Monthly Archives: September 2016

Father of the Bride, Part II

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!

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Masterpiece Day of Masterpiece Days

When my son was seven, he and I hiked to the summit of Yosemite Falls where we triumphantly enjoyed day-old pizza, warm soda and a heavenly view of the magnificent valley below. As I tucked him into bed that night, the tired little Mountain Boy said, “Daddy, this was the best day of my life.”

It was a masterpiece day, to be certain, but I have always felt there is no “best” day, no single day that is the ultimate masterpiece above all others. Rather, the very best days are different hues in a rainbow.

That day on the mountain was a beautiful hue of sky blue.

September 4th, three Sundays past, the glorious yellow of a field of sunflowers was added to my life’s rainbow. More accurately, of a church aisle decorated with sunflowers and a matching bridal bouquet.1_daldadaislewalk

I had not planned to do a follow-up column on my daughter’s wedding after having written about it the day before vows were exchanged. But so many people have requested one that, to borrow the signature phrase from the late radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, here is “the rest of the story.”

A friend, who had already walked a church aisle in my wedding wingtips, told me it would be one of the top five days of my life. By evening’s end, I realized he had understated matters. Indeed, contrary to my earlier proclamation, I dare say it was the best day of my life.

I say this without diminishing my other all-time favorite days, the gorgeous reds and blues and golds in my life’s rainbow. I say this because this single masterpiece day had me reliving many, many masterpiece days.

For example, walking my 29-year-old daughter down the aisle, her hand in my arm, brought to mind walking her to the first day of kindergarten; our hand-in-hand evening walks around the neighborhood when she was young; our own hikes in Yosemite when she was a little older.

Seeing her holding the bridal bouquet of sunflowers, which have always been her favorite, had me reliving her 16th birthday when I surprised her at school with a bouquet of 16 sunflowers.

It was not only hues relating to my daughter that enveloped me. That “best” day climbing Yosemite Falls also resurfaced as the Mountain Boy, now 26, stood tall at the alter beside his big sister as her Man of Honor. The masterpiece day when he delivered the commencement speech at his college graduation flashed to memory as he charismatically gave a heartfelt toast to the bride and groom.

All weddings remind me of my own, but this one did so far more than all others because it was on my wife’s and my anniversary date. Too, the two brides – 34 years past, and present – share the same beauty and radiance.

On and on, my life’s rainbow hues shined everywhere on this masterpiece of masterpiece days.

As I walked my daughter down the aisle, not only did countless images of her – from the day she was born, through her youth, now into young womanhood – flip through my mind’s photo album, but the emotions of each page resurfaced as well. My eyes, like my heart, overflowed as this collage of moments made this the best moment of all.

And then came our father-daughter dance, 3 minutes and 50 seconds of just she and I alone on the dance floor as Tim McGraw’s “My Little Girl” played, and somehow this was an even greater moment still.

A number of people asked me afterward what my little girl and I were talking about, crying about, laughing about intimately out there on the dance floor, and my answer was this: “Everything.”

I will share one specific thing Dallas whispered to me a little earlier, in the church as I escorted her down the aisle to her new husband, because I think there is something universal in the personal: “Daddy, of all the walks we have taken, this one is my favorite.”

Mine, too, Dally. It was a walk on a rainbow.

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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_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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“Hello, this is Vin Scully . . .”

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! 

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End of an Era Stirs Dodger Blues

            The phone rang and my wife answered and the voice on he other end of the line was unmistakable even before the caller identified himself.

“Hello, this is . . .”

Vin Scully was returning my call. However, I had not mentioned to my wife that I was trying to set up an interview and since it is not every day that The Voice of the Dodgers phones home, my wife was caught off guard.1scully

“You aren’t Vin Scully,” she said, amused, thinking it was one of my friends pulling a prank.

And she hung up.

The phone rang again, again the golden voice asked for me, and this time my wife realized her embarrassing mistake.

A few days later, I didn’t interview Scully so much as I pulled up a chair in the Dodger Stadium press box and listened, enchanted, to his storytelling. At one point, he mentioned having just read “The Professor and the Madman” about how the Oxford English Dictionary was compiled by two men – one turning out to be an insane murderer. It struck me, as Scully spun the synopsis, that he could read a random page from the dictionary and make it a listening pleasure on the radio.

About a year after formally meeting Scully we crossed paths a second time at a gala dinner – washing hands in the restroom. Remarkably, he remembered my name, but the greater display of his peerless people skills was his insistence I come meet his wife.

I have been reading The Star for the better part of four decades, writing in its pages for more than a quarter century, and in all this time I cannot recall a more terrific on-going feature, “Peanuts” included, than the daily “Visions from Vin” compiled by Jim Carlisle chronicling Scully’s life and career. The sports-section serial came about because, after being the rivet holding the franchise together for the past 67 seasons, Scully is hanging up his mic following the Dodgers’ regular-season finale in two weeks.

While the gems Carlisle has uncovered from various books, magazines and newspaper interviews have been enjoyable, even more so have been the personal encounters with “Vin” shared by local readers. The common denominator of their remembrances is this: the next time Scully is rude to someone will also be the very first time.

Scully’s friendliness is authentic.

“I enjoy people, so I don’t mind autograph requests at all,” Scully told me. “Why not sign? They’re paying me a compliment by asking.”

And what are some of the stranger “compliments”?

“I’ve signed a lot of baseballs, as you can imagine,” he answered. “But also golf balls and even a hockey puck, which is sort of strange. Paper napkins seem popular, even dirty napkins – I think it’s all they have on hand. I don’t expect them to keep it, but I sign anyway because hopefully they will keep the moment.”

As personal tale after tale shared in “Visions from Vin” attest, these moments are indeed kept, safely wrapped in red velvet in each person’s mind.

One more red-velvet moment. Our interview concluded, I asked Scully if he would put me at the plate in Dodger Stadium. Pat Riley once diagramed for me the Lakers’ “Fist Up” play to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and my goodness how I wish I had kept that doodled napkin. Even more, however, I wish I had recorded Scully’s imaginary calling of my Major League at-bat against the great fireball-throwing Bob Gibson.

No matter, for I can hear it in my mind’s ears yet, working the count full before Scully ended my fantasy with a wink, so to speak: mighty Woody struck out. It was perfect.

To borrow from Ernest Thayer’s famous poem, “Casey at the Bat,” come game’s end on Oct. 2, the tale will be this: “Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright; the band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light; and somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout . . .”

. . . but there is no joy in Dodgerville, mighty Vinny has called his final out.

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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_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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Pocketful of “Selfie” Notes

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! 

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Thoughts on “On Time” and More

A pocketful of “selfie” thoughts jotted down the past few weeks . . .

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A story headlined “5 Minutes Early is on Time; On Time is Late; Late is Unacceptable” recently caught my eye – and fortunately didn’t make me late for anything.

While I generally agree punctuality is a virtue, this is not ironclad. As Einstein said, time is relative, so here is my “On Time” theory:1einstein

Yes, 5 minutes early is on time for a work meeting; but5 minutes early for a doctor’s appointment is wasting your own valuable time; and 5 minutes early for a dinner party is rudely unacceptable.

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When you see a car out on the roads with a dented fender or door, or both, you often aren’t surprised why after a couple blocks of seeing the way the driver drives.

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While I am still awaiting official approval for the naming of a race horse in my honor – first choice from a reader vote-in contest being “Masterpiece Day” followed by runner-up “Streakin’ Woody” – I already have a four-legged friend named after me, sort of.

Stan Whisenhunt, my first managing editor at the Star, wrote to me the other day: “You might be interested to know that we have a wonderful little Jack Russell Terrier named Woody.”

Keeping my ego from inflating like a balloon, he poked a needle: “He already had that name when we got him,” but then kindly added, “and I wasn’t about to change it.”

I consider that a namesake. Now I need to get a sandwich named after me, perhaps “The DagWoody”?

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The Tennessee Volunteers are my new adopted college football team. Specifically, I am rooting for former Star sportswriter Rhiannon Potkey to have a terrific team to cover in her debut season as the beat writer for the Knoxville News Sentinel.

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My two cents on the Colin Kaepernick kerfuffle: Patriotism does not mean you cannot find fault with your country, nor or that you must remain silent. To the contrary, social change and progress has rarely happened without protest. Ergo, protesting is patriotic.

And even if you are angered by Kaepernick’s method of taking a stand – by sitting, or kneeling, during the pregame nation anthem – his non-violent protest has been remarkably successful in creating a national discussion without inconveniencing others via a shutdown freeway or clogged city street requiring police intervention.

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My 2 cents on the 805: Break up the area code and thus BRIEFLY annoy a segment of residents and disturb a few businesses that incorporate 805 in their name, rather than ENDLESSLY inconvenience everyone by having to dial 10-digit numbers for local calls.

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The other evening I happened upon a PBS episode of “California’s Gold” and was once more reminded that we all should strive to embrace travel and new experiences and meeting people with half the curiosity and enthusiasm the show’s iconic host, the late Huell Howser, always exhibited.

Indeed, his lasting legacy is as an AMAAAAZING inspiration to see life through new eyes.

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Speaking of inspiring, here’s an update on Francelia Teran, whose long and unstoppable educational journey I chronicled here in late May after she graduated from CSU Channel Islands with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology:

Fran has been accepted into the Clinical Psychology Master’s program at Antioch University Santa Barbara for this Fall quarter.

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About the nicest thing you can do for a friend is an unexpected kindness for one of their kids or spouse.

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Wisdom is generally shared by elders to younger people, but the exchange can go the other way as evidenced by a thank-note recent Ventura High graduate Nestor Rodriguez sent me and concluded with this nugget:

“If I could offer some advice it would be to remember to get lost once in while. And also remember what it was like to be a teen and a kid, a time when your were basically nonexistent.”

Now that this column is finished, I’m going to put my play clothes on and go get lost in an adventure.

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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_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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Words From Father of the Bride

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! 

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Old ‘Two Trees’ and One Young Couple

For the past 34 years, come Sunday afternoon, my wife has been The Most Beautiful Bride I Have Ever Seen – in person, in photos, in the movies.

But at 4 o’clock tomorrow, on our Sept. 4 anniversary date, my much-better-half will relinquish this title – or, at the very least, now share it. And she will not at all mind me saying as much.

1DalAlTble

Dallas and Allyn, Hollywood name “Dallyn.”

Our little girl is getting married.

I say “little girl” purposely instead of “daughter” because I am reminded of the toast my wife’s father gave at our wedding. Actually, he sang his toast, the

song “Sunrise, Sunset” from “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Here are a few key couplets:

“Is this the little girl I carried, / Is this the little boy at play?

“I don’t remember growing older, / When did they?

“They look so natural together. / Just like two newlyweds should be.”

I, too, don’t remember growing older, but I have not forgotten this wedding-related memory of the little girl I carried. When she was very young, she once asked my wife, a hint of hurt in her voice: “Mommy, why wasn’t I at yours and daddy’s wedding?”

Since we couldn’t share our wedding day with her, it seems only fair to do so with our charmed anniversary date.

Returning to music, another lyric has been stuck in my head leading up to The Big Day. This lyric is from the Jason Mraz song “Quiet,” which my soon-to-be-son-in-law – who, it should be noted, had never before played the guitar – spent months learning to strum, and sing, for a proposal serenade.

The album is appropriately titled “Yes,” which was my daughter’s happy answer.

The lyric goes: “Heartbeats rise, heartbeats fall / Will you be my constant through it all?”

“Through it all” – that is the key for love, isn’t it?

“Through it all” also reminds me of a metaphor I once heard that employs two trees to illustrate a successful marriage. Even though her wedding is in the Bay Area rather than her hometown, the specific image I conjure up is our beloved landmark “Two Trees” holding sentinel high atop their hill overlooking Ventura below with the Pacific Ocean and the Channel Islands in the distance.

The metaphor goes like this: Newlyweds are like two trees growing beside one another. The trees will enjoy sunshine and their leaves will blossom.

Even the best of marriages, however, will sometimes experience fierce winds – and this is good because the two trees learn to lean upon one another.

More sunshine and gentle rains will bring more blossoms, and perhaps the two trees will bear fruit, and their leafy canopies will provide cooling shade, and their branches may even cradle a nest or three.

But sooner or later drought will arrive – and this, too, is good because through the adversity the two trees will dig their roots deeper into the soil.

Eventually, with the truest love, the two trees will grow tall and strong with roots that not only reach deep and wide, but actually entwine and fuse together. And the day comes, after years and years of a wonderful marriage, when the couple realizes they are one tree, not two.

And so, after their vows have been pledged and their rings exchanged and their first kiss as husband and wife shared; after they walk down the aisle together and dance together and ceremonially cut the wedding cake together; when it is my time, as the father of the bride, to offer a toast to the newlyweds, here is what I am going to say:

“Dallas and Allyn, I wish you glorious sunrises, and warm afternoons, and evenings with Pacific Ocean sunsets as breathtaking as those that Ventura’s ‘Two Trees’ enjoy.

“Also, however, I wish you some challenging winds along your life journey together, and days of drought too, so that your roots will grow deep and strong and spread wide until they entwine and fuse.

“But mostly, of course, I wish you gentle rains and moonlit nights and warm sunshine – lots and lots of sunshine.”

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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_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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