Monthly Archives: June 2014

Column: Sunny And Warm

by Woody

Local Warmth Not Limited To Weather

“The people here are so friendly,” said a buddy visiting from Los Angeles last Sunday after dropping off a carload of teenagers at the Warped Tour at the Ventura Fairgrounds.

He couldn’t believe how polite our drivers are, patiently waiting their turns at four-way stops and freely allowing lane changes. He marveled over how many smiles and hellos he and his wife were greeted with on the promenade.

I readily agreed, a dozen examples of local warmness flashing to mind, yet I also thought this: Perhaps we too often take our collective sunniness for granted.

For instance, earlier that day an encounter at Trader Joe’s gave me delight. To begin, a mother accompanied by three teenagers who obviously wanted to be anywhere else on a summer vacation day, completed her purchase when one of her entourage remembered something.

“Oh, yeah, I ate a granola bar,” he sheepishly confessed, pulling an empty wrapper out of his pocket for the cashier to scan while the mom opened her purse a second time.

“And summer is just beginning,” the mom said in mock exasperation to the middle-aged woman in line behind her.

Amused rather than annoyed by the holdup, the second woman smiled and replied: “Oh, I miss it. Mine are grown. Enjoy it because before you know it you are going to miss everything about them.”

Now the second mother was at the checkout and her shopping trip was unexpectedly delayed again, this time by a woman perhaps two decades her senior who interrupted to ask the cashier where she could find a specific skin lotion.

The cashier, a young man in his 20s, politely said he didn’t know if TJ’s carried it and called for assistance. The older woman seemed confused and instead of waiting turned and took off on her own search. In doing so her purse knocked down part of a product display, the boxes tumbling like Jenga pieces. She seemed oblivious to the mess she created.

Before the cashier could register irritation, the middle-aged woman customer made him laugh by looking towards the mom and three teens leaving the store and saying: “There goes my past…

“And” – tilting her head at the older woman walking away to Aisle 3 – “there’s my future.”

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Thinking about the futures of kids she does not even know, a Ventura woman named Lari – after reading a story earlier this week in my favorite newspaper about a local summer writing camp – generously funded, on her own accord, scholarships for two deserving underprivileged youth.

Talk about warmth that has nothing to do with our weather.

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Sometimes strangers in the past become kind friends in the present.

Lisa and Fran and some tall guy.

Lisa and Fran and some tall guy.

A handful of years ago, my then-teenage son requested birthday dinner at a Mexican restaurant we had never before been at the Ventura Harbor. Food, drink and service were terrific, but most memorable was that as we were leaving our waitress – Francelia – privately told my daughter, “Your grandfather is such a sweetheart.”

I laughed when this was relayed to me because “sweetheart” is not among the first adjectives that come to my mind regarding my dad.

Margarita Villa became one of our favorites and Fran quickly went from waitress to friend. We learned about her family and her passion for literature. We celebrated when she was accepted to Cal State University Channel Islands to pursue her delayed-by-being-a-working-mom dream of becoming a family therapist.

After our two kids left home, Fran has kept up with their studies and travels and lives. She lights up when they visit and we need a table for four again. When my memoir about my friendship with John Wooden came out, I received no kinder letter than from Fran.

On a recent “Date Night” my wife and I were not seated in Fran’s area, but she took our table anyway which was no surprise.

What happened at meal’s end, however, was a surprise: Fran refused to bring the check, insisting on buying us dinner while quoting Coach Wooden’s maxim: “You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone else.”

Talk about a friendly sweetheart.

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

 

Check 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”

Column: Summer Beach Bucket List

by Woody

A Beach Bucket List For Summer

In recognition of today being the summer solstice, here is my plastic beach bucket list for the next three months. I encourage you to come up with your own list – and, importantly, then check off as many items as possible this summer.

Help a kid with a beach bucket build a sandcastle.1-sandcasle

Extend my streak since age 2 of watching fireworks every year on the Fourth of July.

Watch a sunrise somewhere new.

Watch a sunset, with the Channel Islands as a backdrop, on an evening when the clouds on the horizon glow so vibrant a field of wild flowers would seem gray by comparison.

Visit my ancestors’ roots in County Cork, Ireland, for the first time.

Fly a kite for about the 100th time.

Tour the Guinness Brewery in Dublin, Ireland, and – as when visiting The Original Ghirardelli Ice Cream & Chocolate Shop in San Francisco – do some sampling.

Take a tour (with a companion designated driver) of a local winery and do some sampling.

Visit The Original Ghirardelli Ice Cream & Chocolate Shop in San Francisco and spoil my dinner.

Do a cannonball off a diving board. Bonus: get a family member wet.

Walk barefoot in cool grass, on warm sand, and on hot blacktop to feel like a kid again.

See a local play.

Enjoy an ice cream cone outside on a day so hot the treat melts and drips faster than I can eat it. And it has to be ice cream, not frozen yogurt. And make it Rocky Road. And add a vanilla scoop for my dog, Murray.

Visit a metropolitan museum.

Go to a local art show.

Spend part of an afternoon watching surfers, kite surfers and, if I’m really lucky, dolphins surfing.

Daydream looking at clouds and stargaze on a clear night.

Listen to live music at a local intimate setting.

Go to a concert at a big venue.

Listen to Vin Scully give a concert.

Enjoy a glass of lemonade from a kid’s stand – and leave a crazy tip.

Go on a hike where I’ve never been before.

Walk hand-in-hand with my much-better-half on the beach where we met.

Ride a paddleboat at the Ventura Harbor and the Ferris wheel at the Ventura County Fair with my adult daughter who will always be my little girl.

Take advantage of my son being in Washington, D.C. for the summer and visit the National Mall for the first time.

Take a selfie with my son and Abe at the Lincoln Memorial.1-fireworks.png PM

Go up in the Washington Monument.

Wear out a pair of new running shoes.

Go for a run in the rain – hopefully Ireland or D.C. will make this possible since Ventura likely won’t.

Go to an author’s book talk.

Read 10 books.

Marvel at the artistic tall stacks of balanced rocks at Ventura’s Surfers Point and try my hand at maybe going four high.

Participate in a beach clean-up day.

Hammer some nails for Habitat For Humanity.

Search for the best taco in Ventura County.

Search for the best micro-brew in Ventura County.

Have dinner “out” from five different local food trucks.

Have the owner of a food truck or restaurant name a sandwich “The Woodrow.”

Write a poem – and memorize one.

Join in on a kids’ water-balloon fight.

Roast marshmallows and make some s’mores.

Catch-and-release a trout, a firefly and a butterfly.

Play a spirited board game until the wee hours.

Go unplugged for one entire weekend.

Go unshaven for a full week.

Do not go unplugged the final week of summer in order to watch the debut airing on PBS of Ken Burn’s newest documentary – “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History” – which I saw the gifted filmmaker talk about in person at a sneak preview a few months ago. It looks fantastic.

Try to heed Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” Or at least once every week this summer.

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

Check 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”

Column: A Story For Father’s Day

by Woody

A Father, A Son And A Promise Kept

The boy, seven years old, was in the family barn doing chores. This was a full eight decades ago, yet the boy – my dad – remembers it like last week.

“I was cornered by rats,” Pop shares. “Big ones. Lots of ’em. To this day, I have a real phobia.”

The frightening memory of a Midwestern rat pack surging out of the hay is, surprisingly, also a cherished one because Pop’s boyhood dog, a terrier mix named Queenie, came running.

Pop, right, with grandson Greg and me.

Pop, right, with grandson Greg and me.

She did what terriers instinctively do: caught each rat in her teeth and gave it a side-to-side neck-breaking shake, tossed it aside like a rag doll, and then went after the next one and the next and the next. Lassie rescuing Timmy.

“She may not have saved my life,” Pop continues, “but at the time it sure felt like it.”

If Queenie did not literally save Pop’s life that day, it is still fair to say she was roundabout responsible for saving many other lives – hundreds, if not thousands – in the future. I will explain.

Queenie’s defining moment actually did not happen in the barn that afternoon; it occurred on a Sunday evening the following summer. The boy, now almost nine, noticed his dog was sick. Soon she went into seizure.

Unbeknownst at the moment, a deranged man had laced raw meat with strychnine – rat poison – and fed it to more than two-dozen dogs throughout the small rural Ohio neighborhood.

What the boy did know was he needed his father’s help, and urgently. Unfortunately, this was eons before cell phones so he could not reach his dad, a country doctor who was out making weekend house calls.

It would have been no problem had the boy known what patient his dad was visiting. Back then the boy did not even need to dial local phone numbers – he would just pick up the telephone and tell the woman operator (it was always a pleasant woman) the name of any person in town and she would connect them simple as that, the operator all the while chatting with the boy until the other person answered.

Tearfully, helplessly, anxiously the boy watched out the front window at 210 Henry Street for his dad to get home.

“I was so scared for Queenie,” that boy, now 87, recalls.

At long last the boy’s dad – my Grandpa Ansel – came home. It proved to be a life-changing “house call.” Ansel put down his well-worn black leather doctor’s bag and checked out his critical “patient.”

Immediately he suspected poisoning and took out a bottle of ether he kept in his medical bag for emergencies such as putting a patient to sleep before setting a broken bone.

Humming softly, Ansel gently held an ether-soaked cloth over Queenie’s snout in the same gentle, caring fashion he used to calm a frightened child crying in pain until the anesthesia took its hold.

The ether-induced unconsciousness temporarily stopped Queenie’s potentially deadly seizures, but when the potion wore off the fierce convulsions would return. It was imperative to keep the dog asleep until the poison could hopefully run its course; however, a continuous does of ether would itself prove fatal.

Hence, Ansel had to constantly monitor the dog’s breathing and administer a brief whiff of ether when necessary. By doing so he was able to keep Queenie precariously balanced on a high wire between slumber and seizures.

Throughout the long night, Ansel kept vigil by the ill dog’s side while the boy kept vigil by his country-doctor-turned-veterinarian father’s side. Soon, Ansel had two sleeping heads on his lap, albeit only one required ether’s aid.

“The next day Queenie was better,” Pop shares, his voice filled with marvel and gratitude all these years later. “She was the only one of all the poisoned dogs to live. The only one. All because of my dad.”

And here is the most important thing. Pop adds: “That dog, that night, changed my life. Right then I promised myself I was going to become a doctor, just like my dad.”

Happy Father’s Day to that boy who kept his promise.

*

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

Check 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”

Column: Maya Angelou remembered

by Woody

Hers was ‘The Voice of God’

 

“What’s your favorite book you have ever read?” is nearly impossible to answer. One’s honest response may change if asked again even an hour later.

 

1-maya

May Angelou: “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”

And yet if you alter the question ever so slightly – “What is your favorite book you have ever listened to?” – I can answer with certainty and sincerity and consistency: “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” on audio book narrated by its author, Maya Angelou.

 

On the written page, this memoir is a modern classic. Read aloud by Angelou, it is poetry.

 

Decades ago, James Facenda gained fame as the bass narrator of NFL Films and earned the nickname “The Voice of God.” With apologies to the late, great Facenda, Maya Angelou made you believe god is a She.

 

The great writer and poet, who passed away on May 28 at age 86, could have read a phonebook aloud and made it enthralling. Or the nutritional facts on a cereal box. Yes, hers was “The Voice of God.”

 

Too, Angelou seemed to have Her wisdom and grace.

 

I saw Angelou speak in person only once, at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. It was about a decade ago, but I vividly remember her sitting regally in an overstuffed chair on stage and magically making it seem like she was having a one-on-one visit with each of the 3,000-plus in attendance.

 

In essence, she was our elegant host for the evening and yet one of the stories she shared that has stayed with me was about the importance of being a gracious guest.

 

I forget precisely what impoverished village she was visiting in a distant land, but her hosts served a fancy porridge for dinner. Upon taking her first spoonful, Angelou realized the “raisins” were alive.

 

The second impulse in such a situation – the first being to gag – is to spit out the wriggling intruders. Angelou did a third thing, an amazing and rare thing: she swallowed that unappetizing mouthful and then the next until it was all gone.

 

You see, Angelou realized she had been given an honorary meal that her host considered a delicacy. To decline, even politely, would be an insult. And so Maya Angelou behaved as if she were dining on her favorite five-star cuisine.

 

I have thought of this life lesson from Angelou over the years when hearing people complain to a hostess that they can’t eat this or that or the other. I mean, if Angelou could affably eat some squirming “raisins” perhaps those of us who are particular about what we do – and don’t – eat could (unless we have a true medical restriction) politely tolerate a smidgen of dairy, gluten, sugar or whatever.

 

And yet, the opposite also holds true: I believe Angelou would have gracefully wanted to provide a gluten-free, lactose-free or a vegetarian dish to her guests. To be sure, one gets the feeling Angelou lived the words she preached, such as:

 

“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”

 

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”

 

“When you leave home, you take home with you.”

 

“As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.”

 

 “You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing.”

 

“A friend may be waiting behind a stranger’s face.”

 

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”

 

“When you learn, teach; when you get, give.”

 

And: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

 

Somewhere, in some distant land, there are people who feel like Maya Angelou loved the authentic local meal they served her. Actually, all around the globe are people who remember feeling her rare grace.

 

Indeed, the quote from Maya Angelou that seems most fitting in the wake of her passing are the words she said upon Nelson Mandela’s death: “Our planet has lost a friend.”

 

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

 

Check 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”