Category Archives: Columns

This ‘News’ Has Expiration Date

by Woody

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

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.”

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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!”

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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.”

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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?”

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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

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

 

A Walk Long Remembered

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

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

 

This Moving Day Needs No U-Haul

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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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

 

Readers’ Poetry, Memories, Laughs

by Woody

One hundred fourteen springs ago “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” with music by Albert von Tilzer and lyrics by Jack Norworth, was submitted to the United States Copyright Office.

Inspired by – more accurately, angered by – Major League Baseball’s ghost town-like empty and quiet ballparks, Bill Waxman, a longtime Dodgers fan and a reader of this space, sent me his own updated lyrics “with apologies to Jack Norworth” but none for the team owners:

“Lock me out of the ball game / Lock me out of the crowd

“I’ve got no interest in unfettered greed / Baseball’s a pastime we no longer need

“So it’s look, look forward to football / A game upon which we’ll depend

“Because no one will really care / When the lockout ends.”

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My requiem to a lovely tree felled near my home brought numerous reader responses, including this time capsule from Kate Larsen:

“I, too, have many trees that trigger great memories. Probably the best is the big chestnut tree in my best friend’s yard. In Michigan, there are lots of horse chestnut trees with their pointy green shells just begging to be shucked. My friend, Sally, and I loved to collect them.

“One year we had literally bushels full of these wonderful chestnuts. My mom insisted we get rid of them in the fall, so we dumped them off the side of the porch. The next spring we had a myriad of baby chestnut trees growing! Needless to say, we spent hours pulling them up and hardly ever collected them after that.”

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“You inspired me to plant more trees for grandchildren to enjoy!” vowed William Goldie, who also shared a BBC news story reporting that a tree cloned from the very one that dropped an apple on the head of Sir Isaac Newton – and thus led to his discovery of the laws of gravity – and planted in 1954 in the Cambridge University Botanic Garden was recently toppled by a storm.

On a happier note, a clone of that cloned historical tree will soon be planted in the garden.

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“I grew up with a “junk drawer” – actually a shoe box in a kitchen drawer,” shared Wayne Saddler. “But we called it “The Hell Drawer” since we always went there when someone exasperatedly exclaimed, “Where the hell is it?”

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James Barney shared his own hellish junk-drawer memory:

“Deborah makes ours look nice and tidy. Hence, when you need anything that SHOULD be in a junk drawer, look elsewhere. Case in point, and this happened recently, I was awakened by an intruder in the middle of the night. I leapt out of bed and banged the heck out of my foot. Immediate agony.

“Howling in pain, I hobbled down the stairs to the kitchen where I discovered: 1) no intruder; 2) that I was now standing in a pool of blood that was growing rapidly; and 3) there was NO tape in the junk drawer to make a bandage.

“I had to wrap my foot in a dish towel, take painful step after painful step down to the basement to get duct tape to fashion a bandage, then drag my now-throbbing foot up two flights of stairs where I discovered a dog who barely lifted her head and a wife who had slept through it all.

“Outcome: One broken toe, lost toenail, and an ‘intruder’ which turned out to be the robot vacuum which has run every night for the past two years. I’d kill for a decent junk drawer with a Band-Aid or tape!”

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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

 

A Beautiful River of Runners

by Woody

Standing along the dusty banks of The Ventura River Trail this past Sunday morning, very early and very cold, I could not help but think of Norman Maclean’s novella “A River Runs Through It.”

Instead of a stream teeming with trout, a running river of humanity was flowing through the tree-line bike path for the annual Ventura Marathon, Half-Marathon and 5K.

As I cheered for my son and future daughter-in-law, as well as for the other entrants in all three events, a quote from Maclean’s masterpiece came to mind – although I had to look it up in order to get it exactly right here: “The fisherman even has a phrase to describe what he does when he studies the patterns of a river. He says he is ‘reading the water’, and perhaps to tell his stories he has to do much the same thing.”

My daughter-in-law Jess epitomized the spirit of the day!

It struck me there were surely 2,511 different stories taking place on this morning, one for each entrant. For example, my son’s fiancé was running her first half-marathon, and successfully; he was running his umpteenth 13.1-miler, but first since battling a year-long foot injury, and with a PR; and hometown star Garrett Reynolds was making his marathon debut with a swift-as-a-salmon-heading-downstream time of 2 hours, 23 minutes.

“Reading the water” revealed many, many more stories. Such as a mother who, no matter how fast she ran, always remained one stride behind her sleeping baby in a running stroller. Likewise, a father pushed a wide-eyed child who seemed as gleeful as if he were riding in a bobsled.

Stories. A grandfatherly man with his race bib pinned to a pink T-shirt in honor of breast cancer awareness. Surely some runners were heroically battling cancer at this very moment and others were cancer survivors.

Stories. A 10-year-old girl and a 76-year-old woman finished the marathon and also an 83-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy. In the 5K, an 8-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl and 75-year-old woman and 84-year-old man. The half-marathon, which featured the most stories with 1,429, similarly spanned many generations.

Stories. One spectator along the river route was especially memorable. I dare say he cheered for each and every single runner, giving his smile to – and putting a smile on – all 2,511 faces. Honestly, I don’t know how he did not go hoarse yet for two hours he never let up.

Indeed, whether the runner was floating speedily on winged feet or struggling with sinking spirits, in a pleasant southern accent he tirelessly offered encouragement: “Only two more miles! … Relax your face… Lift your knees… You’ve got this! … You’re a winner!”

Other spectators likewise applauded for the 10K runners as wholeheartedly as for half-marathoners and marathoners, and cheered for the swift as loudly as for the slow. In return the runners smiled or gave a thumbs-up sign or with huffing breaths said, “Thank you.” Each in-person exchange was worth a thousand “Likes” on social media.

Eventually, the three streams – the marathon, which started at sunrise; half-marathon, beginning half an hour later, halfway down the trail; and 5K, starting still nearer the ocean – all merged into one river that flowed through the finish chute at Ventura Unified School District headquarters.

Arriving at the homestretch, every runner, regardless their time or distance raced, was greeted with a shout-out by name on PA system and rewarded with cheers from the throng of spectators. As it should be, for each of the 2,511 shining faces had earned a new story to tell.

No trout stream was ever more beautiful than this running river.

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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

 

Thanks, ‘Carissa’, for the Ventura Shout-out

by Woody

I remember watching “Little Miss Sunshine” in a downtown Ventura movie theater a number of years ago and the audience erupted with applause and cheers at the dramatic pageant arrival scene when Steve Carell’s dad character, driving the family in a bright yellow VW Microbus, misses the freeway exit and has to take an overpass to turn around…

…and the brief on-screen “star” is our 101 California Street exit – only four blocks away from the movie theater we were watching in – with the high-rise Crowne Plaza beach hotel in the background.

If you are at all like me you feel a similar thrill whenever you see Ventura in a Hollywood role. For example, our downtown in “Swordfish” or several local spots in “Two Jakes” or our beloved pier in “God Bless America” to name three more.

I imagine it’s how Monterey’s “Cannery Row” neighborhood must have felt to be immortalized in John Steinbeck’s novel of the same name. Less famously, the fictional coastal town of Cabrillo hints strongly of Ventura – and the old Star-Free Press – in my predecessor Chuck Thomas’ novel “Getting Off The Map.”

Well, a new book has me smiling and cheering for featuring Ventura in its pages. Actually, the fictional beach town is named Buena Vista, but make no mistake it is Buenaventura. From the beach and pier to Main Street and the foothills, its author – Dallas Woodburn – pays homage to her dear hometown through and through.

My daughter’s second novel, “Thanks, Carissa, For Ruining My Life” from Immortal Works, has just been published and – Boasting Dad Warning – instantly soared to No. 1 on Amazon’s list of Young Adult New Releases.

The story centers around two teenagers, Rose and Brad, who travel parallel journeys of self-discovery, empowerment, and acceptance after popular “queen bee” Carissa tears apart their lives. In Hollywood parlance, it’s “Brittany Runs a Marathon” meets “Some Kind of Wonderful.”

A wonderful kind of thing some writers like to do is scatter “Easter eggs” that only certain readers will find and recognize. “Carissa” has a basketful of such hidden treasures. For example, Tony’s Taco Shop is obviously Snapper Jack’s; Nature’s Grill makes a cameo as Nature’s Café; and in a role encompassing its own storyline is the Buena Vista radio station WAVE-104.3 that is, clear as a Santa Ana wind-blown summer day, Ventura’s KVTA-1590 where Dallas has been a guest on esteemed radio personality Tom Spence’s morning show. The observant reader will find more brightly dyed local gems.

Books are time machines and while “Carissa” will surely transport most readers back to high school, it carries me to when Dallas was only 6 or 7 and already dreaming of becoming an author. In my mind’s eye I can still see her, sitting tall on her knees, in a chair at the kitchen table and typing on her great-grandfather’s restored Underwood No. 5 typewriter. Punching the QWERTY keys, firmly with only her right index finger, she let her imagination soar.

There was modern magic in that 1911 heirloom: in second grade, Dallas had a poem – “Peanut Butter Surprise” about a PB&J sandwich made with a jellyfish because the grape jelly ran out – published in The Star’s “Kids Corner” feature and in fifth grade self-published a book of short stories and poems that sold 2,000 copies.

The little girl’s big dreams kept coming true with a play produced off-Broadway, a John Steinbeck Creative Writing Fellowship, and a handful of awards for her debut novel “The Best Week That Never Happened” two years ago.

Thanks to “Carissa” her writing life remains charmed, not ruined.

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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

 

Lovely ‘Poem’ Becomes Woodchips

by Woody

One hundred nine rings in an oak stump ago, Joyce Kilmer penned “Trees” with one of the most widely familiar opening couplets in America poetry:

I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree.

I thought of these words as I looked out my window and across the street as a lovely “poem” got sawed down, cut up, turned into woodchips and trucked away.

It was like seeing a theatrical street version of Shel Silverstein’s classic children’s book “The Giving Tree” starring two workmen in white hardhats and optic-yellow vests. Actually, this story was even sadder for this tree’s limbs would not be used to build a house for the grown boy; its trunk not crafted into a boat to sail the seas; when the workmen’s work was finished, there was not even a stump left to sit and rest upon.

Majestically tall, its trunk too thick to reach one’s arms around, the tree had become a botanical Leaning Tower of Pisa that was in danger of being toppled by a strong wind.

And so, beginning at 9 o’clock, a loud-crying chainsaw turned morning into mourning as a workman in a gargantuan cherry-picker amputated the branches one by one by one, thicker to smaller, as he hydraulically rose higher, higher, higher.

The felled branches were next cut into manageable lengths and fed into a woodchipper. The lines of a “poem” went in, mulch came out.

Lastly, the towering barren trunk came down. Instead of being made into long lumber for a home or boat, it was sawed into short logs to be burned in fireplaces. This was not a heartwarming thought.

It was not my tree, not in my yard, and yet all the same it was mine, and yours too, because trees are for all of us to enjoy. From start to finish, what took many decades to become living poetry was erased in less than four hours. It was tree-mendously sad.

Kilmer again: A tree that may in summer wear / A nest of robins in her hair.

            No more birds will nest in the lovely tree I used to see out my east-facing kitchen window, the rising sun climbing its branches each day.

The melancholy event gave me pause thinking about a handful of memorable trees in my life: The evergreen beside the driveway of my first boyhood home that my two older brothers and I attempted blind shots over during games of H-O-R-S-E. The sturdy buckeye we swung Tarzan-style from a rope near a pond. The apple tree I picked snacks off of on a shortcut home from grade school. The orange tree my two kids helped me plant when they were in grade school. The giant redwoods we saw, in awe, as a family. And on and on.

I think “poems” fill all our lives more than we generally realize. We draw trees in kindergarten and climb trees as older kids and hopefully at least once plant a tree, for as the Greek proverb states: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” Old women, too.

Kilmer once more: Poems are made by fools like me, / But only God can make a tree.

Afterwards, this fool walked over to determine how old the tree had been by counting its rings, but the stump was cut off below ground and covered with dirt. I may be overestimating its age by half, but I like to think it sprouted in 1913 – the same year “Trees” came into being.

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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

 

Rooting for “Howaboutthat!” Super Bowl

by Woody

Who are you rooting for in Super Bowl LVI/56?

It is a coin toss for me, not of indifference but rather different reasons of passion for the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals.

Let me begin with the Bengals because my rooting roots to them reach back to their very beginning as an expansion franchise in the American Football League in 1968. They were crummy that first season, losing 11 of 14 games, but something really “Crummy” happened the next year that made me pull for them nearly as dearly as I did my beloved Cleveland Browns.

Jimmy Crum, affectionately called Jim Crummy by us school kids, was a popular local TV news sportscaster famous for his trademark plaid sports coats and one-word catchphrase “Howaboutthat!”

As good luck would have it – mine, not Crum’s – he suffered a gallbladder attack or appendicitis or something else that required surgery and my dad performed it. As a thank you, Crum arranged for Pops to bring my two older brothers and me – ages 14, 12 and 9 – to the Bengals training camp at Wilmington College about 70 miles from our home in Columbus.

It was a “howaboutthat!” kind of day. Not only did we get to watch practice from the sidelines, we also ate lunch shoulder-to-hulking-shoulders with the players. Our seatmates included hotshot rookie quarterback Greg Cook; star running back Paul Robinson, who the previous season finished second in the MVP voting to Joe Namath; and menacing middle linebacker Bill Bergey.

While I remain a die-hard disappointed Browns fan, the Bengals were always my second-favorite team…

… until the Rams leapfrogged them two decades later.

While “no cheering in the press box” is an unwritten rule for sportswriters, I nonetheless rooted silently for the Rams while covering them from 1987 to 1994. After all, a winning team is a lot more fun to write about than a bungling one.

My favorite memory from those days happened during the 1989 season, during halftime of a game against the Atlanta Falcons, when legendary columnist Jim Murray asked me if he could sit next to me at lunch in the Anaheim Stadium press box.

“Y-y-yes, of course, M-M-Mr. Murray,” I stammered.

“Please, call me Jim,” my writing idol said and a friendship was born, although I never could bring myself to call him Jim.

Rams quarterback Jim Everett, who had thrown 31 touchdown passes the previous season and had not slowed down now, threw two TD spirals in the first half against the Falcons. In response to my gushing comments about Everett, Murray smiled wryly and knowingly and said in a don’t-get-carried-way tone: “He’s not Bob Waterfield yet.”

Waterfield, it should be noted, led the Rams to two NFL championships on his way to the Hall of Fame. Everett, it shortly turned out, was on his way to being a flash in the pan. It was a lesson, one of many from Murray, I have never forgotten.

Indeed, this season I have said more than once of the Bengals’ young star quarterback Joe Burrow: “He’s not Ken Anderson yet.” Anderson was the league MVP while leading the Bengals to their first Super Bowl victory in 1981.

Since I will not be in the press box at SoFi Stadium on Super Bowl Sunday, I will be openly rooting for the Rams…

…but, in my heart of hearts, I think I will be rooting a little louder for the Bengals; rooting like a 9-year-old kid; rooting for a “howaboutthat!” game where Joe Burrow may not be Bob Waterfield yet, but is Ken Anderson already.

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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

 

 

Ode To The Junk Drawer

by Woody

The other day, after a minor mishap slicing a bagel, you might I think I cursed all the way to the bathroom medicine cabinet to get a Band-Aid.

Nope. I simply took two steps and opened the kitchen’s junk drawer.

Perhaps you call yours the “everything drawer” or “stuff drawer,” but by any name every household has one. It’s usually the drawer nearest the phone and for good reason.

Indeed, it is a little known fact that moments after Alexander Graham Bell completed his historic first telephone call – “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you” – on March 10, 1876, he invented the junk drawer knowing he now needed a handy place to keep dozens of pencils (most with broken lead tips) and pens (good luck finding one that is not dried up) and paper (countless pads from realtors and plumbers) for taking down phone messages.

This junk drawer is even more packed than mine!

Likely, Mr. Bell also foresaw the black-hole-of-a-drawer storing a world tour of menus (Italian, Chinese, Thai, Mexican, Irish Pub…) for ordering takeout. Menus and pens, however, are only the tip of the iceberg.

A good junk drawer – even Martha Stewart’s or Felix Unger’s, I am certain – looks like a small town after a tornado strike. It is the Swiss Army Knife of drawers and in all likelihood has such a knife buried beneath the haphazard takeout menus. Suffice to say, with the contents of a junk drawer McGyver could escape any calamity.

Imagine a rabbit being pulled out of a magician’s hat and you get an idea of a junk drawer. Indeed, I actually found a rabbit’s foot in mine, dyed blue, probably a prize one of my kids won at the Ventura County Fair eons ago.

Actually, a good junk drawer is more like Mary Poppins’ magic carpetbag from which she miraculously unpacks a mirror, apron, packet of hairpins, throat lozenges, bottle of scent, larger bottle of medicine, heeled shoes, seven flannel nightgowns, measuring tape (for “taking measure” of one’s character), small folding armchair, large potted plant, tall floor lamp and taller hat stand.

For fun, lets look inside my own magic carpetbag. Take a deep breath, for commas are about the only thing I did not find although there were two children’s brightly colored (red and yellow) alphabet letters (Q and S) refrigerator magnets. The rest of the inventory includes…

…rubber bands paper clips three spools of thread blue white green sewing needles loose buttons loose postage stamps loose Band-Aids loose batteries (AA 9-volt AAA D – it’s a lottery if they still have juice or are dead) a handful of postcards received two scissors one shoelace nail clippers deck of playing cards one red checker loose birthday candles loose balloons Scotch tape packing tape near-empty roll of duct tape Elmer’s glue sunglasses old reading glasses ear buds iPod shuffle (thought to be lost) calculator (dead) James Taylor CD extra charger cord for cellphone…

…myriad single-serve packets of ketchup Sweet’N Low taco sauce soy sauce one set of takeout plastic cutlery jackknife for opening mail and packages enough pens to stock a shelf at Staples staples stapler pencils pencil sharpener with the plastic bulb fallen off and wood-and-lead shavings everywhere a few loose crayons countless expired coupons one Phillips head screwdriver two slotted head screwdrivers hammer pliers 12-inch ruler four keys to who knows what tape measure combination lock with unknown combo small flashlight and enough loose change to have a large pizza delivered.

I’ll wager all of those coins, with bank coin wrappers to roll them in, that your own junk drawer is a similarly supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

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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

 

 

Readers Awash With Own Memories

by Woody

Chuck Thomas, my mentor and great predecessor in this space, believed a writer should sometimes (when he wants the day off) turn things over to his readers. Who am I to argue?

My column about musical rain and the ocean’s lullaby brought a wave of responses, including this from William Goldie: “I grew up in Redlands where a rare rainy day was wonderful. Walking through the eucalyptus grove in the rain would produce wonderful sounds and smells and sensations that remain in my memory.

“I had a special place in our attic to sit and dream while listening to the sounds of rain on the roof. Splashing through puddles and watching the water rush down the zanja was another thrill that lingers in my memory.”

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“Lovely column today!” wrote Kent Brinkmeyer, who actually had much lovelier things on his mind. “The sounds you described so eloquently soothed me – particularly ‘the whispered breathing of someone next to you’ since today is my wife’s and my 34th anniversary.”

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“You took me back to Solimar Beach through your words,” shared Kirsten Haight-Ziober. “Our feelings are quite mutual – the music of the waves will always be my favorite lullaby, my ultimate serenity, my greatest nostalgia.”

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“Your column brought back memories of the combination of a rainstorm, mood music, and the sounds of a steam train all rolled into one,” Larry Smith reminisced. “It’s like a LP by the Mystic Moods Orchestra titled ‘One Stormy Night.’ It came out in 1966. The storm sounds were recorded during a thunderstorm in LA.

“I first heard it on one of the ‘beautiful music’ stations (oh for the good old days!) shortly after I came to Ventura County, also in 1966. Not having a turntable, I never bought a copy for myself but bought one for my aunt who lived in Beverly Hills her entire career as an English teacher. She and I loved good music. Fast forward to the mid-2010s when I discovered almost anything recorded is on YouTube. There it is!

“And the sounds of surf! From spring 1956 through 1965 (age 15 to 25) I lived in Del Mar with my folks and sister overlooking old 101 just before the turnoff to the race track. We were approximately 1,500 feet, per Google, from the beach at an elevation of about 1,500 feet. At night when the surf was high and the bedroom window open you could go to sleep to the sound of breaking waves.”

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“One of my Christmas presents was a notebook for my collection of your clipped-out columns,” Mickey Harris wrote in the kindest of compliments. “Now I hear we will not be receiving the printed paper on Saturdays! Is it true that your column will only be available online?!”

Don’t worry, Mickey. Come mid-March, readers will still be able to wrap dead fish in newsprint featuring my face and words as my column will be moving to Fridays.

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Lastly, in a note sent belatedly in response to my column about the passing of John Wooden’s daughter, Nan, Katherine Anderson shared this gem: “I rode an elevator with Coach and Nan and her husband years ago at the UCLA Medical office building.

“I was so excited to see Coach when he stepped in and I told him how great he looked! His reply: ‘This is my daughter, Nan, and her husband. Don’t you think they look great, too?’ Warm memories…”

I can just hear the playful warmth in Coach’s voice, as pleasant as nearby crashing waves while rainfall dances on the roof.

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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