Monthly Archives: June 2018

Wishing Clouds Clear for Sunshine

by Woody

Is your Club or Group looking for an inspiring guest speaker or do you want to host a book signing? . . . Contact Woody today!

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1StrawberriesCoverWooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upFor a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” mail a check for $25 to:

Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

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Wishing Clouds Clear for Sunshine

The email from Judith, a Ventura resident, began warmly, “Dear Woody, I am one of your longtime readers . . .”

As is the frequent modus operandi, however, the butter up was followed by an appeal for a favor. Often the request is for me to write a column reviewing a self-published book or perhaps to ask my readers to donate to a classroom/club/team. That sort of thing.

Judith’s cause is her nephew. Rather, her special-needs nephew’s caregiver driver who has seen sunny times erased by storm clouds.

Unfortunately, I have found it necessary as a rule to turn down all such requests lest my general interest column become a weekly book review or fundraising bugle. Too bad, because Judith’s plea begs for a happy ending.

Riffy, Judith’s 26-year-old nephew, is autistic. His driver is named Sunshine, which seems both appropriate and mocking.

Riffy and Sunshine

Riffy and Sunshine

Mocking because when she was 12, Sunshine lost her mother.

Mocking because Sunshine had to retire early from her career as a chemist after being diagnosed with Lupus.

More so, however, Sunshine is appropriately descriptive. For example, her home has become affectionately known as “The Sunshine House” because of her affinity for welcoming those in need of a hot meal and warm bed.

Sunshine’s caring rays filled her car as well. After leaving the periodic table in her rearview mirror, she started driving senior shut-ins to doctor appointments, shopping, and other errands.

Riffy, too, began relying on her to drive him 40 miles to his daily six-hour habilitation program; Sunshine, in turn, relies on her 2015 minivan to help Riffy. All this chauffeuring has caused Sunshine to exceed the mileage allowed by her vehicle lease, meaning she must now buy it.

Roll in the storm clouds.

Ironically, the minivan Sunshine uses for acts of kindness driving others might be lost because of her kindness: a while back she unselfishly, and unwisely, co-signed a lease for a friend who needed a car to get to work and co-signed a loan for another friend to get a place to live.

You guessed it: the latter was evicted and the former was late in making payments. Hence, Sunshine’s once-excellent credit rating nosedived and she has been unable to get the new financing she needs.

Enter Riffy’s parents, Joan and Tom, who have started a Go Fund Me page (www.gofundme.com/sunshine-driving-service) with a goal of raising the $23,440 needed to pay off the minivan.

Their real goal is to give a little sunshine to both Sunshine and Riffy, who was born with a rare genetic mutation CDK13.

“As a result,” Joan told me, “Riffy has Intellectual Disability, Autism, ADHD and a Developmental Coordination Disorder.”

She added: “When you become a special-needs parent, you have to also become a special educator, behavior specialist, attorney, activist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, speech therapist, recreation therapist, psychotherapist, not to mention an alchemist, shaman, magician and fixer.”

Sunshine and her husband Joshua, meanwhile, have been godsends.

“Early on, Joshua, who is a Deacon in his Church, told me that if anything happened to Tom and me, Sunshine and he would take care of Riffy,” Joan marvels.

“When Tom had many illnesses over the last two years, Joshua would call and ask if I wanted to have a word of prayer. Sunshine would always tell me to have a ‘blessed day’ and loves Riffy’s eccentricities. Clearly, we got so much more then drivers.”

Clearly, Sunshine’s story is worthy of a rainbow ending. I just hope Judith and Joan and Riffy understand that I can’t start doing fundraising columns. Rules are rules, after all.

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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 Kickstarter Front PhotoCheck 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” …

Nobody Asked, Here Goes Anyway…

by Woody

Is your Club or Group looking for an inspiring guest speaker or do you want to host a book signing? . . . Contact Woody today!

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1StrawberriesCoverWooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upFor a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” mail a check for $25 to:

Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

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Nobody Asked Me, But Here Goes Anyway

Loyal readers of this space well know that I love libraries.

Along with the breathtaking New York Public Library and the Boston Athenaeum, both of which I wrote about recently, and the Library of Trinity College Dublin that left me awestruck a few years ago, I have another new favorite: our local Ocean View Junior High library.

Although it is far more modest than the three cathedrals of books mentioned above, it is nonetheless special as evidenced by its librarian Maria Tapia being honored in Washington, D.C. with a national Inspiring School Employees Award.

How inspiring is Tapia? Students routinely pack the library from before school until after the final bell, including about 100 kids coming in during lunch period.

I wish Tapia could speak to all bureaucrats nationwide when they are tempted to cut library funding at any school.

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I have been thinking about my vintage typewriter-collecting friend, Michael Mariani, who points out that some older models do not have an exclamation point key. Instead, one must take the time and effort to type a single quote mark, backspace, and a period to create an exclamation mark.UnderwoodTypewriter_Painting

Nobody asked me, but I think all computer and smartphone keyboards should delete their exclamation marks and similarly force people to fashion them. This would end the epidemic of people using one, two and even three exclamation marks in a row – !!! – in texts, emails and Tweets.

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Speaking of Tweets, I think most people – especially celebrities and politicians – need a personal social media editor to check their Twitter postings for general ugliness, meanness and worse before being sent out. It would save everyone a lot of pain.

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Nobody asked me, but my five favorite fruits, in order, are: strawberries, raspberries, apples, bananas, and oranges.

However, if I could only choose one fruit, it would be apples!!!

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High school kids look up to professional athletes as role models, but more and more often I believe the reverse should be true.

Case in point occurred recently in Minnesota when Totino-Grace High School pitcher Ty Koehn struck out Mounds View High’s Jack Kocon to end a big playoff game.

As his teammates rushed to the mound to celebrate the victory sending them to the state championships, Koehn – in a video that has gone viral – sidestepped them all and ran to home plate to console Kocon, who has been his friend since childhood.

Koehn told reporters: “Our friendship is more important than just the silly outcome of a game. I had to make sure he knew that.”

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It is said that no one stands taller than when he or she bends down to help a child.

Conversely, no nation shrinks smaller than when it separates infants and young children from their mothers and fathers.

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A kind and anonymous Good Samaritan recently left a smooth beach stone – hand-painted in purple, green, pink and orange and bearing the words “hope will come” – on the brick steps that remain curbside at my dad’s home that burned to the ground in the Thomas Fire.

What a lovely, and powerful, thought: “hope will come.” I wish somehow those three words could have been said to – and, importantly, truly felt and taken to heart by – celebrities Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, as well as every military veteran and teenager and grownup who is currently suffering and contemplating taking their own life.

With that in mind, let me close with this, the Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255. If you or someone you know is hurting, please call and maybe “hope will come.”

 

Father’s Day Story Packs a Punch

by Woody

Is your Club or Group looking for an inspiring guest speaker or do you want to host a book signing? . . . Contact Woody today!

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1StrawberriesCoverWooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upFor a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” mail a check for $25 to:

Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

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Story for Father’s Day Packs a Punch

The photograph is from the early 1940s, black-and-white and slightly overexposed in the outdoor sunlight.

It is of a man, in his early 20s, with a thin mustache and a thick nose. His jaw is square as a brick’s edge. His hair is dark and short and flattened by sweat. His eyes are hidden in shadows.

The man is a boxer. He is in his prime, stomach flat and muscled, shoulders broad and powerful. He is working the speed bag, which is a blur after having just been struck by his left fist.

Jimmy Harvey, an Oak View resident with a gray-and-ginger goatee and bear’s build, cherishes this picture of his father taken between 1942 and 1946 while Roy L. Harvey was in the Navy during World War II.

Jimmy saw the photo for the first time when he was 14 and promptly asked his dad to teach him to fight.

1JimmyHarvey

Jimmy Harvey, who I would not like to box or fight!

“He said, ‘No, you don’t want to learn from Ol’ Canvas Back,” Jimmy recalls clearly a half-century later. “I asked, ‘What does that mean?’ ”

Answered his dad: “In boxing terms it means you spend more time on your back on the canvas than fighting.”

Looking through the prism of time, Jimmy, now a grandfather five times over, understands: “I think the reason Dad never taught me to fight is I used the term ‘fight’ and he used ‘box.’ He boxed for the art of it – I wanted to hurt somebody.”

In truth, Jimmy was the one generally getting hurt.

“I had my nose broken a few times,” he allows. “I wouldn’t back down. I was just stupid. I was getting expelled from high school all the time for fighting.”

The most memorable time Jimmy refused to back down happened not at school, but at home.

“I was 16 and Dad thought I was feeling my oats a little too much,” Jimmy shares. “We squared off, looking each other in the eye, and Dad said: ‘I know what you THINK you can do.’

“I was so mad. I really wanted to pop him and he knew it. He told me, ‘Let ‘er rip.’

“I decided I was going to sucker punch him quick,” Jimmy continues, pantomiming what followed by pounding his right fist into his left palm: “He caught it.”

Awed by the feat still, Jimmy adds: “Dad looked me in the eye and said, ‘You’re not ready.’ That cooled me off a bit.”

Sparring partners, in a manner of speaking, described their relationship. “We were never close,” the son allows. “I was a product of the ’60s and Dad was of the ’30s and ’40s.”

Time has a way of shrinking generation gaps. So does terminal illness. In 1988, at age 68, Roy was in the hospital. As Christmas – and death – approached, Jimmy visited daily.

“It was a race between liver failure and lung cancer,” Jimmy shares, his piercing blue eyes suddenly awash with emotion. “I was with him when he died. That was tough. Uncle Del was there, too.”

Flipping through a photo album at the wake, Del came to the picture of his brother working the speed bag.

“I said, ‘There’s old Canvas Back,’ ” Jimmy retells. “Uncle Del asked me what I’d said?

“I said, ‘Daddy told me he was on his back all the time so they called him Canvas Back.’ ”

Uncle Del replied, and sharply: “Son, I don’t know where you got your information, but your dad was All-Navy two years running.”

Tracing a finger over the grainy boxing photo, Jimmy rejoins: “He must have really been something in the ring.”

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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 Kickstarter Front PhotoCheck 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” …

Travels reach a “Joyous” dead end

by Woody

Is your Club or Group looking for an inspiring guest speaker or do you want to host a book signing? . . . Contact Woody today!

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1StrawberriesCoverWooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upFor a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” mail a check for $25 to:

Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

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Road trip reaches a “Joyous” dead end

Fourth in a series of columns chronicling my recent father-son travels from Paul Revere’s gravesite in Boston to John Steinbeck’s writing cabin in Long Island, and more.

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The lane was narrow and in need of attention, a blend of gravel and dirt and potholes, leading to a dead end.

In my mind’s eye, nevertheless, Bluff Point Lane came into focus like The Yellow Brick Road of Oz. Indeed, at its terminus and on the left, awaited a castle.

A red brick walkway leads from the driveway to the front door of John Steinbeck’s summer home in Sag Harbor, Long Island. My son and I had driven a few odometer clicks shy of 100 miles from his apartment in Manhattan, by way of Theodore Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill “Summer White House” estate, to reach here.

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Reaching my destination at 2 Bluff Point Lane.

More accurately, my journey covered more than 3,000 miles. Having previously visited Steinbeck’s boyhood home in Salinas, California, where his writing career began, I wanted to see its East Coast bookend where the aging author wrote the final manuscripts of his life.

Those closing works include “The Winter of Our Discontent,” which was fittingly set in a fictionalized Sag Harbor named New Baytown, and “Travels with Charley” about a road trip around America that began right here at 2 Bluff Point Lane on Sept. 23, 1960.

Steinbeck and his black poodle Charley’s departure on their 11,000-mile odyssey in a customized green Ford camper pickup had been delayed by a hurricane. Nearly six decades later, my son and I arrived in an orange rental car after driving through a rainstorm.

Auspiciously, the clouds parted just as we parked. Unfortunately, the front door did not open when I knocked; there would be no serendipitous tour inside the private residence. Through the windowed door, however, a prominently displayed framed poster-size black-and-white photo of Steinbeck in his mustachioed youth greeted us.

In town, in a charming bookstore, in a similar oversized frame we had earlier seen a photograph of Steinbeck in his older age. Not surprisingly, an entire shelf was dedicated to books written by this quiet hamlet’s most famous resident.

The most famous resident’s summer residence proved remarkably modest. Forest green when Steinbeck owned it from 1955 until his death in 1968, it is now painted slate grey. Three windows in front are adorned with white shutters while tall timbers adorn the expansive grounds.

One tree is especially noteworthy. Planted by Steinbeck himself directly before the front door as a sentinel for privacy, it has grown so thick of trunk a “Welcome” mat now barely squeezes in between the threshold and tree base.

Steinbeck fittingly named this house on the east end of Long Island “Eden,” yet it was not the castle I sought to sightsee.2SteinbeckCabin

The rightful castle is around back, a stone’s throw away by a strong arm. Specifically, it is a hexagonal outbuilding that Steinbeck called his “writing cabin.” Smaller by half than Henry David Thoreau’s famous 10-by-15-foot cabin at Walden Pond, it is nonetheless a citadel for the imagination with a breathtaking panoramic view of picturesque Bluff Point Cove below.

Skirted by a brick border, the grey wooden cabin’s matching shingle roof rises to a point. Paned white double doors on one side are joined on the other five by white-framed windows to provide 360-degree natural light and inspiration.

Outside, hanging from two hooks above the entrance, a white wooden sign with hand-painted black medieval lettering reads “Joyous Garde,” in honor of Sir Lancelot’s castle.

Within, on a simple built-in plank desktop, is where the Knight of the Keyboard’s magic happened.

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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 Kickstarter Front PhotoCheck 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” …

Road Trip rolls on to T.R.’s House

by Woody

Is your Club or Group looking for an inspiring guest speaker or do you want to host a book signing? . . . Contact Woody today!

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1StrawberriesCoverWooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upFor a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” mail a check for $25 to:

Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

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Penciling in a Thrill on Road Trip

Third in a series of columns chronicling my recent father-son travels from Paul Revere’s gravesite in Boston to John Steinbeck’s writing cabin in Long Island, and more.

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It was like seeing a Stradivarius violin, only better. Imagine eyeballing one of Babe Ruth’s bats – that he lathed himself. Or a paintbrush made by Rembrandt.

Such was the goose-bump thrill I had at the New York Public Library when I came head-to-lead with a pencil made by Henry David Thoreau. Even visiting the great writer’s home in Concord, Massachusetts, three summers past, I had not come across one of his graphite-and-wood handiworks.

Another surprise: the pencil is three-sided, not round.

My arm hairs stood at attention as I imagined Thoreau using this pencil to write down his thoughts about learning to “live deliberately” during his famous stay of two years, two months and two days at Walden Pond.

Serendipity had smiled. To my “collection” of typewriters I have seen that belonged to famous authors I added: “Thoreau’s Pencil*.”

The asterisk is needed because it was not possible for Thoreau to lug a typewriter into the woods in 1845 since the first commercially successful machine did not come out until 1868. Moreover, it is doubtful Thoreau would have used a QWERTY keyboard anyway. “Simplify, simplify” after all.

Enjoying a bully good time at T.R.'s Sagamore Hill.

Enjoying a bully good time at Theodore Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill.

And so Thoreau’s Pencil* joined my list that includes Jim Murray’s 1946 Remington Rand; Thornton Burgess’ 1910 Underwood No. 5; Eleanor Roosevelt’s circa 1904-1905 Smith & Corona L C Smith Super Speed; and John Steinbeck’s Swiss-made circa 1950 Hermes Baby.

Only moments later, also unexpectedly on display in the New York Public Library, came another addition: novelist/screenwriter Terry Southern’s battleship-grey Olympia typewriter.

My collection expanded once more, and once more by surprise, the very next day when my son and I drove 40 miles northeast of the New York Public Library to Oyster Bay, Long Island. Specifically, we visited Theodore Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill home – known also as “The Summer White House” from 1902 through 1908.

With a hilltop view and wide veranda, the three-story Queen Anne-style mansion is grand on the outside. Inside it is no less impressive, its 23 rooms collectively filled to bursting with T.R.’s bully energy, artwork (countless Remington bronze sculptures) and books (8,000 volumes) and hunting trophies shot by “The Old Lion” himself.

Most breathtakingly bully of all the big-game hides, tusks and mounted animals is a massive Cape buffalo head in the entry parlor. Displayed at its actual height were the beast standing, the menacing ebony horns seem ready to charge and gore each visitor.

A different trophy caught my attention upstairs on the third floor. At the end of the hallway in T.R.’s study, which he called “The Gun Room,” a thread linking some past road trips to the New York Public Library now weaved into the present: Theodore Roosevelt’s black-and-gold Remington Standard Typewriter No. 6.

As with his niece Eleanor Roosevelt, I had not thought of T.R. as a writer. This was my great oversight, twice over, for Eleanor authored 28 books while Theodore surpassed that and greatly. Between 1882 (“The Naval War of 1812: Part I”) and 1919 (“Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children”), T.R. penned 47 volumes.

Due east 80 miles from T.R.’s hilltop Eden overlooking Oyster Bay, driving a rental car past the Hampton Bays and nearly to the tip of Long Island, another author’s home awaited us this same day.

This was the trophy destination our entire road trip had been planned around: a famous author’s home and backyard writing cabin he named “Joyous Garde.”

Indeed, the joy was to continue.

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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 Kickstarter Front PhotoCheck 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” …