugh. One more laugh: When I thanked Coach for his help, telling him about Walton calling me from the airport even though he only had a quick moment, Coach replied in a playful tone, “I wish he’d call me when he’s boarding a plane.”

Far beyond where jetliners soar, I happily imagine Bill Walton is talking Coach Wooden’s ear off right about now.

* * *

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 More Mess, The Merrier

by Woody

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

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Imagine a river, much like a long-long-long run-on sentence with no periods or semicolons, only commas serving as bends in the banks slowing the flow, and you get an idea of the five days leading up to Memorial Day at Casa Woodburn, and I am most certain you have had your own wonderfully idyllic yet hectically chaotic activity-packed string of days as fast paced as water rapids where you felt like you didn’t have a chance to catch your breath, and so for the fun of it here is a Great Mississippi of a single sentence about the human floodwaters that swept through every room of our house, with toys and coloring books and crayons scattered like driftwood on the beach after heavy surf,

with baby monitors here and strollers there and diaper paraphernalia everywhere, and this was just in the family room suddenly decorated in a mix of Colonial Clutter and Modern Mayhem, yet one dares not wish, even the briefest of moments, for the messiness to miraculously vanish because you know all too well that all too soon it will all be picked up and packed up and put away out of sight, for as the philosopher Dr. Seuss, whose books were among the widespread debris, wisely said, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened,” and what happened was our daughter and her husband and their 5-year-old and toddler daughters, both with more energy than a rooftop of solar panels on a sunny summer’s day, invaded from the north and from the south came the troops of our son’s family with an 8-month-old daughter, and instantly the empty nest began chirping happily and loudly as the large canopy of a vibrant tree in springtime, but it should be noted that armies have marched on their stomachs with fewer provisions and possessions than the two SUVs that arrived filled bows to sterns with portable cribs and an inflatable mattress, with enough clothes seemingly for a month-long camping trip and still laundry needed to be washed, meanwhile food preparation similarly appeared to be a constant occurrence for despite Thanksgiving-worthy feasts that promised to have leftovers aplenty so that no cooking would be necessary the following evening, somehow by the time the sun streaked across the sky to early afternoon the overflowing cornucopia of Tupperware was soaking in the sink, and speaking further of food, sandwiched between breakfast and post-dinner bubble-bath tsunamis were daily excursions to play parks, the beach, the gorgeous-viewed Botanical Gardens atop Ventura’s hillside, if you haven’t gone there you must, and on top of the long holiday weekend it was a combination birthday celebration for my daughter and me, on top of this too there was our father-daughter book signing at Timbre Books as she and I both have new novels out, and speaking of books I would be greatly remiss not to mention a trip to the library to get the 5-year-old her first library card which deserves its own column shortly.

But now, as you read this, the kitchen island is deserted of chaos. Fresh laundry is not piled on the family room couch, waiting to be folded. The coffee table again has books and magazines neatly stacked upon it; and also the TV remote, for it no longer needs to be hidden from curious young hands.

Too, the coffee tabletop has lingering crayon marks and a few new permanent stains where coasters weren’t used for children’s water bottles. I look at these mars and scars and my reaction is no shade of annoyance, but rather to smile.

Because it all happened.

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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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Famous Song Lyric Sings True

by Woody

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

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In late spring 1967, so late it was almost summer, the Beatles released “When I’m Sixty-Four” written by Paul McCartney when he was only 16.

At the time, for I had turned seven less than a week before, the song was far beyond my youthful comprehension. In truth, even in high school and college, and a good while beyond, I had a hard time imagining being 64…

…yet seemingly in a wink and a blink, come Memorial Day next week, the lyrics “many years from now” will have arrived for me and McCartney’s words will sing true as I reach this musical milestone age.

While I’m not yet “losing my hair” (thank you, Grandpa Ansel, for your thick-thatched genes) I do have three grandchildren (not “Vera, Chuck and Dave” but Maya, Auden and Amara) to bounce on my knee.

For some reason, perhaps because it was one of my favorite things to do when “When I’m Sixty-Four” first hit the airwaves, I have been reminiscing about riding bikes. In the 1960s, we kids could—and did!—hop on our stingrays in the morning and explore like Lewis and Clark all day long so long as we were home by dinner call.

Oh, the places we’d go! The fun we had! The things we’d do! We’d ride to our friends’ homes, ride to the five-and-dime, ride to the playground and swimming pool and tennis courts. We’d build wooden ramps to soar off, and have contests pedaling as fast as humanly possible before jamming on the coaster brakes with all our weight and try to not wipeout as the back tire locked and fishtailed on the pavement and whoever left the longest black comet tail won, all without bike helmets.

Sometimes, oftentimes, we also left knee and palm flesh behind on the pavement resulting in impassioned pleas for our moms not to spray Bactine—OUCH!!!—on the road rash for that hurt worse than the crashes.

The fall I most vividly remember happened the very first time I rode a two-wheeler solo. I had just turned four and to put an end to my pleading and begging and whining my two older brothers took turns teaching me to ride by running alongside holding the seat of one of their outgrown bikes to maintain my balance.

No doubt, dear reader, you know what happened next for you surely had the same experience when you learned to ride: the magical moment came when one of my brothers let go of the seat while I was concentrating wholly and simultaneously on pedaling and steering and controlling the wobbling and remaining upright—and without knowing it I was suddenly a human space capsule that had shed its booster rocket and was now soaring without assistance.

Down the sidewalk I rolled and, unable to maneuver a U-turn, I continued to pedal all the way around the block and when I came full circle my brothers were both gone…

…for Mom had called us inside for dinner.

Unfortunately, they had neglected to give me instructions for how to use the coaster brakes to stop. Moreover, the hand-me-down bike was a bit too tall for me to touch my feet to the ground, so around the block I went a second time, and a third, and still no one was waiting to help me stop without falling.

Falling, of course, is how I eventually stopped. I came inside in tears and in need of Bactine—and in a state of glorious happiness.

When I’m Sixty-Four next week I shall celebrate with a bike ride.

* * *

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.

Being Cashless Proves Priceless

by Woody

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

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The after-party, no matter how marvelous the marquee event, sometimes proves even better.

Such was the case when My Better Half and I took a walking tour in Dublin, Ireland, that included historic Trinity College’s Old Library, including The Long Room, aptly named for it stretches 213 feet. By any measure it is one of the most beautiful libraries on the globe, a cathedral more than a library really, with more than 200,000 books filling 300-year-old molasses-dark oak shelves accompanied by rolling ladders tall as trees soaring skyward to a curved vaulted ceiling. Too, white marble busts of philosophers and writers and other eminent figures hold sentry.

The Long Room in Trinity College’s Old Library

Jimmy, our tour guide, was as Irish as the Blarney Stone and possessed the gift of gab magically afforded all who kiss it. Indeed, he was nearly as good a storyteller – seanchai in Gaelic meaning “bearer of old lore” – as anyone in the nearby Dublin Writers Museum, a ladder-tall claim considering it features James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, George Bernard Shaw, and W. B. Yeats to name a literary handful. When our afternoon tour concluded at Dublin Castle, Jimmy well deserved a monetary tip.

Alas, MBH and I found ourselves with no Euros bills and our collective coins were too embarrassingly small a sum to hand over. In a pinch, I asked Jimmy if we could tip him with a pint at a nearby pub.

“Brilliant!!!” he replied with at least three exclamation marks of enthusiasm, further proving his Irishness.

Eschewing the pubs at hand, Jimmy, a Dublin native in his late fifties with a twinkle in his eyes and a youthful spring in his step, took us on a roundabout half-hour stroll through his home city en route to his favorite drinking hole. Along the way he pointed out sights that had not been on the earlier tour and regaled us with new tales.

Passing Stephen’s Green Park, for example, Jimmy shared a memorable story from the 1916 Rising when British troops had seized the high ground atop a building bordering the park while insurgent Irish Citizens Army forces dug into trenches across the way – “and bullets whizzed back and forth.”

And yet each day at the stroke of high noon the park keeper, James Kearny, walked directly into the heart of the war zone and coolly headed to a large pond. He had negotiated a daily ceasefire and for one hour both sides allowed him to tend to his duty of feeding the ducks!

By the time we arrived at Jimmy’s preferred pub we were hitting it off like, well, ducks and water. Serendipity again winked at me for The Palace Bar has a long history as a “writers’ bar.” The age-darkened paneled walls are adorned with framed photographs and painted portraits of famous Irish authors – and newspapermen, too, especially from the 1940s and ’50s when this had been a hangout after putting the paper to bed.

Directly above and behind our table, as if he were eavesdropping on Jimmy’s enchanted storytelling, hung a large portrait of James Joyce. At one point, Jimmy raised his quickly emptying pint glass toward James and said, “To old writers I’ve read and a new writer I only just met – slainté (health)!”

So enjoyable was this private after-party that when our three glasses emptied Jimmy phoned a friend to delay their dinner plans elsewhere and we ordered a second round. On a priceless day that included seeing The Long Room and the celebrated Book of Kells, circa 800 A.D., the highlight proved to be running short on cash for a tip.

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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.

Willy Wonka’s Golden Tattoo

by Woody

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

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“So, how Irish are you?” the bartender offered in greeting, his brogue thick as lamb stew and suggesting his own blood pulsed shamrock green.

The question was posed to an American tourist in Dublin, in a celebrated pub now named Kennedys (no apostrophe) but called Conway’s long ago when literary luminaries Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, and James Joyce frequented it, and perhaps insisted on the use of an apostrophe, with the latter even featuring it in his epic novel “Ulysses.”

How Irish am I? Rather than offer a long soliloquy about my third great-grandfather emigrating from County Cork two and a half centuries past at age 14, forever leaving behind everyone he knew while fleeing famine for fertile farmland in Ohio, I answered succinctly by lifting my pants leg above my left calf.

The bartender nodded appreciatively and a moment later placed a pint of Guinness before me, proclaiming with enthusiasm: “On the house!”

The kindly reaction was attributable to the tattoo above my ankle, a fist-sized harp, Ireland’s national symbol—and trademarked logo of Guinness. I was inspired to get the body ink a decade ago while visiting my ancestral home for the first time and sensing the echoes of my distant relatives in the emerald hills of Cork.

Next evening at a different pub, this time unprompted, I wordlessly ordered a Guinness by displaying my tattoo and promptly received another free pour.

A third pub, a hat-trick complimentary black nectar, and I realized I had Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket in my pocket—in my skin, rather. Indeed, for the entirety of our weeklong stay in Ireland, most everywhere My Better Half and I had drinks my initial Guinness was happily served gratis.

The best part of flashing my golden tattoo, black though it be, was not the free flow of stout—it was the conversations that flowed following the inked ice-breaker.

At Smithwick’s brewery in Kilkenny, for example, a bartender named Eoin affably asked if I had any Irish heritage. In reply, I showed my harp and shared the emigration story of my third great-grandfather James Dallas. Eoin poured us each a pint of a private reserve blonde ale not yet marketed and then surmised the surname Dallas might have originated from Daly’s Cross about an hour’s drive north of Cork.

Alternately, a barkeep at The Palace Bar in Dublin told me the Irish surname Daly is derived from the Gaelic Dálaigh, and that either version might have been “Americanized” to Dallas.

At the Irish Emigration Museum, also in Dublin, my inked harp gained deeper meaning when I learned this: on December 8, 1891, Samuel O’Reilly, an Irish-American, received U.S. Patent No. 464,801 for…

…the first electric tattoo gun.

Famed Irish poet William Butler Yeats once said of his motherland, “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.” So it was in a lively pub, again in Dublin, when MBH and I accidentally crashed a 40th birthday party. No sooner had we found two empty stools at the far end of the bar when the husband throwing the celebration for his wife sidled over to us.

It was my birthday as well, a coincidence I shared, and instantly we were guests of honor as Liam introduced us to his wife, Marie, and their comely daughter and strapping son. After we had chatted like old friends for a good while, Liam told my wife: “You’re husband is the most American-looking American I’ve ever seen.”

With that, I revealed my ankle art.

“By god!” Liam sang. “You’re actually an Irishman! Sláinte (health)!”

* * *

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.

Serendipity Smiles at St. Andrews

by Woody

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

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At St. Andrews Golf Club serendipity smiled and the normally gelid seaside weather on Scotland’s east coast grinned warmly as well.

That is to say the sun was out and the wind blowing off the North Sea was only strong enough to steal a hat, or snap a kite string, not carry away big dogs and small children as is the norm. Nonetheless, even wearing a zippered pullover pulled over a sweater, my teeth chattered and I felt pity for golfers who play here when half-frozen raindrops blow sideways and sting faces like angry bees.

By happy chance, My Better Half and I visited the iconic “Old Course” on a Sunday. Turns out that the original church of golf, established 1554, is closed to golfers on the Sabbath and open to the general public, even tourists from America, to stroll at their leisure.

The Swilcan Bridge on a wind-swept (as usual) day at St. Andrews.

And so it was we joined a hundred people or more wandering the famous links, and a couple dozen dogs too, the latter all off leash and free to do their business with nary a plastic bag in any owner’s possession, raising the question: what’s the lift-and-clean rule for a terrier tainted Titleist?

MBH and I walked 12 strokes worth of holes out and back, three par-4s, including crossing the landmark Swilcan Bridge on the 18th fairway. Walked them in even par, I suppose, considering neither one of us lost a shoe—or one another—in the carnivorous gorse.

The fairway grass, fescue to be specific, is as hardy as steel wool and thus the weekly Sunday stampedes cause no visible damage. Too bad, perhaps, because anything that makes the Old Course play more difficultly is “brilliant” in the Scots’ minds.

All the same, traipsing around—even the putting greens are not off limits—seemed as unimaginable as touching the Mona Lisa. It was like enjoying a picnic on Wimbledon’s venerable Centre Court.

Speaking of lunch, the clubhouse is also open to the general public and so MBH and I grabbed a bite at the Tom Morris Bar & Grill where we enjoyed a picture-window seat overlooking the course and I savored a “Tom’s Burger” with grass-fed Scotch beef that was second to none I have ever tasted. Its juicy messiness proved a stroke of good luck as it necessitated washing up…

…which I did, I kid you not, in the locker room used by legendary golfers during the British Open. The dark wooden lockers are numbered with polished brass plates and an attendant kindly guided me to those specifically reserved for Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods.

One final unexpected thrill presented itself. The Old Course runs adjacent to the North Sea alongside the very beach, West Sands, where the quintessential scene in “Chariots of Fire” was filmed showing the British Olympic track team running in slow-motion, barefoot all, splashing through shallow surf.

Although I had gone for an 11-mile run earlier in Edinburgh, in shoes, I was inspired to add a bonus mile just for the memory of it. Up the beach once and back I jogged, not barefoot but seemingly in slow-motion thanks to soft sand and hard blustery winds pushing me sideways. In my mind’s ear I heard the unforgettable Oscar-winning musical score by composer Vangelis Papathanassiou.

Despite the biting chill, I had company. A rookery of novice surfers, wisely wearing full wetsuits with hoods and booties, was taking a group lesson. Their instructor, however, apparently half-Scot and half-seal, rode the waves attired in boardshorts only.

Next week: An Irish version of Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket.

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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.

Angel’s Share and Titanic Tears

by Woody

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

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Contrary to its worldwide catchphrase, Disneyland is not, according to one kilt-wearing tour guide in the Highlands of Scotland, The Happiest Place on Earth.

Leaving Loch Ness, which seems The Remotest Place on Earth almost, our tour group drove along a road so narrow that whenever we passed a vehicle coming the other direction our bus had to suck in its breath like a person trying to button a familiar pair of pants after gaining ten pounds.

The Highlands of Scotland en route to Loch Ness.

Along this breath-holding drive we passed breathtaking scenery and passed through a small town and in doing so passed by a wee little whisky distillery—no “e” in whisky’s spelling in Scotland as apparently “whiskey” also sucked in its breath.

Directly across from the distillery was a neighborhood of timeworn cottages all built of sandstone blocks, all with stone fences so ancient they leaned off balance as if having consumed too much whisky. Despite the visual suggestion of hardscrabble lives within, our guide told us the residents were The Happiest People on Earth.

“Every day they open their windows and get drunk on the air and sunshine,” Callum said. Noting the steady rain coming down, he added: “Or they open their windows and get drunk on the air and Scottish mist.”

After requesting we open the bus windows a crack, he explained that as whisky ages in oak casks about 10 percent evaporates annually and this is called “the angel’s share.”

Sweeping a hand towards the humble houses Callum went on: “So you see, they are The Happiest People on Earth because they are stealing their fair share from the angels.” He inhaled through his nose, deeply, as if cookies were baking—smiled—and added with a wink: “Now before we all get drunk, close the windows.”

Continuing his playful sommelier’s soliloquy, Callum said: “In Scotland whisky is distilled twice while Irish whiskey is distilled three times. Three times might sound better than twice, but this is not the case at all—the Irish do one extra because they can’t get it right in two tries.”

A mist of gentle laughter floated through the bus and days later similarly did so in the tasting room at Jameson Distillery in Dublin, Ireland, when its tour host buoyantly reversed the punch line: “The Scots are too lazy to do it the right way which is three times.”

Helen Churchill Candee’s flask.

There was no laughing inside the oppressively somber and, fittingly, impressively gigantic Titanic museum and shipyard in Belfast where the infamous ship was designed, built, and launched.

Among the heart-wrenching artifacts on display, and echoing the whisky-and-writers theme that emerged on this trip, was a silver flask belonging to Helen Churchill Candee. On fateful April 15, 1912, she was a 53-year-old American author and journalist.

While Candee would live to 90, her story, as related on a placard, caused an angel’s share of tears to well up in my eyes: “As ship was sinking, she was helped into Lifeboat No. 6 by her First Class companion, Edward Kent. She did not have pockets in her coat, so entrusted Kent with her hip flask—a cherished family heirloom. Tragically, Kent did not make it to safety and died in the icy waters. The hip flask, however, did find its way back to Helen. It was recovered from Kent’s body, and returned to its owner after the authorities traced her family through the Churchill family motto engraved on the flask—”

Here, fact proves far more creatively perfect than fiction.

“ ‘—Faithful, but Unfortunate.’ ”

Next week: Serendipity smiles at St. Andrews Golf Club.

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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.