Category Archives: Columns

Laughing Through Mourning Tears

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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“Tonight’s the night we make Greg shoot milk out his nose,” the 10-year-old oldest of three brothers whispered conspiratorially to the middle sibling, two years his junior, as the youngest boy and victim, age 5, sat across the dinner table totally unaware.

For nearly six decades I have remained in the dark that one of the most memorable meals in our family lore had been orchestrated, at my expense, by my two big brothers. With the statute of limitations for being grounded having long expired, Doug, the middle brother, recently confessed to the premeditation during a beautiful eulogy for Jim.

Though their plan was hatched hastily, it nonetheless was executed to perfection: when I started drinking greedily like a parched man lost in a desert, a wicked wisecrack was delivered and the resultant burst of laughter turned my nose into an Old Faithful-like geyser of chocolate milk. If you have never had milk spew out your nose, I do not recommend it for it stings so greatly as to make your eyes cry.

Here is something else I want to share from the “Celebration of Life” honoring Jim’s masterpiece span that was cut far too short by cancer (today, September 13, he would have turned 69): Never be so afraid of saying the wrong thing that you fail to say anything to those who are grieving.

Indeed, I have come to realize since Jim’s passing, and my 97-year-old father’s death only a few months prior also to despicable cancer, that any words of condolence are more appreciated than no words.

Even just a couple words can speak volumes and mean the world. When I posted my column about Jim’s death on Facebook, a dear friend posted a comment of exactly two words in full—“Oh, Woody”—that touched my heart deeply and brought to mind a line by Bodil Malmsten, a Swedish poet, who once conceded: “This hurts too much for words.”

When words hurt too much, just the simple expression “I’m sorry” is a welcomed balm for grief. As another friend says to the idea of worrying about saying something awkwardly: “When it is said from the heart, it will be received by the heart.”

Those who shared their own memories of Jim, in person or by note, warmed my heart more than they can know. Donations in his honor, flowers or planting a memorial tree, or dropping off meals were all likewise touching.

At the service, I am not sure which was a more powerful salve for the soul: seeing the familiar faces one knows, without question, would be there—or faces that were wonderfully unexpected. Of the latter was a teacher from my adult kids’ past who, despite it being a school day, hustled nearly a mile on foot to the church during lunch break to express his condolences before the memorial got underway and then raced back to class.

Being in a mourning fog, and also mentally rehearsing the eulogy I would shortly give, I do not recall exactly what our teacher friend said to me. And yet I will not forget that he, and every single person who expressed condolences in any fashion at all, made Maya Angelou’s often-quoted words ring true:

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Doug, meanwhile, made me wonderfully feel 5 years old again with his belated confession. Had I been drinking milk I surely would have snorted it out while once again laughing through my tears.

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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

Short Walk to Long Remember

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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Going for a walk, Walt Whitman poetically penned, left him “enrich’d of soul” and I am of a similar mind.

Indeed, few things leave me feeling more “enrich’d” than a walk on the beach, barefooted naturally, ideally at the shoreline where retreating waves leave the sand wet and cool and firm, but also little squishy between one’s toes.

A walk in the woods is likewise soulful, Walden Pond being one of my most memorable strolls for it is as beautiful as it is famous, and yet such natural splendor is not required to for a walk to be unforgettable.

Nor is a magical walk measured always by miles or hours. The other day, as example, a short walk on a city sidewalk instantly claimed a spot in my heart alongside a second-date beach stroll with a lovely brunette who would become my wife; alongside a hike up-Up-UP the switchbacking trail of Yosemite Falls with my son when he was in grade school; alongside a saunter down the aisle with my daughter, her hand wrapped around my arm and my heart wrapped around her little finger, on her wedding day.

I wish you could see a photograph of my latest walk to remember. It was snapped surreptitiously from behind as my 5-year-old granddaughter and I walked side by side, her little hand reaching up and engulfed in mine reaching down.

Maya, her sandy-blonde hair in a ponytail, seems a human rainbow in a blue-white-and-peach T-shirt, shamrock green leggings and pink sneakers, with a purple backpack decorated with a yellow heart and smiley face.

Her monochromatic escort, meanwhile, wears grey hiking shorts, a black pullover with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows for the morning is sunny and already warm, and black flip-flops.

Unseeable from behind, Maya and I are also wearing smiles.

We are on the way to school, her next-to-last day of preschool before starting kindergarten. To the left of us are some handsome trees, parked cars to the right, and a scattering of fallen leaves on the narrow sidewalk underfoot.

Our strides match perfectly—our outside feet stepping forward and inside feet pushing back in unison in the photograph—as Maya takes slightly longer steps than usual, almost skipping with helium in her socks, while I have shortened mine.

Walking from our car parked down the block to the school’s front door, then two hallways to Classroom 1, takes only a few minutes yet is time enough to talk a little and laugh some, too.

“What are you going to do in school today?” I ask.

“Play,” Maya answers with unusual succinctness.           

“Play is good,” I say and try again: “What do you think you are going to learn today?”

“I don’t know or I’d already know it,” Maya replies, looking up with a wry and playful smile.

She proceeds to tell me that NeNe, this being what she calls my wife, wants to come to school—not to drop her off, but to be a student so she can learn new things.

“What classroom would she be in?” I ask and the reply comes sprinkled with a giggle: “I think there isn’t a classroom number high enough because NeNe is too old for my school.”

“How about me?” I follow up. “Could I be a student here?”

“Oh, yes, Bruno,” Maya sings, using her pet name for me. “You can be in my classroom because you act like a kid.”

“An early-morning walk,” said Henry David Thoreau, echoing Mr. Whitman, “is a blessing for the entire day.”

My day had been blessed indeed, my soul “enrich’d.”

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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 Bamboo Field Life Lesson

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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I have a craving for corn on the cob.

Also, memories being a funny thing, my mind has leapfrogged from fresh corn to garbage cans and jumped again to saying “hello” to total strangers. All of this because Chi Chi Rodriguez, one of the greatest and most charismatic golfers ever, died last week, his age matching the number of keys on a piano and in my cerebrum’s ear I hear the music of a story he once told me.

Let me begin, however, with a memory about Sparky Anderson, the late Hall of Fame baseball manager, who, on his daily morning walks through his Thousand Oaks neighborhood, would personally deliver onto front doorsteps any newspapers still resting in driveways. Moreover, on trash day he would go for an evening walk and move empty garbage barrels from curbside up to the garage doors.

Asked why, Sparky replied simply: “Woody, it don’t cost nothing at all to be nice.”

It also don’t cost nothing at all to be friendly, as another Hall of Famer, basketball coach John Wooden, illuminated to me with an anecdote. He was driving a friend to the airport after a weeklong stay in Southern California and the Midwestern visitor complained to his transplanted Hoosier host: “John, I honestly don’t know how you can stand to live here. No one is friendly like they are back home.”

“Sure they are,” Wooden answered. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve been here an entire week and not a single person out on the street or sidewalks has said ‘Hi’ to me.”

“Did you say ‘Hello’ to them?” Wooden wisely asked.

“Well, no,” the visitor explained with slight exasperation. “I didn’t know any of them.”

Even to strangers Wooden made friendliness a fine art. An excellent example is an encounter a woman shared with me after I gave a talk about my long friendship with Coach.

She was in a coffee shop, very early, literally the only customer at the moment. Enter Wooden, who walked over—remember, every other table was available—and politely asked if he could join her. Years later, she still lighted up in the retelling of her masterpiece breakfast with a perfect stranger.

Which leads, as promised, back to Chi Chi Rodriguez, one of the nicest and friendliest athletes I ever had the privilege to meet, and the inspiring lesson that sprang to life in my mind upon hearing of his death.

“When I was a young boy we had a little field that was overgrown with bamboo trees,” Rodriguez had recalled of his childhood in Puerto Rico. “My father wanted to plant corn, but clearing the bamboo would have taken a month. He didn’t have the time because of his job. So every evening when he came home from work, my father would cut down a single piece of bamboo.”

A pause.

“Just one piece.”

A knowing smile.

“Every evening.”

A longer dramatic beat.

“The very next spring, we had corn on our dinner table.”

A hole-in-one grin.

“The bamboo story to me is the secret to success,” Rodriguez went on. “If you really want something and set your mind to it and work hard enough, one by one, little by little, miracles happen.”

And so, this weekend I plan to have corn on the cob on my dinner table; sweet and fresh-picked from a roadside stand; boiled with some salt and a little butter added to the water; then served in honor of little miracles and a 5-foot-7 golfer and champion philanthropist who stood tall as a single stalk of towering bamboo.

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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.

Writing Streak’s Rhythm Slows by Half

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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I have a thing for streaks.

I have been married to my college crush for 42 years, come next month, “God willing and the creek don’t rise” as the saying goes; have run at least three miles for 7,698 consecutive days and counting; and for 730 weeks in a row, also through kidney stones, Coronavirus and vacations, have written this general interest column for The Star.

Beginning today, it will instead run every other week.

A reader could be forgiven for hoping the cutback will improve the quality. After all, it will allow me to be twice as selective of my topics; to biweekly cull the worst—“least good” would be more charitable—column I would otherwise undertake and simply not write it. And thus tender only the better of the pair.

The fly in the QWERTY alphabet soup is that I possess no such writer’s ESP. Indeed, I am often surprised when a column I consider slightly frivolous strikes a chord with myriad readers who praise it more widely than ones I consider superior.

Compared to producing a fresh 600-word theme weekly, at first blush writing fortnightly seems like easy street, and downhill at that, yet to be honest it spawns more than a little anxiety. For the past 14 years my life has had a familiar rhythm; with the beat slowed by half, will I lose my writing groove?

Moreover, without a weekly deadline will Writer’s Block—something I have never believed in previously, precisely because deadlines are an inoculation against it—come knocking? Or, will I feel pressure to swing for a home run every at-bat and thus strike out more frequently instead of choking up on the bat handle now and again?

In my press box days of yesteryear, for a good while I wrote three columns a week. Then, for a time, it was pared to two and I suddenly felt an extra dose of pressure because each column carried 50 percent more weight. Before, when I wrote a clunker I had a chance to make amends in two days. But with only two columns per week, the next opportunity was three or four days away—and back-to-back foul outs quickly added up to a weeklong slump.

Similarly, now I will have to wait two Fridays instead of just one before I can try to make up for a subpar column. And bookended bungles, a full month of disappointing my readers, is a literary bogeyman peering over my shoulder.

So, then, why cut back? Let me first express gratitude to My Favorite Newspaper for affording me this time-honored soap box, stewarded before me by the esteemed Chuck Thomas and Bob Holt and Joe Paul, for too many newspapers have done away entirely with local columns. Therefore, even appearing in this space only every other week still feels like a sandcastle holding its own against a rising tide.

Again, why now? The recent release of my debut novel “The Butterfly Tree: An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations” has been such a rewarding experience, with readers and reviewers praising it and even a handful of awards already honoring it, I have a growing hunger to write a second novel without delay and hopefully more.

Furthermore, the recent deaths of my father and eldest brother, just four months apart, have been stark reminders not to put off things one wishes to do. Lastly, with my first weekly column appearing July 24, 2010, this past July 19th’s column seemed like serendipitous anniversary timing.

So, see you next week—oops, make that in two weeks.

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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.

Stung in the Heart by a Yellowjacket

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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Let me begin, despite eyes blurred by tears as I write this, with a laugh.

It was a hot summer day in my boyhood, in Ohio, in the late 1960s. My two older brothers and I, our younger sister too, had gone swimming in a pond.

Suddenly, on the short walk back to a weekend cabin, Jim, the eldest and five years my senior, started yelling and hopping wildly about as if dancing on red-hot coals. He was 13 or 14 years old and gangly, already his full adult height of 6-foot-3 but skinny as a brand-new No. 2 pencil with a shock of hair as red as its eraser.

The reason for the impromptu Irish jig was because, somehow, a yellowjacket had gotten inside his cutoff jeans swimsuit and was stinging and biting him, again and again, over and over, in the crotch while Jimmy frantically tried to unbutton and unzip and peel off his clingy wet shorts. For us three sibling spectators, it was side-stitch hilarious.

Today, my heart feels like it has been assaulted by a dozen angry yellowjackets: Jim died earlier this week, mid-morning Monday to be precise, a midsummer day with too much lovely sunshine for such searing sorrow. He was 14 months shy of the Biblical “threescore years and ten,” and oh, god, am I furious at cancer for stealing his wonderful life.

The heinous disease attacked relentlessly over the past seven years, but Jim valiantly kept extending the battle. He lost both his ears, literally, but never his bottomless sense of humor. At a wedding reception in a museum a few years back, Jim removed an ear prosthesis and positioned it on a tooth of a replica dinosaur skeleton that was not roped off. As he posed for a selfie, a docent materialized and gently commanded: “Sir, please remove your ear from the dinosaur’s mouth.” T-Rex-sized laughter was the norm whenever Jimmy was around.

A hundred columns would not suffice in telling all about my big brother, but this single sentence speaks volumes: Jim was more of a dad to me than my dad was. The latter was overly busy with his surgical career and so it was Jimmy who showed me how hit a baseball and throw a football spiral; taught me to play cribbage and euchre; helped with my homework.

Jim showing off his new “ear” prostheses!

When I was very young and would have a nightmare, it was Jimmy’s bed I climbed into—and he would let me stay until morning. When I was older, he gave me the sex talk and taught me to drive a stick shift with nary an angry word when I grinded the gears of his Pinto.

Throughout my adulthood, Jimmy remained a role model and was there for me in big ways and small. A small example: he would text me when one of my columns especially delighted him. How dearly I am going to miss those big-bro kudos.

A big example: during our forever-goodbye visit mere days ago, Jimbo reached for my hand and held it and squeezed it as he whispered, using a private nickname he gave me when I was maybe 5 and ever after always called me by: “Grog, you’ve been a great little brother.” Tears instantly overflooded my eyes, yet helium filled my heart.

Jim married his college sweetheart, was a Girl Dad three times over, and eventually had seven grandchildren—and his next greatest love was being a surgeon. I think his blood flowed Scrubs Green in color, not red. His patients absolutely adored him; nurses and fellow doctors, likewise.

Let me end with another summer memory, this one when Jim was in medical school, in New York, and I flew out to spend a couple weeks with him. At one point he shared that while learning to insert a catheter they each had to do so to their own self. I flinched empathetically and said something like, “Ouch! That must really sting.”

Not missing a beat, Jimmy replied: “It wasn’t nearly as bad as a yellowjacket in my shorts.”

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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 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.

* * *

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.

*

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.

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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 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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