Category Archives: Columns

A Tale of Two Handmade Quilts

by Woody

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

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Imagine a painting by Monet of a pond shimmering with a hundred shades of blue, deep ocean to summer sky, on a canvas larger than a king-size mattress.

Now imagine a different masterpiece, every inch as large and lovely and beautiful and blue, but instead of oil brushstrokes on stiff canvas its medium is five-inch squares of age-worn denim sewn together and framed by a twill border.

“Priceless” is a greatly overworked word, but it is rightly employed to describe the patchwork quilt my mother, gone 33 years now, made for me before I headed off to college.

To begin, Mom surreptitiously saved my old blue jeans, Levi’s mostly, for a number of years. From these she harvested enough squares, or “blocks,” to build a quilt of 19 rows by 13 – 13 being a lucky number in her heart because she met my dad on a blind date on the thirteenth of October – measuring an oceanic six feet wide by more than seven feet long.

She arranged these pixels of denim with an artist’s eye and a mother’s care, forming pleasing patterns from the spectrum of faded hues and varying textures. For example, a small number of blocks have inseams running through them and a few others have front or side pockets removed, leaving behind silhouettes that resemble suntan lines.

One noteworthy square has the white frayed beginnings of a hole, probably at a knee, chosen because Navajos to this day intentionally weave a faint imperfection into each blanket to make it more human and thus more treasured.

Less seriously, near the quilt’s bull’s-eye is a signature 501 Button Fly. Naturally, one square features a rectangular Levi’s label – the waist and inseam sizes erased by age – and a trademark Red Tab tag adorns another square.

In the heart of the blue-denim field, which features nearly 300 tasseled quilting knots securing the touching corners of each and every block, is a large diamond pattern comprised of 16 squares of colorful tartan, in homage to our Irish roots, an eyesore pair of 1970s bellbottoms metamorphosed into handsomeness.

Weighing nearly 11 pounds, thanks furthermore to heavy-duty twill backing and thick batting inside, sleeping beneath this heirloom quilt feels like being hugged. In time, it hugged my daughter throughout college and then my son during his university years. No worse for wear, it now awaits four grandchildren.

Speaking of grandkids, the quilt’s four main corners each have a complete back pocket that my mom said, with a wink, were for condoms because she did not wish to become a grandmother too early.

And yet when I eventually made her a grandmother (for the fourth time) it was indeed too early, for my daughter was born three months premature weighing just 2 pounds, 6 ounces. Dallas remained in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for two months that seemed like a hundred years. If there is such a thing as angels on earth, I will tell you NICU nurses indeed have invisible halos.

September is National NICU Awareness Month, which brings me to a second priceless quilt. It is crib-sized and new and conjures a field of sunflowers painted by Van Gogh. I purchased it from an on-line shop for my granddaughter, Auden, who is named in honor of my mom.

More than being beautiful, what makes this quilt beyond special is the accompanying note from the seller, written in purple ink in smooth looping letters, explaining that her mom donates the money from her handmade quilts to NICUs.

All quilts are works of art, but some are works of heart.

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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.

Can Black Thumb Turn Green?

by Woody

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

Inspired by a white orchid received when my dad passed away a year and a half ago, which I have miraculously kept alive since, I am sharing this slightly revised column from my archives because, even more miraculously, Spikey is still in my care and thriving four years later!

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In college, for a girl I had a crush on, I agreed to care for her cat and a houseplant over winter break. The CliffsNotes plot summary: I overwatered the plant, overfed the feline, and overestimated the girl’s feelings for our relationship.

Of the three, only the fat cat survived.

For a different girl I soon after met in college, I years later planted a dwarf orange tree as a gift for her fifteenth wedding anniversary. I did everything the gardening expert at the local nursery advised, from choosing a location with optimal sunshine to digging a hole of the prescribed circumference and dept to using the right soil mixture and watering amply but with care.

Alas, for our sixteenth anniversary I did not give my wife a glass of homegrown freshly squeezed orange juice in bed because the tree had already perished. Fortunately, this was not an omen as our wedded family tree now has forty-three annual growth rings.

Some people – such as my great-grandfather, who developed his own registered “Woodburn Golden Dent” corn variety that won numerous gold medals at the State Fair and was popular well beyond the borders of Ohio – have green thumbs.

My thumb, on the other hand (on both hands, in fact) is funeral black. To trees, plants, lawns, roses, even full gardens, I am the Grim Reaper. A Human Dust Bowl. And so it was with great trepidation that I agreed to care for my son and his lovely wife’s small potted succulent named Spikey.

While my wife has developed a light minty-colored thumb to compensate for my inabilities, I wanted to make amends for the long-departed orange tree and thus assumed full care of Spikey.

How is it going, you might wonder?

Believe it or not, Spikey is thriving as never before! A big reason is because my dear friend Sus, whose thumb brings to mind the Emerald Isles, shared some of her secrets.

To begin, she told me I must occasionally take Spikey outside for “recess” in the fresh air. This sounded reasonable and doable.

Secondly, less reasonable and much less doable, she advised that I sing to Spikey. Sus leans towards church hymns for her houseplants and specifically noted her bonsai tree named Little Harmony is partial to “I Come To The Garden Alone.”

Understand, Sus sings in a choir, her voice so enchanted I imagine it can turn weeds into roses. My singing voice, I fear, would do the opposite. Sus suggested I instead play radio music for Spikey so long as I also read to him.

“You’re joking, right?” I said.

It turns out Spikey seems to enjoy hearing “The Runaway Bunny” and “Goodnight Moon” from my lips nearly as dearly as do my three young granddaughters. When I confessed to Sus that I felt silly reading children’s books to a plant, she suggested trying a novel.

“You’re kidding, right?”

I think Spikey’s vocabulary is growing almost as steadily as are his sharp leaves.

It seems I have become a plant whisperer of sorts. As such, I have now been temporarily entrusted with six of Spikey’s relatives: Lundy, short for London, who needs to avoid direct sunlight; Lexa, who likes a little sunshine; Phillip and Mariposa, who must have their support stakes routinely checked for straightness; and Verny and Junior, who prefer to be watered sparsely.

As for books, I was thinking they might all enjoy if I read aloud “Where The Red Fern Grows” – but certainly not “The Giving Tree” for it would surely give them nightmares.

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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.

Crown Cost a King’s Ransom

by Woody

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

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I hope you have a wonderful dentist who not only keeps your smile healthy and radiant, but also puts a grin on your face each visit.

However, if you try to tell me that your dentist is better than my D.D.S., I am afraid I will have to have to knock out one of your front teeth.

Speaking of missing teeth, when I was in Scotland a handful of years ago, I was strolling along a plaza walkway when a woman tripped me from behind sending me airborne headfirst down four stairs whereupon I landed sprawled prone on a cement patio area. Miraculously, I sufferer neither a broken arm or fractured hip nor a concussion.

But my smile of lucky relief had two broken top middle front teeth.

The trip-and-run woman quickly fled the scene, but another lady came to my aid and with kind intentions handed me a pair of cufflinks-sized nuggets of teeth – I’m not sure if she expected me Gorilla Glue them back in place or keep them as souvenirs of my trip, pun intended, to The Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.

For the remaining week of travel that headed next through Ireland, I felt self-consciousness about opening my mouth in conversations and remained tight-lipped for photographs. So you can imagine my great gratitude when my dentist, Doc Stacy, shoehorned me into his schedule the very morning after the night I flew home. By noon, I was smiling widely again with temporary crowns and a week later had two new perfect porcelain incisors.

Doc Stacy has been my dentist for nearly half my life, better than three decades, and over that time he has given me a million-dollar smile – or, at least, six-figure pearly whites. He has given me more crowns than in marathon game of checkers; crafted a few veneers; encouraged me to get braces as an adult; and, most recently, assisted with a dental implant – specifically, tooth No. 14, the upper left permanent maxillary first molar.

By the way, what do you think a snack-sized bag of “Roasted & Sea Salted” whole almonds costs? Whatever you guessed, multiply it by about a thousand, because even with dental insurance that is how much my resulting nut-cracked tooth set me back.

The worst part of getting a shiny new chomper was having the old bad apple plucked out. Dr. Z, whose name I cannot pronounce, much less spell, is the oral surgeon who did the plucking and implanting of a titanium post.

I wanted local anesthesia rather than sedation, but Dr. Z zealously urged me to concede as well to a smidgen of intravenous magic potion to “take the edge off.” Leery he might not stop until my twilight zone became midnight, I nonetheless agreed.

I need not have worried. Dr. Z was true to his word. Right before administering the agreed-upon small dose through an IV in my forearm, he said: “You’ll feel this pretty quickly.” No sooner had “quickly” escaped his lips than I felt like I had quaffed three pints of Double IPA.

“Can I have a little more?” I asked Dr. Z, as if he were a bartender, and he happily served me a chaser that left me still awake and feeling wonnnnderrrrful.

Also wonderful was that for the next few days I had a valid excuse to eat nothing but chocolate milkshakes!

After a few months, after the implant fused fully in the jawbone, Doc Stacy added a Zirconia tooth. I can again eat anything I want – but I still pass on the almonds.

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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.

Kings of the Castle in Doubles

by Woody

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

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This Saturday, in Newport, Rhode Island, Mike and Bob Bryan will be formally inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, so it seems fitting to share this column five summers past from my archives…

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“Don’t tell me about your dreams of a castle,” Wayne Bryan likes to say, “show me the stones you laid today.”

When Wayne and wife Kathy’s identical twin sons, Mike and Bob, were eight years old they taped an image of their dream castle on the Camarillo family’s refrigerator door: “Become the No. 1-ranked doubles team in the tennis world!”

They then laid the stones, day after week, month after year after decade, until they had erected a castle that surpassed their wildest dreams. Indeed, when Mike and Bob retired at age 42 their career looked like Camelot.

Together, Mike and Bob have singularly been Mikeandbob – a two-headed monster with four arms and four legs, standing 12 feet, 7 inches tall and weighing 370 pounds. Even Hercules could not slay Bobandmike on a tennis court.

Their final stat line as a pro tandem: 16 Grand Slam doubles championships and 119 overall titles, both all-time records by a mile, plus Olympic gold and bronze medals for good measure. As for their wild-eyed boyhood goal, they were ranked No. 1 in the world for 438 weeks during 22 years on the ATP Tour.

Mikeandbob also authored one of the greatest goodbye statements in sports history, rivaling Lou Gehrig’s famous “Luckiest Man” speech. It reads like an award-winning children’s book, yet is inspiring for adults too:

“Many years ago, two brothers left home and embarked on a journey up a tall mountain. With knowledge from their parents and fueled by boundless passion, they moved up the mountain together, their eyes fixated on a peak they could see on the distant horizon.

“They lifted each other over boulders, pulled each other up steep cliffs, and kept each other warm when storms battered the mountain. If one boy became weary, the other pushed harder and when one boy had doubts, the other fearlessly pressed on. They often slipped and were bruised but loved their fight against the stubborn mountain.

“After years of climbing, the boys finally reached the top. The view was beautiful but not what they expected. They saw a vast landscape filled with endless ranges of even taller peaks. Without looking back, they continued on.

“The trail eventually disappeared but the boys kept going, clearing their own path and exploring undiscovered lands they never knew existed. No matter the direction, they stayed together, for they knew their journey was impossible alone.

“And when their bodies could carry them no further, they turned around and gazed upon the world they had travelled. They looked at each other, smiled proudly, and headed home shoulder to shoulder, with a newfound peace and a bond stronger than ever.”

Along their fantastical journey, Mikeandbob behaved like chivalrous knights in shining armor. For example, they gave a match-used racket to a 10-year-old boy in Japan who was fighting cancer. More special, they stayed in touch. When they later learned he was on his deathbed, they expressed a final package of gifts to him.

A small thing? The young fan passed away wearing a shirt autographed by his twin heroes.

One more example of thousands: For a young girl fan who was in the hospital after attempting suicide, Bobandmike sent a video message complete with a musical performance – Bob on keyboard, Mike on drums – of an original song they wrote specifically for her.

Back when the kid Bryan Brothers first posted their lofty castle dream on the refrigerator, their mom Kathy told them: “It’s far more important who you are as people than who you are as athletes.”

Remarkably, Mikeandbob climbed that Mount Everest, too.

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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.

Wins, Losses Don’t Tell Full Story

by Woody

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

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In a celebratory banquet room one recent summer afternoon, I learned about a somber hospital room from nearly two winters past and my esteem for a man I have admired for four decades further grew.

The happy occasion was a retirement party for Phil Mathews, honoring his half-century of coaching basketball, including a decade of dominance at Ventura College from 1986 to 1995 when he guided the Pirate men to ten consecutive conference banners with state titles coming in his second and final seasons.

His overall record as head coach at a handful of schools, including the University of San Francisco, was an eye-popping 611-354; he also enjoyed laudable success as an assistant, including at UCLA; and for good reason has been inducted into three different halls of fame.

Joey Ramirez and Phil Mathews

And so, also for good reason, more than 200 former players and fellow coaches, family members and friends, and even one bygone sports writer, showed up to show him their respect and gratitude and love.

A few laughs were shared reminiscing about Phil’s fire-and-brimstone coaching style, but more important were the heartfelt stories that offered a truer measure of the man; a man who, despite the full-court-like pressure the college coaching profession puts on marriages, has fast-breaked to 32 wedding anniversaries with his dear bride Margie; a man who is Velcro close with his four children in adulthood; a man who remains an active father figure to five decades worth of players.

Joey Ramirez played for Mathews at VC and later became the Pirates’ second-winningest head coach behind him, but he told the assemblage that the most important way he wanted to emulate his mentor was as a champion husband and dad. Goal achieved, for as he spoke, Joey’s lovely wife Olivia and two of their three affable sons looked on proudly.

There were no smiles in the Ramirez family two Decembers ago, however, after Joey contacted COVID and legionnaires disease and severe pneumonia – a medical triple-threat that landed him in the ICU for nearly two weeks while being intubated and fully sedated.

The great poet Robert Frost famously said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” Conversely, Joey proved as he spoke at the podium this day: tears in the speaker, tears in the listeners. In a choked voice, Joey said that upon finally regaining consciousness in the hospital the first person he saw at bedside keeping vigil was his ol’ coach.

Something like that doesn’t go on a Hall-of-Fame plaque, but should.

Let me close with a story about the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. The magnificent edifice took 83 years to build, from 1907 to 1990, and near the end of construction progress slowed to a crawl because it became nearly impossible to find stonecutters with the skill necessary to prepare the stones properly.

Curious about this dying art on life support, a journalist went to the job site and interviewed two of the remaining stonecutters. Specifically, the writer asked the pair of master craftsmen to explain what they were doing.

“I’m shaping this stone so that it fits perfectly into that space over there,” the first stonecutter replied, pointing.

Coach Mathews certainly shaped his players to fit perfectly into their roles to help their teams succeed year after year after year. But it was the second stonecutter who truly epitomized Phil, for he offered a grander answer: “I am building a cathedral.”

By dedicating his adult life to shaping young basketball players into successful men in the game of life, Philip Lewis Mathews has indeed built a beautiful cathedral.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

Still Feeling Lucky Decades Later

by Woody

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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A recent note, out of the blue, from a key mentor in my life whose praise can still put birdsong in my heart and helium in my stride, inspired me to reshare this column (with the time frame revised) from my Star archives…

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It is hard to imagine anyone being luckier in Las Vegas than I was 43 years ago come this September. Freshly graduated from UC Santa Barbara, but jobless, I got a phone call that proved to be like a Jackpot-Jackpot-Jackpot spin on a slot machine.

A newspaper editor had tracked me down on my honeymoon, no easy feat before cellphones, offering an interview for a sportswriter position. That was the good news.

The bad news was the tiny twice-weekly publication, The Desert Trail, was in Twentynine Palms – a one-stoplight triple-digit-temperatures town where no young bride dreams of beginning her new wedded life. No matter, Lisa and I cut our honeymoon short and took a detour through the yuccas landscape on our drive back to Goleta.

I not only got the job, I got a blue-ribbon boss, life-changing mentor, and dear friend in the deal. The latter happened overnight, literally, as Dave Stancliff and his wife and their three very young sons took me into their home for a month.

Under Dave’s tutelage, I received a hands-on master’s degree education in journalism that made me a better writer.

More importantly, he imparted life lessons that made me a better person. For example, instead of giving a homeless person a few bucks for a fast-food hamburger, Dave would buy him or her a restaurant meal. Kinder yet, he sometimes surprised his family by bringing a hungry stranger home as a dinner guest.

Along with a heart of gold, Dave has mettle of steel. Straight from high school he went to fight in the sweltering jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia. Stories of his soldiering experiences gave me nightmares – and he did not even share the worst of the hell he saw.

Indeed, a decade before Tim O’Brien’s remarkable Vietnam War novel, “The Things We Carried” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, I learned about “The Things Dave Carried” home from that war: PTSD as well as physical health issues caused by Agent Orange. He bravely battled those foes, and still does, as if they were fierce opponents in the ring when he was an Army boxing champion.

To say I admire Dave is an understatement of molehill and mountain proportions, so a blog post he wrote headlined “The Two Most Inspirational People I’ve Ever Met” caught my eye. After all, to be worthy of Dave’s highest esteem would require someone quite special. Eugene “Red” McDaniel certainly measures up. Now in his 90s “and still going strong,” McDaniel is a Vietnam vet who, after being shot down over Hanoi in 1967, spent six years as a POW before being freed.

“Red, who received the most brutal torture at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors, showed me how indomitable the human spirit is in the worst of times,” Dave wrote, having first met McDaniel in the mid-1970s while writing for the campus newspaper at Humboldt State. “His positive attitude about everything in life was actually therapeutic for me and my PTSD.”

Reading further along, I was suddenly struck by twin lightning bolts of shock and goosebumps: “The other really positive person in my life is Woody Woodburn…”

The laudatory dispatch that followed made me blush; made me feel privileged to have Dave in my life, then and still; and also made me think of something the late Chuck Thomas, my predecessor in this weekly space and also a dear Dave-like mentor to me, liked to say: “Don’t wait until tomorrow to tell a friend how you feel about them today.”

Wise advice for us all.

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            Woody Woodburn will be the featured speaker at the “Books, Butterflies & Botanical Gardens” fundraiser benefiting the Ventura County Library Foundation on Sunday, October 19. Tickets are available online at: vclibraryfoundation.org/events/ … He can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Lesson From A Rocking Chair

by Woody

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

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A big-time New York City sportswriter once said, long ago, that his best pieces were when he quoted at length from columns by press-box legend Red Smith. Chuck Thomas, my esteemed predecessor in this space, humorously echoed: “Never write a bad column when you can steal a good one.”

Thusly inspired, I have stolen a new essay from award-winning novelist Dallas Woodburn, who will be a headliner at the “Books, Butterflies & Botanical Gardens” fundraiser benefiting the Ventura County Library Foundation on Oct. 15. (Tickets are available online at: vclibraryfoundation.org/events/ )

My daughter shares wisely…

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Yesterday, I sold the rocker from our nursery.

It was time. My younger daughter is two-and-a-half and was excited about putting up a “reading tent” in her room, in the space where the rocker used to be.

The woman who bought the rocker was delighted. It was for her pregnant daughter and it warmed my heart to imagine another family getting to use this item we had loved so much.

Yet still, watching the woman drive away with our rocker in the bed of her truck made unexpected tears spring to my eyes and a big lump rise to my throat.

It was a blinking neon-sign reminder that time is passing. So, so quickly.

I vividly remember when we bought that rocker, when I was pregnant with my older daughter seven summers ago, back when we were living in a small rental house. I remember setting up the nursery in what once had been my home office, a mix of excitement and nerves giving me giddy butterflies.

My baby daughter and I spent countless hours rocking in that chair. We rocked to calm her. We rocked her to sleep. In the early, early days, I nursed her in that rocking chair, listening to audiobooks and feeling like the two of us were the only ones awake in the entire world.

In those newborn days of early motherhood, time was molasses. I rocked her and rocked her, back and forth, back and forth, her head heavy in the crook of my elbow, praying for her to fall asleep – and stay asleep. It felt like she would always be tiny and I would always be rocking her.

Four years later, my husband and I were setting up the same rocker in a different house, in a different nursery, for our second precious rainbow baby.

Our younger daughter arrived and didn’t like to be rocked as much as her big sister. She preferred the standing-dancing-bouncing method. Still, she and I spent a lot of time, especially reading, in that rocking chair.

Why am I telling you all about this rocking chair? Because time is passing quickly. Children are growing up. Parents are aging. We all are aging.

And if we aren’t careful – if we aren’t intentional and purposeful and brave – time can be a cruel thief, slipping by like a cat burglar, stealing away our biggest dreams.

What were you dreaming about seven years ago? Do you hold a big dream in your heart that is older than my rocking chair? Are you still trying to “make time” for that dream? Do you tell yourself that you’ll make time to pursue it later; next season; next year; when life calms down and things are less busy?

The next piece of furniture we will likely offer away is my younger daughter’s crib, now converted into a toddler bed. I’m guessing we’ll get another two years out of it before she graduates to a full-on “big-girl bed.”

Two years from now, will your big-life dream be growing true?

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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.

Part II: My Top Top-Shelf Book

by Woody

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

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Picking up where I left off last week in answering the question, “What is my favorite book that I own?”

While my previously mentioned 1885 first edition, seconding printing, of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is monetarily the most-valuable volume in my Favorite Books Bookcase, a short stack gifted by friends and family are more priceless to me largely because they were thoughtful presents.

While my very favorite of favorites will surely come as a surprise, it is no surprise that “Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court” by John Wooden is on the elite shelf. This little blue book is big-time special because of the story behind it: when I politely told Coach I would instead buy my own copy because he had already given me too many gifts on previous visits, he grinned wryly and said he could not very well give it to someone else because he had already inscribed it to me…

…but, after a moment’s reflection, Coach encouraged me to go ahead and buy a second copy and give it to a friend for no reason.

Writers who, like Coach Wooden, have made friendship a fine art with their own gift books now residing on my special shelf include Ken McAlpine, Roger Thompson, Mimi Herman, Geoffrey Simpson, Jacinda Townsend, Tom Hoffarth, Tavis Smiley, and Chuck Thomas.

Dog-eared paperbacks of “The Old Man and the Sea” and “Travels With Charley” have brought me great reading joy, but “good” condition hardcover first editions as gifts from my daughter make her Old Man’s heart Travel to the moon.

So dearly do I love “The Snow Goose,” which I have read a dozen times at least, that I gifted myself a volume signed by its author, Paul Gallico. Still, my favorite copy of this little-known 58-page novella is a 1941 first edition, its pricey value multiplied many times over because my friend Nick Sarris searched it out as a gift.

While first editions and signed title pages are indeed special, emotional provenance is no less so. Hence, three muddy-moss-colored cloth-covered obviously often-read hardbacks by John Steinbeck are exceptional beauties to my eyes because they were long-ago treasured by the father of my college dorm pal Mikey Weinberg-Lynn, who wanted me to have the family heirlooms because of my great admiration for the author.

Similarly, an age-worn collection of “The Bedtime Story Books” series by Thorton W. Burgess that belonged to my dad as a boy reside in my Favorite Books Bookcase.

But my all-time top top-shelf book is not a storybook, although it does indeed have myriad marvelous color illustrations; nor is it a novella or novel.

Rather, it is a textbook, placemat-sized and thick as “Ulysses” at more than 500 pages, and heavy as a cinder block because of the glossy paper throughout. The black hardcover, especially its spine, shows the wear from countless late-night study sessions, three successive generations in fact, for the book originally belonged to my grandfather Ansel, whose name is on the first inside page, then my father, and in turn my eldest brother – doctors all.

Why in the world would “An Atlas of Anatomy” by J. C. Boileau Grant, a 1947 second edition, be my most cherished book? Because two days before my big brother passed away – exactly a year ago this week – during my very last bedside visit with him, Jimmy gave it to me along with these whispered final words:

“You’ve been a great little brother.”

And so it is that I learned, on page 440, about orifice of naso-lacrimal duct – the tear duct.

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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.

This Favorite Book Will Surprise You

by Woody

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

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“What’s your favorite book?” I was asked the other day, a simple question that is calculus-difficult to answer.

Hemming a moment, I finally replied I would need to think about it. Now I have, long and happily, retreating a lifetime into memory back to my first favorite book that I checked out of the library myself, at age 5, “Where The Wild Things Are,” and then browsing forward through a hundred books that each merit a color in my rainbow of all-time favorites.

Scarlet or violet or gold or…?

“The Old Man and the Sea” or “The Grapes of Wrath” or…?

I decided to reframe the conundrum to: What is my favorite book I own? My answer, without question, will surprise you.

Let me begin by sharing a handful of contenders that share a shelf of honor in my Favorite Books Bookcase. This includes the full collection – three novels, four short story collections, one children’s book – by my all-time favorite writer, with no apologies to John Steinbeck: my daughter, Dallas.

Proving truth in the aphorism to not judge a book by its cover, monetarily the most valuable book I own has a hardback front and back that only a mother – or perhaps great-great-grandmother – could love, for it looks like gaudy red-pink-gold-green-and-white patterned wallpaper from the 19th Century. The spine, however, of rich brown leather with gilt lettering tells a different tale: “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” It is a first edition, second issue (with a few corrections) published in 1885.

Ol’ Huck is not the oldest book on my special shelf. That honor, by a mere year, goes to a poetry collection titled “Red Letter Poems.” It is a handsome illustrated edition with a white leather cover protecting 647 gilt-edged pages, but its true value is in having been passed down on my mother’s side of the family.

And yet the favorite book of poetry I own is small and slim, at just 20 pages, with a cover that looks like it was once left outside through a full winter. No matter, “From Snow To Snow” by Robert Frost is dear to me because a college class studying the four-time Pulitzer Prize winner’s works partially inspired me to become a writer. Further making this 1936 first edition, first printing, all the more dear is the pencil signature inside, dark and clear, albeit a little shaky, in the author’s hand.

Nonetheless, my most-prized Pulitzer honoree’s signature is on the title page of “The Sporting World of Jim Murray” – “Keep swinging! Jim Murray” he penned – that I found in a used bookstore in Twentynine Palms for all of $6.50 according to the penciled price inside the cover. That was in 1982, my rookie year in journalism, and a few years before I would meet my sportswriting hero in person in a press box.

Even more precious, even though it is unsigned, is a 1936 edition of “Roget’s Thesaurus of English Language In Dictionary Form.” The dirty-red, well-worn cloth cover is nothing to look at – until you take a closer look. In the lower right corner, imprinted in small gilt letters, it reads JIM MURRAY and was gifted to him by Roget’s.

Making this Thesaurus more cherished – also: loved, beloved, precious, special – is that Jim’s widow gifted it to me in honor of his and my friendship.

Indeed, being gifts is a theme that makes a handful more books in my Favorite Books Bookcase truly priceless to me – none more so than my surprising answer as my No. 1 fave, which I will reveal in this space next week.

An Unknown Hero Among Heroes

by Woody

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

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Today being the Fourth of July, it seems fitting to share a column about a hero from my Star archives from a decade ago…

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For the first five days of August, I was in the august company of heroes in our nation’s capital.

Heroes like astronauts John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, and earlier fliers like Charles Lindbergh and the Wright Brothers, all in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Also men and women heroes interred in Arlington National Cemetery, a heartbreaking landscape that is ironically beautiful.

My tour of heroes further included monuments for those who served in World Wars I and II; the Korean War Memorial; and Vietnam Memorial Wall.

In the National Archives I peered at Founding heroes like Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock’s ornate signatures on the original Declaration of Independence.

And, of course, there are the marble heroes in the National Mall: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yet the hero who arguably engraved the deepest impression upon me was one I encountered shortly after my late-night arrival when I boarded the train from the airport to my downtown D.C. hotel.

The first few minutes of the ride were quiet, sans the pleasant rhythmic sounds of the track below, when suddenly calm turned to clamor. A passenger two rows ahead of me – a tall, sinewy man in his 20s, bare arms covered with sleeve tattoos, electrocuted blond hair that made Einstein’s look tame – jumped from his seat like a jack-in-the-box and began shouting at a goateed man – about his same age, although shorter and stockier – seated across the aisle.

The goateed man apparently had said something to the mangy tattooed man’s equally unkempt dog. Quick as a hiccup, the two men were standing nose-to-nose as the tattooed man angrily cursed and challenged the goateed man’s manhood.

A young woman facing me across the aisle looked petrified. As the vile racial epithets from the crazed tattooed man intensified, I signaled with my eyes that we should slip out the door at the next stop.

Just then – THUMP! – the goateed man landed a solid punch to the jaw and – THUMP! THUMP! – a second and third blow. Frankly, Gandhi might not have blamed him at this point. Remarkably, the tattooed man’s large dog remained nonviolent.

Before another punch could be thrown, or a weapon pulled out, a bald-headed man sitting with his back to the fray bolted from his seat, spun 180 degrees into the aisle in one fluid motion, took four strides in two blinks, and seized the goateed man from behind. It was as if Batman happened to be aboard the Metro Blue Line.

Sitting beside his gray-haired wife, the bald-headed man, wearing peach slacks and a white sweater, had seemed as unimposing as Bruce Wayne. Rising into action, the human Teddy bear came into focus like a grizzly – or a former NFL linebacker or retired Marine sergeant.

“Knock it off!!! Now!!!” the bald-headed man commanded fiercely with multiple exclamation marks. “Get out of here!!! Now!!! Before you get arrested!!!”

Having stepped between the two combatants, the bald-headed man assumed the wide-footed stance of a heavyweight boxer and slowly and deliberately backed the goateed man towards the closed exit.

At the next stop, the goateed man retreated out the door with haste; the tattooed man and his dog also departed; the bald-headed man returned to his wife’s side; and the rest of us passengers finally exhaled.

When my stop came, I used the exit door further from me but nearer the bald-headed man.

“Thanks,” I said, shaking his hand. “You’re a hero.”

He smiled, humbly, but his wife’s proud smile was as oversized as John Hancock’s “John Hancock.”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s debut 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.