Category Archives: Columns

Part 2: Easy Listening In Former Speakeasy

by Woody

The worst seat in the house inside “Bill’s Place,” a former Prohibition era speakeasy in Harlem that once again features live jazz, would be better than the best seat in most any other venue.

My son and I, you see, sat in the back row – which was also the front row. As mentioned here last week, the off-the-beaten-path step-down brownstone apartment-turned-revived-nightclub is so shotgun-narrow that a single row of 11 mismatched wooden chairs and stools are backed up against the wall opposite the three-inch-high stage. So close are the seats that when I straightened my legs my feet literally rested onstage.

Standing room allowed another dozen patrons to enjoy the intimate performance by Bill Saxton & The Harlem All-Stars. Saxton is fittingly named for he plays the sax. Moreover, he has done so over the past five decades with the likes of such luminaries as The Duke Ellington Orchestra and The Count Basie Orchestra.

Bill Saxton doing his magic…

“Welcome to Bill’s Place,” said Saxton, the venue’s owner and namesake, and then our memorable evening was underway. Between songs, he regaled the assemblage with tales of nights long foregone, including about legendary songstress Billie Holiday who was discovered right here at age 17 in 1933.

Not even halfway into the 90-minute set, my cane chair had become tortuously uncomfortable, but that and 20 dollars – cash only; no secret password was required, however – was the price of admission. Both costs were bargains for the jam session was so steamy it threatened to peel off the wallpaper.

The intimacy of the room surely made the music sound better, but an equal pleasure was to watch the musicians at such rare proximity and behold Saxton, beads of sweat visible on his forehead just below the brim of his porkpie hat, rhythmically tapping his left foot as he played, his fingers masterfully commanding the keys and pearl buttons of his saxophone, a ring on his right pinkie twinkling like starlight.

To audit even closer and see his fingers flex and release, quick, slow, liquidly; see his cheeks change shapes and color; see his eyes not just close at times, but squeeze tightly shut, lost in the music, was spellbinding.

Similarly, thanks to the upright piano being pressed up against the wall, stage left, the pianist played with his back to the audience thus affording listeners the opportunity to watch his fingers deftly dance and slide and tickle the ivories. Meanwhile, far right on the stage, the blurred, rhythmic hands of the drummer were equally arresting to focus in on.

But most mesmerizing of all, to my eyes, was watching the upright bass player’s fingers strum and pluck the strings; strings that from merely five feet away seemed as thick as bungee cords – or chords, should I say?

What strength in those fingers! What grace, too, as they nimbly moved up and down the neck massaging the fingerboard. His hands, the knuckles enlarged from a billion lifetime notes, are surely as strong as a bricklayer’s yet his calloused fingertips somehow maintain the sensitive touch of a master safecracker’s.

“Easy reading is (darn) hard writing,” Nathaniel Hawthorne said, and music is no different. Hunched over his instrument, the (darn) hard effort of the bassist’s work showed in growing perspiration stains, but the result was easy listening.

“Find a hidden doorway and go inside,” a wise friend often reminds me before I travel. “That’s where you’ll find the truly magical experiences.” He was right once again, for to borrow from a Billie Holiday song, finding the out-of-the-way doorway of Bill’s Place was like finding “Pennies From Heaven.”

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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 1: Small Audiences, Big Enchantment

by Woody

Recalling a handful of my all-time favorite concerts in this space last week, I made the knee-jerk mistake of focusing on big venues – baseball stadiums, basketball arenas, outdoor bowls – and thus remembered The Who, Paul McCartney, Fleetwood Mac, and James Taylor while suffering temporary amnesia of two unforgettable musical gigs in small settings.

Small is actually a sizeable overstatement. My daughter and I saw award-winning songstress Amber Rubarth perform in a private “house concert” in Seattle, in a suburban living room, in front of 24 attendees filling one couch, a loveseat, an array of dining room and kitchen chairs, and some split-level stairs.

With no mic and amplifier required, Amber’s voice was twice as pleasant as on recordings and three times more so than in a big venue. Before songs, she shared personal stories behind the lyrics; after songs, she asked audience members about themselves. It wasn’t a concert so much as an intimate party.

Even more intimate was a night of music I enjoyed with my son in New York City, in Harlem specifically, more precisely in “Bill’s Place,” a former speakeasy in the 1920s and ’30s that features live jazz again since its revival nearly two decades ago.

“Bill’s Place” is off the beaten path, a fair hike from the nearest subway stop, eventually down a narrow block on West 133rd Street – long ago known as “Swing Street” because it was swinging and jamming on both sides with jazz, but is now so quiet you can hear birdsong.

Address number 148 is a brownstone apartment, shotgun narrow, with a step-down entrance guarded by a shoulder-high black wrought iron fence. Only a modest red awning featuring “Bill’s Place” in small white script lets you know you have arrived.

Closer inspection affords two more telltale signs: a plaque on the brick facade, just to the left of the black front door, reads “Harlem Swing Street / Jazz Singer / Billie Holiday / Discovered Here in 1933 / Bill’s Place Speakeasy” and above it is a framed black-and-white photo of the legendary singer.

Back in those days, during the Prohibition years, bathtub gin was served here in coffee cups so that when police raids came the cups served as decoys. Ironically, these days the bygone nightclub serves no alcohol – although patrons are welcome to bring their own spirits.

Back during my nights and days as a sports columnist, I sat courtside at Lakers games and saw Pete Sampras from the first row; sat two feet behind the out-of-bounds back stripe of the end zone in Candlestick Park for a 49ers-Rams playoff game and walked inside the ropes while following Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods; and on and on; but I have never been nearer to the action than I was at Bill’s Place.

My son and I sat in the front row, which was also the back row because the time-capsule room was so narrow there was only one row of seating – eleven mismatched cane chairs and wooden stools, all backed up against the wall opposite the stage, the seats shoehorned so closely together that patrons’ elbows rubbed and their rear ends bumped. Additionally, there was standing room only off to either side of the stage for a dozen people.

We were so close to the stage, which by the way was only three inches high, that if I, at six-foot-four, straightened my legs out my heels would rest on it, albeit at the risk of tripping the star saxophonist – and venue namesake – Bill Saxton should he roam two steps forward.

To be concluded next week…

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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.

The Birds “play a song for me”

by Woody

“What’s the greatest concert you’ve ever been to?” came the question and I might as well have been asked which of my two children or soon-to-be-three grandkids is my all-time favorite.           

Truth is, all five have their own color in my I Love You Most Rainbow. Similarly, I had to answer with a handful of hues in my Rainbow Of Concerts: The Who, Paul McCartney, Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers…

… and The Birds — not to be confused with The Byrds — who performed outside my bedroom window the other morning as dawn and I yawned ourselves awake. This concert began as a solo act, although I could not see the performer because the shutters were shut and I was too comfortable beneath the covers to get up and open them. Instead, I was like an orchestra judge listening to blind tryouts taking place behind a screen.

Mixing tweets and trills, whistles and chirps, sometimes repeating short melodies and other times seemingly creating long jazzy patterns on the fly — on the perch, rather — she sang and I listened. I say she, but of course in equal likelihood it was a he singing to attract a mate or claim territory. However, so beautiful and upbeat was this birdsong, I imagined it came from a common “swift” family member — specifically, the uncommon Taylor Swift.

My friend Scott, who wrote a book titled “Raptor Quest” about his successful pursuit to photograph all 53 species of raptors that fly in American air space, can identify most feathered friends with his ear ever as deftly as with aid of binoculars. I, on the other hand, could not tell if my winged warbler was a common Ventura sparrow, St. Louis Cardinal, California thrasher, Atlanta Hawk, American robin, or Philadelphia Eagle.

Nor could I help but wonder about the lyrics. With the morning recital coming on a Friday, maybe she was a loyal reader of my column and was complimenting that day’s 600 words? More likely, she was singing, “Time to rise and shine!” Or, perhaps, she was crowing, “Guess which early riser caught a worm! Would you like half?”

“No worm for me, thank you,” I wanted to say while offering, “Would you like some coffee?” But I didn’t know how.

I do know this: It is nearly impossible to start your day in a foul mood when a fowl sings good morning to you in a voice bright as a kindergartener’s first-day smile.

After a short while, the opening act ended — probably she had run through her complete repertoire, or else had to wing-pool the kids to school — and a different bird, with a different pitch and different rhythms, took center stage in a different tree and her (or his) song was equally beautiful.

In turn, she (or he) yielded to another solo serenader, then three or four more joined in to make it a jam session, and now I was fully transported back to summer days of yore; of running barefooted in my backyard chasing butterflies and grasshoppers; of summer vacations at a lakeside cabin in Ohio when I was a boy; of fishing at a pond with my Grandpa; all while the surrounding trees were alive with birdsong.

Too, the birds on this morning made me think of The Byrds and their song “Mr. Tambourine Man” and its lyrics “…play a song for me / I’m not sleepy and there’s ain’t no place I’m goin’ to…”

Yes, I was no longer sleepy as I enjoyed a memorable morning concert with no better place to go.

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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.

Friend Turns Floodwaters Into Sunshine

by Woody

What a difference a day makes.

More accurately, what a difference a friend can make on a day. Such it was on recent back-to-back afternoons that for me were as polar as sunshine and flooding rain, figuratively and almost literally.

Let me begin with the rainstorm. My Much Better Half and I are having our kitchen and downstairs guest bathroom remodeled. “Don’t expect smooth sailing,” we were forewarned. This proved a portentous metaphor because returning from my daily run I opened the front door and found myself in need of a boat.

While I was out, a worker clogged and broke the toilet – a toilet that was not to be used for it was covered by protective plastic during painting – and it runneth over continuously for an hour or more. Floodwaters overtook the entryway, dining room, family room, and most of our primary bedroom. The tide even surged into the kitchen and garage.

With hardwood floors ruined, carpet too, my spirits the following day were soggy as well. When I went on a run that afternoon, for a rare time during my running Streak of 7,341 consecutive days, I felt like cutting my intended miles shorter. But then…

“Hi, Woody!” came a voice from behind my left ear, so close and loud and unexpected that I flinched. Because I was wearing earbuds, the greeter’s volume was purposely turned up to be heard. However, because of a dead battery I was not listening to music. As a result, I may have yelped as if startled by the sight of a slithering rattlesnake two strides ahead.

Instead, it was a friendly face that I have seen from time to time at Kimball Park. Brody, a handsome young man with sharp features and a soft smile, grew up in Ventura and is a recent graduate from UC Santa Barbara, my alma mater, where he was in the ROTC. I learned all this, and more, on previous occasions he joined me for a few miles when our running paths crossed.

This go-round-and-round around the soccer fields he updated me about his enlistment as an officer in the Army (the Irish meaning of Brody is “protector,” perfectly fitting for someone safeguarding our country); that he is now married; and is stationed in Texas, which he said has been so Hades-hot lately that this 80-degree Ventura day felt chilly to him.

And just like that, like morning dew under August sunshine, my soggy mood over “The Great Woodburn Flood of ’23” quickly evaporated. My heavy feet that felt like I was slogging through a muddy boot-camp obstacle course suddenly had Hermes-like wings on their ankles and the next two miles breezed by. Brody’s pace was surely slower than he wanted, mine a tad too fast, for isn’t friendship sometimes a compromise?

The last time I had seen Brody was in a rainstorm, the showers so steady that the park’s fields then coincidentally resembled my downstairs floors only 24 hours earlier. On that rainy day we had laughed as we splish-splashed along; this day now, I suddenly felt winsome and recalled a poem titled “On Friendship” by John Wooden:

At times when I am feeling low, / I hear from a friend and then

My worries start to go away / And I am on the mend

No matter what the doctors say – /And their studies never end

The best cure of all, when spirits fall, / Is a kind word from a friend

Indeed, a kind word – better yet, a couple miles of friendly conversation – can turn rain into sunshine.

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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.

X Marks The Spot of Paradise

by Woody

The thorn in the Rose Bowl – parade and football game – is that the weather on New Year’s Day is invariably picture-postcard perfect, so sunny and warm it entices waves of people watching the telecasts in their Midwest igloos to pack up like “The Beverly Hillbillies” and move to Southern California.

Similarly, the downside of Ventura hosting the X Games last weekend is that the TV coverage with our gorgeous ocean backdrop and pastel sunsets that seemed painted by Monet were the equivalent of a skywriter spelling out: “Hey, world! Move here! The 805 is paradise!”

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Speaking of the X Games, the “Moto X Best Whip” competition – basically daredevil astronauts on motorcycles launching themselves into orbit off a giant ramp and doing dizzying spins and twists, and even front or back flips, before safe reentry back down on earth – makes Evel Knievel’s “death defying” jumps in the 1970s look like a kid riding a tricycle off a curb.

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Pulling into my driveway the other day, on four wheels not on an acrobatic motocross bike, it struck me that the instant gratification of today’s music platforms offering most every song on command have stolen the magic of hearing a favorite tune that makes you stay in the car after arriving at your destination and listening to the end.

Now you can just go inside and simply say, “Play it again, Sam/Siri/Alexa/etc.”

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Now in my 60s, but age 6 at heart, I still get a small thrill and a big smile when I’m out on a run near railroad tracks and a train comes rumbling along and I pump my fist up and down in the universal “honk!” gesture and the engineer, bless his soul, blows his LOUD! horn.

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I like the challenge of scraping, scraping, scraping an empty jar of peanut butter to get enough for one last sandwich. Even more, I love being the first to dig into a brand-new jar – and hate it when doing the former means someone beats me to the latter.

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Add gooey silliness. My wife and I have an unspoken challenge where we squeeze, squeeze, squeeze the life out of a tube of toothpaste in order not to be the one who opens a new one. For the record, I’m usually more stubborn.

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A note from a reader regarding my unromantic wedding proposal that I shared a short while back gave me a laugh. My recap…

College Girlfriend: “I’ll go wherever you go after graduation.”

Me: “I guess we might as well just get married then.”

She (Now-Wife-of-40-Years): “Okay!”

Wayne Saddler confesses he, too, popped his “inglorious proposal” in unacceptable “Jeopardy!” fashion of not being in the form of a question: “Well, I guess we should get married.”

To which his girlfriend responded: “Let’s do this right – go ask my father for permission.”

“I was nervous during my 45-minute drive to her parent’s home,” Wayne continued. “When I asked him he responded, ‘You’re asking the wrong person.’ That was almost 47 years ago.”

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Lastly, and bestly (not a word, but should be), thanks in no small part to so many of you dear and generous readers, Erick Aleman, a track and cross country athlete at Rio Mesa High School, will be getting a state-of-the-art $15,000 “blade” prosthetic and promises to be running faster than ever with it by summer’s end.

As Erick’s coach Garrett Reynolds relayed to me to relay to you: “A massive THANK YOU. Erick and I are at a loss of words for how grateful we are for everyone’s support.”

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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.

“Erick the Great” Needs a Little Aid

by Woody

Early in my career as a sportswriter, so long ago we still used typewriters, I met a high school student whose competitive mettle remains unforgettable. Paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident, he decided to do a 5K in a wheelchair.

Alas, his hospital style wheelchair was a bulky, heavy tank ill-suited for a road race. It was like paddling a raw redwood log instead of a kayak. Despite wearing leather workman gloves for training, his hands quickly became blistered and bloodied and he was close to giving up on his dream.

Then something wonderful happened. Readers of a column I wrote about “Iron Mike,” as I called him in print, rallied to his side like the residents of Bedford Falls for George Bailey. A large basketful of donations poured in and Iron Mike was soon spinning the wheels of a sleek, low-to-the-ground sports chair made of aluminum and titanium.

Erick Aleman, a role model for overcoming challenges…

Here is what I most happily remember: that racing chair changed Iron Mike’s life by giving him self-esteem and confidence and a can’t-stop-smiling smile he lacked when I first met him. He not only crossed the finish line in his first 5K, he did more road races and soon began entering para-athlete meets.

Thinking of Iron Mike always reminds me of two other high school students I once wrote about and have never forgotten. They were brothers who lived in such poverty they shared one pair of shoes. Moreover, that single pair was a little too small for the older brother and a bit too big for the younger one. Worse still, one flapping sole was being held on with duct tape.

Worst of all, the boys alternated days going to school because shoes were required for attendance. Again, readers stepped up and the boys soon each had his own school shoes – and also his own basketball shoes, opening up a whole new world for them on their school’s team.

I have a new story in need of a happy ending, a real-life version of the old allegory, “I felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.”

Erick Aleman, a junior at Rio Mesa High School, was born without his left foot and lower leg due to Hanhart Syndrome. Despite this, he has been competing against athletes without disabilities in track and cross-country races since middle school and now does so for the Spartans.

Even more remarkable than usually finishing up in the middle of the pack, this modern-day “Erick the Great” has done so while running in a clunky prosthetic leg designed for walking and thus lacks the lightness and mobility and energy return of one designed for sports. Imagine world-record holder Eliud Kipchoge running a marathon in hiking boots and you get an idea of the disadvantage.

 A high-tech “blade” prosthetic would level the uphill lane, slightly at least, that Erick continually faces. Unfortunately, these are not cheap, easily costing $15,000.

Fortunately, however, Erick’s coach at Rio Mesa, Garrett Reynolds, has set up a fundraiser: go to GoFundMe.com and then search “Prosthetic Running Leg for Erick.”

“I can genuinely say that Erick is one of the hardest-working young men I have seen,” Coach Reynolds, a three-time Ventura County Runner of the Year, says on the GoFundMe page. “Erick never complains or has excuses. He truly has a natural gift for running, and a running prosthetic would allow him to compete on an equitable level, and would empower him to reach his full potential as an athlete and as a human being.”

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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.

Tiny Grads and Big Emotions

by Woody

For the past week I have had a song stuck in my head. More accurately, a stanza from “Turn Around” and it goes:           

“Turn around and they’re two. Turn around and they’re four. Turn around they’re a young man heading out the door” – or a young woman, of course.

Wayne Bryan, father of the legendary tennis tandem Mike and Bob, shared these lyrics with me back, back, back when my daughter was born. It remained on my mind, and in my heart, until Dallas and her younger brother Greg headed out the door as young adults.

Maya marches in to “Pomp and Circumstance.”

Wayne, who had these lines of wisdom hanging on a wall at home as a constant reminder of how fleeting the time he would have with his twin sons was, later explained in his parenting book “Raising Your Child to be a Champion in Athletics, Arts, and Academics”:

“I found this to be so true. Mike and Bob hit their first tennis balls at age two on Monday, went to kindergarten on Tuesday, entered high school on Wednesday and graduated on Friday. At Stanford, they went up there on Monday and they were going out on the professional tour after their sophomore years on Tuesday.”

By Thursday, Mike and Bob were retiring with 16 grand slam championships and 119 tour titles together after spending 438 weeks ranked No. 1 in the world, and by Friday had their own children to turn around and see grow as if in time-lapse.

It’s no different for grandparents. One day I turned around and my first grandchild, Maya, was born; the next day I turned around and she was two; and yesterday – last week, in truth – I turned around and she was four and graduating from preschool and headed to pre-K.

Grownups sometimes, oftentimes actually, forget how little things are amplified into big things for youngsters. Indeed, I don’t think I have ever seen Maya happier, not even on Christmas morning, smiling so wide she almost sprained her face with joy at her recent graduation ceremony.

The happy and proud graduate and parents.

Nor seen her more proud, for she was beaming like human sunshine. To her, the certificate, rolled up like a baton and tied with a red ribbon, might as well have been a diploma from Harvard.

I wish you could have seen Maya and all her classmates in their miniature full-length gowns of royal blue and matching mortarboard caps, complete with gold tassels, as they marched in among balloons and “Happy Graduation” banners while “Pomp and Circumstance” played.

Beforehand, I would have thought all of this was over-the-top silly. It proved to be as wonderful as fresh strawberries in wintertime. I dare say there wasn’t a pair of eyes in attendance (or watching the video afterwards) that weren’t moist, some even spilling over a little. To be sure, additional lyrics from “Turn Around” gripped my heart and squeezed gently:

“Where have you gone my little girl, little girl, / Little pigtails and petticoats where have you gone? / Turn around you’re tiny, turn around then you’re grown / Turn around you’re a young wife with babes of your own . . . Turn around and they’re young, turn around and they’re old / Turn around and they’ve gone and we’ve no one to hold.”

After the little honorees had all walked across the stage, the principal announced, “You finally did it! The Class of 2023!” Again, at first blush this might seem grandiose silliness for preschool, and yet—

—turn around, turn around, Maya and her friends will be marching with their high school graduating Classes of 2036.

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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.

Wearing Theater’s Two Masks

by Woody

Anniversaries, like the two masks of the theater, can come with laughter and celebration or tragedy and tears.

Today, July 7, I will wear both masks simultaneously.

First, the celebratory anniversary. Or, as the United States Running Streak Association terms it, my “Streakiversary.” Simply put, I have run a minimum of 3.1 miles every day, without fail, for the past 20 years. The math adds up to 7,306 consecutive days and 83,337 miles, more than three times around the Earth, and more than 100 pairs of shoes, for a daily average of 11.4 miles.

With humility, I must point out that 106 runners have USRSA-recognized Streaks longer than mine, including four surpassing 50 years!

Sometimes we don’t fully appreciate something until it is taken from us. So it was for me with running after I was rear-ended at a stoplight by a drunk driver speeding 65 mph. While I was fortunate to have walked away from the wreckage, my neck required a diskectomy and fusion of two vertebrae, and I feared I would never run another marathon.

Six long months later, my doc finally gave me clearance to go on a short run of one mile. I gleefully, also slowly and painfully, went three-plus miles. Before I knew it, I had unintentionally run 100 consecutive days and decided to try for 365 and like Forrest Gump just kept going.

As with U.S. postal workers, I have not been detoured by rain nor sleet nor snow. Nor by injury and illness, Covid-19 and a kidney stone, wildfire smoke and a wildly painful cracked rib.

I have run at all hours to accommodate family plans, vacations, time zones. On the streets of London after a long travel day, I kept The Streak alive as midnight neared, causing one Englishman to holler, “Hey, bloke! You must be a Yank ’cause you’re bloody crazy.”

Crazy, perhaps, but psychoanalysis might reveal something else at play. While I did not realize it until a couple years later, it now seems beyond coincidence that my Streak began on July 7, 2003 – the due date of my wife’s and my third child. A baby lost to miscarriage. Was my Streak’s birth a subconscious response to death?

The pregnancy was a surprise, a wonderful one infused with champagne bubbles, but because my wife was 44, a high-risk one infused with worry. Only after making it safely into the second trimester did we exhale and allow ourselves to get fully excited.

Then the heartbreak of no heartbeat.

“You can try again,” family and friends say at such times. And: “At least you already have two healthy children.” They all mean well, but the heart does not listen to rationalizations.

We chose not to know the gender, perhaps trying to protect our hearts just in case, although we had picked out Sienna for a girl. A few years later, my wife had a powerful dream of a child on a playground swing. The girl, the same age our child would have then been, smiled and waved. Rather than being overwhelmed by renewed grief, my wife felt deeply comforted.

Surely thus influenced, even though it came a few years thereafter, I too had a real-as-can-be dream where I was running on the beach bike path, perhaps my very favorite route, alongside a child the same age ours would have then been.

She was smiling and happy.

I will think of heras I extend my Streak today, on her summer birthday that never was, imagining Sienna also turning 20, my eyes assuredly as salty as the sea.

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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.

Students Create Own 7-Point Creeds

by Woody

“I finally read ‘Wooden & Me’!” Matt Demaria, an eighth-grade teacher at Mesa Union School in Somis, emailed me recently regarding my memoir about my life-changing friendship with Coach John Wooden. “I thoroughly enjoyed it.”

Naturally, I thoroughly enjoyed Matt’s compliment, yet what I liked even more was the rest of his letter with photos included.

For starters, around the classroom Matt has posted quotes to inspire his students and center stage, side by side above the white board, are gems from two of the most important mentors in my life: Wooden and Wayne Bryan, father of Mesa Union’s two most famous alumni, Mike and Bob, the greatest doubles team in tennis history.

Wayne, on chocolate-colored construction paper, offers: “Don’t tell me about your dreams of a castle; show me the stones you laid today.”

And on plum paper, Wooden’s wisdom: “Remember this: the choices you make in life, make you.”

To my great pleasure, Matt holds these two heroes of mine in such high regard that their words are flanked on the left, on tangerine paper, by the great Ralph Waldo Emerson – “Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain” – and on the right, on forest-green paper, by no less than Benjamin Franklin – “Hide not your talents; they for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?”

More important than posting a new motivational quotation weekly from writers and poets, artists and actors, sports figures and scientists, Matt displays wisdom from his students.

Specifically, inspired by John Wooden’s 7-Point Creed – “Be true to yourself / Make each day your masterpiece / Help others / Drink deeply from good books / Make friendship a fine art / Build shelter against a rainy day / Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day” – Matt had each student create their own seven personal points.

On 3×5 note cards of yellow and blue and pink, and displayed under the headline “Words of Wisdom from Mesa 8th Graders,” here are some assorted examples:

“The best competition I have is against myself to become better.”

“Not everyone deserves a second chance” and “Ask for help.”

“Saying you have no motivation is an excuse to be lazy” and “Quality over Quantity.”

“Having fun is one of the most important foods for your brain.”

“Being yourself is the best person you can be” and “Don’t worry about what others think of you, worry about what you think of yourself.”

“Friendships are like goldfish: they will die off quickly if you don’t give them love and care.”

“Goals won’t be accomplished by wishing” and “You can’t take it easy on the way up.”

And, “You decide how you roll with life’s hills and valleys.”

This final nugget rang true to me the other day when I figuratively stood atop a hill with a gorgeous view of a valley blooming with poison ivy. The hill’s summit was a reader buying five copies of “Wooden and Me” as gifts and asking me to sign them with personalized inscriptions.

As I was doing so, the gift giver mentioned she already had a copy of the book for herself and when I asked if she would like me to sign it as well, she said it was already inscribed. Sheepishly, she confessed it was actually personalized to a different name than hers because she picked it up at a garage sale.

She offered to show me the name, but I decided to roll with life’s valleys and declined on the ego-bruising off chance it was someone I knew!

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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.

Devilish and Sweet Typewriter Tales

by Woody

Although it will go widely unrecognized, today is an important date in history for it was on June 23, 1868, that Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for the typewriter.           

Three years later, Mark Twain saw one of these newfangled machines in a store window, in Boston; in he walked and out he came having paid a whopping $125 – equivalent to about $3,000 today – for a Remington model.

It proved to be a love-hate relationship for at one point Twain insisted Remington, which originated the QWERTY keyboard layout, cease and desist mentioning him in its advertisements, writing: “Please do not use my name in any way. I don’t want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker.”

Mr. Twain on my Olivetti Lettera 32 model favored by Cormac McCarthy.

Twain also claimed these new typing machines were “full of caprices, full of defects – devilish ones.”

And yet, according to literary scholars, Twain was the first author to submit a typewritten manuscript – “Life on the Mississippi” – to a publisher in 1883.

In honor of today being National Typewriter Day, I would like to share the story of another QWERTY machine, this one bought not brand new for a princely sum, but secondhand at a pawnshop for $50. Even back in 1963 that was bargain for a top-of-the-line Olivetti Lettera 32 portable model.

The purchaser was Cormac McCarthy, legendary author of “The Road” and “All The Pretty Horses” and “Blood Meridian” and a long shelf of other best-seller page-turners, who died earlier this month at age 89.

McCarthy banged away on the black keys of that blue-bodied typewriter for nearly a half-century until the Italian-made machine wore out beyond repair. No small wonder it finally became roadkill considering the Pulitzer Prize-winner estimated he had put about 5 million words on its odometer.

Here is where McCarthy’s typewriter story gets even better, in three ways.

One. Whereas Twain surely would have tried out the caprices, defects and devilishness of a computer, McCarthy remained true to Christopher Latham Sholes’ invention.

Two. McCarthy, despite his fame and riches, did not buy a typewriter restored to mint condition for the burgeoning collector’s market that now sees machines priced as high as MacBooks. Rather, a friend gave him a replacement, another blue Olivetti Lettera 32, for which he paid all of $11 and which McCarthy used for his next million words.

Three. In 2009, McCarthy, who wrote in an authentication letter, “I have typed on this typewriter every book I have written including three not yet published,” put his original Olivetti up for auction.

The pre-bid estimate of $20,000 proved wildly wrong as an anonymous collector paid an eye-popping $254,500 with the proceeds, in a rare happy ending for a McCarthy tale, going to a non-profit organization.

I am happy to say that the entire handful of typewriters I have accumulated cost well below $254,500. This includes a blue Olivetti Lettera 32 identical to McCarthy’s, albeit a 1969 model with about four million fewer words of wear on its typebars and no New York Times Best Sellers to its credit.

Like McCarthy’s replacement Lettera 32, mine was a gift, not from a friend but from my little sister a couple years ago. For writing notes and letters it has the most pleasant touch and action of all my typing machines.

Even so, I dare say it is not the sweetest typewriter I own. That honor goes to another one My Li’l Sis gave me last month for my birthday, a replica of a Hermes Baby used by John Steinbeck, or so it seems, as it is quite small…

…and made of gourmet chocolate.

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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.