Category Archives: Columns

Hall-of-Fame Hat Trick for Derry

by Woody

The esteemed poet John Greenleaf Whittier, in his poem “Maud Muller,” wrote this famous couplet: “For all sad words of tongue and pen, / the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’ ”

Equally sad, sometimes, is when something has been but no longer is. Consider, for example, Frank Sinatra singing “There Used To Be A Ballpark.”

More melancholic, to my mind, would be a similarly themed song titled “There Used To Be A Newspaper” which is something that two new communities experience each week, on average, across this nation.

And yet, selfishly, I am happy and thankful that one specific newspaper’s ink disappeared, back in 1997, back in Texas, when the The El Paso Herald-Post ceased operations. El Paso’s great loss was Ventura County’s great gain. You see, that’s how star sportswriter Derry Eads came to The Star. It was like the Los Angeles Lakers getting LeBron James from the Cleveland Cavaliers late in his career.

Hall-of-Fame sportswriter, and person, Derry Eads.

Deservedly, Derry will be inducted as a journalist into The Ventura County Sports Hall of Fame this Sunday along with Mike Enfield (soccer, Ventura High), Samantha Fischer (softball, Simi Valley High), Marlene Harmon Wilcox (track, Thousand Oaks High) and Rick Stewart (baseball, Fillmore High).

Here is how big a deal Derry is: this will be his third Hall of Fame induction, a hat trick that also includes the El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame and El Paso Bowling Hall of Fame.

The thing is, Derry has never acted like a big shot. He was always as enthusiastic about taking phone calls to record the day’s local fish reports as he was covering a CIF championship event.

Derry has the droopy mustache of a gunslinger from the 1800s and, fittingly, his trigger finger (and nine companions) is lighting quick on the keyboard, yet he is as soft-spoken as an Old West schoolmarm. Moreover, he chooses his words with the same thoughtful care in speech as he does for print. As a result, when he talks – and writes – people pay attention. I don’t think there exists a sportswriter who has met Derry and not both liked and respected him.

Derry retired from The Star in 2011, in theory anyway. In truth, he continues to cover sporting events and also remains the guru of updating the Bible of local prep sports statistics that was originally created by fellow local sportswriting legend Jim Parker.

Of the various title games and championship track meets Derry and I covered together, I have no specific press-box memory. What I do recall clearly, and with great fondness, are the countless times he and I had desk shifts together and he would happen to answer the phone when my son and daughter, when they were young, called to say goodnight to me.

Instead of transferring the call right away, Derry would talk to them for a while, asking about school and their athletic endeavors and such, and finally he would playfully refuse to put me on until they gave him the password.

“Red Snapper,” they would answer with sing-song delight even though they had no idea what the password meant. All these years later, here is the secret revealed: that is the nickname Derry called me, inspired perhaps partly from taking a fish report call and also because my hair back then still had quite a bit of strawberry tint in it.

Former Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher is credited with saying, “Nice guys finish last,” but he missed the mark like a wild pitch. Derry Eads is proof they sometimes finish as first-rate Hall of Famers.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Some Things I Have Come to Know…

by Woody

The mile marker of a birthday is a good time for reflection and so today, shortly before beginning a new personal lap around the sun, here are a few things I have come to know…

Always double-knot your shoelaces.

Never pass up a barefoot walk on the beach.

Love is more powerful than penicillin.

Never ever pass up a chance to gaze at a sunrise or sunset.

Always take the opportunity to gaze at the stars on a clear night – or at Starry Night and other masterpiece paintings.

Speaking of art and masterpieces, these two bookend John Wooden-isms will carry you far: “Make friendship a fine art” and “Make each day your masterpiece.”

Who you travel with is far more important than where you travel.

All the same, Robert Frost was right: Take the road less traveled by.

John Muir was also right when he said, “Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.”

Don’t save the good china plates and crystal goblets and heirloom silverware for special occasions only.

Do spend as much time as you can with people who lift you up and as little as possible with those who pull you down.

Saying “You’re welcome” is as important as saying “Thank you.”

Writing a thank-you note or handwritten letter is always a few minutes well spent.

A good many movies and books are far too long, but most hugs are too short.

Never pass up a chance to hold hands with a boyfriend or girlfriend, a husband or wife or partner, a child or the elderly.

Don’t let your fears outweigh your dreams.

One minute of encouragement following a defeat or failure or during hard times is worth far more than an hour of accolades and praise after a triumph or big success.

Artificial Intelligence doesn’t worry me half as much as Real Stupidity.

The value of a compliment is often underrated by the giver, but rarely by the person receiving it.

A positive attitude will positively carry you a long, long way.

This African proverb is right: “There are two lasting gifts you can give your child: one is roots, the other is wings.”

Do unto others as you would have them do unto your children or grandchildren is a better Golden Rule.

We can always make room for one more at the dinner table or in our heart.

Maya Angelou was right: “When you leave home, you take home with you.”

The best travels, and life journeys too, often wind about a little crookedly.

Even a “bad” road trip will give you some good memories to last a lifetime.

It is not truly a favor if you make the recipient feel like you are doing a favor.

It takes worn-out running shoes to finish a marathon; worn-out brushes before you can paint a masterpiece; burnt pots and pans to become a seasoned chef, and blistered fingertips to finally master the guitar.

Some of my very favorite adults seem like they are just tall children.

No matter your age, never pass up a chance to ride a Ferris wheel or carousel.

If you can be world class at only one thing, make it kindness.

My dear friend Wayne Bryan is right: “If you don’t make an effort to help others less fortunate than you, then you’re just wasting your time on Earth.”

Don’t waste your time on Earth.

We should all make a wish and blow out a candle 365 times each year because every day is a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece to be celebrated.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Fondly Missing ‘Mom’s Kitchen’

by Woody

“What is a restaurant that’s not around any longer that you miss?” asked a post on social media, eliciting more than a million responses including, locally, Ferraro’s, The Gin Mill, Bobby McGee’s and Anacapa Brewing Company.

To that Fab Four I could add myriad more – Hudson’s Grill, Ventura Spaghetti Company, Top Hat and Cartwright’s Famous Hot Dogs leap quickly to mind – but the restaurant I miss the very most is “Mom’s Kitchen.”

Perhaps your own Mom’s franchise remains open and, if so, count your blessings. My Mom’s Kitchen closed unexpectedly, and permanently, 31 years ago come October.

In its heyday – Oh, boy! – it was something. I dare say no fancy restaurant, casual café, famous chef’s food truck or 24-hour diner could ever rival it because it was all of those stirred, blended and folded into one.

Mom’s Kitchen, like similar landmark eateries, changed location over the years. It originated as a tiny hole-in-the wall in Columbus, Ohio, on Ashmore Road; soon moved into a slightly larger venue a mile away on McCoy Road; then, necessitated by its daily clientele ordering the kids’ menu alone having grown to four, expanded again nearby on Alliston Court.

Eventually, Mom’s Kitchen relocated across the country to Ventura, high atop the foothills, its best table having an ocean view that rivaled the famous Pierpont Inn’s dining room.

No matter its location, no reservations were required at Mom’s Kitchen – just walk right in and make yourself at home. Moreover, extra dinner mouths were always welcome as were bed-and-breakfast guests, the latter most commonly on weekends and any day in summer. On holidays, it was lucky the Fire Marshal didn’t shut Mom’s Kitchen down for being overcrowded.

More than once, before taking a plate a guest of mine and I would actually phone his rival location of Mom’s Kitchen to see if by chance it had a better dinner special that evening than my Mom’s Kitchen, but that very rarely proved to be the case.

Indeed, night after night, my friends, and my two older brothers’ and younger sister’s friends as well, flocked to our Mom’s Kitchen as if there were two giant golden arches out front of our house.

To be sure, hamburgers were sometimes on the menu, although they were usually grilled up by Mom’s sous-chef who, if we are being honest, was infamous for cooking the burgers a tee shot’s distance beyond the point of well done. Upon slapping a hockey puck onto a bun, the sous-chef would proudly announce, “Here you go, charred like in a fine restaurant.”

Meanwhile, Mom was a cordon-bleu-chef/short-order-cook who could turn hamburger into fifty fares – from meatloaf and stroganoff to tacos and burritos to her world famous spaghetti sauce served on handmade pasta, naturally, that made even my Italian mother-in-law Irish green with envy – all worthy of Michelin stars.

Back to the original R.I.P. eatery question, I dearly miss Leonardo’s Pizzaria from my boyhood, The New York Hero House in college, and most recently Ferraro’s. But most of all, I would wish for one more meal at Mom’s Kitchen.

I have a strong hunch you feel likewise about your own Mom’s Kitchen…

…unless, thank your blessed stars, it remains open for business. Perhaps its peak hours are now limited to special occasions like holidays and birthdays and any time you are in town. If so, I urge you to make travel plans and dinner reservations as soon as possible.

Better yet, just drop in unannounced – I’m fairly certain your Mom’s Kitchen won’t mind the surprise at all, especially this Sunday for Mother’s Day.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Unexpected Detour Down Memory Lane

by Woody

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Gaucho love!” strikes again, I hope.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Sauntering and Buddy Benches, too

by Woody

I have another bench I adore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

Example of one of my new favorite benches.

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

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

*

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

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

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

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Part 3: Tears in the Storyteller – and Listener

by Woody

Now the final chapter of the story…

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

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

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

My hero and my grandpa, Ansel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*   *   *

Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Part 2: From Cold War to Warm Heart

by Woody

Picking up where I left off last week…

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

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

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

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

Grandpa Ansel, my two older brothers and me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued, and concluded, next week.

*   *   *

Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Shared Memory is Music to My Heart

by Woody

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

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

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

Dr. Ansel Woodburn, aka my Grandpa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Another ‘Four-Dot’ Day in America

by Woody

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

What is “A hodgepodge Column”?

by Woody

“Who is Tennessee Williams?”

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

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

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

Tennessee Williams’ home in the French Quarter.

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

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

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

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

Insert a dramatic pause.

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

Insert a laugh in the retelling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.