Author Archives: Woody

Unexpected Detour Down Memory Lane

by Woody

My much-better-half and I were driving home from the Bay Area after visiting the sunshine smiles of our two young granddaughters and, because our legs grumbled and our stomachs rumbled, decided to stop in Santa Barbara to stretch and eat.

My lobster roll was Maine-worthy delicious, the clam chowder too, and Lisa’s shrimp tacos were as good as they come at Broad Street Oyster Company. But it was the dessert, so to speak, that truly made the meal memorable.

With the portions being generous, I stepped away to get take-away containers but first went to the men’s room and then got sidetracked looking at some grainy black-and-white surfing photographs from the Beach Boy’s era. By the time I returned to our patio table, I found a small party had broken out.

Young “Gaucho Love”. . . our very first date.

Alone when I left her, Lisa was now in animated conversation with three young strangers, all college age – two girls, one brunette with shoulder-length straight hair, the other having blonde waves cascading halfway down her back; and one guy, the boyfriend of the blonde it turned out.

The young trio greeted me by singing out in cheerleader-like fashion, “U! C! S! B!” and “Gaucho love!”

Quickly, my wife added, with a silly laugh and twinkle in her eye and a grin that together suggested she had just had two tall pours of Chardonnay instead of an iced tea: “I told them!”

“Told them what?” I asked, fully befuddled.

“How we met at UCSB and fell in love—”

“—and how you’ve been married forty years,” the brunette chimed in happily.

In the seven or so minutes I was gone, Lisa had for some reason told these students from our alma mater about a long-ago day in late May, only weeks before I was to graduate; she had received her diploma a year earlier and stuck around to work at a downtown indie bookstore while putting her career plans on hold to be with me; and now we were talking about what came next.

I said I would go wherever I could find a sportswriting job and she replied, without an eye blink’s hesitation, “That’s where I’m going, too.”

In quite possibly the least romantic proposal ever, especially when you consider we were in the kitchen of her off-campus apartment with an ocean backyard and thus popping the question on bended knee on the beach was only a minute’s walk away, I blurted out, without forethought and without a ring: “I guess we might as well get married then.”

All of this, and more, Lisa shared in my absence and now in my presence the college boy said: “Seems like it was a pretty great proposal – forty years is impressive.”

Next he asked, “How do you know when it’s the right person?” and Lisa answered, “I think you just know – and it helps if you can laugh together.”

He then looked to me and I said, basically, find someone who is super kind and would smile warmly at three strangers on a chilly evening and offer them her outdoor table with the only working heater.

The college boy, a biotech major, further shared that he was planning to move to San Francisco, where he grew up, after his upcoming graduation but his girlfriend was intent on staying in Santa Barbara. He specifically wanted my advice.

The blonde smiled at my answer and her boyfriend also grinned before announcing enthusiastically and surprisingly, “Yes, I just might flip your script!” and at this the blonde’s smile suddenly reached all the way to Santa Cruz Island.

“Gaucho love!” strikes again, I hope.

*   *   *

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.

Sauntering and Buddy Benches, too

by Woody

I have another bench I adore.

As shared here once before, I “collect” benches, storing them in my mind and heart, dating back to a salty-sea-air-weathered wooden bench, high on a bluff with a postcard-worthy panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean, that I made frequent contemplative use of as a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The sitting assemblage includes a steel bench in San Francisco with a look at The Golden Gate Bridge and another of wood tucked away in a secret cove in Kona, Hawaii, where I watched surfers at play; a green-painted cement bench with a plaque reading “The Drake Seat” at Vista Point on Saint Thomas Island, U.S. Virgin Islands, where Sir Francis Drake is said to have looked down for enemy ships of the Spanish fleet far below; a memorial bench on the Ventura Pier with a nameplate honoring Larry “Coach” Baratte; and a hundred more gems, near and far, where I have sat alone enjoying a quiet moment.

My friend “Larry’s” memorial bench on the Ventura Pier.

The new bench I have fallen in love with is one I have not experienced in person, but rather saw in a news story. Painted rainbow colors, it graces an elementary playground and has been christened the “Buddy Bench” and here is why: if a child is lonely at recess, he or she sits on it and waits and the other schoolchildren know to come offer an invitation to join them in play.

This simple idea fosters kindness and friendship so well that Buddy Benches are spreading far and wide at pre- and elementary schools, and public playgrounds as well.

Perhaps Buddy Benches for teens and adults would be a good idea, too.

*

Speaking of upbeat stories, or “good little news” as reader of this space Judee Hauer calls them, she shared this with me in an email: “Every day we see, hear, sense bad news, but also the little blessings, chirps, colors of how good life is.

Example of one of my new favorite benches.

“So we need to celebrate the elderly person seen burying a fallen sparrow, digging the small hole with a found branch, covering and talking to the dead creature, marking the spot with a broken piece of asphalt; the house at the corner where somebody has set up two pink plastic chairs at a small table overflowing with 75 mini-animals, inviting a childlike response; smiling eyes under a mask at the doctor’s office; a you-have-the-right-of-way wave…

“There is good right here, right now, all over the place.”

*

Coming full circle to column’s beginning, the gorgeous hiking trails in Ventura’s Harmon Canyon Preserve are dotted with a good many lovely benches, and by coincidence – or serendipity – on Earth Day last weekend I came across this quote from John Muir:

“Hiking. I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not hike! Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter’? It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”

In this hectic, busy, go-go-go world, maybe we all need to remind ourselves to slow down and saunter through our daily lives a little more often – and ask someone sitting on a Buddy Bench if they want to join us.

*   *   *

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.

Part 3: Tears in the Storyteller – and Listener

by Woody

Now the final chapter of the story…

“I was a high school senior with plans to enter nursing school in August,” Suzie shared, reaching back 69 winters and across the country from her Camarillo home.

But an unwanted teen pregnancy upset her apple cart beyond repair, she feared, and upset her parents beyond so much as a kind word. Terrified and feeling all alone in the world, Suzie slinked into the office of a doctor she had never met.

That doctor was my grandpa, before he became my grandpa, back in 1954, back in the small town of Urbana, Ohio.

My hero and my grandpa, Ansel

“How could I ever forget those three visits with Dr. Ansel Woodburn,” Suzie continues, her words a grateful statement not a question. “As a teenager, it was scary to discuss my private life in detail, but he was very kind – grandfatherly, even – and gentle in his questioning and examination.”

With a soothing bedside manner that would have made Hippocrates proud, Ansel determined that Suzie, who timorously claimed she had only missed one menstrual period, was actually three months along dating back to Thanksgiving break when her college boyfriend returned home.

“Your grandfather reassured me there was nothing to be ashamed of,” Suzie remembers. “He said there was no shame in my situation, that there was no shame in having sex. What a wonderful gift he gave me – to feel normal, okay, valued and not judged as a loose woman.”

At her next appointment, Ansel instructed Suzie to phone him immediately if she started spotting. His worries proved well-founded: Soon thereafter, Suzie, “painfully alone in the bathroom,” suffered a passed miscarriage at home.

Painfully alone still, she returned to Ansel’s office at 107 Church Street where she says she received the kindness of a minister and the compassion of a saint.

“ ‘Oh, Suzie,’ he said,” Suzie recalls with timeless clarity. “Dear Dr. Ansel Woodburn gathered this trembling young woman in his arms and held me as I cried and cried and cried about the mess I created. Several times he told me I was okay and I would be okay. I remember how good it felt to be wrapped in his strong arms – my father did not do that for me, ever.

“No one asked me how I was feeling, how I was doing, but your grandfather did. He said my life depended upon what I did in the future, and that I was strong and young and would be successful. I’ll never forget that – I’ve never forgotten him.”

The great poet Robert Frost said, “No tears in writer, no tears in the reader,” and at this moment it is true also with speaker and listener.

“For as long as I needed, and I think it was an hour at least, your grandfather held me and comforted me,” Suzie goes on. “He knew I wasn’t getting any comforting at home. As I rested my head on his shoulder, I heard his soft whistle-hum. He didn’t let me leave until I stopped crying.”

The tearful memory elicits a smile from Suzie: “He had a funny comment that made me laugh, and then he let me leave with another wonderful hug like a big bear. Thanks to your grandfather, I knew I was strong and would be able to go on in life.”

In extending her invitation for my visit, Suzie said, “Your grandfather’s spirit shall be present at our meeting, I’m sure of that.”

Bidding our goodbyes, Grandpa Ansel’s long-ago patient gave me a hug that sent the vibrations of a soothing whistle-hum through my being.

*   *   *

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.

Part 2: From Cold War to Warm Heart

by Woody

Picking up where I left off last week…

“Your assignment,” Miss Bauer, my first-grade teacher, told the class while passing out oversized pieces of Manila art paper, “is to draw the most important person in the world.”

When it was time to share, my classmates showed off crayon pictures of baseball stars and football heroes, presidents and movie stars and other famous people, and I held up a portrait of a bespectacled man wearing a plaid fishing shirt, with a black doctor’s bag in one hand and a fly rod in the other.

“This is my grandpa,” I said happily, proudly.

My esteem for Grandpa Ansel, my paternal grandfather, has not diminished in the passing decades. As evidence, my son’s middle name is in his honor.

Grandpa Ansel, my two older brothers and me.

While my memories of Grandpa are about as thin as one of his fly rods, I do vividly recall the way he softly whistle-hummed when he was concentrating,such as when tying fishing flies; and also when he hugged me, the quiet lip music as soothing as a cat’s purr.

Here is something I else I have never forgotten. I was maybe 7 years old, which would mean it was the final year of Grandpa’s life for he died in 1968 at age 76, and I was playing with little green plastic army men. This being during the Cold War, my American mini-G.I. Joes were naturally shooting up evil Russian soldiers.

Grandpa interrupted my war games, getting down on hands and knees on the carpet, and told me, gently but earnestly, that Russian boys were no different than me – they liked to fish with their grandpas, ride bicycles with their friends and play sports with their brothers, and probably loved orange soda almost as much as I did. Of a hundred family stories I have heard about Grandpa, to me this one has always encapsulated the humanity and wisdom that was woven into the fabric of his being.

All these years later, I was recently told a new story from seven decades past that doubled the height of the lofty pedestal on which I view Grandpa. The gift remembrance came from a former patient of his, for Ansel was a longtime country physician in the small rural town of Urbana, Ohio.

In 1954, Suzie was a high school senior with a college boyfriend. Her mother snoopily intercepted a love letter, had reason to think her daughter might be pregnant, and took her to see Dr. Ansel Woodburn. That choice was made for two important reasons: four years earlier, Ansel had delivered Suzie’s youngest sister; perhaps more chiefly, Suzie’s family had since moved from their farm just outside of Urbana to Springfield, some 20 miles away, and her mother thought an out-of-town doctor might prevent gossip.

“Needless to say, my parents were very angry,” Suzie says, adding: “My dad was not kind to me at all and my mother was no nicer.”

While there was only icy acrimony at home, Suzie was embraced with great warmth in Ansel’s medical office.

“I have never told anyone, not even my four children, about this episode,” Suzie confided to me. “It happened so long ago and life has moved on with a great force to live each day looking forward.”

Here and now, with me sitting in her Camarillo living room, Suzie looked backward. What she saw, and shared, began with heartbreak but in the end put birdsong – no, a soothing whistle-hum as she also remembered my grandpa doing – in her heart as well as mine.

To be continued, and concluded, next week.

*   *   *

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.

Shared Memory is Music to My Heart

by Woody

Approaching the front door of an attractive home, two stories and gated, I was greeted with a gentle breeze that carried upon it a jazzy piano melody.

So lovely was the music, which I soon learned came from a gorgeous Steinway – a century-old family heirloom, in fact, played by a gifted pianist – that before gently knocking, rap-rap-rap, I stood outside the threshold for a very long moment and listened.

And yet an even more beautiful song awaited me inside, the song of a story shared about my paternal grandfather, life-changing memories from 69 years ago and 2,300 miles away.

Dr. Ansel Woodburn, aka my Grandpa

Before moving forward with this song, I must first briefly go backwards. Three years ago in this space, I wrote about my Grandpa Ansel who was a country physician in Urbana, Ohio. In part, I quoted from a yellowing newspaper clipping from The Urbana Daily Citizen with the headline “Fond Memories of Doc Prevail” below whichMarilyn Johnson recalled being treated by my grandfather many, many years ago.

“When I was small,” she wrote, “I was always breaking a bone. Dr. Ansel Woodburn would first of all use his trusty (and hated) thumb to locate the fracture. He would then set the bone and cast it.”

She specifically recalled one fracture and treatment: “After he casted my arm, he asked how my favorite doll was doing. Before I could say ‘Jack Robinson,’ he had fashioned a doll cradle with Plaster of Paris and wires on which to rock.”

In response to my column, I received an email from another patient my grandpa had cared for a long, long time ago. Suzie told me she was given an even greater kindness than a toy doll cradle.

Wondering how in the small world Suzie had come across my column nearly across the nation in Ohio, and also wishing to hear more of her recollections about Grandpa Ansel, I wrote her back and asked. Surprise of surprises, it turns out she now lives in Camarillo and subscribes to The Ventura County Star.

Moreover, Suzie very kindly invited me to come for a visit so she could share her memories in person. Alas, the busyness of life, as it has a way of doing, along with the pandemic, as it had a way of doing, got in the way. Recently, at long last, our get-together happened.

By convenience, and by a 1-in-365 coincidence, we unintentionally met up on the very day marking the 55th anniversary of Ansel’s death. Adding to the serendipity, perhaps raising it to fate or a Godwink, is this: In 1954, when Suzie was an 18-year-old high school senior walking into Ansel’s physician’s office, he was 62 years old. When Suzie, now an octogenarian, welcomes me into her home with a piano’s song, I too am 62.

Music and poetry go hand in hand, so I am reminded of an original poem Grandpa penned on the title page of his copy of “Modern Surgery,” an heirloom holy as scripture. It is dated October 1, 1919, four days before his 28th birthday:

“The worker dies, but the work lives on / Whether a picture, a book, or a clock

“Ticking the minutes of life away / For another worker in metal or rock

“My work is with children and women and men – Not iron, not brass, not wood

“And I hope when I lay my stethoscope down / That my Chief will call it good”

A narrative Suzie shared with me, and which I will share here next week, confirms that Ansel’s “Chief” called his life’s work “good.”

*   *   *

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.

Another ‘Four-Dot’ Day in America

by Woody

Another school shooting, an all too familiar daytime nightmare in America, and my heart weeps again not only for the victims senselessly murdered, but for everyone who knew them – most especially their young classmates and friends who will be haunted the rest of their lives, of this I am personally certain.

Back when tennis balls were white instead of optic yellow, instead of numerals to help identify them when they strayed onto an adjacent court they had one, two, three or four blue-colored dots. Superstitiously, I always favored using one-dot balls.

Children from the Covenant School hold hands as they wait to reunite with their parents.
(George Uribe / Associated Press)

The summer I was 10, my superstition changed to four-dot balls – I refused to play with them. If I opened a can that had four-dotters inside I would trade these new balls with someone else, even for used ones. You see, I had four-dot nightmares.

To this day, in fact, fully five decades later, the same nightmares return from time to time, triggered by certain headlines and movie storylines. These terrible dreams are proof that our childhoods never leave us for mine have followed me from childhood in The Sixties in Ohio to adulthood in Southern California in the 21st Century.

David was one of my childhood tennis buddies. When he was 10, he was kidnapped from a tennis court. Days later, his lifeless body was found in a remote wooden shed and I will spare you further horrific details. It was a very, very long time before I slept peacefully through the night.

David and I were not best friends. We lived far across town from each other and went to different schools. But we were the same age and we both played tennis and we took group youth clinics together.

The weekend before the kidnapping, we had played each other in the first round of a tournament on The Ohio State University campus. Since we were in the youngest division, we got sent to a court in the boonies a bike ride away from the check-in table.

My recollection is fuzzy on the final score of our match, but this part remains in sharp focus in my mind’s eye: Early in the second set, after I had won the first, David broke a racket string. Back then youth players did not have a spare racket, or two, at courtside as is commonplace today.

Two older kids, waiting on deck at courtside to play their match after we finished ours, impatiently said David would have to default. Thanks to my two older brothers teaching me to stick up for myself, I said we were allowed to find a racket to borrow. We eventually got one at the check-in table and rode back and resumed play and I won the match.

A week later, and forever since, I wished I had lost. I even felt guilty about winning. You see, as mentioned, David was abducted from a tennis court. “Maybe,” I reasoned, “if he had won our match he wouldn’t have been motivated to go practice his serve all alone.”

All that was found on that public tennis court where David was last seen alive was a single tennis ball. Importantly, a tennis ball with four blue dots on it.

Important because four dots, his older sister told police when David was first reported missing, was their secret code: a four-dot ball purposely left behind meant “trouble.”

In the first 86 days of 2023 there were 129 mass shootings in America. In other words, statistically every day here has become a four-dot day and the victims are not limited to those who are shot.

*   *   *

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.

What is “A hodgepodge Column”?

by Woody

“Who is Tennessee Williams?”

This is what I said aloud to the TV, and to my wife, the other evening when “Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings revealed the category – “Writers & The South” – for Final Jeopardy.

My blind guess came to mind because we had visited the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright’s home in New Orleans’ French Quarter a few years ago. We even met the current owner of the Creole-style building on Toulouse Street and he shared a few stories about the man who wrote “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

When the game-ending clue was revealed – “In 1939 he lived on Toulouse Street in the French Quarter & chose the professional name that bonded him to the South” – I exalted knowingly.

Tennessee Williams’ home in the French Quarter.

My shot-in-the-dark bull’s-eye felt as sweet as a powdered sugar-covered beignet, but my dear friend Sus has a far better “Jeopardy!” story.

Understand, Sus is one of the wisest, most widely read people I know, able to quote lengthy passages from books and poems and plays. She is also as honest, and usually as modest, as “War & Peace” is long.

“I don’t think I ever told you,” Sus told me the other day, “that when Stephen and I were dating we had a Watch ‘Jeopardy!’ Together Date and I answered almost every question quick as a wink. This included the hardest stumpers that all of the contestants missed. I got Final Jeopardy right, too.

“The next time we watched, the same thing, and the next time as well – and when all the contestants missed Final Jeopardy, I got it! Well, by now Stephen was amazed and asked me what my IQ was and I said I had no idea and that I didn’t think it was high, but that I just liked trivia…”

Insert a dramatic pause.

“…and then I started laughing so hard I couldn’t stop.”

Insert a laugh in the retelling.

“I had to confess,” Sus confesses. “My dad, who lived in the Midwest, was taking copious notes for me on as many questions as he could. This was, of course, three hours before we watched it out here in California. He would phone me and give me the answers and I studied them, even hid my notes in the bathroom.”

The payoff pitch: “Dad just wanted to help me impress this guy that I really liked – I think it worked!”

Indeed. Answer: Sus and Stephen. Question: “Who have been happily married for 34 years?”

*

In my year-end column highlighting the best books I read in 2022, I forgot to mention any of the approximately 101 books I read to my 4-year-old granddaughter. Here are some recommendations from Maya herself:

“The Year We Learned to Fly” by Jacqueline Woodson; “Not a Cat: A Memoir” as told to Winter Miller; “The Snail and the Whale” by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler; “Maybe” by Kobi Yamada; “Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem” by Amanda Gorman; and “Who Knew Baker Flew!?” by Venturans Marty Kinrose and Nancy Talley.

*

The former sportswriter in me has to give a big shout-out to The Star’s Joe Curly for his recent coverage of the CIF Division III State Championship game. Specifically, under the headline “Buena’s state title bid stopped by Oakland,” this lede sentence:

“SACRAMENTO – Ventura County’s longest boys basketball season ended with a long drive and even longer faces.”

If poetry is to say as much as possible in the fewest words, that line indeed qualifies for it encapsulated Buena’s 37 games played, the title showdown was on the road; and the final result was a heartbreaking defeat.

*   *   *

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.

Bryan Brothers Serve Up Feel-Good Story

by Woody

Sometimes the headline story doesn’t tell the whole story and misses the best story.

So it was on Monday when it was announced that Bob Bryan, half of The Pride of Camarillo along with identical twin brother Mike, is the new Captain of the United States Davis Cup Team.

Mikeandbob – one word suffices for that’s how tightly synchronized the Bryan Brothers always were on the tennis court – are the greatest doubles team in history with a resume of championships too long to fit in this space’s allotted 600 words. Here is a Tweet-length summary in 280 characters:

NCAA doubles crown at Stanford in 1998; record 119 professional titles together; record 16 Slam titles together; ranked No. 1 in the world a record 438 weeks; ATP Doubles Team of the Decade for 2000-2009 and 2010-2019; gold medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics, bronze medal at 2008 Olympics; in 2007 helped Team USA win the Davis Cup.

Of all those triumphs the one dearest to Mikeandbob growing up, since way back when they would lose interest watching matches at the prestigious Ojai Championships and venture down to the creek in Libbey Park and try to catch frogs, was to represent the U.S. in Davis Cup action. So to become Captain is a dream come true atop a dream come true for Bob, a chocolate-dipped strawberry atop the cherry on a sundae. And yet that isn’t the best story.

The best story is this…

At the Indian Wells Masters, currently underway and unofficially considered tennis’ “fifth” Grand Slam event, a group of 154 junior players from five states, including California with Ventura County represented, were invited as special guests to not only watch some terrific matches at the highest level, but also take part in a youth clinic. Joining the kids were 23 coaches comprised of former pros and college stars, and a gaggle of parent chaperones.

The United States Tennis Association felt the Indian Wells Masters was an ideal setting to tell Bob Bryan that he had been selected to be the Davis Cup Captain and did so last Friday. The official announcement, however, would not be made until the following Monday.

Naturally, Bob had a full slate of USTA meetings to attend and wanted to touch bases with as many American players and their coaches as possible. Too, there were media interview requests for embargoed stories. Moreover, Saturday night he and Mike had to leave for a previous commitment in Miami on Sunday.

Understandably, Bob decided he would have to pass on participating in the special clinic for the invited youth players.

On second thought, Mikeandbob being Mikeandbob – perennially voted the ATP’s “Fans’ Favorite” for two decades, beloved for giving clinics at every tournament stop and for always lingering after their matches until the very last autograph request had been fulfilled – decided they would drop by for a few minutes to say hi to the kids before jetting off to Miami.

On third thought, Mikeandbob stayed a full hour to hit with all the juniors.

The spark of Mikeandbob’s long-ago dream to play on the U.S. Davis Cup Team happened when they were attending a Davis Cup match as seven-year-olds and squad player Ricky Leach said hi to them, even gave them an American flag, and inspired them.

On final thought, perhaps the very best story about Bob Bryan becoming Cup Captain won’t reveal itself until 15 or so years from now when one of the girls or boys at that junior clinic who met and rallied with Mikeandbob has her or his own tennis dream come true.

*   *   *

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.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make

The Family Circus comes to town

by Woody

Spring-cleaning, in preparation for a visit from human rays of sunshine, happened a few weeks early of the season’s official arrival at the Woodburn household.

Masterpiece Maya, our four-year-old granddaughter, and her two-month-old sister, Awesome Auden, along with their parents, were coming to stay with us thanks to my daughter being a bridesmaid in a local wedding.

Additionally, my newlywed son and daughter-in-law were traveling in to help make it Thanksgiving in March.

And so the carpets were vacuumed, the hardwood floors mopped and windows washed; fresh sheets were put on beds and clean towels laid out in the Jack-and-Jill bathroom between our adult kids’ old bedrooms. By and by, the house looked ready for a photographer from “Better Homes & Gardens.” Even the “Welcome” mat was tidied up.

Then a tornado blew in through the front door. In a blink, our family room looked like an aisle in Toy Barn after an earthquake. The coffee table became an art studio and a couch was turned into a schoolroom filled with stuffed-animal students. A second couch was overtaken by a portable bassinet while a tsunami of other infant paraphernalia, including a baby swing and diaper changing station, flooded across the floor.

I was instantly reminded of “The Family Circus” comic. Specifically, a Sunday offering in color that ran on March 2, 1990, when my daughter was nearly 3 and my son a newborn. I know the exact date because it graced our refrigerator door for many years before eventually being moved into a keepsake shoebox when we moved to a new house with a new fridge. Even out of sight, its sentiment has remained affixed to my heart as if with invisible magnets.

It is said a picture is worth a thousand words, but this single panel – divided into five scenes – equals a novella, at the least…

In the opening image, Thelma has her hands on hips, as moms are universally wont to do when upset, and wears a matching annoyed countenance as she surveys the kitchen table that is covered with a coloring book and splayed crayons; a drawstring pouch of spilled marbles; a small tripod telescope, medium-sized toy dinosaur and, standing atop the back of an armchair in the background, large teddy bear.

In the next drawing, in another room, again with none of her four children in sight, Mother’s face remains stern as she looks at the floor that is cluttered with a football, Ping-Pong paddle and ball, a book left open, a couple of wooden alphabet blocks, a doll, a toy truck, and a small guitar.

Moving to the third image, Thelma peers out a window into the backyard at an abandoned jumble of a beach pail and shovel, a soccer ball and baseball bat, a skateboard and red wagon.

In image number four, Billy, Dolly, Jeffy and P.J. finally appear, all displaying looks of innocence as their mom, with eyebrows knitted in exasperation, scolds them: “When will all these toys ever be put away properly?”

Next comes the payoff pitch with Thelma holding her fingers to her mouth and wearing an expression of wistfulness. Inside a thought bubble she sees herself, her raven-black hair now white as a cotton ball, poking her head into the attic. Before her eyes in storage are all the toys from the previous scenes, some with gathered cobwebs, plus a stack of nursery rhyme books and various other childhood playtime treasures.

I wish you could have seen our house last weekend and how Billy-Dolly-Jeffy-P.J.-like wonderfully messy it was.

I can’t wait until it is again.

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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.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Part 2: Old Friends Are Time Machines

by Woody

“It takes a long time to grow an old friend,” John Wooden said, and a bookend “Wooden-ism” comes from his Seven-Point Creed: “Make friendship a fine art.”

On the latter, it pains me greatly to confess, I failed regarding the first friend I made in California after moving from Ohio at age 12. Jimmy Hart, just a few months my junior, was the cousin of my godsister, Karen, two years and one day older than me.

Karen’s family lived at Solimar Beach, and Jimmy and I basically spent my first summer in Ventura living there. Boogie boarding, exploring the tidal pools, playing basketball by day and eight ball pool by night, Jimmy and I enjoyed an idyllic summer.

Two old friends enjoying the magic of getting together.

Unfortunately, he lived in Pasadena so we did not see each other much during the ensuing school years.

Every summer, however, we would pick up where we left off at the beach house. Too, we occasionally had weekend sleepovers at one another’s house. We stayed up late watching a new show called “Saturday Night Live” and stayed up even later talking about girls.

Eventually, as happens, we went our separate ways for college and the ensuing roads of life. For a while we stayed in touch with each other’s ever-changing lives through Karen until insidious cancer stole her 26 years ago. Alas, without hers and the beach house’s gravitational pull, Jimmy and I drifted apart until we only caught up with Christmas cards.

This past holiday season, our cards, as usual, shared similar P.S. notes of good intentions: “It’s been too long. Let’s get together soon!”

And that was that until just before Valentine’s Day when I received a text from Jimmy telling me – not asking, telling – we were having lunch the following week. No more ifs, ands, buts or excuses. Pick a day; he would drive from San Gabriel.

Perhaps the best way to describe our reunion is that it was an hour before we stopped talking long enough to order our first beers and half as long again before we took a time out, upon the waitress’s umpteenth visit, to look at the menus.

Jimmy’s hair, once surfer long and Scandinavian blond, is long gone. His face, like mine, has laugh lines and lines caused by a youth spent in the sun at the beach. But what remains as unchanged as fingerprints are his radiant smile and a laugh that sounds like it is infused with champagne bubbles.

For a couple hours it was as if H.G. Wells’ time machine had turned 2023 into 1973. Naturally, we revisited the past, including when we saw John Wooden give a lecture in Pasadena, one of the last times we were together. Growing up, we both memorized Coach’s famous “Pyramid of Success” and always double-knotted our sneaker laces as he advised.

Reminiscing, enjoyable as it was, gave way to catching up on our lives today. We talked about our wives; our children, four for him and two for me, plus my two granddaughters; work, he was a middle school gym coach, now retired – “I always taught the kids about the Pyramid of Success,” he shared happily; and on and on.

Jimmy’s cheeseburger grew cold as did my tacos, and our second pints grew warm, because our mouths remained focused on more import matters. I wish you could have heard us.

If you have an old friend you have lost contact with, I urge you to make friendship a fine art by reaching out. For that matter, reach out to a newer friend and start growing an old friendship.

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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.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make