Author Archives: Woody

Shared Memory is Music to My Heart

by Woody

Approaching the front door of an attractive home, two stories and gated, I was greeted with a gentle breeze that carried upon it a jazzy piano melody.

So lovely was the music, which I soon learned came from a gorgeous Steinway – a century-old family heirloom, in fact, played by a gifted pianist – that before gently knocking, rap-rap-rap, I stood outside the threshold for a very long moment and listened.

And yet an even more beautiful song awaited me inside, the song of a story shared about my paternal grandfather, life-changing memories from 69 years ago and 2,300 miles away.

Dr. Ansel Woodburn, aka my Grandpa

Before moving forward with this song, I must first briefly go backwards. Three years ago in this space, I wrote about my Grandpa Ansel who was a country physician in Urbana, Ohio. In part, I quoted from a yellowing newspaper clipping from The Urbana Daily Citizen with the headline “Fond Memories of Doc Prevail” below whichMarilyn Johnson recalled being treated by my grandfather many, many years ago.

“When I was small,” she wrote, “I was always breaking a bone. Dr. Ansel Woodburn would first of all use his trusty (and hated) thumb to locate the fracture. He would then set the bone and cast it.”

She specifically recalled one fracture and treatment: “After he casted my arm, he asked how my favorite doll was doing. Before I could say ‘Jack Robinson,’ he had fashioned a doll cradle with Plaster of Paris and wires on which to rock.”

In response to my column, I received an email from another patient my grandpa had cared for a long, long time ago. Suzie told me she was given an even greater kindness than a toy doll cradle.

Wondering how in the small world Suzie had come across my column nearly across the nation in Ohio, and also wishing to hear more of her recollections about Grandpa Ansel, I wrote her back and asked. Surprise of surprises, it turns out she now lives in Camarillo and subscribes to The Ventura County Star.

Moreover, Suzie very kindly invited me to come for a visit so she could share her memories in person. Alas, the busyness of life, as it has a way of doing, along with the pandemic, as it had a way of doing, got in the way. Recently, at long last, our get-together happened.

By convenience, and by a 1-in-365 coincidence, we unintentionally met up on the very day marking the 55th anniversary of Ansel’s death. Adding to the serendipity, perhaps raising it to fate or a Godwink, is this: In 1954, when Suzie was an 18-year-old high school senior walking into Ansel’s physician’s office, he was 62 years old. When Suzie, now an octogenarian, welcomes me into her home with a piano’s song, I too am 62.

Music and poetry go hand in hand, so I am reminded of an original poem Grandpa penned on the title page of his copy of “Modern Surgery,” an heirloom holy as scripture. It is dated October 1, 1919, four days before his 28th birthday:

“The worker dies, but the work lives on / Whether a picture, a book, or a clock

“Ticking the minutes of life away / For another worker in metal or rock

“My work is with children and women and men – Not iron, not brass, not wood

“And I hope when I lay my stethoscope down / That my Chief will call it good”

A narrative Suzie shared with me, and which I will share here next week, confirms that Ansel’s “Chief” called his life’s work “good.”

*   *   *

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.

Another ‘Four-Dot’ Day in America

by Woody

Another school shooting, an all too familiar daytime nightmare in America, and my heart weeps again not only for the victims senselessly murdered, but for everyone who knew them – most especially their young classmates and friends who will be haunted the rest of their lives, of this I am personally certain.

Back when tennis balls were white instead of optic yellow, instead of numerals to help identify them when they strayed onto an adjacent court they had one, two, three or four blue-colored dots. Superstitiously, I always favored using one-dot balls.

Children from the Covenant School hold hands as they wait to reunite with their parents.
(George Uribe / Associated Press)

The summer I was 10, my superstition changed to four-dot balls – I refused to play with them. If I opened a can that had four-dotters inside I would trade these new balls with someone else, even for used ones. You see, I had four-dot nightmares.

To this day, in fact, fully five decades later, the same nightmares return from time to time, triggered by certain headlines and movie storylines. These terrible dreams are proof that our childhoods never leave us for mine have followed me from childhood in The Sixties in Ohio to adulthood in Southern California in the 21st Century.

David was one of my childhood tennis buddies. When he was 10, he was kidnapped from a tennis court. Days later, his lifeless body was found in a remote wooden shed and I will spare you further horrific details. It was a very, very long time before I slept peacefully through the night.

David and I were not best friends. We lived far across town from each other and went to different schools. But we were the same age and we both played tennis and we took group youth clinics together.

The weekend before the kidnapping, we had played each other in the first round of a tournament on The Ohio State University campus. Since we were in the youngest division, we got sent to a court in the boonies a bike ride away from the check-in table.

My recollection is fuzzy on the final score of our match, but this part remains in sharp focus in my mind’s eye: Early in the second set, after I had won the first, David broke a racket string. Back then youth players did not have a spare racket, or two, at courtside as is commonplace today.

Two older kids, waiting on deck at courtside to play their match after we finished ours, impatiently said David would have to default. Thanks to my two older brothers teaching me to stick up for myself, I said we were allowed to find a racket to borrow. We eventually got one at the check-in table and rode back and resumed play and I won the match.

A week later, and forever since, I wished I had lost. I even felt guilty about winning. You see, as mentioned, David was abducted from a tennis court. “Maybe,” I reasoned, “if he had won our match he wouldn’t have been motivated to go practice his serve all alone.”

All that was found on that public tennis court where David was last seen alive was a single tennis ball. Importantly, a tennis ball with four blue dots on it.

Important because four dots, his older sister told police when David was first reported missing, was their secret code: a four-dot ball purposely left behind meant “trouble.”

In the first 86 days of 2023 there were 129 mass shootings in America. In other words, statistically every day here has become a four-dot day and the victims are not limited to those who are shot.

*   *   *

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.

What is “A hodgepodge Column”?

by Woody

“Who is Tennessee Williams?”

This is what I said aloud to the TV, and to my wife, the other evening when “Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings revealed the category – “Writers & The South” – for Final Jeopardy.

My blind guess came to mind because we had visited the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright’s home in New Orleans’ French Quarter a few years ago. We even met the current owner of the Creole-style building on Toulouse Street and he shared a few stories about the man who wrote “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

When the game-ending clue was revealed – “In 1939 he lived on Toulouse Street in the French Quarter & chose the professional name that bonded him to the South” – I exalted knowingly.

Tennessee Williams’ home in the French Quarter.

My shot-in-the-dark bull’s-eye felt as sweet as a powdered sugar-covered beignet, but my dear friend Sus has a far better “Jeopardy!” story.

Understand, Sus is one of the wisest, most widely read people I know, able to quote lengthy passages from books and poems and plays. She is also as honest, and usually as modest, as “War & Peace” is long.

“I don’t think I ever told you,” Sus told me the other day, “that when Stephen and I were dating we had a Watch ‘Jeopardy!’ Together Date and I answered almost every question quick as a wink. This included the hardest stumpers that all of the contestants missed. I got Final Jeopardy right, too.

“The next time we watched, the same thing, and the next time as well – and when all the contestants missed Final Jeopardy, I got it! Well, by now Stephen was amazed and asked me what my IQ was and I said I had no idea and that I didn’t think it was high, but that I just liked trivia…”

Insert a dramatic pause.

“…and then I started laughing so hard I couldn’t stop.”

Insert a laugh in the retelling.

“I had to confess,” Sus confesses. “My dad, who lived in the Midwest, was taking copious notes for me on as many questions as he could. This was, of course, three hours before we watched it out here in California. He would phone me and give me the answers and I studied them, even hid my notes in the bathroom.”

The payoff pitch: “Dad just wanted to help me impress this guy that I really liked – I think it worked!”

Indeed. Answer: Sus and Stephen. Question: “Who have been happily married for 34 years?”

*

In my year-end column highlighting the best books I read in 2022, I forgot to mention any of the approximately 101 books I read to my 4-year-old granddaughter. Here are some recommendations from Maya herself:

“The Year We Learned to Fly” by Jacqueline Woodson; “Not a Cat: A Memoir” as told to Winter Miller; “The Snail and the Whale” by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler; “Maybe” by Kobi Yamada; “Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem” by Amanda Gorman; and “Who Knew Baker Flew!?” by Venturans Marty Kinrose and Nancy Talley.

*

The former sportswriter in me has to give a big shout-out to The Star’s Joe Curly for his recent coverage of the CIF Division III State Championship game. Specifically, under the headline “Buena’s state title bid stopped by Oakland,” this lede sentence:

“SACRAMENTO – Ventura County’s longest boys basketball season ended with a long drive and even longer faces.”

If poetry is to say as much as possible in the fewest words, that line indeed qualifies for it encapsulated Buena’s 37 games played, the title showdown was on the road; and the final result was a heartbreaking defeat.

*   *   *

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.

Bryan Brothers Serve Up Feel-Good Story

by Woody

Sometimes the headline story doesn’t tell the whole story and misses the best story.

So it was on Monday when it was announced that Bob Bryan, half of The Pride of Camarillo along with identical twin brother Mike, is the new Captain of the United States Davis Cup Team.

Mikeandbob – one word suffices for that’s how tightly synchronized the Bryan Brothers always were on the tennis court – are the greatest doubles team in history with a resume of championships too long to fit in this space’s allotted 600 words. Here is a Tweet-length summary in 280 characters:

NCAA doubles crown at Stanford in 1998; record 119 professional titles together; record 16 Slam titles together; ranked No. 1 in the world a record 438 weeks; ATP Doubles Team of the Decade for 2000-2009 and 2010-2019; gold medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics, bronze medal at 2008 Olympics; in 2007 helped Team USA win the Davis Cup.

Of all those triumphs the one dearest to Mikeandbob growing up, since way back when they would lose interest watching matches at the prestigious Ojai Championships and venture down to the creek in Libbey Park and try to catch frogs, was to represent the U.S. in Davis Cup action. So to become Captain is a dream come true atop a dream come true for Bob, a chocolate-dipped strawberry atop the cherry on a sundae. And yet that isn’t the best story.

The best story is this…

At the Indian Wells Masters, currently underway and unofficially considered tennis’ “fifth” Grand Slam event, a group of 154 junior players from five states, including California with Ventura County represented, were invited as special guests to not only watch some terrific matches at the highest level, but also take part in a youth clinic. Joining the kids were 23 coaches comprised of former pros and college stars, and a gaggle of parent chaperones.

The United States Tennis Association felt the Indian Wells Masters was an ideal setting to tell Bob Bryan that he had been selected to be the Davis Cup Captain and did so last Friday. The official announcement, however, would not be made until the following Monday.

Naturally, Bob had a full slate of USTA meetings to attend and wanted to touch bases with as many American players and their coaches as possible. Too, there were media interview requests for embargoed stories. Moreover, Saturday night he and Mike had to leave for a previous commitment in Miami on Sunday.

Understandably, Bob decided he would have to pass on participating in the special clinic for the invited youth players.

On second thought, Mikeandbob being Mikeandbob – perennially voted the ATP’s “Fans’ Favorite” for two decades, beloved for giving clinics at every tournament stop and for always lingering after their matches until the very last autograph request had been fulfilled – decided they would drop by for a few minutes to say hi to the kids before jetting off to Miami.

On third thought, Mikeandbob stayed a full hour to hit with all the juniors.

The spark of Mikeandbob’s long-ago dream to play on the U.S. Davis Cup Team happened when they were attending a Davis Cup match as seven-year-olds and squad player Ricky Leach said hi to them, even gave them an American flag, and inspired them.

On final thought, perhaps the very best story about Bob Bryan becoming Cup Captain won’t reveal itself until 15 or so years from now when one of the girls or boys at that junior clinic who met and rallied with Mikeandbob has her or his own tennis dream come true.

*   *   *

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

The Family Circus comes to town

by Woody

Spring-cleaning, in preparation for a visit from human rays of sunshine, happened a few weeks early of the season’s official arrival at the Woodburn household.

Masterpiece Maya, our four-year-old granddaughter, and her two-month-old sister, Awesome Auden, along with their parents, were coming to stay with us thanks to my daughter being a bridesmaid in a local wedding.

Additionally, my newlywed son and daughter-in-law were traveling in to help make it Thanksgiving in March.

And so the carpets were vacuumed, the hardwood floors mopped and windows washed; fresh sheets were put on beds and clean towels laid out in the Jack-and-Jill bathroom between our adult kids’ old bedrooms. By and by, the house looked ready for a photographer from “Better Homes & Gardens.” Even the “Welcome” mat was tidied up.

Then a tornado blew in through the front door. In a blink, our family room looked like an aisle in Toy Barn after an earthquake. The coffee table became an art studio and a couch was turned into a schoolroom filled with stuffed-animal students. A second couch was overtaken by a portable bassinet while a tsunami of other infant paraphernalia, including a baby swing and diaper changing station, flooded across the floor.

I was instantly reminded of “The Family Circus” comic. Specifically, a Sunday offering in color that ran on March 2, 1990, when my daughter was nearly 3 and my son a newborn. I know the exact date because it graced our refrigerator door for many years before eventually being moved into a keepsake shoebox when we moved to a new house with a new fridge. Even out of sight, its sentiment has remained affixed to my heart as if with invisible magnets.

It is said a picture is worth a thousand words, but this single panel – divided into five scenes – equals a novella, at the least…

In the opening image, Thelma has her hands on hips, as moms are universally wont to do when upset, and wears a matching annoyed countenance as she surveys the kitchen table that is covered with a coloring book and splayed crayons; a drawstring pouch of spilled marbles; a small tripod telescope, medium-sized toy dinosaur and, standing atop the back of an armchair in the background, large teddy bear.

In the next drawing, in another room, again with none of her four children in sight, Mother’s face remains stern as she looks at the floor that is cluttered with a football, Ping-Pong paddle and ball, a book left open, a couple of wooden alphabet blocks, a doll, a toy truck, and a small guitar.

Moving to the third image, Thelma peers out a window into the backyard at an abandoned jumble of a beach pail and shovel, a soccer ball and baseball bat, a skateboard and red wagon.

In image number four, Billy, Dolly, Jeffy and P.J. finally appear, all displaying looks of innocence as their mom, with eyebrows knitted in exasperation, scolds them: “When will all these toys ever be put away properly?”

Next comes the payoff pitch with Thelma holding her fingers to her mouth and wearing an expression of wistfulness. Inside a thought bubble she sees herself, her raven-black hair now white as a cotton ball, poking her head into the attic. Before her eyes in storage are all the toys from the previous scenes, some with gathered cobwebs, plus a stack of nursery rhyme books and various other childhood playtime treasures.

I wish you could have seen our house last weekend and how Billy-Dolly-Jeffy-P.J.-like wonderfully messy it was.

I can’t wait until it is again.

*   *   *

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

Part 2: Old Friends Are Time Machines

by Woody

“It takes a long time to grow an old friend,” John Wooden said, and a bookend “Wooden-ism” comes from his Seven-Point Creed: “Make friendship a fine art.”

On the latter, it pains me greatly to confess, I failed regarding the first friend I made in California after moving from Ohio at age 12. Jimmy Hart, just a few months my junior, was the cousin of my godsister, Karen, two years and one day older than me.

Karen’s family lived at Solimar Beach, and Jimmy and I basically spent my first summer in Ventura living there. Boogie boarding, exploring the tidal pools, playing basketball by day and eight ball pool by night, Jimmy and I enjoyed an idyllic summer.

Two old friends enjoying the magic of getting together.

Unfortunately, he lived in Pasadena so we did not see each other much during the ensuing school years.

Every summer, however, we would pick up where we left off at the beach house. Too, we occasionally had weekend sleepovers at one another’s house. We stayed up late watching a new show called “Saturday Night Live” and stayed up even later talking about girls.

Eventually, as happens, we went our separate ways for college and the ensuing roads of life. For a while we stayed in touch with each other’s ever-changing lives through Karen until insidious cancer stole her 26 years ago. Alas, without hers and the beach house’s gravitational pull, Jimmy and I drifted apart until we only caught up with Christmas cards.

This past holiday season, our cards, as usual, shared similar P.S. notes of good intentions: “It’s been too long. Let’s get together soon!”

And that was that until just before Valentine’s Day when I received a text from Jimmy telling me – not asking, telling – we were having lunch the following week. No more ifs, ands, buts or excuses. Pick a day; he would drive from San Gabriel.

Perhaps the best way to describe our reunion is that it was an hour before we stopped talking long enough to order our first beers and half as long again before we took a time out, upon the waitress’s umpteenth visit, to look at the menus.

Jimmy’s hair, once surfer long and Scandinavian blond, is long gone. His face, like mine, has laugh lines and lines caused by a youth spent in the sun at the beach. But what remains as unchanged as fingerprints are his radiant smile and a laugh that sounds like it is infused with champagne bubbles.

For a couple hours it was as if H.G. Wells’ time machine had turned 2023 into 1973. Naturally, we revisited the past, including when we saw John Wooden give a lecture in Pasadena, one of the last times we were together. Growing up, we both memorized Coach’s famous “Pyramid of Success” and always double-knotted our sneaker laces as he advised.

Reminiscing, enjoyable as it was, gave way to catching up on our lives today. We talked about our wives; our children, four for him and two for me, plus my two granddaughters; work, he was a middle school gym coach, now retired – “I always taught the kids about the Pyramid of Success,” he shared happily; and on and on.

Jimmy’s cheeseburger grew cold as did my tacos, and our second pints grew warm, because our mouths remained focused on more import matters. I wish you could have heard us.

If you have an old friend you have lost contact with, I urge you to make friendship a fine art by reaching out. For that matter, reach out to a newer friend and start growing an old friendship.

*   *   *

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

Growing an Old Friend Takes Time

by Woody

Coach John Wooden, during the two decades I was blessed to be his friend, told me many, many wise things – “Wooden-isms” I like to call them – including this gem: “It takes a long time to grow an old friend.”

I think of these words every time my wife is on the phone with Nanette, for they met a long time ago, all the way back in kindergarten, back in the Midwest, back in the early 1960s, and their friendship has been growing ever since. Despite thousands of miles between them literally, and even more miles figuratively along life’s roads of moves and college and marriage and families and more, they have remained dear friends.

I wish you could hear them on the phone together. I bet you have a similar rare friend. When they chat it is a time machine and they remain forever young, forever 5, or forever 11 when Lisa moved away from Northern Ohio to Southern California. Every few years, when phone calls simply won’t suffice, they meet up in various vacation cities for a girls’ weekend.

My daughter, Dallas, does Lisa and Nanette even better for a friendship starting age. She and Mikey planted the seed of an old friendship when they were 3 years young in daycare. They proceeded to go through school together, from kindergarten to senior year in high school, and did not lose touch after graduation. Indeed, a full three decades after they first took naps side by side on their sitter Jeanie’s living room floor, these two first-ever friends remain among each other’s best ones.

And yet the gold medal for a green thumb at growing an old friend, in my firsthand observation, is my 96-year-old dad who has a childhood friend of nearly that full life span. Although Lilly still lives in Urbana, Ohio, where they grew up together, they talk on the phone nearly weekly.

I, too, have tried to put Coach’s wisdom into practice. Although my family moved away from my birthplace of Columbus, Ohio to Ventura when I was 12, I have remained friends with an elementary school classmate who was also my tennis doubles partner. Jim Hendrix, a lefty with a wicked slice serve, was almost as magical with tennis strings as his famous namesake was with guitar strings and helped carry us to quite a few championship trophy victories. He eventually played at Ohio State where his father had once been the Buckeyes’ head coach.

An Irish proverb, and I have distant shamrock roots, says: “A good friend is like a four-leaf clover; hard to find and lucky to have.” Lucky for me on the first day of classes in seventh grade most of my teachers made their seating charts alphabetically. As a four-leaf-clover result, I found myself sitting next to Mark Wilson and Brian Whalen in quite a few classes.

I instantly had two new friends. We called ourselves “The Three W’s” and were as inseparable as the Three Musketeers all the way through high school. We were “That 70’s Show” 20 years before it aired, hanging out in Mark’s family room playing bumper pool and listening to music and watching “Fernwood 2 Night” and just being goofy teens.

But life, as it will, eventually took us on different paths, near and far. Slowly our contact faded mostly to Christmas cards. Lucky us, in the past decade we reconnected after all three W’s wound up physically close once more in Ventura County.

A brand-new reconnection with an old friend is where we will pick up in next week’s column.

*   *   *

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

Knocked Out by “The Kudzu Queen”

by Woody

“What really knocks me out,” Holden Caulfield says in “The Catcher in the Rye,”  “is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”

Mimi Herman’s newly released debut novel, “The Kudzu Queen” (Regal House Publishing), KO’d me so completely I felt like calling her up on the phone even though we have never met.

Instead, I reached out through social media and she graciously responded from her home in North Carolina, where TKQ takes place, albeit in the early 1940s. Before I share some of our correspondence, let me share a little about her 320-page gem.

Lee Smith, a New York Times best-selling author, calls the narrator, 15-year-old Mattie Watson, “the most appealing young heroine since Scout” in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Praise doesn’t come much taller than that.

Rather than being hyperbole, I think the favorable comparison to Scout actually falls short of doing Mattie full justice. In my eyes she even more so reminds me of Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, one of the most beloved characters in American literature. Mattie, like Atticus, has a golden heart and a backbone of steel and a conscience like the needle of a compass that always knows where the North Star is. I asked Herman if she agreed with my assessment.

“Mattie is mature for her age,” Herman replied, “so I can see her sounding like Atticus. In my mind, Mattie is what Scout (who is younger) might have grown up to be as an adolescent, and since both Scout and Mattie are in many ways shaped by their admirable parents, I can see the connection. Lately, I’ve been saying that I think Mattie’s parents are what Atticus might have been if he’d been divided into a mother and a father.”

Kudzu, by the way, is a plant that grows a “mile-a-minute” and has been called “the vine that ate the South.” I will not reveal the novel’s plot, other than to say it is a page-turner featuring a protagonist to admire; a handsome charlatan whose evilness outgrows kudzu; families, both tightly knit and torn apart; friendships and feuds; heart and humor; tears and fears; twists and turns.

Beyond the story itself, I fell in love with Herman’s writing. She is an acclaimed poet and this shines through in her long-form writing as she routinely makes a handful of words do the work of a hundred.

“I am fierce in my writing and revising about making sure each word, each sentence, each description, each line of dialogue is perfectly tuned, so it resonates,” Herman shared, noting her original manuscript was a whopping 680 pages.

The result of this poet-like approach is sentences that read like stanzas and paragraphs resembling sonnets. I would have finished reading TKQ in three nights instead of four had I not spent so much time rereading, even re-rereading, so many lovely passages in order to savor them fully.

Here is but one example chosen from dozens of passages I underlined, a single sentence that sums up a hundred previous pages. It is after a terrible fire, after a death too, and after a third tragedy as well: “Danny stayed with Mr. Cullowee, to tend whatever was left to tend on the farm that wasn’t a farm anymore, by the house that had stopped being a house after it ceased to be a home.”

Written by my new friend, Mimi, an author who has not stopped being a poet.

*   *   *

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

Valentine’s Day Is More Than Candy

by Woody

It is easy to view Valentine’s Day – which will once again sneak up, on tiptoes, on a lot of forgetful boyfriends and husbands a few days hence – through jaundiced eyes as a holiday contrived for selling greeting cards and flowers, fancy chocolates and fancier restaurant dinners.

Looking through long-stem roses colored glasses, however, Cupid’s big day always reminds me of weddings. This of course includes my own, although admittedly the ceremony and reception – held before nuptial videography became en vogue – are a blur. Forty years later, I wish we had a videotape to fill in our memories.

Indeed, after watching my beautiful bride walk down the aisle to meet me at the pulpit, everything else – the verse readings, the minister’s words, our vows and our first kiss as husband and wife, the giddy walk on air with helium in our shoes back down the aisle together, the reception line, toasts given, our first dance, even how in the world one of the groomsmen wound up in a swimming pool in his tux – is pretty much all lost in the fog of time.

Given a time-machine trip back to Sept. 4, 1982, I would make a concentrated effort to stop and smell the bridal bouquet, so to speak, and savor more specific moments from the whirlwind day.

The next best thing to a time machine, for me, is going to weddings. Sitting in a church pew, or nestled around a gorgeous garden spot or gathered together overlooking the ocean, allows one to experience the pomp and circumstance much more clearly than can the two people standing front and center – and excited and overwhelmed – taking their vows.

Being a wedding spectator offers the chance to vicariously be the groom or bride again, this time with the advantage of not being bowled over by the occasion, and woos you to silently renew your own vows and commitment as you watch the marquee couple do so.

To be certain, it is almost impossible not to have your own heart chirp in song while watching two lovebirds join The Matrimony Club. The next time you are at a wedding, when the bride and groom are saying their vows, slyly peek around and notice how many married couples in attendance reach down and squeeze each other’s hands; after their big kiss, see how many little kisses among wedded spectators follow.

Another thing I like to do, if it hasn’t been mentioned among the toasts, is to ask the bride and groom how they met. Even if their “meet-cute” was not the stuff of a Nora Ephron movie, the blissful couple will always light up in retelling.

Meanwhile, listening to their tale always lightens my heart and reminds me of my own enchanted first encounter that led to “for better, for worse, in sickness and in health…”

Valentine’s Day, like weddings, affords a similar opportunity to be inspired by love. If you go for a walk along the beach this February 14th, or out to a restaurant, you will have no trouble picking out the dating couples and newlyweds and recently-weds.

Equally heartening are the couples you can tell have been together for a long, long time yet still glow like they are newly in love. If there were a polite way to do so, I would love to interrupt these veteran darlings and ask how they met – and their secrets to keeping the magic alive.

I have a strong hunch some of them might mention that going to weddings always results in being struck by a rejuvenating arrow from Cupid’s bow.

*   *   *

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.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 1StrawberriesCover-196x300.png
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Wooden-Me-cover-mock-up-186x300.png

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

Meal as Special as Murano Glass

by Woody

In Italy, in Venice, in a small shop in a labyrinth of narrow alleyways, my wife and I bought eight water glasses of hand-blown glass made on the nearby famous island of Murano. Each is of a different main color – midnight blue, sky blue, green, yellow, red, orange, white, black – with swirls and teardrops and other designs in contrasting colors.

They have one more striking characteristic: their shape looks like a paper cup that has been crushed in one’s hand, or stomped flat underfoot, then pushed out whole again with the wrinkles unsuccessfully smoothed out. This purposeful imperfection makes them perfectly beautiful.

These exquisite tumblers tumble to mind when I think about the final meal my wife and I had on our recent dream trip celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary. At first appearance, the restaurant in Barcelona, the last stop of our two weeks abroad, looked like a smashed paper cup but in the end it proved to be like masterful Murano glasswork.

Lobster paella was not to be missed — but almost was.

As mentioned here a week ago, on the very first evening of our travels, at an outdoor table under the stars overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice, I had the best spaghetti of my life at a tiny trattoria named Carpaccio.

In the Gothic Quarter, in the historic centre of the old city of Barcelona, Lisa and I set out on foot in search of dinner with no recommendations or idea of where to eat. We had decided, as we often do on vacation, to let our dining destination be determined by serendipity – and, this night specifically, by having paella on the menu for we had not yet sampled this locally.

Aranega’s Restaurante was so small as to be called a mouse-hole-in-the wall. We did not find it so much as the proprietor found us by materializing out of nowhere directly in our path on the sidewalk and handing us two flat laminated menus. Politely, though unenthusiastically, we glanced at the menus, but unlike at many eateries here with English translations – and like Aranega’s sandwich chalkboard displaying a lengthy Menu del Dia – the offerings were in Spanish only. Sensing our language illiteracy, he disappeared through the doorway and quickly reappeared with an English version.

With our appetites rumbling, for we had been walking a long time looking for the ideal restaurant; and with trepidation, for this establishment looked to be only a step above fast food, we perused the new menu albeit with low expectations. As we did so, the owner again vanished inside.

While he was gone, Lisa and I both spotted it at the same time: lobster paella.

The owner returned carrying a two-top table and set it up on the sidewalk, for the evening was too pleasant to waste eating indoors, and without delay next brought out two chairs and gently guided us to sit down.

A waiter, an affable young man who we learned was the owner’s son, took our order; told us one serving would fill us both; and added that it would take half an hour to freshly prepare.

“We’re in no hurry,” we replied, ordered sangrias, and enjoyed people watching and reliving highlights from the past fortnight.

The lobster paella required closer to a full hour, and two sangrias each, before arriving; was served in a giant communal cast-iron bowl, steaming hot, with a full crustacean shell swimming in soupy rice; and was beyond worth the long wait.

Indeed, like Maria’s spaghetti at Carpaccio, it was as exquisite as Murano hand-blown glass. Together, the bookend meals were masterpiece ways to begin and end a masterpiece trip.

*   *   *

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