Monthly Archives: March 2015

Column: A Stew of Thoughts

by Woody

My new memoir WOODEN & ME is available here at Amazon

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Thoughts on This, That, the Other

Nobody asked me, but here goes anyway. . .

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I don’t understand the appeal of the new Apple Watch that requires a person to also carry an iPhone in order to activate all the watch’s features, such as tracking physical activity and alerting a person via vibration when texts arrive.

1dicktracyApple didn’t ask me, but alert me when it finally makes a wristwatch that is a phone – you know like Dick Tracy had 80 years ago!

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Congratulations to Ventura County four-peat champion Westlake High School for placing 20th in the state Academic Decathlon.

Nobody asked me, but I would like to see academic all-stars get the same media coverage when they decide which college they will take their talented minds to as blue-chip prep athletes receive on national signing day.

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Hollywood and theater chains didn’t ask me, but how about if they cut the 20 minutes of coming attractions by half and show some of the Oscar-nominated Best Short Animated Films we never get to see?

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I hadn’t watched a national evening news broadcast on one of the three major networks for a while and when I did recently my takeaway on all the fluff was this: #WalterCronkiteIsSad.

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If somebody asked me if I wanted a bacon and raspberry jelly-topped hotdog on a Krispy Kreme doughnut bun I would think they were messing with me.

But “The Krispy Kreme Donut Dog” really is a mess of a concoction offered at Fawley Stadium in Wilmington, Del., home of the single-A Blue Rocks.

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Add Krispy arteries: Not to be outdone, for $7 fans attending Phoenix International Raceway can buy a 900-calorie “CARBuretor Crunch” which is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich encrusted in Cap’n Crunch and topped with bacon.

Only 131 days until the 2015 Ventura County Fair opens!

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Nobody asked me, but my personal list of Best Clam Chowder in Ventura County has a new No. 1 with Garman’s Pub in Santa Paula leapfrogging Beach House Fish at the Ventura Pier, Lure Fish House in downtown Ventura, and Andria’s Seafood at the harbor.

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I love how a friend of mine recently had a $7 breakfast at a small-town diner and left a $20 bill, noting of the waitress’s reaction: “Her 13-dollar smile made my day!”

A few days later another friend asked a Girl Scout how many boxes of cookies she had left and, told 84, bought all of them. I would have loved to see that $336 smile.

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Congrats and good luck to 805 community treasure Josh Spiker for taking over the Tri-Running store in Camarillo which he has coolly renamed Mile 26 Sports.

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Congratulations also to the 805’s Mustang Marketing, and thanks to all who contributed, for giving more than 300 sleeping bags to the homeless.

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Charlie Sifford, The Jackie Robinson of Golf who recently passed away at age 92, once told me when I asked if he regretted being born too soon to play on the then-segregated PGA Tour in his prime, answered: “I don’t regret being born too soon, I’m just thankful I was born at all.”

A great lesson in perspective for all of us.

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Speaking of thankfulness, a story earlier this week in my favorite newspaper included this quote from a grandmother, who has been living in a crowded trailer with her daughter and four grandchildren, after a county assistance program helped the family move into a four-bedroom house in Simi Valley:

“To us, this is a mansion. Running water, we are very rich.”

How rich does her gratitude make you feel?

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Art Linkletter was only half right with his old show “Kids Say The Darndest Things” – so do senior citizens.

During the Q&A portion of my recent talk about John Wooden at “The Californian” Ventura Convalescent Hospital, after questions about basketball and Coach’s religious beliefs, a woman raised her hand enthusiastically and asked: “Can I go to the bathroom now?!”

Quoting one of my favorite Woodenisms, I said: “Be quick, but don’t hurry.”

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

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck 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: Stan Smith stands tall

by Woody

My new memoir WOODEN & ME is also available here at Amazon

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Ojai to Wimbledon, Stan Smith shined

Nearly two decades before fictional Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella built his “Field of Dreams,” a Court of Dreams was laid down in the middle of an Ohio cornfield for the inaugural 1970 Buckeye Open – now the ATP Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati.

The green hardcourt was built and they came – Arthur Ashe, Charles Pasarell, Tom Gorman, an aging Pancho Gonzales, and that year’s eventual singles champion, Bob Lutz.

However, it was Lutz’s doubles partner out of the University of Southern California, Stan Smith, who made the quickest – and most lasting – impression upon me.1stansmith

I was a 10-year-old rookie ball boy working the very first match of the pro tournament. Like Smith, my forte was at net where I was quick and confident. But unlike the tall, lanky, blond Californian, I was not falling prey to my own miscues. The opening set was over quickly as Smith didn’t win a game.

In the second set, however, the three-time All-American from USC and 1968 NCAA singles champion found his form. Unleashing aces instead of double faults, put-away volleys and laser-guided passing shots instead of unforced errors, Smith won the second set as fleetly as he had lost the first. Ray Ruffels, a lefty out of Australia, suddenly became Ray Ruffled as Smith ran out the match, 0-6, 6-0, 6-0.

Walking off the court my new idol paused to sign “Good luck, Stan Smith” on the brim of my tennis hat. A week later I got more than an autograph. I scored one of Smith’s rackets – a custom Wilson Jack Kramer Pro Staff model, weighted “Heavy” with an oversized 4-7/8 grip.

On match point of the doubles final, Smith hit an overhead a fraction high of the sweet spot and the wooden racket head collapsed like a dry leaf. Still, the shot had enough power to win the point and give the title to Smith and Lutz.

Before shaking hands with their opponents at the net, Smith handed me his splintered racket. It was like having Babe Ruth give you a cracked bat before his home-run trot.

Behind a serve that came out of the treetops and a net game so monstrous that Romanian star Ilie Nastase nicknamed him “Godzilla,” the mustachioed Smith soon rose to No. 1 in the world. He won the 1971 U.S. Open. He won Wimbledon in 1972. He won the prestigious year-end WCT Finals twice.

Too, Smith was Mr. Clutch in Davis Cup play, going 15-5 in singles and 20-3 in doubles (13-1 with Lutz) while setting a record by personally clinching the Cup five times.

Stanley Roger Smith was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987 but his credentials date back to The Ojai Tennis Tournament “Where Champions Are Discovered” and where he won the 1964 Boys’ Interscholastic singles title and added three Collegiate singles crowns, two Collegiate doubles titles and one Open Doubles championship.

More than a half-century after his first appearance at The Ojai, Smith will be back at this year’s 115th edition of the prestigious event. On April 23 he will attend the traditional Thursday Night BBQ and on April 24 will be the guest of honor at a special reception from 5:30 to 7:30 at the Ojai Vineyard Tasting Room to raise funds for capital improvements to the tournament. Tickets can be purchased online at: www.ojaitourney.org.

“The main goal, of course, was to play on the main Libbey Park courts,” Smith, now 68, recently recalled. “That was really special.”

The Pasadena native who now resides in Hilton Head Island, S.C. where he runs his own junior tennis academy, continued: “And the orange juice stand was the other highlight. It’s funny how certain things stand out in your mind.”

Funny indeed. When he was losing that six-love set to Ray Ruffels, this is what stands out in my mind: Stan Smith argued a line call – that had gone in his favor and ultimately gave the point to his opponent.

I think of that whenever I look at that broken keepsake racket hanging on my wall to this day.

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

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck 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: Sweet and Sour Tale

by Woody

My new memoir WOODEN & ME is also available here at Amazon

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True Tale of the Sweet Meatloaf

News item: The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recently recommended that no more than 10 percent of daily calories – roughly 12 teaspoons – should come from added sugar.

Americans currently consume more than twofold that sweetness, which sounds like a lot unless you compare it to the 1960s when 1sugarcrsipkids’ diets consisted of the four basic food groups: meat, potatoes, dairy, and sugar. The ratio most commonly followed was five percent, five percent, ten percent and eighty percent.

A typical breakfast in The Sixties consisted of Super Sugar Crisp, Frosted Flakes, Cocoa Puffs, Froot Loops or cardboard-like Wheaties, the latter requiring adding six heaping spoonfuls of sugar on top in order to reach food group nutritional goals.

Indeed, if there wasn’t syrupy undissolved nectar at the bottom of the cereal bowl afterwards, you had not added enough sugar. Similarly, Tang – the drink of astronauts! – and Nestles Quick were best mixed by tripling the directions for the number of spoonfuls recommended.

Since my two older brothers, younger sister, and I could never agree on one cereal, when we went to Grandpa Ansel’s house for the weekend we were greeted with a mega-pack of single-serving boxes featuring a dozen different kinds. We would “draft” the mini-boxes by taking turns. Trades – and fights – followed. Only Risk and Monopoly were more contentious.

Cold cereal also made a great lunch when we grew tired of bologna on white Wonder Bread, peanut butter and jelly on white Wonder Bread, or hotdogs on white Wonder Bread.

Too, many a night at the dinner table when Pop said we had two choices – “Take it or leave it!” – regarding liver and lima beans or some other culinary punishment, we proved him wrong with a third choice: Cereal!

This is not to suggest Mom was a bad cook. She was terrific. I have yet to taste the equal of her spaghetti sauce, although Pop recently revealed her secret ingredient, I kid you not: a little sugar.

In The Sixties the granulated white stuff was considered as magically healthy as penicillin. Mary Poppins even advised in song: “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.”

Mom’s meatloaf – despite containing no sugar so far as I know – was legendary. This is not hyperbole. For some reason, perhaps the gross humor of three young sons rubbing off on her, when serving meatloaf Mom always mentioned she had mixed it with her bare feet, much like a winemaker stomping grapes.

This family joke – “gag” is perhaps the more appropriate word choice – soon had us boys delightedly asking, with feigned hope, if Mom had played tennis earlier in the day. To which she would playfully answer: “Yes, three sets, and I didn’t wash my feet afterwards so the meatloaf should be especially tasty tonight!”

One afternoon my best friend Dan was over and when dinnertime neared he phoned home to see what his mom was cooking. I asked my mom the same question. It was a tactic we routinely employed to decide where we wanted to eat. This time my house had the best menu.

1meatloafWhile washing our hands I mentioned that I hoped my mom hadn’t washed her feet before making the meatloaf and naturally Dan looked at me quizzically. When I explained how she mixed the meatloaf with her stinky toes, he of course did not believe me.

As we sat down at the dinner table, as if on cue, one of my big brothers asked Mom how smelly her feet were today. Mom, also as if rehearsed for this very moment, enthusiastically replied she had played an extra set of tennis because she knew Dan might be staying for dinner and she wanted the meatloaf to be extra delicious.

Dan, queasily but earnestly, asked: “Uh, Mrs. Woodburn” – in the 1960s kids didn’t know grown-ups’ first names, much less address a parent by one – “you don’t really use your bare feet, do you?”

Mom replied deadpan: “Why of course I do, Dan. Doesn’t your mom?”

I am certain it was not the first time Dan had Super Sugar Crisp for dinner.

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

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck 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: Payphone Slot Machine

by Woody

My new memoir WOODEN & ME is also available here at Amazon

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Hung Up On Saving a Sweet Dime

Anyone with a Facebook page or their own blog will find this hard to believe, but in the 1960s there were no personal computers. Also no VCRs, much less DVDs or DVRs. No microwave ovens or cell phones.

Largely no parental supervision, either.1payphone

Indeed, The Sixties seems a prehistoric era. We “dialed” numbers on rotary phones, listened to “records” and newfangled “eight-track” tapes, and if your car broke down or ran out of gas you had to find a telephone booth (Google it) which cost a dime to make a local call.

Usually a dime. My oldest brother discovered that if you hung up a payphone the very millisecond someone answered on the other end, the automated switchboard perceived the call had not gone through and your dime would drop into the change slot.

Hence, Oldest Brother told Mom that when she answered the phone and no one was there, it meant he needed to be picked up from school, football practice or a friend’s house.

One problem. This required Mom to know where Oldest Brother was. In The Sixties, 99.2 percent of parents did not concern themselves with such trivial matters as knowing the whereabouts of their children between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.

My two older brothers and I could go next door to use power tools unsupervised, ride our bikes without helmets across town to the comic book store, or hop on a boxcar with hobos and so long as we were home by eight o’clock there would be no questions asked. Most likely, we would not have even been noticed missing.

Frequently as not, when Oldest Brother phoned home and quickly hung up Mom went to the wrong place to pick him up. She would waste a dollar of gasoline driving around town to find Oldest Brother, who was thrilled to have saved a dime.

More than once Mom went to the right place to get Oldest Brother only to learn had not called for a ride home yet – his “secret code” had been a wrong number hang-up. Amazingly, these miscommunications never seemed to ruffle Mom.

Even running out of gas, in a downpour, did not get Mom steamed up. It helped that the faux-wood-paneled station wagon sputtered dead at an intersection with gas stations on three of the four corners. An attendant across the street saw Mom wave in distress out the driver’s window and came running through the rain to the rescue with a gas can.

Amazingly, Mom happily escaped this “I Love Lucy”-like madcap situation without even getting wet. She made us three boys in the backseat swear to secrecy because Pop was forever admonishing her for acting as though “E” on the gas gauge stood for “Enough.”

As you might imagine, the moment Pop came home from work that evening we rushed to tell him all about our adventure; he just shook his head because he knew Mom had not learned her lesson.

Back to Oldest Brother’s hang-up ploy. The biggest problem came after he taught Middle Brother and me how to turn the payphone into a slot machine with a dime payout. Now Mom had no idea who had hung up on her, much less where we were.

1-pixieAll this hassle to save a dime might seem nuts, but back then ten cents bought a Snickers, or a six-pack of mini-Coke bottles made out of paraffin and filled with colored sugar water, or a roll of chalky Necco Wafers, or ten Pixie Stix paper straws filled with granulated sugar flavored grape, lemon-lime or cherry.

So when the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recently recommended that no more than 10 percent of daily calories – roughly 12 teaspoons – should come from added sugar, I had to shake my head. In The Sixties, only 10 percent of a kid’s calories didn’t come from sugar.

Today, Americans gulp down an average of 22 teaspoons of added sugar daily, nearly twofold the new recommendation – or about the amount my brothers and I ate between calling home and when Mom finally picked us up.

To be continued next Saturday…

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

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck 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”