Engaging GOAT Tale of Two Goats

June 9, 2022June 16, 2022 by Woody

The acronym GOAT is greatly overworked, for to declare someone – or something – the Greatest Of All Time is a fool’s errand. One person says Mozart is the GOAT while three more argue for Beethoven, Bach and Stravinsky.

Rembrandt, Jordan, the Beatles are countered by Van Gogh, LeBron, the Rolling Stones; or Picasso, Magic, Grateful Dead; and so on.

The lovebirds Jess and Greg

To be sure, “greatest” depends on the eye – or ear – of the beholder. Far better, it seems to me, to have a Rainbow of Greatness and dish out colors. For example, Prince may get a shade of rock-and-roll purple and Steinbeck gets a hue of literary blue and Jesse Owens a glint of Olympic gold.

Which brings me to last weekend’s Ghanaian Engagement Ceremony for my son and his fiancé. Delayed two years by the pandemic, and thus held belatedly the day before the wedding, it was well worth the wait.

Imagine a New Year’s Eve party combined with Shakespeare in the Park, mix in two family reunions, attire everyone in dresses and shirts that look like they were hand-painted by a Disney animator using colors infused with sunshine, and you get a small idea of the big fun.

Oh yes, and don’t forget a bride and groom-to-be as beautiful and handsome as any storybook princess and prince. She wore a stunning lace dress, white as a cloud, the hemline and single sleeve widely bordered with a woven pattern of orange accented with red, green and blue. Her tekua, a crown-like headdress, echoed the bright palette. He complemented her in a long white shirt, its breastplate matching her tekua, white pants, and colorful pillbox kufi cap.

In honor of the princess’s Ghanaian roots, where her mother and father were wed, a spokesman asked for her hand on behalf of the prince. Bargaining, all performed aloud, ensued. Eventually, three representatives of the prince carried in four large woven baskets filled with jewelry and linens, perfumes and soaps, drinks and foods.

Had the ceremony been truly authentic, the offered dowry would have been declined for it lacked one important item: many years earlier, the princess’s mother’s family had received a goat in exchange for their blessings. Alas, that was in Ghana and this was in Santa Monica, and the mother dared not dream to request a goat.

The princess’s family deliberated playfully in open view even though all in attendance knew the generous dowry would in the end be accepted.

Taking no chances, for the prince loves the princess so deeply and dearly that he wished to impress her family beyond all doubt, a nod was given and into the courtyard walked two of the prince’s friends…

…each with a leashed goat in tow.

The jaw of the mother of the princess fell agape in joyous surprise and disbelief.

The two goats – royalty of sorts themselves, having appeared on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon and Saturday Night Live, and been guests at numerous Hollywood parties – departed before dinner was served. This was a good thing because the feast included kebobs of chicken, vegetables and, um, shall we say, meat not from a cow.

Libations and stories flowed; dancing continued long after the stars came out overhead; and the princess’s mother told me many times over, in a sing-song accent as sweet as any bottled fragrance in a dowry basket: “Ohhhh, I still can’t believe it. Your son got me good. Two goats – not one, two!”

Indeed, if it wasn’t the GOAT of engagement ceremonies, certainly it merits a brilliant orange to match the prince and princess’s decorative outfits.

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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

Sunshine Amidst A Rainy Morning

June 3, 2022 by Woody

Some people get caught in a light drizzle and curse their lack of an umbrella.

Others skip in the rain and dance playfully in the puddles.

And then there are those special individuals who, even in the darkest of storms, create rainbows for others wherever they go. My friend Nick is just such a rare human sunbeam. Let me share one shining example.

On a rainy winter morning, Nick ventured down his driveway to retrieve the newspaper and spotted a quite elderly gentleman doing likewise a handful of houses away. The neighbor, however, was using a reach-grabber tool so he wouldn’t have to – or, perhaps, couldn’t – bend down to pick it up.

Furthermore, the man was accompanied by his wife who was holding him seemingly so he wouldn’t fall. In truth, the wife appeared to equally need her husband’s support to keep from toppling.

Indeed, the couple’s driveway was literally a wet and slippery slope waiting for an accident – perhaps a broken hip or arm – to happen.

“I was worried one or both of them would fall and get hurt, maybe seriously,” Nick thought with serious concern. His next impulse was to help this couple he had never met, but quickly a third consideration embraced him: “I didn’t want to bruise their dignity if I walked down the street to help them.”

Nick slept on the matter and the following morning rose a little earlier than usual. Again it was raining, so he walked down the street and stealthily deposited the three newspapers the elderly couple subscribe to on their welcome mat along with an anonymous note that read: “Your paperboy wanted to make your morning a little easier and brighter.”

Thus began a new morning ritual for Nick that brings to my mind Sparky Anderson, the late Hall of Fame baseball manager, who coincidentally lived not far from Nick’s Thousand Oaks neighborhood. Each week on trash day, during his afternoon walk, Sparky would move his neighbors’ barrels from the curb up their driveways. Asked what motivated him to do so, he replied simply: “Woody, it don’t cost nothing at all to be nice.”

Curious about the identity of their nice Samaritan “paperboy,” the elderly couple asked around and eventually phoned Nick to thank him and a new friendship was born.

In sunshine as well as rain, day after week after month, Nick continued his new one-home paper route. And then the mishap he had feared for the elderly couple happened to him – not a fall and injury, but rather COVID-19.

Before going to the hospital with a dangerously low oxygen level, Nick had the presence of mind and heart to find a substitute paperboy. For the two weeks Nick was a patient, and a good while longer while he recuperated at home, a 13-year-old neighborhood boy dutifully delivered the early morning kindness.

When Nick was finally fit to resume his paper route an unexpected problem reared its head – its teenage head.

“He wouldn’t give it back,” Nick says with a laugh. “He told me it started his day with a sense of purpose and responsibility and a good feeling in his heart.”

And so it was that the teen boy continued the daily Sparky-like act of niceness until the couple recently moved away to be closer to their grandchildren.

Here’s hoping that another human sunbeam in the couple’s new neighborhood sees them with a reach-grabber tool and is inspired to escort their newspapers up to their welcome mat. As Ernest Hemingway wrote in the “The Sun Also Rises”, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

“Tigers” Keep Rampaging Unfettered

May 26, 2022June 1, 2022 by Woody

A tiger crept into an elementary school earlier this week, with summer vacation two days away, and fatally mauled 19 precious children and two heroic teachers.

It was not the worst such attack of schoolchildren in the Land of Freedom, if morgue-cold numbers are the criteria, for 10 years earlier a single man-eating tiger savagely killed 20 first-grade students in their classroom along with six adults.

Nor was it a rare tiger attack. Just two weeks ago a tiger killed 10 shoppers at a supermarket and over the past decade there have been more heinous, horrific, heartbreaking mass maulings by tigers than can be imagined.

Once again, again and again, words cannot describe the heartbreak…

This year, not yet Memorial Day, there have already been more than 200 mass maulings by tigers. Moreover, in 2020, the most recent year for which full data is available, 45,222 people in the Land of Freedom died from tiger injuries – half of them killed by their very own tiger.

“Thoughts and prayers,” half of the lawmakers offer after each mass mauling.

“Let’s pass some common-sense laws about tigers,” the other half pleads. “Like having all tiger owners undergo background checks to make sure they are fit to own a deadly beast. And why do civilians need mutant 15-headed man-eating tigers with claws that can pierce metal that were bred by the military for war?”

“No, no, no,” the first lawmakers demand, their stubborn faces turning blood red. “Owning a cat, even mutant tigers, is an inalienable right written on The Original Parchment and its Second Rule of All Rules is holy as if it were etched on Moses’ tablets of stone. Any law that limits tigers in any way is a slippery slope that will lead to the extermination of all tigers.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” the counterpart lawmakers cry out until they are blue in the face. “There are 400 million tigers in our Land of Freedom, more than one beast for each of our 300 million citizens. Rounding up all those tigers would be more impossible than ridding our land of alcohol, and surely you remember how that worked out. You still have your wine and whiskey, don’t you? And a bottle of Jack Daniels never killed 20 schoolchildren in the blink of an eye.”

“Tigers don’t kill people either – tiger owners do,” sneer the red-faced do-nothing lawmakers who line their pockets with gold from tiger breeders who themselves get filthy rich from selling as many striped man-eaters as possible.

“You love tigers more than you love people,” the blue-faced try-something lawmakers accuse.

“It’s the price of freedom,” insist the red-faced lawmakers. “More laws aren’t the answer. Cages won’t save lives. More tigers, not fewer, that’s the answer. Ban books, not tigers. The only thing that can stop a bad tiger is a good tiger. Thoughts and prayers, that’s all we can do.”

And so the arguments go, round and round like a spinning record album with the stylus stuck in one groove, the red-faced lawmakers thwarting all efforts by the blue-faced lawmakers even though the majority of tiger owners and non-owners alike want restrictions to slow the carnage.

Meanwhile the rest of the world’s lands, despite having mental illnesses and violent video games, suffer a tiny fraction of killings by tigers compared to the Land of Freedom. They roll their eyes with pity because they see what the Land of Freedom is blind to:

Owning tigers in unlimited numbers, including mutant multi-headed military-style man-eaters and deadly ghost tigers, does not keep people safe and free. In truth, in the Land of Freedom the people no longer own the tigers – the tigers own them.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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

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…

* * *

WOODY WOODBURN

Writer, "Streaker" & Speaker

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