Tag Archives: Writing

Following in Giant Footsteps

by Woody

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

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From Woody’s column archives, November 27, 2010…

“Seek not to follow in the footsteps of the wise,” advised Japanese poet and philosopher Matsuo Basho. “Seek what they sought.”

Ages later another poet, the journalistic philosopher Chuck Thomas, wrote: “Never write a bad column when you can steal a good one.”

Chuck, who passed away one year ago (now 15) this coming week, wrote wise columns for The Star for more than half a century. The final time I saw him was in the hospital and he joked I should pinch hit for him until he got well. Heartbreakingly, he didn’t and now I feel like George Selkirk, the poor guy who followed in Babe Ruth’s giant footsteps.

Instead of playing right field in pinstripes in Yankee Stadium, I find myself writing in Chuck’s old space. His sacred spot. What an honor. And what pressure. I could use a therapy session with Chuck’s invented column character, “stressologist” Dr. Sigmund Schrink.

Following the master’s lead, I will partially fill this morning’s column with someone else’s words—Chuck’s, from two of the handful of letters he wrote me during my 13 years as a sportswriter for this newspaper.

Let me begin with one dated April 12, 1992, shortly after I confided my growing desire to move on to a major metropolitan newspaper. Using a manual typewriter he thoughtfully said, in part:

“Having been where you are, I can appreciate your frustration. I, too, wanted to prove I could play in the Big Leagues, but wasn’t willing to move to Cleveland or even Oakland to achieve that goal. Eventually, I realized that living in Ventura was more important to me and my family than being perceived as a genuine major leaguer.

“As that line from ‘Mission: Impossible’ goes, your challenge—should you choose to accept it—is just to keep writing great columns, and remember: Success is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy this time in your life, because your old Uncle Chuckles can promise that, someday, you’ll look back on these as good-old days.

“Even though it may seem to you that no one has noticed, I’m one of your fans who knows that you’re writing better now than ever—much better, with more depth, more variety and more class. And you’re writing rings around most of the other guys in the Big Leagues.”

His kind words not only swelled my spirits and buoyed my confidence, they guided me in a difficult decision when I was soon thereafter offered a big-time columnist position in Philadelphia. Realizing that living in Ventura was similarly more important to me and my young family than being perceived as a genuine major leaguer, I turned it down.

How much did I look up to Chuck? Perhaps the best answer is this: his notes and letters have always shared the same wooden box with penned heirlooms from my late mom, my departed grandfathers, and my idols Jim Murray and John Wooden.

Re-reading these missives from Chuck, who uniquely and affectionately often called me “The Wooder,” reminds me of something he said more than once in print: “If there’s someone whose friendship you treasure, be sure to tell them now—without waiting for a memorial service to say it.” I am thankful I listened and did so while Chuck was alive.

As I write my 14th column (now 14 years worth!) in this space, his venerable corner, the opening sentences of a letter dated July 12, 1995, seem eerily prophetic. Chuck, who started his career in sports, began:

“Woody – What happens to old sports columnists? Some of them become old news-page columnists.”

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“Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive” reminder: New sports balls can be dropped off, or online orders delivered to, Jensen Design & Survey at 1672 Donlon St. in Ventura, 93003. Please email me about your gifts at woodywriter@gmail.com so I can add your generosity to this year’s tally and acknowledge you in a future column.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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

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

Writing Streak’s Rhythm Slows by Half

by Woody

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

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I have a thing for streaks.

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

Beginning today, it will instead run every other week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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

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

Some Very, Very Short Stories

by Woody

“Simplify, simplify,” advised Henry David Thoreau, to which Ralph Waldo Emerson wryly, and wisely, replied: “One ‘simplify’ would have sufficed.”

On a similar theme, Ernest Hemingway is said to have once accepted a bet that he couldn’t write a complete story in a mere six words. Papa triumphed with this mini-masterpiece: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

For fun, I challenged some friends to write their own six-word stories of fiction or memoir. Here are some of their tiny tales…

“She had me with her smile.” By Mitch Gold.

By Steve Grimm: “I asked her, she said yes!”

Conversely, and darkly, by Debby Holt Larkin, author of “A Lovely Girl” and the daughter of the late, great Bob Holt who chronicled this column space long ago: “Wife ran off … need your shovel.”

Even more darkly, a six-word historical novel by Chris Barney: “Rats had fleas. Millions died painfully.”

More happily, by Ethan Lubin: “Former students visited. Made my day.”

“Ignored warning signs, at great peril.” By Joe Garces.

“Caesar had the best,” noted John Yewell: “ ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ Of course in Latin it’s only three words.”

“The light is darkness. Oh, Oppenheimer.” By Karen Lindell.

 “Today, tomorrow and whatever comes next,” wrote John Collet and Susie Merry offered: “Small things can bring big happiness.”

Less happily, by Patrick Burke: “Last man down the trail, alive.”

“ ‘You run everyday?’ They are confused.” A mini-memoir by Lauren Siegel, a “streaker” who has run 8,737 consecutive days.

 “I patted her pillow. It’s empty,” wrote James Barney, while Mary Eilleen Distin offered: “He left, and now I’m happy.”

“I moved to NYC at 71.” By Kris Young.

Jeff McElroy flipped the script on Hemingway’s heartbreaking micro-novella, turning it into a much happier one – and in only five words: “Free: Baby shoes, well-worn.”

Seeking even further simplicity, I posed a second challenge of brevity: Write a happy story in only four words…

“I love you, too,” wrote Chulwon Karma Park.

Kathy McAlpine and Betsy Chess both identically authored a classical super small storybook: “Lived happily ever after!” while Allyson McAuley added a slight twist: “They lived, happily, peacefully.”

“Peace love rock roll,” wrote Dick Birney while Carrie Wolfe offered: “Life is unexpected love.”

“The grandkids came over!” wrote Toni Tuttle-Santana and E.Wayne Kempton echoed: “Good to be Grampy!”

By Alison Smith Carlson: “Julie’s cancer was cured.”

In a sequel to his earlier six-word story, or perhaps a prequel, James Barney wrote: “She woke beside me.”

“The cruise is booked!” wrote Karen Biedebach-Berry and Julie Chrisman offered another tale of the sea: “Today I went Paddleboarding!”

Susie Merry wrote a sweet story, “I ate some chocolate,” and John Brooks served up a similar theme for readers’ consumption: “I ate some cannoli!”

“I got over it,” wrote Shaka Senghor and I, for one, want 1,000 more words.

Cindy Hansen wrote, “Hike trees bees breathe,” while Tom Koenig similarly offered: “Warm water beach sand.”

In an inspiring mini-memoir, Todd Kane wrote: “Been sober since 1976.”

“Because she was brave.” By Hannah McFadden.

“We are all together,” wrote Mike Weinberg-Lynn while Robin Harwin Satnick offered: “We happily adventured together.”

“9 o’clock starting time,” wrote Rodney Johnsen, Sr. in a story that may turn less happy by the third tee.

“Fireplace book cooking wine,” wrote Kathleen Koenig while Vicki Means offered: “Feeling safe and sound.”

“Autumn air smells earthy!” By Lisa Barreto.

Julie Hein wrote, “Gave birth; heart grew,” while Edie Marshall also offered a love story: “Found Chuck. Got married.”

Lastly, by yours truly: “Column written for me.”

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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.

Knocked Out by “The Kudzu Queen”

by Woody

“What really knocks me out,” Holden Caulfield says in “The Catcher in the Rye,”  “is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”

Mimi Herman’s newly released debut novel, “The Kudzu Queen” (Regal House Publishing), KO’d me so completely I felt like calling her up on the phone even though we have never met.

Instead, I reached out through social media and she graciously responded from her home in North Carolina, where TKQ takes place, albeit in the early 1940s. Before I share some of our correspondence, let me share a little about her 320-page gem.

Lee Smith, a New York Times best-selling author, calls the narrator, 15-year-old Mattie Watson, “the most appealing young heroine since Scout” in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Praise doesn’t come much taller than that.

Rather than being hyperbole, I think the favorable comparison to Scout actually falls short of doing Mattie full justice. In my eyes she even more so reminds me of Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, one of the most beloved characters in American literature. Mattie, like Atticus, has a golden heart and a backbone of steel and a conscience like the needle of a compass that always knows where the North Star is. I asked Herman if she agreed with my assessment.

“Mattie is mature for her age,” Herman replied, “so I can see her sounding like Atticus. In my mind, Mattie is what Scout (who is younger) might have grown up to be as an adolescent, and since both Scout and Mattie are in many ways shaped by their admirable parents, I can see the connection. Lately, I’ve been saying that I think Mattie’s parents are what Atticus might have been if he’d been divided into a mother and a father.”

Kudzu, by the way, is a plant that grows a “mile-a-minute” and has been called “the vine that ate the South.” I will not reveal the novel’s plot, other than to say it is a page-turner featuring a protagonist to admire; a handsome charlatan whose evilness outgrows kudzu; families, both tightly knit and torn apart; friendships and feuds; heart and humor; tears and fears; twists and turns.

Beyond the story itself, I fell in love with Herman’s writing. She is an acclaimed poet and this shines through in her long-form writing as she routinely makes a handful of words do the work of a hundred.

“I am fierce in my writing and revising about making sure each word, each sentence, each description, each line of dialogue is perfectly tuned, so it resonates,” Herman shared, noting her original manuscript was a whopping 680 pages.

The result of this poet-like approach is sentences that read like stanzas and paragraphs resembling sonnets. I would have finished reading TKQ in three nights instead of four had I not spent so much time rereading, even re-rereading, so many lovely passages in order to savor them fully.

Here is but one example chosen from dozens of passages I underlined, a single sentence that sums up a hundred previous pages. It is after a terrible fire, after a death too, and after a third tragedy as well: “Danny stayed with Mr. Cullowee, to tend whatever was left to tend on the farm that wasn’t a farm anymore, by the house that had stopped being a house after it ceased to be a home.”

Written by my new friend, Mimi, an author who has not stopped being a poet.

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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.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and

Still Feeling Lucky Decades Later

by Woody

It is hard to imagine anyone being luckier in Las Vegas than I was 40 years ago come next month. Freshly graduated from UCSB, but jobless, I got a phone call that proved to be like a Jackpot-Jackpot-Jackpot spin on a slot machine.

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

The bad news was the tiny twice-weekly publication, The Desert Trail, was in Twentynine Palms – a one-stoplight triple-digit-temperatures town that was not exactly where a young bride dreams of beginning her new wedded life. No matter, Lisa and I cut our honeymoon a couple days short and took a detour through the high desert on our drive back to Goleta.

Dave Stancliff, a top-dog newspaperman, mentor and friend.

I not only got the job, I got a great boss, life-changing mentor, and dear friend in the deal. The latter happened – nearly literally – overnight as Dave Stancliff, his wife Shirley and their three young sons, took me into their home for three weeks until Lisa could join me.

Under Dave, I received a hands-on journalism education that surpassed a master’s degree and made me a better writer. More importantly, he imparted life lessons that made me a better person. For example, instead of giving a homeless person a few bucks for a fast-food hamburger, Dave would buy him or her a restaurant meal. Sometimes he even surprised Shirley by bringing a hungry stranger home as a dinner guest.

Along with a heart of gold, Dave has mettle of steel. Straight from high school he went to fight in the sweltering jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia. Stories of his experiences as a soldier gave me nightmares, yet he didn’t even share the worst of the hell he saw.

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

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

“Red, who received the most brutal torture at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors, showed me how indomitable the human spirit is in the worst of times,” Dave writes now, having first met McDaniel in the mid-1970s while writing for the campus newspaper at Humboldt State.

“His positive attitude about everything in life was actually therapeutic for me (and my PTSD),” Dave continues, happily concluding: “Red is 93 years-old and is still going strong.”

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

The flowery praise that follows is, with no false modesty, unmerited. Nonetheless, the kind words put birdsong in my heart and bring to mind something Chuck Thomas, another dear mentor of mine, liked to say: “Don’t wait until tomorrow to tell a friend how you feel about them today.”

Wise advice for us all.

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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.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

 

Breaking My Own Column Rule

by Woody

My great friend Dan had a basement that was a boyhood wonderland with a pinball machine, Ping-Pong table, slot-car racetrack, dartboard, Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, board games and more.

Dan not only knew how to expertly shake the pinball machine without a “tilt” registering, he also had a habit of tilting other games in his direction. That is to say he playfully cheated.

“My house, my rules,” Dan would announce and claim a do-over when his HO-scale Corvette went around a curve too speedily and flew off the track; when his dart wildly missed its mark and ricocheted off the cinder-block wall; when he jiggled the pinball machine a little too vigorously and the flippers did freeze.

Similarly, a high-stakes roll in Monopoly sometimes required having both dice coming to rest on the game board, not the table; but other times vice-versa. “Doesn’t count. Roll again,” he would cackle if he didn’t like the outcome. “My house, my rules.”

Naturally, the rules tilted in my favor when we played H-O-R-S-E or checkers at my house.

I bring this up today because I have long had an unwritten rule of not writing about local authors and their books in this space. It seems more prudent to say “no” to all requests, being as numerous as they are, than risk this becoming a weekly book review column.

Alas, loyal readers of this space with good memories will instantly recognize my hypocrisy because back in February I wrote about the novel “Thanks, Carissa, For Ruining My Life” (Immortal Works Publishing). The setting features a fictional beach town named Buena Vista that is clearly – from Main Street to the foothills to a familiar taco shack – Buenaventura.

That author, a former prestigious John Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing, has a new book that just came out last week: a collection of short stories titled, “How to Make Paper When the World is Ending” (Koehler Books). It is terrific. Indeed, no less than ten of the 15 offerings have previously appeared in literary magazines and journals.

Just as Mr. Steinbeck time and again wrote about the Salinas Valley in his fiction, Dallas Woodburn over and again writes about her hometown – including the pier, beach, and promenade – in the pages of “Paper.” One of my favorite stories here is titled “How My Parents Fell In Love” which begins:

“My mother walked out of the grocery store. She wore a red dress, her hair was permed the way it looks in photo albums. My father drove up in a car, a fast car, silver, a car that goes vroom vroom. He did not know her yet. She looked pretty in that red dress with the ruffles at the hem. He rolled down the window, leaned out, and smiled, and said, ‘Hubba, hubba!’ They fell in love and lived happily ever after.”

Four similar vignettes follow, each growing longer and written more maturely than the previous, each storyline slightly changed yet each ending exactly the same: “They fell in love and lived happily every after.”

The sixth and final version, however, rings most true and scraps the fairy-tale ending: “Later that night they kissed under the mistletoe. The fell in love. And they lived, happily. Also angrily, naughtily, hopelessly, hungrily. Messily. Ever after. Like saints and martyrs and lovers and children. They lived, and they live. Together still.”

Am I guilty of hypocrisy and nepotism with today’s subject? Yes, most assuredly. Also unashamedly, happily, unapologetically, proudly with my buttons popping off.

“My column, my rules.” I hope you understand and will forgive me.

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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.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

“Let Me Be Brave In The Attempt”

by Woody

The Tokyo Olympics, as the Games always do, makes me think of Special Olympics meets I have covered.

John Steinbeck, among other great writers, claimed fiction is often more truthful than nonfiction. While the names and location have been changed, the track scene below excerpted from my nearly completed novel “all is not broken” truly happened. Backstory: Charley and Finn are best friends, and Kenny is Finn’s autistic brother.

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“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s quote on display in her Hook Farm home in Hartford sent Charley’s thoughts racing back in time, back to Brooklyn. She thought the abolitionist author’s inspirational words perfectly described Kenny – especially at his Special Olympics swim and track meets.

Actually, “never give up” pretty much characterized every Special Olympian in Charley’s eyes.

Charley went with Finn to many of Kenny’s races and both girls got gooseflesh each time. While no world records ever fell, some of the competitors did – but only those who, like Kenny, were physically blessed enough to be able to stand in the first place. After all, many Special Olympians compete in wheelchairs.

When someone held a pity party for themselves, and this included Charley on rare occasions, Geepa would gently refocus their perspective by noting: “I felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes – and then I met a man who had no feet.” That was how watching the Special Olympics made Charley feel – blessed to have feet and shoes, and legs and arms and hands that worked perfectly.

In turn, Charley recalled a Special Olympics track meet in Brooklyn when she saw a young boy – probably about twelve years old, she guessed – stumble at the halfway mark of the hundred-meter dash. The race was called a “dash” but in truth some of the competitors walked and others limped and still others rolled in their wheelchairs.

The stumbling boy fell headfirst and bloodied his knees, bloodied his palms, and also bloodied his nose. Hearing the crowd groan with alarmed empathy, Kenny – in the neighboring lane, but far ahead of all the other runners – stopped cold ten meters shy of the finish-line tape and looked up into the stands and then back over his shoulder.

Seeing the boy sprawled on the track, Kenny started running again…

…not to the finish line to win the blue ribbon, but in the opposite direction toward the fallen competitor.

As the other racers continued full speed ahead, Kenny helped the injured runner to his feet and, with his shoulder under the boy’s arm to lend support, walked the final fifty meters at his side. Every spectator in the stands stood and cheered as though the two boys were running for the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl.

Actually, Charley did not cheer – she was too proud and too choked up with tears to do so. Little did she know that that example of sportsmanship and kindness would later change her life.

Having forfeited a blue ribbon for winning the hundred meters, Kenny disappointedly settled for a participation ribbon. Charley was of an opposite mind. Whenever she looked at the “Wall of Fame” in Kenny’s room, her eyes would invariably find their way to the white ribbon he got for finishing in a tie for last place. It, more than the many, many, many blue ribbons and gold medals combined, made Charley smile the widest because it truly highlighted the motto of the Special Olympics:

“Let me win, but if I cannot win let me be brave in the attempt.”

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Woody Woodburn 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.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

The Bamboo Field & Sink of Dishes

by Woody

“Don’t worry that your children never listen to you,” essayist Robert Fulghum wisely wrote, “worry that they are always watching you.”

Sometimes, of course, our little ones do both. This happy insight struck me when I read a recent essay by my daughter, the best writer in the family, truly. Her words were evidence that she had taken to heart a parable I told her when she was growing up and also watched me tackle large tasks with its inspired lesson.

The big task of clearing a bamboo field happens one stalk at a time…

The story, shared with me long ago by golfing legend Chi Chi Rodriguez while recalling his childhood in Puerto Rico, goes like this: “When I was a young boy we had a little field that was overgrown with bamboo trees. My father wanted to plant corn, but clearing the bamboo would have taken a month. He didn’t have the time because of his job. So every night when he came home from work my father would cut down a single piece of bamboo.”

Chi Chi paused, dramatically, then emphasized: “Just one piece.”

Before his conclusion, let me share my daughter’s similar tale.

“This morning,” she wrote, “I woke up and felt exhausted even though my two-year-old daughter actually slept in and I was able to get a decent amount of sleep. As my husband changed her diaper, I got up to make coffee for him and tea for me.

“The kitchen was filled with dirty dishes from not just last night’s dinner, but from the past few days. I looked at those dishes and thought: Ugh! I CAN’T EVEN right now.

… juts as a cluttered sink of dirty dishes gets cleaned one dish at a time.

“My mind immediately began filling with excuses and reasons to ignore the dishes, yet again, until later. As if by putting them off until later some magical Dish Fairy would sneak into our kitchen and do them all for us. (Which does actually happen when my parents or mother-in-law or sister-in-law come over!)

“But the coffee strainer was dirty, so I had to wash that. Plus, I might as well wash my favorite mug so I could use that for my morning tea. Waiting for the kettle to boil, I did a few more dishes. And it wasn’t that hard to slot a bunch of dirty plates and bowls into the dishwasher. Already the counters looked much cleaner.

“I poured the hot water into my mug and still had a few minutes of waiting for the tea to steep, so I figured I might as well do a few more dishes. I took a sip of tea. Mmmm. Already I was feeling better, less groggy, more ready to face the day.

“My sponge was still soapy and I hate to waste some good soapsuds, so I scrubbed more pots and pans, then dried them and put them away. Meanwhile, our daughter was, miraculously, entertaining herself in her crib. This far in, I figured I might as well keep going and finish the job. And that is what I did.

“Looking around the clean kitchen, I felt so much better about the day, my life, myself. It might sound silly, but my clean kitchen made me feel more confident and capable and cheerful. Instead of a sink and counter full of dirty dishes, I now had a clean slate. And it almost didn’t happen. It started with just washing one little dish.”

Just as the bamboo field started with cutting down just one stalk.

“The very next spring, we had corn on our dinner table, “Chi Chi Rodriquez concluded with a knowing smile. “The Bamboo Story, to me, is the secret to success.”

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Woody Woodburn 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.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Part 2: Hemingway’s “Last Red Cent”

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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Part 2: Hemingway’s

“Last Red Cent”

The stairway to heaven has 19 steps.

Before climbing the outdoor flight leading to Ernest Hemingway’s second-floor writing studio in the backyard, spitting distance away I toured the main house at 907 Whitehead Street in Key West’s Old Town. It is a mansion masterpiece.

The Spanish antiques and African artwork throughout, much collected by Hemingway himself, are stunning. However, I was more captivated by the wordsmith’s seven typewriters – three Underwood models; one Remington portable; two Corona machines, one black and the other forest green; and one Royal – displayed in various rooms.

Hanging out with Hemingway in his Key West home.

The black Royal portable, Hemingway’s favorite, naturally resides in his next-door upstairs studio. The spacious room has robin-egg blue walls and red terra cotta tile floor. Sun pours through ample windows, one of which affords a view of the Atlantic Ocean.

In addition to bookcases fully filled, the décor features taxidermic hunting trophies plus a mounted fish – albeit greatly smaller than Santiago’s great marlin in “The Old Man and the Sea.”

The showpiece of the room, however, is a modest round table the master used as a desk paired with a lone wooden chair. Upon the well-worn tabletop sits Hemingway’s prized typewriter as well as a notebook with a pen resting on its open pages.

When I came through, an orange six-toed cat was also resting on the table-turned-desk. One could imagine the tabby was waiting for its master to return because a sheet of typing paper was in the Royal, as if Papa had just stepped out for a moment.

“There is nothing to writing,” Hemingway famously said. “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

Hemingway bled profusely in this den from 1931 to 1939, writing nine books. The prolific period began with “Death in the Afternoon”, included “The Green Hills of Africa” and “For Whom the Bells Toll”, and ended with “Under Kilimanjaro.” His process was to rise at dawn and hunch over his Royal until early afternoon, always quitting while still in the flow so it would be easier start anew the following morning.

The magic one feels standing before the Mona Lisa or the marble David, I experienced here. Oh, how I would have loved to give the Pulitzer Prize winner’s antique Royal a whirl for a sentence or three!

Too, I would have liked to dive into the magnificent swimming pool some two dozen strides from the writing studio and directly below the master bedroom in the main house. Dug into solid coral ground, it took two years to complete and was the only swimming pool within 100 miles.

Measuring 60 feet by 24 feet and 10 feet deep at the south end, half that at the opposite point on the compass, the rectangular pool cost a staggering $20,000 in 1938. Understand, less than a decade earlier the entire home and acre of land was purchased for $8,000.

Hemingway was exasperated at the pool’s final cost and at his second wife who oversaw its construction while he was away as a correspondent for the Spanish Civil War. Upon his return, he is said to have flung down a penny and complained: “Pauline, you’ve spent all but my last red cent, so you might as well have that!”

Offered as evidence that the story is true and not apocryphal, Pauline had a penny embedded heads-up in the cement on the shallow-end deck. Superstitiously, I left a shiny penny behind on top of that famous red cent.

Soon thereafter, I left a few dollars behind in the gift shop for a leather bookmark with the image of a lucky six-toed cat.

 *   *   *

Woody Woodburn 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 books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

 

Part I: Pit Stop and the Pendulum

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!

 * * *

Visiting Poe’s Home Upon a Midday Dreary

This is the first in a four-column series chronicling my recent father-son road trip to the homes of two Founding Fathers and more.

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Monticello, the Virginia estate of Thomas Jefferson, is nearly 350 miles as the crow flies from my son’s shoebox-sized apartment in lower Manhattan.

Make that as “The Raven” flies, because to break up our drive we stopped midway at the Edgar Allen Poe House Museum in Baltimore.

1poemug

Edgar Allen Poe

“Once upon a midnight dreary” begins the poem that launched Poe’s fame, and this certainly describes the midday of our visit two Saturdays past. Stepping out of the drizzle and inside the claustrophobic three-story brick home, a docent asked us how we learned about the museum. She seemed almost surprised to have visitors.

As if trying to ensure that we bought tickets, the docent told us we had arrived on an auspicious day because this date – October 8 – was the 167th anniversary of Poe’s funeral. She further explained, her voice dripping with drama, it had been a similarly rainy day.

My initial reaction was that the docent made this eerie claim every day for effect. However, a placard in the museum documented her claim: Poe died at age 40 on October 7, 1849, and his burial took place a day later at the nearby Westminster Burying Ground. Furthermore, so few people showed up because of the rain that the reverend decided not to bother with a sermon.

Poe lived at 203 North Amity Street only briefly, from 1833 to 1835 while in his mid-20s, yet he wrote voluminously during this span. The home was saved from demolition in 1941 and is now a National Historic Landmark that is nearly as hidden in plain sight as “The Purloined Letter.” I am glad we found it.

The narrow winding stairway leading up to Poe’s bedroom had a foreboding “rapping, rapping at my chamber door” feel. Artifacts on display include Poe’s chair and lap desk.

Poe’s legacy as a writer is remarkable; he invented the detective story and advanced the genres of horror and science fiction. And, of course, he penned a poem so great that an NFL team is named in its honor.

1poe-graveSerendipity smiled further on our side trip when the docent informed us that a anniversary ceremony commemorating Poe’s funeral was to be held at the Westminster Burying Ground, little more than a mile a way, starting in about five minutes.

Normally we would have walked, even in the rain, but for time’s sake we decided to drive. Confusing one-way streets and a dearth of parking spaces turned this into a bad decision. We finally made it to the church 10 minutes after the appointed 3 p.m. start.

Poe’s grave was easy to find by the size of its 7-foot tall marble monument, not by the size of the crowd gathered, because there was no one else present.

We hurried inside the beautiful gothic church, thinking the special observance for the great writer must be going on there instead of in the rain, but again we were alone.

Back into the drizzle we ventured to pay respects at the gravesite – the first of a handful of graves my son and I would visit, and be moved by, on our four-day journey.

Leaving the grounds, we finally encountered another person, an employee at the church. I inquired about the Poe ceremony, saying it must have been quite brief and we were sorry to have missed it.

It turns out that because of the dreary weather no one showed up and the planned sermon was cancelled. How eerily fitting.

In truth, the quaint museum had been a tad disappointing. But the mysticism of Poe having lived – and written – inside its walls, and the auspicious date of our visit, had magnified the magic.

Leaving the museum, the church, and a lunch of Maryland crab cakes at Lexington Market that dates back to 1763, we were accosted each time by panhandlers, one unnervingly aggressive. All in all, one visit to Poe’s city had been enough.

“Quoth the Raven, ‘Balti-nevermore.’ ”

*  *  *

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”

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