Category Archives: Columns

Delivering a Mother’s Day message

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE! 

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Delivering a Mother’s Day message

The first Mother’s Day gift I remember giving my mom was a bouquet of flowers fashioned from colored tissue paper and pipe cleaners that we made in first grade.

I am fairly certain nearly as much messy glue went into it as love, and a handful of dandelions would have been prettier to display, yet Mom, of course, acted as thrilled as if it were a dozen roses because that’s what moms do.1momsday

The final Mother’s Day gift I gave my mom, 24 years ago – it is difficult to believe it has been that long – was a bouquet of real flowers. More importantly, I delivered them in person with a hug. She probably would have preferred a single rose and a bouquet of hugs.

These two reminisces bring to mind a story, perhaps apocryphal, I heard a while ago and seems fitting to share today on Mother’s Day eve.

It was the Friday before Mother’s Day and a successful businessman – let’s call him Harry – decided to order flowers for his mom. Usually he had his secretary or wife do this task, but for some reason he felt motivated to do it himself.

Ordering a bouquet online would have been almost as easy as asking his secretary to take care of it, but Harry believed in supporting local businesses so on his lunch break he walked to a florist shop a few blocks from his office.

The owner began to show Harry a variety of special arrangements, but Harry was in a hurry – he always seemed in a rush; in the business world time is money – so he simply ordered a dozen long-stemmed red roses to be delivered two days hence on his mom’s doorstep 200 miles away.

The premium prices for Mother’s Day flowers, and the surcharge for a Sunday delivery, didn’t make Harry blink. In fact, because he felt bad for being too busy to visit his mom he doubled his original order to two-dozen roses.

Harry wrote down his mom’s address, asked for an extra dozen roses to-go to take home to his wife, and paid with his platinum credit card.

Exiting the florist shop, Harry almost bowled over a young boy who asked: “Excuse me, sir, could you lend me two dollars?”

Harry’s instinct was to acerbically correct the boy and say, “Don’t you mean give you two dollars? You aren’t planning to pay me back.”

But the boy’s sincerity brought out a gentler side in Harry and instead he asked: “Why do you need two dollars?”

“Today’s my mom’s birthday and I want to buy her a beautiful flower, but I don’t quite have enough money,” the boy explained.

Harry suddenly found himself in no hurry, found himself becoming a softy, and while reaching for his wallet asked the boy where he lived.

The boy pointed up the street: “About five minutes that way.”

Harry now had a better idea than handing the boy a couple bucks. He plucked one of the roses from the bouquet for his wife – surely she would not even notice the difference between a dozen and 11 – and handed it to the boy.

“Give this beauty to your mom.”

“Wow! Thank you so much!” the boy said. “I’m going to take this to my mom right now!”

With that the boy got on his bicycle and began to ride off – in the opposite direction of where he had pointed his house was.

“Hey, son, I thought you lived that way,” Harry said.

“I do,” the boy replied. “But the cemetery is this way. My mom died last year.”

“I’m so sorry,” Harry said, his voice choking up. He handed the boy the rest of the bouquet and added: “Please put these on her grave.”

The boy took all the flowers and rode away while Harry turned around and went back into the florist shop.

“I need to cancel that out-of-town delivery I just ordered,” Harry said. “Instead, I need you to put together two dozen roses to-go as quickly as possible. I’ve decided to deliver them today personally.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Readers Chime In

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE! 

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Flipping roles: readers do the writing

“Why struggle writing a column,” Chuck Thomas, my esteemed mentor and longtime steward of this space, liked to say, “when you can have others do it for you?”

Following his sage advice, I am taking the day off. Pinch-hitting are some readers who responded to recent columns.

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“Thank you for the beautiful piece you wrote on the value of libraries!” emailed Marianne Coffey. “So many depend on our libraries each day and it is so difficult here in Ventura to garner City Council support for our libraries or a book budget.

“I volunteer at E.P. Foster Library and it is so heartwarming to see firsthand the early literacy activities enjoyed by the little ones, the Lego play times, the dance parties, Summer Reading Program, the Chess Club and Teen Activity Groups, as well as adult activities underwritten by all the Ventura Friends of the Library.

“We are blessed with a dedicated library staff and our libraries are a real lifeline for so many, helping many community members cross the digital divide.

“Our libraries offer homework centers, and there is a retired gentlemen at E.P. Foster that I watch in the afternoons tutoring Math. We have a great many unsung heroes in our community!”

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Joanne Fields, herself an unsung library hero, offered this:

“You concisely cleared up the confusion many have about libraries being ‘outdated’ in this age of technology. In addition, you expressed the wonder that can be found in libraries.

“In my case, whenever I took a new job, the first place I located near my new employer was the library. My first job was as a page in the library and I am now recording secretary for the Ventura Friends of the Library. So my love affair with libraries and the knowledge they represent is unabated.”

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By no means is my in-box always filled with unabated support, as this viewpoint from P.W. attests:

“Why throw into a column on impersonal musings, your personal dislike for Trump? Trump’s angry rhetoric is no worse than equally hateful/dishonest/unprincipled commentary from ALL the candidates.

“The election issue is not Trump, but a complete slate of people who are far from being the best and brightest our country has to offer.”

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A handful of readers replied in regards to my personal “Theory of Pizza Imprinting,” but my favorite is from John Acevedo:

“Boy, did I get a lot out of your pizza column. My favorite pizza is from a place in Lincoln, Nebraska, named Valentino’s. We used to buy two and put one in the fridge for breakfast on Sunday. What crazy boys, we were!”

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Howard Reich made me crazy happy with his note, and deed, that reversed the title of my book “Strawberries in Wintertime” into Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive in Springtime:

“Woody, I used a Sports Chalet gift card to purchase and distribute one football, one basketball, and two playground balls.”

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Bob Pratt wrote in with a suggestion regarding something I mentioned:

“Maybe you could tell the story behind why -30- is used by writers at the end of a column in newspapers.”

Great question, indeed, for while I have typed -30- since first working on UC Santa Barbara’s The Daily Nexus in 1979, I never knew the origins of this journalism tradition. Prompted by Bob, I now do.

Its use apparently began during the Civil War era when telegraph operators employed a long list of terms – called the 92 Code of telegraphic shorthand – that each had a number associated with it.

For example, 1 meant “Wait a minute”;  27 was “Priority, very important”; 73 was “Best regards”; and 88 was “Love and kisses.”

And, of course, 30 meant “No more – the end.”

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Lastly, one more library email, this one from Doris Cowart sharing a comment about her 5-year-old great grandson:

“When Dean got his library card, he called it his ‘Library License’ and he carries it in his wallet. Love that boy!”

Doris didn’t ask me, but she should send Dean this text: “27-88-30.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Catherdrals of Curiosity

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE! 

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Libraries: Cathedrals of Curiosity

Nearly a half-century has passed, yet the memory remains vivid and magical. My fellow first-graders in Miss James’ class went on a field trip to the Center of Science and Industry in downtown Columbus, Ohio.

Before we saw the erected dinosaur skeletons and caveman displays and moving constellations inside the planetarium, we were greeted in the cathedral-like entry foyer by a gargantuan pendulum that seemed to hang down from the heavens so high overhead was its anchor pivot.

The bowling ball-sized “massive bob” swung to and fro in slow motion while on the floor around the circumference of its path were wooden pegs. With each swing, the point at the end of silver bob inched closer and closer to the next upright peg in line until the margin it missed by was razor thin. Then, finally, another miniature bowling pin would topple. It was mesmerizing.1librarypic

Another cathedral, similarly so quiet you could have heard a wooden peg drop on its tiled floors, made a lasting impression on me that same year when my mom took me to the Upper Arlington Public Library to get me my very own library card.

Inside this magical place I also could learn about T-Rex, Neanderthals and the Big Digger – and so much more. I even remember the first book I checked out: “Where the Wild Things Are.” This was a case where judging a book by its cover turned out wonderfully.

My enchanted experience is nearly universal. Indeed, it is rare to meet an adult who doesn’t fondly recall getting their library card as a child.

“I discovered me in the library,” the great author Ray Bradbury said. “I went to find me in the library.”

And this from the poet Maya Angelou: “I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.”

Inventing the public library, in 1731, might have been Benjamin Franklin’s greatest act of genius. The Ventura County Library system is quite venerable itself, proudly celebrating its 100th anniversary this week.

Much has changed since 1916 – even since 2006. Card catalogues are now digitalized; e-books, movies and music are available at our libraries; free WiFi and computer access are also offered.

Sadly, even tragically, too many people see libraries as outdated in this Google era and a waste of taxpayer money. These naysayers are as wrong as a Social Sciences title, which belongs in the Dewey Decimal System’s 300 section, being shelved in the 500s for Science.1libraryquote

Here is what my dear friend, and favorite librarian, Allyson would like you to know:

“In the 21st Century, we’re not your Grandma’s librarian! Librarians have always been the ‘original search engine,’ but in this age of technology librarians are needed more than ever.

“In the 21st century, people are faced with an ocean of information, in an explosion of formats from a huge variety of authors, with a wide range of credibility. We need librarians more than ever to help us learn the skills to navigate this ocean.

“In an age of widening income inequality, libraries remain dedicated to the radical proposition that everyone has a right to access humanity’s knowledge, and the right to read for pleasure.

“In an era where everything from job and college applications to car buying and banking is done online, libraries provide not only free internet access but guidance, insuring that information does not become the domain of the few and the wealthy.

“Libraries are centers for all kinds of events and exchanges of ideas,” Allyson continues passionately. “They are the heart of the community. And the only passport required to enter is curiosity.”

Me again. Curiosity, and a library card, will take you anywhere and everywhere. And while the pendulum may swing towards technology, it always swings back to print books and human librarians.

In truth, I need not have told you Allyson is my friend so long as I mentioned she is a librarian. From Benjamin Franklin’s time to today, every librarian is a friend to all who enter these cathedrals of curiosity.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Nobody Asked Me, But…

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE! 

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Thoughts and Rants on This and That

Nobody asked me, but here goes anyway . . .

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Back in the dinosauric pre-computer age, which my writing career’s beginning touched the ending, journalists composed stories on typewriters and turned in hard-copy pages.

Instead of typing “The End” as with a movie script, a writer would put “–30–” at the bottom to let the typesetter know the story was over.1_30

I bring this up because Stephen Curry, the NBA’s reigning MVP on the reigning champion Golden State Juggernauts (pronounced “Warriors”), wears jersey number 30.

Nobody asked me, but I think the league should make Curry add two dashes and wear “–30–” because when he’s on the court, the game is pretty much over.

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The 2016 NCAA championship basketball game proved, once again, that sports is the most exciting “reality TV” imaginable.

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The murder trial of Jane Laut, who was recently convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting her husband Dave Laut at their Oxnard home on Aug. 27, 2009, proved that reality journalism of a high-profile trial is far more captivating than any CSI TV series.

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Add Laut trial: One of the most important aspects of VC Star reporter Marjorie Hernandez’s outstanding daily coverage of the unfolding drama, I believe, was in showing how far the tragedy ripples out and how many people it touches beyond the victim and perpetrator – from family members and friends, of course, to colleagues and even jurors who had to hear grisly details.

Indeed, this wasn’t CSI Oxnard, this was – and is – real life, real death, and a real life sentence in prison.

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It is so refreshing, and welcoming, to visit a city that doesn’t have parking meters.1park

While I’m resigned that moneymaking meters are here to stay in downtown Ventura, is it too much to ask they be upgraded so as not to be so frustratingly slow? On top of delays between each button that must be selected in the process, they finicky-ly spit out perfectly valid credit cards.

Add in a patron who forgets the ID number of their parking spot – understandable after the lengthy delays – or if a couple people are waiting in line, and you can be late for a movie of dinner reservation.

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It takes dirty fingernails and an ugly blister, or three, to grow a beautiful garden. That’s pretty much true for any accomplishment. Just saying. . .

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Just asking: Why is it that an airline passenger seat or the driver’s seat in a car is so much less comfortable than spending the same length of time in a movie-theater seat or on a sofa?

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Nobody asked me, but I think most will agree it’s difficult (pronounced “impossible”) to imagine the frontrunner of the “Party of Lincoln” saying the words below from President Abraham Lincoln’s famous second inaugural address:

“With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

More Trump-like is this: “With malice towards all, charity for none . . . ”

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Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk announced that its Model 3 mass-market electric vehicle – which, with an average mix of options, will cost about $42,000 – had 180,000 pre-ordered in the first 24 hours.

That eye-popping total soared like a SpaceX rocket – a company Musk also founded – to 325,000 after just one week. This is all the more remarkable considering a deposit of $1,000 was required for a car that won’t be delivered until 2017.

For those with wallets fatter than a Big Mac, the Model 3 is the iPhone 6 of cars. Musk – this generation’s 2.0 version of Steve Jobs – didn’t ask me, but he should rename it the iTesla 3.

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For my observations, comments and complaints today, that’s a –30–

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Wading in with Pizza Theory

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE! 

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Wading in with Theory on Pizza

 “Filial imprinting” is the learning process where a young animal becomes attached to its parent and copies what it does. However, as Austrian ethologist and 1973 Nobel Prize-winner Konrad Lorenz famously demonstrated, upon coming out of their eggs, goslings, ducklings and chicks will imprint on the first moving object they encounter and become socially attached to it.

Konrad Lorenz with feathered friends in tow.

Konrad Lorenz with feathered friends in tow.

Usually, this moving object is the mother goose, duck or hen, but Lozenz showed it can also be a human – or, expressly in his case, the young birds imprinted on his wading boots that were at their eye level.

In one experiment, Lorenz even showed goslings could imprint on a cardboard box. When the box was then placed on a model train the gosling followed it around and around as it circled an oval track.

I bring this up because I have my own theory of imprinting that also involves a box – a pizza box. Specifically, my Theory of Pizza Imprinting is that the very first slice we ever taste becomes our ideal “pie.” Thin crust or deep dish; extra saucy or super cheesy; crispy crust or soft edges; no toppings or many; these specifics are what we will prefer forevermore.

My personal perfect pizza still mimics the first slices I had nearly five decades past from “Leonardo’s,” a mom-and-pop take-out-only pizzeria in my boyhood hometown in Ohio. Leonardo’s pizza had a thin-but-bready dough and the edge crust was nearly-burnt-crispy delicious.

Leonardo’s pies were actually square and cut into 16 pieces, meaning the four middle slices had no crust. These interior pieces were always the last to go because, lacking crust to anchor the cheese, the entire melted slab tended to slide off with your first bite leaving behind only the bready bottom wet with tomato sauce.

1pizzabox1pizzaPepperoni was the only topping I remember our family getting on Pizza Nights and even this imprinted: Leonardo’s thin-sliced pepperoni –

like its dough crust – was wonderfully crisp around the curled-up edges.

For pizza like Leonardo’s I continue to search. In fact, I even prefer the rare Italian pies that are square because the challenge of eating a crust-less interior slice without all the cheese coming off and flopping onto my chin on the first bite adds a dash of heartwarming nostalgia to the recipe.

Pizza imprinting is so powerful I have friends whose ideal pie is as rubbery as one of Lorenz’s old wading boots because their virgin slice was delivered in a franchise-logoed flat box.

While the imprinting is not quite as strong, I believe my pizza theory holds with other foods – especially “comfort” foods such as the meatloaf or mashed potatoes like your mom made; or your grandma’s chocolate-chip cookies; even the first hot dog you remember relishing.

I am reminded of this whenever my daughter or son returns home to Ventura and they crave fish-‘n’-chips from Andria’s Seafood at the Harbor. Meanwhile, the hot dogs they still hold as their standard are not Dodger Dogs, but those once served at long-gone Cartwright’s hut on Main Street.

Frankly, I had not thought of berries being on the menu for my imprint theory until a local reader commented about my boyhood experience having strawberries in wintertime from a roadside stand in Saticoy.

“Your column reminds me of Northern New York State and our visits to small stands along the highway where on display, and for sale, were fruit and vegetables grown by the Amish community,” Reva writes in an earthquaky cursive that suggests her sweet recollections are from many decades past.

“California strawberries served in our retirement facility are unusually sour and don’t improve with the addition of sweeteners,” she continues. “You must put Amish strawberries, in person to sample, on your ‘some day’ list.’ It’s well worth the trip. ”

I, for one, cannot imagine our Ventura County strawberries being sour compared to strawberries from upstate New York, or anywhere, anymore than I can imagine a wading boot looking like a mother goose. I think pizza-like imprinting, and perhaps aging taste buds, is the only explanation that holds water.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Fast-Break Iambic Rhythms

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE! 

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Iambic Rhythms at Fast-Break Pace

What do Alexander Hamilton and John Wooden have in common? An obvious answer is the number 10: Hamilton is on the 10-dollar bill and Wooden won a record 10 NCAA national championships as a basketball coach.

Meanwhile, about the last denominator the legendary secretary of the treasury and legendary Wizard of Westwood would seem to share is hip-hop music.1raphamilton

Well, the critically acclaimed Broadway musical “Hamilton” is performed in rap lyrics. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creative genius who wrote the music, lyrics and playbook, is making rap more mainstream than March Madness office pools. Indeed, “Hamilton” is harder to get tickets to than the Final Four and here’s an iambic fast-break highlight why:

“How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten / spot in the Caribbean by Providence impoverished in squalor grow up to be a hero and a scholar?

“The Ten dollar, founding father without a father / got a lot farther by working a lot harder / by being a lot smarter by being a self-starter / by fourteen, they placed him in charge of a trading charter.”

Take a breath, because that is only the first 10 seconds of the four-minute opening song. Act I has 24 songs in all and Act II has 23.

Which brings us to three other rap songs, the video links to which a friend emailed me, asking: “What do you think Coach Wooden would think?”

In his offering “Wooden Heart,” artist Fearce Vill mixes imagery Coach would admire along with some Wooden-isms:

“I go the hard route / I don’t play it safe / because the scuff on my shoe represents / what I’ve been through / so I’m gonna keep runnin’, runnin’

“The scuff on my shoe represents / what I’ve been through / so I’m gonna take one day at a time / one day at a time

“Things turn out best for the people / who make the best of the way things turn out / Everybody want a free throw / but nobody want to work for it”

The artist known as “Freestyle” offers these slam-dunk lines:

“John Wooden taught me / you get back what you put in it / The things he said are music to my ears

“He taught us that a poor man’s wealth is his ability / Winning takes talent / to repeat takes character / That’s what he taught the people across America

“Success is never final / failure is never fatal / What counts is the courage you bring to the table.”

And in “The Keys,” Megan Ran uses the rhythmic verbal beat of a quickly dribbled basketball while incorporating Wooden’s famous Pyramid of Success along with other maxims:

“Most times we won / before we even stepped upon the court / Tools for life much bigger than any sport / Life lessons for leaders, athletes and teachers / even musicians pushing education through the speakers on me

“Yeah, on me / these are the keys, ready / enthusiasm, intentness, loyalty, dedication, physical and mental fitness, self-control, confidence, poise, skill and condition / Better get on your mission / to make it come to fruition

“Little things make big things happen / Make each day your masterpiece / Never forget the team /Always keep the ‘we’ before the ‘me’ / Ask questions / because these here are the best lessons / Follow these keys and success is destined.”

Now back to my friend Bill’s question of what Wooden might think of these rap songs were he alive today. I think, like me, he would love them!

After all, Coach had a passion for poetry – reading, writing, reciting. Indeed, listening to these hip-hop tributes reminds me of how Coach would oftentimes recite a poem, fast-paced, almost rapper-like.

Too, I believe he would be pleased that his teachings are being shared with a new generation and audience.

Coach Wooden, however, might have had one reminder for Fearce Vill, Megan Ran, Freestyle, and the cast of “Hamilton” – “Be quick, but don’t hurry.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

My Farming Roots Run Deep

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE! 

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Family Roots: Soil, Seed and Corn

This Tuesday past was National Agriculture Day, a day I observed by enjoying some fresh guacamole made from local-grown avocados and earlier giving thanks to those doing backbreaking work in a strawberry field as I drove past.

As John Greenleaf Whittier wrote: “Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all.”

And, the poet should have added, he and she who harvest a field.1cornpic

My farming roots run five generations deep into the rich soil of Ohio.

My paternal great grandfather, J.D., in particular, was renowned in the agricultural community. His 330-acre farm on Route 68, south of the small town of Urbana, was saturated with nutrients from long-ago floodings of the Mad River. On this fertile land, over many years, he developed what respectfully became know far and wide simply as “Woodburn Corn.”

J.D. began with a variety of dark corn called “Ripley” that his grandfather began growing on the family farm 70 years earlier as animal feed. J.D. cross-pollinated Ripley with a light-colored variety called “Loudenbark.” The result was what you would expect: ears of corn with a mix of both light and dark kernels.

For several successive years, J.D. selected the darker of these new ears to use as seed to repeat the process, believing this would result in a more robust and bountiful variety.

A few years into his experimentation, J.D. tested his hypothesis by planting his hybrid seed in a side-by-side test. Specifically, he sowed seven acres with the darker selection he favored and seven acres with the lighter kernels he was trying to eliminate. To his surprise, the lighter corn out-yielded the dark – and greatly so.

Thereon, J.D. switched his focus to developing an improved variety of light-colored corn. Importantly, he also selected the ears with the largest kernels – the result being corn with more animal feed per ear. He ultimately would spend more than four decades improving his corn.

About 10 years into the process, a grain elevator worker noticed that J.D.’s corn was far superior to the other corn coming in. The worker started recommending it to others, and soon J.D. was selling all his extra seed to neighbor farmers – and much further away, too.

And for good reason: J.D.’s “Woodburn Corn” won the gold medal for the Utility Contest at the Ohio State Fair as well as the silver medal for Yield. With a test result of 98-percent germination, J.D.’s entry crop in the ten-acre contest resulted in 112.64 bushels of corn per acre.

“Topping one-hundred bushels per acre was like breaking the four-minute mile,” my dad recalls, adding of his trips as a young boy to the State Fair: “Farmers from all over would come up to ask Grandpa for advice.”

Interestingly, and remarkably, J.D. grew the prize bounty without using any manure or fertilizer. Rather, he simply grew it in a virgin pasture – that is how fertile his farmland was. “One of the choicest farms of his township,” according to The History of Champagne County, Ohio.

However, it took more than choice magical land to grow medal-winning crops.

“Good seed, that’s the one big secret of our crop,” J.D. told a newspaper reporter. “But I don’t know as you would call it a secret. It’s a thing any good farmer knows.”

While my great-grandfather won prizes for his corn, my great uncle – “Unc” – earned his own measure of local fame in Urbana for his green thumb.

Instead of using wooden stakes for his garden beans to climb, Unc got the idea to plant a single sunflower seed inside each circle of planted bean seeds – the beans, he reasoned, would then be able to climb the rising sunflower stock.

Well, as they say, the best laid plans . . .

The beans withered and died because the sunflowers bogarted the extra fertilizer and water intended for the beans. Not all was lost, however, as Unc boasted – and was teased for – “the tallest crop of sunflowers in town.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Part 1: Miracle Man Alvin

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE! 

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Remarkable Journey to Starting Line

The race aside, Alvin Matthews’ journey to the starting line of the 2016 Los Angeles Marathon is a remarkable story in itself.

Alvin’s racing resume does not suggest it was a prodigious feat for him to be among more than 20,000 people lining up for the 26.2-mile challenge three weeks past. After all, the 45-year-old Ventura native had previously run 20 marathons with a PR of 3 hours, 13 minutes.

A cold Alvin Matthews at the top of the world!

A cold Alvin Matthews at the top of the world!

More impressively, Alvin has finished marathons around the globe in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and Antarctica. He lacks only South America to join the select “Marathon Grand Slam Club” with 73 members to date who have completed marathons on all seven continents, plus the North Pole.

Yes, Alvin completed – “survived” is more accurate – the North Pole Marathon in frostbite conditions that would make a polar bear shiver. In addition to a race-day temperature of minus-27 degrees Fahrenheit, the 6-foot-2, 175-pound competitor had to forge through knee-high powered snow for five-plus hours. It wasn’t a marathon so much as an expedition like Robert Peary made more than a century ago.

By comparison, Alvin completed the Antarctic Ice Marathon in balmy 10-degree weather.

Conversely, in true heat, Alvin has also completed a 56-mile ultra marathon in South Africa. To be sure, the 1989 Buena High graduate has heavy mettle.

Two years ago, all those marathons, combined one after another into one mega race, was a smaller challenge than what Alvin suddenly faced.

In spring 2014, Alvin was living in Lebanon and working as a contractor overseeing civilian construction. Away from the dangers of the work site, tragedy befell him.

On April 15, he found himself locked out of his house. Because it was built into the side of a hill, Alvin had easy access to the flat rooftop that he could walk across to reach an open balcony. He had previously done this several times.

“This time I slipped,” Alvin recalls, “and fell three stories.”

He landed on concrete, on his neck, suffering what his doctors termed a “catastrophic spinal cord injury at the level C5 to C7.”

Translation: quadriplegia.

What Alvin shares next, and unbelievably with a smile, reveals his unbreakable courage and character: “I’m fortunate. If I landed a few inches either way, it could have been worse.”

With a state-of-the-art hospital in Beirut deemed too far away, Alvin was taken to a local facility that did not even have computer technology. Fortunately, an expert team of neurosurgeons was brought in from the capital. One of the doctors called Alvin’s survival “a miracle.”

The Miracle Man remained in the hospital for 25 days before returning to the United States. Two months in UC Davis Medical Center Hospital was followed by six weeks at the highly acclaimed Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

When catastrophe strikes, Alvin says there are two possible paths: self-pity or fortitude. He chose the latter, tackling rehab like it was a “Grand Slam” marathon.

Initially barely able to move only his left side, through diligent physical therapy Alvin slowly regained some movement and strength in both shoulders and arms. Use of his once-dominant right hand remains greatly limited, but he has become adept at most things with his left hand even though its coordination is also compromised.

“The support of family and friends, and also strangers rallying around me, has kept me going,” Alvin shares.

One such friend is Jim Freeman, who had helped coach Alvin for the 2010 L.A. Marathon. Now he invited Alvin to join Team NutriBullet as its only wheelchair athlete.

After the first practice, after seeing Alvin struggle with only his left hand able to grip a wheel to propel his chair, team members organized a fundraiser to buy an $8,000 top-of-the-line racing handcycle.

Days before the 2016 L.A. Marathon, Alvin received his sleek, three-wheel, 30-gear dream machine that allows his weak hands to be securely strapped into the “pedals.” With only two short test rides under his belt, Alvin rolled to the starting line.

He recalls worrying: “Can I do this?”

Next week in this space we will learn the answer.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Strawberries Sweet in All Seasons

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE! 

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Strawberries Sweet in All Seasons

Jim Murray, my writing hero, once told me he regretted his modesty in not doing a column about his memoir when it came out. This lesson, combined with numerous readers of this space asking me about the meaning behind the title of my new book of essays, “Strawberries in Wintertime,” leads me to shamelessly share the backstory.

In my boyhood, I fondly remember picking wild blackberries and raspberries on humid summer days at a weekend cabin in rural Ohio. My two older brothers, younger sister, and I filled pail after pail with ripe berries – and nearly as many berries went directly into our mouths as into the buckets.1berriesstand

So plentiful were the blackberries, especially, that my dad made wine with them. Once. Not only did the blackberry vino prove undrinkable, Mom’s pots and pans were stained purple beyond ruin in the process.

Still, wild blackberries and raspberries, and store-bought strawberries, in summertime were always a delicious treat. Too, an expected one.

Berries in the wintertime, in the Midwest, however, are something I cannot recall from my youth. I am sure they were available at the supermarket in the 1960s for a premium, but Mom never brought them home.

So it was a magical winter indeed when my family took a Christmas vacation to Ventura in 1971 and spent a week at the charming Solimar beach house of family friends. I had never before seen the ocean in person, much less bodysurfed and built sandcastles or explored tidal pools at low tide and chased a “grunion run” under a full moon’s high tide.

And here is something else magical: fresh strawberries in wintertime!1berriesflat

Instead of by the bucketful as with Ohio blackberries, we enjoyed Southern California strawberries by the “flat” topless box containing a dozen plastic pint baskets with a bonus pint piled atop.

I am guessing, but I imagine the price for the entire overflowing flat from a roadside farmer’s stand in Saticoy – for Ventura County was then, as it remains today, the nation’s leading producer of strawberries – wasn’t much more than the cost of a single pint basket in a Midwest grocery store in December.

The temptation during the drive from the farmer’s stand back to the beach house was too tempting to resist. In the car, en route, I ate crabapple-sized strawberries by the handful, by the mouthful, sweet red nectar dripping down my chin.

The following summer we moved from Columbus to Ventura and strawberries became a year-round fare. Still, in my mind they have remained a special treat in wintertime. Hence the title of my newest book, as I hope each offering will make the reader smile and want to devour another.

Indeed, over the years “Strawberries in Wintertime” to me has become a metaphor for an unexpected pleasure in any season. For example, meeting my wife at a college Christmas party was certainly a strawberry-in-wintertime event – and so was having John Wooden befriend me a few years later in springtime.

A surprise birthday party, even in summer, is a strawberry in wintertime – and so is a planned trip in autumn that proves to be magical at every turn.

The point, I suppose, is that by paying attention and having the right frame of mind, our own strawberries in wintertime can fill a “flat” to overflowing no matter what page the calendar shows.

Watching an elementary school play or a Broadway show, cheering at a youth track meet or an Olympic race, building a sandcastle or visiting a castle in Ireland, can all be strawberries in wintertime.

Bumping into an old classmate or finding an email in your inbox from a friend you haven’t heard from in years, these too are strawberries in wintertime.

When I think back to my first visit to Ventura, or in fact any time I stroll on the beach or dive into the surf, I am reminded of this advice from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”

In my mind, he should have added: “And eat strawberries in wintertime.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Wedding Story With a Twist

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE! 

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Wedding Love Story With a Twist

We felt like interlopers, nearly, in Agoura Hills last Saturday. But like the “Wedding Crashers” characters played by Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, my wife and I had an absolute blast.

To be honest, being invited was a surprise because the only person I knew was the groom.

Added honesty: the invitation made my heart sing, as did the tearful bear hug my tuxedoed friend greeted me with before the ceremony. You would have thought we went back two decades instead of only a couple years.

But, as one of the groomsmen noted in his dinner toast, that is the magic of Jon – he makes all his friends feel like they are his best one.

Jon has many more magical qualities, perhaps none more endearing than how he wears his heart on his sleeve. Actually, his heart seems to be tattooed on his wrist.

Jon and his dad

Jon and his dad

So it was no surprise that as each groomsman and bridesmaid walked down the aisle, Jon’s tears flowed. When the bride appeared, the trickle became Niagara Falls. His visible love was almost as beautiful as the bride herself.

After exchanging lovely vows and rings and a first kiss as wife and husband, Jon stomped on a glass and the gathering shouted “Mazel tov!” – Congratulations! – and the party was on.

Later, as the DJ earned his pay and the dance floor earned its rental fee, I spotted the father of the groom across the ballroom sitting alone at the head table. After introducing myself, the DNA source of Jon’s warmth was obvious.

I wanted to tell him about my first meeting with his son. As he had talked about his writing career, Jon lit up; discussing music and movies, he beamed more; and when he spoke about Natasha, whom he had only recently started dating, he fairly glowed.

But even this joy grew 100 watts brighter when Jon began sharing stories about his dad. This is what I shared, for while the dad certainly already knew about Jon’s love for him. it is always nice to hear such things.

In his toast, Jon’s dad had mentioned how his son phones him at midnight just to say “hi,” or to share this or that, or tell him to listen to a certain song. When Pavarotti died, Jon called in tears because he remembered listening to “The Three Tenors” with his “Pops.”

“How did you become such good friends with your son?” the father privately told me he is often asked. His answer: “I did the opposite of what my dad did.”

He explained that his own dad, a child of The Great Depression, felt his fatherhood duties began and ended with paying the mortgage and putting food on the table. And so he didn’t attend Little League games or Boy Scout gatherings. He gave reprimand, not praise, for report cards with even one B.

Jon’s father did the opposite. He went to every youth game and cheered for his son off the playing fields as well. He took young Jon to trading card shows far and near. He showed an interest in his son’s interests. He gave his time and offered praise and, no small thing, frequently told all his children he loved them.

In short, he was the dad he had not had.

When Jon was 8, his father shared with me proudly, Jon found a wallet containing $100 and on his own turned it into the police. This is not surprising after spending time with Jon’s role model.

Indeed, that private time off to the side of the ballroom, off the dance floor and away from the excitement, visiting with Jon’s dad was every bit as heartwarming as the wedding vows and cake-cutting ceremony and toasts recollecting how Natasha knew Jon was “the one” after their first date and how it wasn’t long before Jon proposed on bended knee in the aisle of a Southwest flight 30,000 feet in the sky.

I came to the wedding knowing Jon was a special man, but I left knowing why he chose his dad to serve as his “best man.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”