A Wonderful Bird Is The Pelican

May 19, 2022 by Woody

A wonderful bird is the pelican.

So begins a poem you may be familiar with from your primary school days. Written by Dixon Lanier Merritt, rarely has a line of verse rung truer. Indeed, awed by its magnificent wingspan and graceful flight and fishing skill, the ancient Egyptians worshiped the wonderful pelican as a god.

Sailors, meanwhile, have long embraced pelicans as a spirit animal that will brave fierce storms and rough seas to save them from drowning.

Pelicans certainly are breathtaking to watch, one moment floating high above the ocean then suddenly diving almost vertically, like a kamikaze aircraft at stunning velocity, and folding their wings up tight an instant before plunging into the water to catch a meal.

I bring up these wonderful birds today because my wife recently saw a California brown pelican float down from the sky and land a 3-point shot away from her on the wooden deck of an Airnb beach house at Faria Beach. This was the day leading into the night of the blood moon lunar eclipse and my much-better-half says seeing the pelican so up-close was as thrilling as the distant astronomical sighting.

The pelican encounter was all the more special because Lisa was enjoying another encounter that in recent years has seemed nearly as rare as a lunar eclipse: her childhood nuclear family was together, just the “Original Six” as they dubbed themselves – 90-year-old parents, three daughters, one son – for four days at the beach without spouses and children.

With one bed too few, one sibling had to sleep on an air mattress. With only one bathroom, the quarters seemed as crowded as the wood-panel station wagon they all used to pile into for family trips back when the siblings were ages 5-and-up instead AARP-and-up.

And without question, it was perfectly wonderful.

For a long weekend, 2022 became 1972. Board games sent phone screens directly to Jail without passing Go. Serene walks on the beach replaced hectic commutes to work. Laughter echoed in rhythm with the crashing waves.

The arrival of the pelican was perfectly apropos. After all, this wonderful bird’s ability to glide over the water’s surface in seemingly slow motion while scanning patiently for prey is said to symbolize the importance of slowing down in our own lives.

Additionally, in many cultures when a pelican swoops into view it is believed to represent the gift of spending time with family. Some people furthermore see its trademark oversized throat pouch as symbolizing an abundance of love. Enhancing these motifs, parent pelicans will prick open a wound in their chests to provide chicks with their own blood’s nourishment when starvation threatens.

The above interpretations are how I wish to see the pelican with the Original Six. Sadly, however, less sunny symbolism rolled in like heavy fog. You see, the breathtaking bird’s surprise visitation ended in heartbreak. After resting on the wooden deck through sunset, it curled up off in a corner through the night and come morning only its spirit had flown away.

But I choose to focus on the lively excitement of the pelican’s arrival, not its deathly departure. I choose to focus on not when – or if – the stars will align again for a reunion of the Original Six again, but rather on the laughs they just enjoyed. Here is one more laugh, courtesy of Mr. Merritt:

“A wonderful bird is a pelican, / His bill will hold more than his belican.

“He can take in his beak / Food enough for a week;

“But I’m darned if I see how the helican.”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Pier Bench Is My New Favorite

May 12, 2022 by Woody

Do you have a favorite bench?

If so, as I reckon you do, where is it? A short walk from work where you escape for coffee breaks? In a park, perhaps, under a lovely shade tree in the company of songbirds? Or maybe in a cemetery where a bench becomes an outdoor pew?

I had a favorite bench in college, on the edge of campus at the University of Santa Barbara, high on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Its wooden seat slats sagged a little from age and were a lot weathered by the salty sea air, but the view was anything but ugly. Indeed, it was a beautiful spot to contemplate a poor test; brood a dating breakup; or simply rest and savor the panoramic scene after a run on the beach below.

Coincidentally, I found a bookend favorite bench on another college campus many years later. Specifically, the University of Southern California’s Founders Park which boasts one specific tree from all 50 states. In this idyllic setting, sitting on a shaded wrought-iron bench on a nearly weekly basis for nine years – my daughter’s and son’s four-year undergraduate enrollments overlapped one year, plus the latter’s two years of MBA study – I would wait with happy anticipation for classes to get out so we could have lunch together.

I now have a new favorite bench, one of 49 skirting the historic Ventura Pier. This one is perhaps a third of the way out on the right-hand side and affords a spectacular north-facing view towards Surfers Point. Importantly, it also has a brass plaque on the top wooden back slat dedicated to: Larry “Coach” Baratte.

Along with two of his “How To Live Rules” – Each Day Is A Blessing and Give Of Yourself And You Will Receive Ten Times In Return – the plaque bears a compass rose. The latter is truly fitting because Larry was a human North Star for countless people before brain cancer claimed his precious life two years ago come tomorrow – May 14, 2020 – at age 60.

The memorial bench was a gift this past Christmas from Larry’s widow, Beth, to their three adult sons, Chase, Collin and Cole. Making it all the more special is that Larry and Beth talked about it before he passed.

Sitting on “Larry’s Bench” quiets my soul. As the timbers below shudder pleasantly in rhythm with the waves, I like to watch the world spin by. I watch beach runners on shore and dog walkers on the promenade and fishermen on the pier.

And, of course, I watch the surfers. I watch them sitting astraddle their boards, rising and dipping as if sitting on an aquatic merry-go-round, and then doing their water-walking magic.

Too, I imagine Larry in the distance, in the cove, in the curl of a wave riding a surfboard. Better yet, I see him directly below, swimming around the pier for a workout. Best of all, I feel him sitting next to me, sharing his wisdom and his laugh and his friendship.

Inspired by the pile of pencils offered in homage by visitors at Henry David Thoreau’s gravestone in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Mass., on my most recent visit to “Larry’s Bench” I left behind a coach’s whistle hanging by its lanyard. Maybe this small gesture, or perhaps swim goggles, will catch on. It’s pretty to hope so.

Pretty, certainly, is the view. Indeed, “Larry’s Bench” is a most lovely place to take a break from the hustle and bustle of the world and reflect on why “Each Day Is A Blessing.”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Fishermen Catch My Attention

May 5, 2022 by Woody

As the sun went down and the tide came up, a lone fisherman stood atop the tallest lava rock where earlier in the day there had been an exposed tidal pool.

Now the waves washed over his ankles, salty mist splashed his face, and even from behind you just knew he was smiling. Watching this scene from a third-floor beachside balcony overlooking Lyman’s Bay in Kona on The Big Island of Hawai’i gave me a smile as well.

After a while, I noticed that his long fishing rod was like a giant metronome moving in a 1-to-4 rhythm with the sea – a new cast going out with every fourth wave that washed in.

At Pu’uhonua o Honaunau and Royal Grounds National Historic Park in South Kona … before seeing the lone fisherman in the bay.

Watching someone else fish is sometimes as much fun as fishing and so for half an hour I spectated, but nary a fish did the fisherman reel in. I imagine he did not care; that catching wasn’t the main point anyway; that just being out there in the fresh sea air was medicine for his soul.

And then something happened that was even better medicine…

…a fisherboy, about age eight or so, came and joined the fisherman on the lava rock, ankle-deep in waves, side-by-side in smiles, casting out with his own pole. It was a Norman Rockwell painting brought to life.

The next day, while visiting the Pu’uhonua o Honaunau and Royal Grounds National Historic Park in South Kona, another angler caught my attention.

The most impressive artifact on the 180-acre grounds, once believed to possess spiritual powers, is “The Great Wall” built more than 400 years ago. Measuring 12 feet high and nearly two feet thick, its workmanship is remarkable. Even without mortar, the lava stones remain perfectly in place with the wall sides rising flat and true and its top edges as square as a brownie pan.

Running 950 feet long in an L shape, The Great Wall divides the Pu’uhonua – meaning “Place of Refuge” – from the rest of the grounds. Lawbreakers, even ones sentenced to death, who managed to flee by foot or swim along the coast to the Place of Refuge would be absolved of their crimes by a priest. Most fugitives did not make it, however, for the distances could be great, the currents strong, the waves angry as they crashed on a beach made treacherous with lava stones sharp as razors.

It was in these waters, on the north edge of the Royal Grounds, that The Great Wall was overshadowed by a small fishing skiff. With a single motor at the stern and a weathered one-person cabin at the bow, it bounced up and down on rough water while chugging towards the shelter of the bay.

I find watching someone performing excellence in most anything to be a thrill, and this lone fisherman thrilled me now. Reaching the shallows near shore, he hopped out into waist-deep water, waded up a cement loading ramp, and jogged away.

In a flash, he was back – backing a pickup truck and boat trailer down the long, narrow ramp with surprising speed. Indeed, with little margin for error and without pause, he guided the trailer into the water and halfway under the skiff. It was poetry in motion. Like watching someone parallel park into a space that seems much too tight.

Wading waist deep again, the solitaire fisherman pushed the skiff fully onto the trailer and secured it before climbing into his truck and driving off. In all, arrival to departure, perhaps six minutes passed.

I don’t know if the fish were biting, but I’m guessing he caught the limit.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

A Waterfall Seen, A Fall Averted

April 28, 2022 by Woody

“When in Rome…” when one is in Hawai’i means attending a luau.

The hour drive north from Kona along the coast was spectacular and the traditional feast at the famous Mauna Kea Beach Hotel did not disappoint either.

A whole pig – slow-roasted for most of the day after being stuffed with steaming lava stones, then wrapped in wet banana leaves and buried over koa wood embers in a sandpit – took center stage on a buffet table fit for a king.

After dinner, on a raised outdoor stage, a history lesson of the island’s royalty was performed. This included reenacted battles and courtships, warriors blowing thunderous notes on conch shells, and hula dancers turning their hips into rhythmic earthquakes. It was a Broadway Show under the stars.

A luau sunset at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel.

And yet the highlight of the evening was neither music nor dance, food nor mai tai, but rather the ocean backdrop as the sun melted into the horizon with the lava beach so near one could hear the crashing waves.

Describing the sea’s deep shades of blue and bluer, and the warm oranges and golds of the finger-painted kaleidoscope-colored sky with scattered clouds slowly turning to streaks of flame, is like trying to describe Monet’s “San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk.” Words fail greatly.

The sunset was all the more personally special because this hotel, these grounds, this paradisial ocean view was perhaps my mom’s favorite place on earth. She vacationed here many, many times, including not long before she died 30 years ago. It is hard to believe today, April 29, would have been her 90th birthday.

As you can imagine, as I gazed at the sundown scene the salty ocean mist was not the only thing moistening my cheeks. Akaka Falls

“When in Rome…” also meant visiting Akaka Falls State Park near Hilo. At 442 feet Akaka Falls falls far shy of Yosemite Falls’ 2,425 feet, and yet its breathtaking-ness measures up fully for it is tucked inside a lush rainforest filled with wild orchids, draping ferns, towering bamboo, all with a soundtrack featuring a symphony of songbirds.

The short hike to the lookout point view of the Falls is undemanding with a paved path and stairs, and yet this site provided a challenge for some – and provided an additional memorable sight for me. Two men were struggling to carry a wheelchair with a pre-teen boy in it down a section of steps when a stranger heading the opposite way, having seen the Falls already, reversed course and paused to help them…

…and then patiently waited to assist them on their return trip up the path.

That kindness on the Akaka Falls stairs brought me full circle to the luau. Leaving the grounds, an elderly gentleman was ascending a long outdoor cement stairway and path when a woman behind him touched his shoulder to tell him his shoe was untied. It was a trip, fall and broken bone waiting to happen.

The man waved her away, not rudely but not politely either, and proceeded on. Her worry rising with each of his next few steps, the lady Samaritan pardoned him again and offered to retie his shoe for him. This time he smiled and accepted her help.

I smiled, too, for this woman’s kindness reminded me of my mom who did a similar thing once at the Mauna Kea. Sharing a dinner table with a very elderly couple, and seeing the husband stranger struggle with his knife, my mom cut his steak into bite sizes as nonchalantly as a mother helpfully retying a young child’s undone shoelace.

To be continued…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Ocean Rescue Rescues Memories

April 21, 2022April 22, 2022 by Woody

A big-wave warning was issued at Magic Sands Beach, as previously mentioned here about my recent trip to The Big Island of Hawai’i, and a strong rip current carried a swimmer further and further from shore.

The lifeguard on duty, sitting in a towering chair, called out with a bullhorn for the man to come back in. Either the command was ignored, or the swimmer was unable to heed it, and he was pulled deeper out to sea.

Before tense seconds could add up to a New York minute, the lifeguard – imagine David Hasselhoff in the old TV show “Baywatch” and you have an accurate portrait – flew down from his perch, ran and dove into the surf, and swam like he was challenging for an Olympic gold medal.

David Hasselhoff as Mitch Buchannon in “Baywatch.”

“Baywatch” originally aired from 1989 to 1999, but my mind raced all the way back to “Quarrywatch” in the 1940s starring my dad as the fictional Mitch Buchannon in red swim trunks.

During summers in high school through medical school, Pop was a lifeguard at Muzzy’s Lake, a flooded rock quarry in Urbana, Ohio. He started out earning fifty cents an hour.

“That beat the heck out the twenty-five cents an hour I made at my first summer job when I was fourteen, pumping gas at Blue Synoco,” Pop, now 95, recalls vividly. “Gas was sixteen cents a gallon – I remember that because most customers bought a dollar’s worth which was six-plus gallons.”

At Muzzy’s he eventually worked up to one dollar an hour and notes: “That was good money!”

He earned it. One single summer, between Memorial Day and Labor Day, Pop made 46 saves. Understand, Muzzy’s attracted upwards of a thousand people a day on weekends. Combine those crowds with a gently sloping bottom that in one blind step dropped off suddenly from friendly chest-deep water to 30-plus feet and you had the deadly ingredients for drowning.

Once, far outside the buoys marking off the swimming area, a car rolled off a towering bluff at the far end of the quarry and plummeted into deep, deep water. As it sank, Pop – an intercollegiate swimmer – raced freestyle to the crash site and dived down to the ear-popping cold depths in hopes of rescuing anyone trapped inside. It took three lung-burning tries before he finally located the car.

Thankfully, it was empty.

When a tow truck arrived at the scene, Pop dove down, down, down a fourth time to attach a chain so the car could be pulled out. It was a “Baywatch”-like episode in real life. Indeed, in photographs during his final years lifeguarding at Muzzy’s Pop seems chiseled from quarried stone at 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds and comes into black-and-white focus like Mitch Buchannon with a crew cut instead of longish curls.

In more than half a dozen summers in the tower chair, Pop – and his best friend and co-lifeguard, Dunny – had only one death occur during their Quarry Watch. A young boy, with a congenital heart problem it turned out, quietly sunk down underwater. There was no splashing, no struggle, no telltale sign of trouble for a lifeguard to see.

Meanwhile, the boy’s parents were not keeping a watchful eye and eventually sounded the alarm too late. Their son tragically drowned in less than three-feet of water that he could stand up in.

Happily, the Magic Sands Beach lifeguard towed the struggling swimmer to shore with the aid of a small torpedo-shaped buoy.

Isn’t it funny that traveling on vacation not only creates new memories, it can also rekindle old ones.

To be continued…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Sad Goodbye To A Merry-Go-Round

April 14, 2022April 15, 2022 by Woody

The chronicles of my Hawai’i adventures, previously promised to continue today, are postponed a week in order to share about a dear friend I lost last Sunday.

There is a good chance, if you live in or have visited Ventura County, she was your friend as well. I say “she” because just as ships are lovingly considered female, so too should merry-go-rounds.

The carousel at Ventura Harbor Village spun round and round for the very last time, to be replaced – as too often happens to nostalgic treasures – by something new called “progress.” Wild horses could not have kept me away from saying a final goodbye to these mild horses that gallop gently in circles. The hand-painted menagerie also included a giraffe, zebra, rooster and St. Bernard.

The circa-1970s carousel found a home at the harbor in the mid-1980s and in 1990 I took my then-3-year-old daughter on it for the first time. A fair guess is that we returned a hundred times more, at least, in the years that followed for what she called our “Daddy Dates.” While we rotated among numerous eateries at Harbor Village, we always, always rode the carousel.

And always, without exception, my daughter rode Rudolph. I think she initially picked him because it was summertime and she thought that was the funniest thing in the world – Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer being here in the warm sunshine instead of at the snowy North Pole. Ever thereafter she continued to politely hand over her arcade ticket at the gate and then rush excitedly past all the other animals and climb aboard Rudolph.

My daughter and I have enjoyed other carousels near and far, from the Ventura County Fair to Monterey’s Cannery Row, from Disneyland to Disney World, from San Francisco’s Pier 39 to New York City’s Central Park, but nowhere has she found another Rudolph and so always she has been a little disappointed.

Indeed, while some merry-go-rounds are bigger, or have brighter lights or shinier paint, the Harbor Village carousel will forever remain my favorite because of all the memories it carries with my daughter – and son, too, although he has never adored it quite so dearly. Yes, on the soundtrack of my life’s happiest moments the calliope music of the Harbor Village carousel plays a verse.

Adding to the melancholy of the farewell day, my daughter – herself now a parent of a 3-year-old girl – was unable to make it down from the Bay Area for a final carousel “Daddy Date.” Happily, I took an equally beautiful date. One of my favorite pictures of my wife is a black-and-white portrait when she was 5; now, as she sat astride the St. Bernard, I imagined her in living color at that age.

When I first started taking my daughter on the carousel it cost all of dollar as I seem to recall. This time it was four bucks per person, a bargain nonetheless because a five-minute ride on a time machine is priceless.

As I emotionally orbited round and round, I took a selfie video to send my daughter. My quick-thinking wife did something even better – she made a video call and that is how our little girl “virtually” rode her beloved merry-go-round during its last go-round. Naturally, she teared up saying goodbye even from afar.

“Don’t cry because it’s over,” I said over the phone, repeating a quote by Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, “smile because it happened.”

I need not tell you which carousel animal I rode. Some of the red paint has worn off his nose, but to my wistful eyes Rudolph never looked finer.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

A Small Pleasure on The Big Island

April 7, 2022 by Woody

Third try was the charm indeed.

Early in the pandemic, seemingly a decade ago, my wife and I had a long-planned trip to Hawai’i – my first ever – cancelled. A year later, after arrangements were again all made, a tsunami-sized COVID-19 surge forced a second postponement.

At long last, we recently made it to The Big Island, to Kona, to Lyman’s Bay where we stayed in a lovely one-bedroom retreat with a postcard view of the ocean brought to life.

We filled the week with sightseeing and snorkeling, with a day hike to Akaka Falls and an evening luau under a sky as pink as the inside of a conk shell, yet one of the biggest highlights was our tiny third-floor balcony. It was here where we started each morning by watching surfers carve their moves into the waves like hands writing script in invisible ink on the water’s surface. Evening happy hours were spent similarly.

A song lyric from The Beach Boys – “Catch a wave, you’ll be sitting on top of the world” – played in my mental jukebox as the wave dancers lined up, usually no less than two dozen of them, waiting and positioning to catch their next turn on top of the world.

While the surfers in this corner of paradise were nearly all adults – perhaps paddling out before going in late to the office; or diving in in the early evening on the way home after a full workday – they came into focus like school kids at play during recess.

One morning, when there was a “Big Wave Warning” all day for swimmers and snorkelers at nearby Magic Sands Beach just a mile south, the number of surfers in Lyman’s Bay swelled twofold to catch waves that were nearly triple the size of the previous few days’ head-high curls. Even super-sized, the waves broke as if in slow motion, gently almost, left-to-right looking on from the beach, and maintained their form so long they could be ridden for what seemed like a full minute.

Our final evening on our beatific balcony in Kona, the waves were so ginormous, and the Monet-painted sunset so impossibly gorgeous, that in addition to surfers lining up out on the water, runners and walkers and cyclists stopped en masse along the narrow-but-well-trafficked beachside road to gaze. Some cars even pulled over and parked, their occupants joining the entranced crowd.

After the sun melted fully into the horizon, the spectators gradually resumed their runs and strolls and rides. In turn, the brotherhood of surfers likewise grew smaller and smaller as one after another grabbed his or her final ride, happy and tired and probably looking forward to coming out again tomorrow morning, or next evening, or the upcoming weekend.

Eventually, there were only three surfers remaining in the bay, in the water, in the deepening darkness.

“That’s his last one,” my wife or I would say when one of these night riders caught a wave—

—but each time that surfer would paddle back out.

The longer this stubbornness against the dark went on and on, the brighter my already bright mood became until it shone like the rising moon. No matter their ages, I realized, these three men were at heart still boys at play.

It was as if they were shooting baskets in the driveway, or practicing skateboarding tricks in the street, and their mothers had just called them in for dinner on a warm midsummer’s night and they shouted back: “Just five more minutes, pleeeease!”

Or, in this case, “Just one more wave!”

To be continued…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

This ‘News’ Has Expiration Date

April 1, 2022 by Woody

BREAKING NEWS: The items in today’s column expire at midnight.

HOLLYWOOD – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today issued a press release announcing it is rescinding Will Smith’s “Best Actor” Oscar and will return it only if the star of “King Richard” slaps Samuel L. Jackson in the face … and lives to tell about it.

COOPERSTOWN, NY – Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred today announced another new rule aimed at shortening game times. Beginning with Opening Day on April 7, batters will get only two strikes and three balls.

“Two-and-one is the new full count,” Manfred noted.

LOS ANGELES – The Super Bowl champion Rams today announced they have signed actor Will Smith to a one-year deal for $22-million as a defensive lineman.

“His head slap is reminiscent of the great Deacon Jones,” Rams General Manager Les Snead said. “With Aaron Donald and Will together, no opposing quarterback will be safe.”

SILVER SPRING, MD – The FDA, citing a series of recent scientific studies, today declared that chocolate chip cookies are a “super food” high in antioxidants and taste.

NEW YORK – National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell today announced that beginning with the 2022 season, the NFL will address its Traumatic Brain Injury and concussion epidemic by having all players wear 1930’s-era leather helmets without facemasks.

“We feel this will stop the players from using their heads as weapons,” Goodell said.

NEW YORK – In stunning medical news, more than 13,000 oncologists in the United States, and nearly 200,000 other healthcare workers specializing in cancer treatment, filed for unemployment today after losing their jobs.

“It’s the most wonderful news imaginable,” one newly unemployed oncologist said. “We have wiped out cancer with a vaccine so there just isn’t any work for us anymore.”

WASHINGTON, DC – “Whoa, not so fast!” Surgeon General of the United States Dr. Vivek Murthy said today regarding the eradication of cancer. “The vaccine only saves the lives of those who will take it.”

SOMEWHERE IN LOW-EARTH ORBIT – Jeff Bezos, The World’s Richest Person with an estimated wealth of $165 billion, today proclaimed from his Blue Origin capsule: “I win, I win! I am the champion of World Monopoly! Now let’s reshuffle the Chance and Community Chest cards, and I’ll start all over with $1,500 – 2 x $500, 2 x $100, 2 x $50, 6 x $20, 5 x $10, 5 x $5 and 5 x $1 bills. This time I’ll even pay when I land on the Income Tax space. Good luck, everyone!”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Education today announced it will use the bulk of a $164-billion windfall from an anonymous donor for a national curriculum in MAC – Music, Art and Creative writing – and place an emphasis on attracting the very brightest students.

“While we recognize STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – helps make life better,” a spokesperson explained, “we feel without question MAC makes for richer lives.”

EVERYTOWN, USA – Millions of Baby Boomers marched nationwide today in apology for their previous grumpy-toned complaints about Millennials and Generation Z being overly coddled with inflated senses of entitlement.

The marchers’ signs included: “Millennials Are Magnificent!”

“Our College Education Was Affordable – Sorry!”

“Gen Z Rockz at Volunteering!”

“What The Heck Is TikTok?”

NEW YORK – The Pulitzer Prize Board today announced a surprise award honoring Woody Woodburn.

A board member explained: “Woodburn is not as good a writer as he should be; he’s not as good as he wants to be; but thank goodness at least he’s better than he used to be.”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

A Walk Long Remembered

March 25, 2022 by Woody

A very personal anniversary arrives next week, not of my wedding, but rather a milestone marking 35 years to the morning when I walked with John Wooden for the first time.

March 31, 1987 – Tuesday then, this year Thursday – was a day so special I marked it in my datebook of birthdays and anniversaries to remember. It proved to be an occasion that changed my life for Coach became my friend and mentor, and later a great-grandfather figure to my two children. I pinch myself still for such grand luck.

Coach and me during one of many magical visits.

In the long span since, I have written more columns on Wooden than on anyone else, as well as a book; when I give guest talks he is the person most often asked about, even now 12 years after his death at age 99; so here is a stroll down memory lane.

After interviewing Coach following a lecture he gave, he invited me to join him on his daily four-mile walk. Aware of his maxim, “Be on time whenever time is involved,” I left Santa Maria when the stars were still out and arrived in Encino with nearly an hour to spare.

At the appointed time, seven o’clock sharp, I nervously pressed the buzzer outside the condominium’s entrance. Coach, true to his code, was ready and waiting and immediately came out. After warm pleasantries on a cool and dewy Southern California spring morning, we set forth around Mister Wooden’s Neighborhood.

For the first mile or two, I peppered Coach with basketball questions but he then turned the tables and asked about my life. He was delighted to learn I was going to become a father in August and asked when was the due date.

“The eighth,” I replied and Coach stopped cold, his eyes visibly misting up. That was his and Nell’s wedding anniversary, he shared. High school sweethearts, they had been married 53 years before her death to cancer two years before our walk.

On that magical morning, I was 26 and Coach was 76 – the exact age at which my paternal grandfather died two decades earlier. Indeed, sitting in Coach’s living room after breakfast I felt like I was not with a living legend so much as visiting with what I fondly remembered my beloved grandfather to be like.

Like Wooden, my Grandpa Ansel was raised on a Midwestern farm – in Ohio rather than Indiana. Like Wooden, Grandpa enjoyed Shakespeare greatly and also similarly favored “Hamlet.” Like Wooden, Grandpa loved poetry and wrote verse. And like Wooden, Grandpa had once been a schoolteacher, albeit for only a few years in order to earn tuition for medical school.

Moreover, Grandpa’s familiar reminder to me, “If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right,” surely echoed Coach’s oft-repeated aphorism, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” Similarly, Grandpa’s “If you don’t learn anything today it will be a wasted day” dovetailed perfectly with Coach’s “Learn as if you were to live forever; live as if you were to die tomorrow.”

John Muir, reflecting on meeting – and walking with – Ralph Waldo Emerson in the Yosemite Valley, wrote: “Emerson was the most serene, majestic, sequoia-like soul I ever met. His smile was as sweet and calm as morning light on mountains. There was a wonderful charm in his presence; his smile, serene eye, his voice, his manner, were all sensed at once by everybody. A tremendous sincerity was his.”

Such is how I felt about John Wooden during our first walk and visit – and feel so still.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

This Moving Day Needs No U-Haul

March 18, 2022 by Woody

According to U.S. Census Bureau data, each person in the United States will on average move residences 11 times during her or his lifetime.

According to data retrieved from my memory, I rank well above average having moved 16 times – and that counts college, with three different dorm rooms and one off-campus apartment, as just one singular residence.

A handful of my moves have spanned only a couple miles; my most recent relocation measured just four blocks; and one boyhood move was merely two houses away, while others were marathons.

Perhaps the most memorable move was also the longest, driving coast-to-coast towing a U-Haul behind a stick-shift pickup truck with my newlywed wife and me, plus our two dogs, shoehorned inside the two-seat cab. Apollo 11’s capsule was less cramped, yet we repeated the claustrophobic feat returning to California from Delaware.

I have moving on my mind because today I make another memorable move – from Saturdays to Fridays in order to remain in The Star’s print edition. In some ways, it feels like my toughest move ever. After all, Saturday mornings have been my column’s home for nearly 11 years. Before me, Saturday’s were also home to Chuck Thomas, Bob Holt, Joe Paul, Jr. and Julius Guis, legends all.

Change is often not easy and moving Saturday’s edition of The Star exclusively online will surely upset some readers. But here’s another thing about change: while it can be a headache, it also often brings unexpected bonuses. Let me share a story…

My paternal grandfather, I have little doubt, would have bought an Apple Macintosh home computer when it was first released. Too, if he were alive, he would without question excitedly stand in line for the latest iPhone and just as surely read his favorite newspaper on an iPad or laptop rather than get newsprint all over his fingers and thus require extra hand-scrubbing before delivering a baby or performing surgery as a small-town country doctor.

You see, my Grandpa Ansel loved technology and had a history of being an early adopter. For example, long before he had the first color Zenith TV on his block, Grandpa bought one of the very first ballpoint pens manufactured – an expensive “Reynolds Rocket” that cost a princely $12.50 in 1945.

“He loved that pen,” my dad recalls, adding with a laugh, “for about two days.”

On Day 3, the state-of-the-art writing marvel sprung a leak that left a huge ink stain over the breast pocket of Ansel’s Arrow white dress shirt. It looked like he had been shot in the chest and was bleeding dark blue blood.

Not only was Grandpa out 12 bucks and change for the pen, but another $4.50 for a new collared shirt. However, instead of ranting at technology’s foibles, Grandpa shrugged it off. He just said, “A shirt salesman needs to make a living too” and bought a new Arrow – although it was a couple years before he bought another “newfangled ballpoint pen.”

While you cannot clip out a cartoon, recipe or column from online and stick it on the refrigerator with a magnet, “newfangled” e-editions still boast many advantages from speedier delivery to never getting soaked in the rain. Maybe those of us who have shunned The Star’s online edition will finally take the leap on Saturdays and learn to navigate it – and, very likely, learn to love it.

“When you leave home,” Maya Angelou said, “you take home with you.”

I like that thought: I’m leaving Saturday’s, but also taking them with me to TGIF. I hope you’ll keep visiting me.

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WOODY WOODBURN

Writer, "Streaker" & Speaker

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