Monthly Archives: July 2026

Broken In Bone, Not In Spirit

by Woody

Auden, my elfin three-year-old granddaughter, took a tumble the other day and despite landing on plush carpet fractured her left arm.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” Mark Twain said, and a poem in my family annals now includes these couplets: bed and sled, skating fall and basketball.

My daughter, long before she was Auden’s mommy, fell while roller-skating at slow speed and broke her left arm at age 10; a couple of years thereafter, my son, coincidentally also 10 at the time, broke his left arm playing basketball; and when I was 7, I too broke my left arm.

Four fractures, arms each, all in portside rhyme.

A brief trip down memory lane – rather, a sled ride down The Big Hill in my boyhood neighborhood in Ohio. Having reached the speed of a comet, I skidded off course through an icy turn…

CRASH!!!

…into a two-foot-high stout steel pole.

Brave Auden and me…

The pain screaming through my wrist and arm was nearly surpassed by the fear of my dad’s raised-voice scolding when he found out the Flexible Flyer I turned into bent steel and splintered wood – while also splintering my ulna and radius – had been “borrowed” from my friend’s big brother without asking.

At home, including at the table at dinner, I kept my winter coat on to cloak the swelling. Mom asked me to take it off. I kept it on. Dad insisted. Shedding the sleeve over my injured arm felt like peeling the skin off.

Mom, despite being a housewife not an orthopedist, without aid of an X-ray image instantly made an accurate diagnosis: “Oh, honey, you broke your arm!”

To which, family lore has it, I angrily huffed through tears: “I knew you’d say that!”

When I saw Auden seated at her kitchen table after bath time, refusing to put on a shirt because it hurt too much to move her arm, I quietly thought: “Oh, Audie, you broke your arm!” X-rays confirmed my silent diagnosis, albeit with twice the precision: it was fractured in two places.

Two hours in Urgent Care seemed like a week, but Auden waited patiently and bravely as we read books. When her name was finally called, she was greeted by doctors and technicians who not only provided expert medical treatment, they were experts at being friendly and warm and reassuring to a little girl in pain.

I won’t say Auden enjoyed getting X-rays taken (positioning her arm this way and that caused tears to flow anew) or getting a cast put on, but she did like staying up well past her bedtime.

She left Urgent Care with a smile having replaced her tears and with a “snazzy” – her newest word learned from her grandpa – fiberglass cast as colorful as a World Cup soccer jersey, a camouflage pattern of yellow, pink, blue, and green reaching from hand to shoulder.

Today’s casts are indeed snazzier than the plain white plaster ones of my youth, but the throwbacks had one advantage: friends and family could sign them whereas ink doesn’t take well to fiberglass.

It’s funny the small things we sometimes remember, even after half a century has slid by seemingly as fast as a sled down The Big Hill, and this remains indelible to me: my big brother Jimmy doodled a sledder on my cast and wrote: “Fast And Fearless!”

If I could I write on Auden’s slick cast without it smudging, I would quote from Shakespeare’s play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” when Helena says of her friend Hermia: “And though she be but little, she is fierce.”

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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.

Fair Makes Big-Eyed Kids of Us All

by Woody

The 152nd Ventura County Fair opening next week on July 29…

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The John Mellencamp song “County Fair” comes to my mind every summer with one lyric especially making me smile: “Kids with eyes as big as dollars / Rode all the rides.”

That, in a single image, sums up the Ventura County Fair to me – kids getting their thrills on carousels and trains, sky swings and the Tilt-a-Whirl, small roller coasters and the giant Ferris wheel. The latter always makes me think of two little girls.

The first girl, then age 5, went to her first County Fair alone with her father and on the drive home she could be heard softly whispering to herself, “Ferris wheel, Ferris wheel, Ferris wheel,” so as not to forget the name of her favorite of all the rides she rode.

Arriving home, the little girl – now my wife – raced inside and exclaimed: “Mom! I rode the merry-go-round!”

Another cherished Ferris wheel memory is captured in a framed 8-by-10 black-and-white photograph. Snapped candidly by former Star photographer Gary Phelps three decades past, before newspapers became colorful, it still hangs on my daughter’s childhood bedroom wall. Frozen in time, she is 4 years old with excited eyes as big as dollars. She is seated snugly beside her father – me – with one arm around her. We are both smiling as we soar skyward. It was her first VC Fair and made a lasting impression as one of her earliest childhood memories.

It is a magical memory of mine as well for the Fair makes kids of us all.

This year’s Fair theme is “Find Your Fun” and never has a challenge been easier. If not the rides, then the win-a-stuffed-animal games or various exhibits or concerts or culinary delights will give you eyes as big as silver dollars.

Legend has it Babe Ruth played an exhibition game a century ago in the mid-1920s at Seaside Park which is, and has been since 1914, the site for the Ventura County Fair that originated in 1874 at the Pierpont Bluffs. This claim to fame makes the current fairgrounds all the more special. After all, while throwing baseballs at milk bottles on the midway you can imagine yourself trying to strike out “The Sultan of Swat.”

The Fair is also special because of its spinning, dipping, whirling rides with G-forces to make a NASA astronaut’s stomach woozy.

Speaking of woozy, the Fair is special because the food can also make your stomach spin with concoctions that include almost anything imaginable served on a stick, deep-fried, or dipped in chocolate – or all three – and which the Star’s intrepid reporter Tom Kisken bravely samples and shares glutinous gastronomic reviews of annually.

The Fair is special because it serves as an excuse for young parents to play hooky from work for an afternoon.

The Fair is special because of the amazing exhibits of paintings and photography, handmade quilts and home-baked cakes, et cetera and so forth and so on.

The Fair is special because of the midway games, even if the basketball rims are too high and so bent out of round that Stephen Curry would be lucky to sink 1 out of 10.

The Fair is special because the carnies are such colorful characters.

The Fair is special because of the 4-H junior livestock auction and blue-ribbon rabbits the size of English bulldogs.

And the Ventura County Fair is most special of all because of the vertical merry-go-round overlooking the ocean. The seagull’s view atop the seaside Ferris wheel is even more magical if you are sitting beside a kid with eyes as big as silver dollars.

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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.

Don’t Wait for a Retirement Party . . .

by Woody

Chuck Thomas, the legendary columnist and my mentor who preceding me in this space, said more than once in print and also in person: “If there’s someone whose friendship you treasure, be sure to tell them now — don’t wait for a memorial service to say it.”

Chuck walked the talk, I am happy to say and blessed to have personally experienced.

Chuck also wisely told me, again multiple times, that oftentimes the more personal a column is the wider its appeal; that there is macro in the micro; that writing about the general does not resonate as clearly and universally as storytelling about the specific.

Heeding these two bookends of personal and professional advice, here is a toast I gave a few days ago at a retirement party for my beloved dentist Stacy Schmidt.

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Thirty years past, you took over Dr. Sparks’ space

A new dentist now cared for the smile on my face

But one tiny small matter made my concerns fly

My doc, for the first time, was younger than I!

A second woe brought my mood further down

Yikes, you’re a Cougar from the other side of town

Ah, thank goodness your dental school was ’SC

Like Dallas and Greg, a proud Trojan identity

Your heart, however, also runs Bruin blue

John Wooden is the greatest you say to be true

His “Pyramid of Success” I mention today

Because its top block you have scaled all the way

Fillings, veneers, crowns of porcelain and gold

You are the G.O.A.T. it must now be told

Million-dollar smiles you gave patients to show

Alas, darn insurance companies pay far too low

When I turned age forty—shortly ago (wink, wink)

You told me what would make any adult heart sink

“Woody, good pal, your shifting teeth need braces”

Translation: Three years of joining junior-high faces

Brackets and wires, rubber bands, the whole mess

More than once I cursed you in mouth-aching distress 

But slowly and surely I gained a straight grin

Another example of a Doc Stacy win

On vacation in Scotland, Oh my what a trip!

Literally so—I fell and bloodied my lip

My two top middle teeth broke off in disaster

For ten days I needed my dental grandmaster

“You fit right in here,” Lisa soothed with a laugh

But in every photo I hid my gaping-toothed gaffe

The first morning after sleeping in my own bed

“I’ll fit you right in,” your gallantly Maddie said

Alas—hang up your white coat and silence your drill

A new chapter awaits before you’re over-the-hill

Time to travel the globe with camera in hand

Enjoy distant beaches too, and golf traps of sand

Speaking of fairways and tees, clubs and putting greens

May your handicap shrink shrink shrink below the teens

May every rough and all bunkers your shots always miss

And your only “Sandy” time being wifey shared bliss

With deep gratitude—also a sorrowful sigh

To you, our dear friend, we raise toasting glasses high

Wishing for your thumbs to no longer arthritically ache

And joy and adventures on all the roads that you take

    Happy retirement, Stacy, we love you. Slainte!

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    Echoing Chuck’s words, don’t wait for a retirement party to tell a friend that you treasure them — say so now and put a million-dollar smile on their face today.

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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.

Golden Thoughts and Green Flashes

by Woody

In “Tortilla Flats,” John Steinbeck’s first novel of critical acclaim, the great author wrote: “Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.”

As are my thoughts while running any time of the day.

Late afternoon is my preferred time to be fast afoot, after finishing my writing day at the keyboard, and therefore my slow and deep and golden thoughts often stretch into the golden hour of sunset. It is difficult to imagine a day, even one that has already been a masterpiece—but especially a salt-in-the-coffee kind of day—not being made sweeter while savoring a sunset during a run when the sky becomes a child’s finger painting in progress, a kaleidoscope of grape and strawberry colors swirling and flowing Van Gogh-like.

My favorite sunsets are seascapes. Of these, the most magical—and which I have seen only twice, both times while pausing during beach runs—feature a “green flash” when, at the exact instant the sun fully melts into the water’s horizon, there truly is a rare bright-green pinpoint flash of sunlight.

A sunset in Hawaii, albeit with no green flash…

On each occasion—the first running barefoot on the bronze-hued sand in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico; next in training shoes along a two-lane beachside road in Kona, Hawaii—I resumed my run feeling like I had a rising trade wind at my back and Hermes-like wings on my ankles.

On the same run that I saw the green flash in Kona, I momentarily watched two fishermen—one was a fisherboy, actually; grandfather and grandson, I surmised, the latter maybe ten years old. Though they were surfcasting, my thoughts turned to fly-fishing because it is the angling art my grandfather favored and gave me instruction in when I was a fisherboy.

The lessons were less than fully successful as I never mastered the rhythmic ten-to-two-o’clock ideal casting motion of the rod tip. Or, perhaps, what I learned simply took a good long while for me to appreciate because I now think running is my version of fly-fishing, affording respite from life’s busyness; a slice of quietude in a loud world; a brief escape from what needs escaping; time to myself for thoughts that are slow and deep and golden.

When I am out running on a beach or bike path, road or grass field, I am my father’s father patiently casting a hand-tied fly into a brook or stream or pond or lake. “The gods do not deduct from man’s allotted span the hours spent fishing,” Grandpa Ansel liked to say, quoting an old proverb, and this is my adopted rationale as well for my hours spent running—for which I celebrated my 23rd “Streakiversary” earlier this week of having run a minimum of three miles every single day since July 7, 2003.

Playful epigram aside, from time to time I ask myself: Is time spent running time well spent? After all, as Ernest Hemingway poignantly added in a postscript to a letter to a friend: “Time is the least thing we have of.”

My daily hour or two dedicated to running is not precious time misspent, the gods would agree with me I have come to believe, because it leaves me, as Walt Whitman wrote of walking, “enriched of soul.”

More angler wisdom, this time from Henry David Thoreau: “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”

My own flash—green flash!—of insight from my Streak: it is not entirely the run I am after.

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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.

Appreciating What You Will Miss

by Woody

From my column archives, originally running in July of 2012, now updated slightly…

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“My kids. Nick. Spring. Fall. Waffles. The concept of waffles. Bacon.”

These are the first few things writer-filmmaker Nora Ephron listed in her short essay titled “What I Will Miss” in her fine, and final, book: “I Remember Nothing And Other Reflections.”

Also: “A walk in the park. The idea of a walk in the park. The park. Shakespeare in the Park. The bed. Reading in bed.”

It is a superb essay, like all of Ephron’s writing, but when I read it – not in bed, for I am not an in-bed reader – I remember thinking it seemed out of place; she was too young; this piece was for a future book.

I had missed the clues that seem so obvious now, such as the previous essay “What I Won’t Miss” (“Dry skin. E-mail. Funerals. Small print…”) and the Acknowledgements page that concluded, “And also, of course, my doctors.”

Like the marvelous writer she was, Ephron had told us without telling us. She was battling leukemia. A battle she lost the first week of summer in 2012 at age 71.

Here is what I hope, that Ephron wrote “What I Will Miss” long before she first became ill, under a different title, perhaps “What I Love Now.” Such a list is something we should all write, right now, whatever our age, to help us more fully appreciate these things today.

In this spirit here is a short rundown, off the top of my head, of “What I Love Now”…

My four young grandchildren. My two kids and their spouses. My wife. Family and great friends – and Murray, our boxer, who is both. (Murray, sadly, is now on my “What I Miss Now” list.)

The beach. The ocean. “The Old Man And The Sea.”

The Ventura Pier. The Channel Islands. A Pacific sunset with clouds painted in the sky the colors of flames.

Yosemite Falls. Niagara Falls. The fall colors.

Summer. Daylight Saving Time. Watching fireworks on the Fourth of July.

The smell of sunscreen, the smell in the air after it rains, the smell of Thanksgiving all afternoon long.

Fleetwood Mac. The Beatles. The Who. James Taylor.

Running along the beach, any beach; in a park, especially New York’s Central Park; in the sun, in the rain, in a road race; and the adventures of running in a new place.

Every book by my hero John Steinbeck, my daughter Dallas Woodburn, and my dearest of friends Ken McAlpine.

Newspapers. (Sadly, again, these are rapidly joining my “I Miss” list.)

A hot shower. A warm bed. A cold pint. Not in that order.

John Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success” and my favorite Wooden-ism: “Make each day your masterpiece.”

The last moments awake in bed after a long, full, masterpiece day. Even better with the sound of rain on the roof.

The sound of Vin Scully on the radio. (“I Miss.”)

Date nights. Van Gogh’s Starry Night. A personal museum of paintings by my son.

The simple grace and quiet strength of trees and rivers – and some people. People who have empathy and authenticity. Curious people who never stop learning.

Chocolate-chip ice cream. Chocolate-chip cookies. Chocolate chips. Chocolate.

Finishing writing something that I feel is as good as I can do.

Movies, which for this list today seems fitting to pick three by Nora Ephron, even though I get them confused: “When Harry Met Sally”, “Sleepless In Seattle”, and “You’ve Got Mail.”

And yes, waffles instead of pancakes, definitely.

My grandchildren. My kids and their spouses. Lisa. I know I already said this, but I want to emphasize it.

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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.