Category Archives: Columns

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.

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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

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.

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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

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.

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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

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.

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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.

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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

Bookend Meals to Fondly Remember

by Woody

“Chocolate, s’il vous plaît,” I said, pointing at the dessert menu, at what I thought was ice cream, at crème glacée.“

You mean chocolat?”the waiter said, his tone mocking.

My wife and I were at a charming café in Nice, France, on a recent dream trip celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary, yet our waiter was anything but charming. To call him surly would be far too kind.

“Oui,” I said, trying my best to parrot his pronunciation, “Chocolat.”

“Chocolat,” he sneered again with emphasized inflection and a dismissive eye roll.

Cheers to a wonderful 40th anniversary trip…

My mind flashed back a few days, back to when we were in Olympia, Greece, and our tour guide, a lovely woman named Nicolette, taught me a less-than-lovely Greek word our bus driver had barked out in frustration at a driver who displeased him. I was tempted to repeat those two displeasing syllables now at our waiter, but instead bit my tongue until the chocolat ice cream could soothe it.

Happily, that rudeness and margherita pizza that tasted like it came frozen in a box, were the exception on our 12-day travels from Venice to Barcelona. From a delicious assortment of tapas al fresco while protected under a canopy beneath rainy skies to velvety gelato at a seaside table outdoors where it was impossible to tell which was forget-me-not bluer, the sky or the water, we had many meals to remember for the right reasons.

Two, however, stand out above the rest as all-time unforgettable meals. Remarkably, they were the very first and last dinners of our trip.

The lunch of tapas we enjoyed in Barcelona were simply amazing!

We arrived at our hotel in Venice after a long night, long day, and long evening of travel at nearly 9 o’clock and promptly went looking for a place to dine. Serendipitously, an Italian restaurantwas literally next door.

Carpaccio Trattoria is too small to be described as cozy, but we were too weary to look further. Without any wait, and with the temperature in the mid-70s, we were given a table for two on the waterfront patio with a front-row view of the scenic Grand Canal.

The ambiance could not have been lovelier with lapping water serving as soft music and an apricot-hued moon balanced on the steeple of the landmark Palladian Church directly across the waterway as if it were a basketball spinning on a Harlem Globetrotter’s index finger.

Maria, whose appearance was as pleasant as her manner, showed us to our table; took our orders; and served us as well. We learned over the course of the meal that she is also the owner, pasta chef, and bakes all of the desserts which she proudly noted she always samples. The latter was nearly impossible to believe for the dessert menu was not at all slim and yet Maria very much was – a positive testament to the walking lifestyle here.

Since boyhood, spaghetti has been my favorite meal and the gold standard has always been my mom’s. For the past 30 years, I have wistfully pined for her magical sauce and handmade pasta.

God bless Maria. Her tender-yet-firm pasta and simple sauce that was almost as sweet as chocolat – “The secret magic is the fresh local tomatoes,” she confided – was not the equal of my mom’s, impossibly it surpassed it. I wish you could have tasted it.

We passed on dessert, but Maria would have no such nonsense. Learning this was our anniversary eve, she brought a cannoli and a slice of triple-chocolate cake as her gifts to us. Both were heaven on a plate.

Next week: The second bookend meal to long remember.

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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.

Papa’s Bar Leads to Picasso’s Paintings

by Woody

On the Italian Riviera, on a ferryboat, on our way to Montorosso, the last of five charming fishing villages collectively known as Cinque Terre, my wife and I, on our recent 40th wedding anniversary, passed through the Gulf of La Spezia which is famously, and for good reason, nicknamed “The Bay of Poets.”

In addition to Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Henry James and Virginia Woolf, to name but a handful from a long shelf of celebrated authors who frequented these beautiful coastal lands, Ernest Hemingway wrote about the region in his novel “Across the River and Into the Trees.”

Self portrait by the legendary Pablo Picasso

Across the waters circumventing Italy and into Barcelona, this was not our first encounter with Papa Hemingway’s past. In Venice, his fingerprints remain at the Gritti Palace and Harry’s Bar; at sea, heading to Naples, we passed the hamlet of Acciaroli where Papa was believed to have found inspiration for “The Old Man and the Sea”; in Naples, in Rome, in Nice, I was proudly told: “Hemingway spent time here!”

In Barcelona, I decided to search for Hemingway’s footprints – or, rather, his elbow marks on an antique oak bar. “Hemingway Gin & Cocktail Bar” was within walking distance, albeit a rather lengthy stroll, that afforded Lisa and me an opportunity to explore the city en route.

HG&CB would have been easy to miss, and indeed we walked past it once, for its storefront is no more than 10 feet wide with an entrance doorway six steps below street level. Half-hidden as it is, the establishment looks fully posh with gilt signage and a glass door featuring a brass handle polished to a mirror-like shine.

Inside, the dark-wood bar is polished as perfectly as the front door’s handle and runs down the right side of the shotgun layout with forest-green leather-upholstered stools on the drinking side and black lacquer shelves filled with bottles on the serving side. The opposing wall is decorated with black-and-white photographs of Hemingway and also a framed quote by Papa: “Write Drunk, Edit Sober.”

Signature cocktails carry the theme further with names like “The Old Man And The Sea” (gin, vermouth and soda, served in a silver conch shell) and “Hemmy” (vodka, vanilla, liquore al pino and soda, served in a bearded pewter mug of the writer’s likeness).

Alas, Papa never enjoyed a “Hemmy” here for the bar is less than a decade old. Added woe, the elegance was locked behind a copper-colored security gate because it was only noon and patronage hours did not start until 4 p.m.

Less than two miles away, Bar Marsella, established in 1820 as Barcelona’s first bar, promised an authentic echo of Hemingway. Once again, however, it did not open until siesta ended. Adding to our disappointment, we were denied a glimpse inside because the entrance was shrouded by a single-car-wide steel roll-up garage door cloaked in graffiti art. Instead of poshness, it was grittiness; a place to Write Drunk, not Edit Sober.

Next came a silver lining on a cloudy day. Learning that Pablo Picasso as well hung out at Bar Marsalla, we Googled the legendary artist and discovered The Picasso Museum. A 20-minute walk in a pleasantly warm drizzle rewarded us, at last, with an open door – and more than 4,000 of his original paintings, drawings, and ceramics.

As Hemingway’s Santiago says in “The Old Man and the Sea”: “Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing…” Indeed, the collection was intoxicating.

Next week, as these travel chronicles near an end, some meals to remember.

*   *   *

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.

In a ‘Good Mood’ on French Riviera

by Woody

A priest in a brown robe belted with a white rope, a nun in running shoes matching her black habit, and a wolfish dog white as an angel jaywalk into city traffic…

What sounds like the beginning of a barroom joke was actually a sight I encountered a stone’s throw away from the Vatican during my recent 40th wedding anniversary dream trip. The trinity caused a car to hit the brakes and blare its horn while making me wonder what in the world Pope Francis would think about the two two-legged scofflaws.

Just as Saint Peter’s Square will always fondly remind me of the jaywalking Catholic dog, the French Riviera visited a day later provided another souvenir dog tale.

My wife and I, despite knowing only a fistful of French words between us, had successfully navigated the train system from Villefranche-Sur-Mer to Nice; where we successfully navigated both a long foreign menu and a surly waiter short on affability; then successfully navigated our return to the charming Old Town port whence we started.

To celebrate not getting lost en route either direction, and not mistakenly ordering Pieds De Porc (pigs’ feet) or Couilles de Mouton (mutton testicles) for lunch, we found a seaside bar just in time for Happy Hour. “The Good Mood” brasserie could well have been named “The Good View” for our outdoor two-top table overlooked, across a narrow cobblestone walkway, a postcard bay filled with sailboats and picturesque beach populated with sunbathers.

Certainly we were in a good mood as it is hard to imagine a lovelier place to rest one’s feet after a long day of sightseeing and enjoy a glass of wine and pint of beer. On the proprietor’s recommendation I had a “1664” French golden lager originally brewed when its name suggests.

Gazing at the sea, which in color seemed to be a reflection of the cloudless turquoise sky, a lone swimmer caught my eye. He was doing laps between two yellow buoys, perhaps 50 meters apart and bearing “No Motor Boats” signs, employing freestyle towards us and breaststroke when heading away. I would estimate his pace was about a half-mile per pint by me, which means he swam a full mile as I watched.

Ernest Hemingway’s footprints had appeared a number of times during our travels that began in Venice; and his fingerprints would be found at our final destination of Barcelona two days hence; and sitting here I could imagine Papa writing and drinking, and perhaps even challenging the swimmer to a race.

Before the swimmer finished her workout, and I finished my second 1664 for the recommendation had been a good one, a second swimmer appeared. She – or he, it was impossible to tell, but I will go with “she” – was slower in pace, yet much more enthusiastic. Indeed, the Black Lab splashed with abandon as she chased a tennis ball.

The dog’s owner, a young woman with an obvious sense of mischief, threw the tennis ball towards the orange buoy – close, closer, closer still – each time the freestyler approached it. On the fourth toss her aim and timing were both excellent and it looked like the lap swimmer and the Lab swimmer would collide…

…or perhaps the freestyler, looking up as he switched to breaststroke, might see the tennis ball and fetch it himself.

Alas, the dog-paddler got there first. Returning to shore, in her own display of playful mischief, she shook herself dry while getting her owner all wet and my good mood got even gooder.

Next up: Looking for Hemingway and finding Picasso…

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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.

Little Girl With A Big Name

by Woody

Dearest Auden,

Welcome to our family!

We waited for your arrival with growing excitement and diminishing patience as the big day neared. You weren’t due until the third day of the New Year, but to be honest you’re just what topsy-turvy 2022 needed to finish on a high note.

You came as a belated birthday gift for your big sister, Maya, who turned four early in December, and a three-days-early Christmas gift for the rest of us. In a wink of serendipity, you share your birthday with your Uncle Greg.

Normally, Funcle – as Maya calls him, and I’m certain you too will find the moniker of endearment to be perfectly fitting – feels slighted by birthday/Christmas combination gifts. In this case, however, he could not have felt more blessed.

Holding you for the first time, Auden, was a time machine for me. I looked down at your blue eyes and saw your big sister; saw your mommy when she was a baby; and saw your grandma, NeNe, long before I knew her.

But most of all, I saw your great-grandma – who was my mommy – for she ha the bluest eyes I have ever seen. Her peepers were the color of the Caribbean Sea and a cloudless summer sky, the prettiest blue in Monet’s palette and Wedgewood blue, which she dearly loved, all blended together. Yes, Auden, you have her movie-star eyes.

More importantly, however – for your eyes, and you, would be just as beautiful if they were green or brown, hazel or grey – you also have your great-grandmother’s name. While her birth certificate, and death certificate 30 years ago, read Audrey, your mommy and the other eight grandchildren all called her Auden.

The great poet W.H. Auden wrote a poem titled “O Tell Me The Truth About Love” and the truth is, Little Auden, your namesake epitomized love. Of a thousand stories I will one day share with you, let me begin here with this one that remains, sadly and maddeningly, relevant in this troubled world that oftentimes seems to be moving backwards.

It happened a long, long time ago, in the previous century, in the late 1940s, in the Midwest, when Auden was in high school. There was a must-go-to prom party and she was thrilled to be invited.

Shortly before the eagerly anticipated merrymaking, however, Auden’s excitement evaporated faster than a wet footprint on a scorching pool deck in August because she found out her friend Trish had not received an invitation.

Auden’s disappointed sizzled into anger when she learned why Trish was excluded: because she was Jewish. America’s G.I. Joes had just defeated the Nazis overseas, but anti-Semitism – then as now – had not been vanquished across our amber waves of grain and fruited plains, from sea to shining sea.

Understand, this was not just The Party of the Year, it was The Party of The Senior Class’s High School Lives. No matter. If Trish was not welcomed, then Auden would not go either. Instead, she invited Trish over to her house for their own two-person party…

…that turned out to be The Best Partyof Allas a growing cascade of classmates followed her example.

“Injustice,” she often told me, “is everyone’s battle.”

Little Auden, more than your lovely blue eyes, it is her traits of inner-mettle and rightness, alloyed with a great sense of humor too, that I hope you are most proud to have inherited from your namesake.

With love to the moon,

Bruno

P.S. Next, I need to tell you why Maya and you call me Bruno instead of Grandpa.

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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