Woody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE! 

*   *   *

Feliz Navidad Arrives Belatedly

An uninvited guest dropped by on the first Sunday morning of this New Year and instantly made herself right at home.

Lunch came and dinner went, and still she stayed, making herself comfortable on the couch. It was obvious she expected to spend the night, if not longer.

“Navi” making her cute self at home on our couch.

It was all my wife’s fault. She not only welcomed our guest with open arms – she carried her in her arms across a busy stoplight intersection and then the final few blocks to our house, fearful the small lost dog would dart into traffic.

The dog, you see, had started following my wife while she was out on an early-morning run. How long the dog had been giving chase before being noticed, my wife was not sure.

“Stay,” “heel” and “stop!” commands all failed. The interloper kept following.

My wife circled through this unfamiliar neighborhood, listening for a worried owner’s shout and looking for an open gate to a backyard, all to no avail. The dog, with no collar and ID, still followed.

We immediately drove back to where the dog latched onto my wife’s Nikes and canvassed the area. A boy, about age 10, seemed to recognize the white dog with black markings and directed us to a house where he thought it lived. Indeed, a very similar-looking dog answered the front door with its owner.

After striking out with a few others we encountered, we put up half-a-dozen “FOUND DOG” signs throughout the area and also posted messages on the Ventura County Animal Shelter’s webpage.

A visit to the veterinarian revealed the dog had no microchip for identification. (Public Service Announcement: collars with identification tags can come off so get your pet microchipped!)

As a Hail Mary, I posted a photo on my own Facebook page and asked Ventura friends to “share” it.

We cancelled our afternoon plans, stayed home, and waited.

Frankly, I did not do cartwheels having a lost dog in our backyard. Our 9-year-old boxer, Murray – named after the great writer, Jim Murray – was none too pleased either. He and I both knew it was only a matter of time, and not much, before my wife’s heart melted and she brought the dog inside from the chill.

The over-under-was an hour. The “under” bets won, and easily.

The energetic small dog not only won over my wife (no big feat), she also won over Murray (no small feat). I, too, quickly succumbed to the charms of this affectionate and playful pup.

That night, as we contemplated confining the new dog in the laundry room, she raced into our bedroom and hopped onto the bed. If you tell me you could have looked her in those brown doey eyes and ordered her “off!” I will tell you that you are lying.

Before we drifted off to sleep, the dog had snuggled her way into our hearts.

Mid-morning the following day, the only thing that would have made us happier than adopting this lost dog happened: the social media Hail Mary was caught in the end zone.

Joey Archuletta, a sophomore at Buena High, recognized the dog in the Facebook picture as belonging to his good friend and classmate, Diego Villa. Within an hour, the story had a happy ending.

Here’s how happy: “I felt like Joey just cured me of cancer when he showed me that you found Navi,” Diego told me.

Feliz Navidad on January fourth.

Navi, you see, is short for Navidad – named thusly because Diego and his family got the Jack Russell-Labrador mix as a 12-week-old puppy for Christmas 2014.

Nine days after this Christmas, the side gate had been left unlatched and Navi escaped unnoticed. That she also leapt over a four-foot-high wall comes as no surprise after seeing her jump entirely over our couch with the ease of an Olympic high jumper.

The surprise here is that Diego says Navi is an outdoors dog and does not sleep in his bed.

One more surprise: even after just one night of her company, the foot of our mattress feels a little empty without Navi.

*  *  *

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

• Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com
• Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon

Woody’s new book STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter is available for Pre-Order HERE NOW! In time for the holidays!

*   *   *

Acknowledging Ball-Givers Bellringer-Style

“I always turn to the sports page first, which records people’s accomplishments,” former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren famously said. “The front page has nothing but man’s failures.”

When Christmastime rolls around, I like to turn to the Star’s “Local” section first to read the Julius Gius Bellringer campaign’s daily update which records nothing but people’s generosity.

Gius, the late, great, longtime editor of The Star, was a role model and his annual Bellringer drive helped inspire “Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive” dedicated to giving new sports balls to disadvantaged kids.

And so, Bellringer-style, I want to acknowledge in print a few benefactors who represent many, many more who to date have donated more than 100 new sports balls this holiday season.

As has become a tradition, the very first person to get the ball rolling was Jim Cowan, who again donated ten Spaulding NBA basketballs.

“In the past I have done so in honor of my family, my coaches and friends,” said Cowan, a former star college basketball player and star educator afterwards. “This year I did so with a thought from a poet that didn’t attend Whittier College as I did, but I am sure John Wooden would have been one of his fans – John Greenleaf Whittier: ‘The joy that you give to others is the joy that comes back to you.’ ”

*

Jim Parker, my old press-box pal, wrote in an email with the subject line One More Through The Hoop: “I drained one from 3-point distance into the annual St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Christmas toy/gift drive box. Swish!”

*

Sherrie Basham swished Five More Through The Hoop, writing: “I have a small landscape design business with wonderful clients, who gift me generously this time of year. I decided to turn some of that around and donate to your drive.

“My mom, Janice, who died in 2013, would have been on board with this so in her memory I dropped off five NBA basketballs.”

*

“We just dropped off a basketball, football and soccer ball with Lea at the Ventura Boys and Girls Club,” shared Alan and Kathy Hammerand, adding: “Lea told me that she has been working there since 1988 and looks forward to the ball donations from your program every year.

“We are grateful to be able to be part of this effort to keep kids active and bring joy to them at this special time of year.”

*

Glen Sittel, who donated a basketball, football and soccer ball, similarly noted: “It’s always a great feeling to give something so simple, yet so important, to our youth in need.”

*

The narrative behind Leslie Seifert-De Los Santos’ donation of two NBA basketballs is especially touching. She shared:

“I spent some time thinking about my father, Arthur Seifert, whose lifelong recreation was basketball. He loved and excelled in it until he was 79 years old, when he suffered a heart attack while playing basketball.

“Dad recovered enough to shoot baskets for several years. He died three years ago, at 92 years old, after watching a basketball game with me the night before.

“Whenever I see a basketball, hear one bounce, watch children or professionals play, I remember my father’s eyes shining as he taught his daughters, the neighborhood children or the ‘young guys’ at pick-up games all over town, how to play and appreciate the game.

“Hopefully, whichever youngsters plays with the basketballs can enjoy that lifelong love of the game as well. Thanks for giving me the moment to remember.”

*

The thanks belongs to everyone, too many to mention all here, who have already contributed and a reminder that there is still time to drop off a new sports ball at any local youth club or the Ventura County Star offices (Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., through Dec. 21) at 550 Camarillo Center Drive near the Premium Outlets.

If you do pass out an assist, please email me at woodywriter@gmail.com so your donation can be added to the final tally.

And remember, “The joy that you give to others is the joy that comes back to you.”

*  *  *

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

• Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com
• Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon

Woody’s new book STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter is available for Pre-Order HERE NOW! In time for the holidays!

*   *   *

Bah-Humbug Hangover From Black Friday

If you were expecting 700 words of holiday nice and pumpkin spice here this morning, you are going to be as disappointed as a kid who doesn’t find a Hoverboard under the tree this Christmas morning.

I have a Black Friday hangover. If you want good cheer, phone your grandma. I’m in a “Bah-humbug” mood.

*

For starters, it annoys me when an all-inclusive “Happy Holidays” is misconstrued as being a “War on Christmas.”

*

Call me Scrooge, but I say “Bah, humbug!” to Black Friday and Cyber Monday and to radio stations that started playing nothing but Christmas music before Thanksgiving arrived.

Ditto for stores and homes that put up holiday lights and reindeer decorations before the Halloween pumpkins were tossed out.

*

It annoys me that so many drivers fail to even yield at a STOP sign but stop at YIELD signs when the roadway is clear.

*

The simply red “War on Christmas” holiday cups at Starbucks don’t bother me, but I was annoyed the other day when the barista wrote my name as “Woddy.”

Actually, it made me laugh.

*

“Small Business Saturday” annoys me – not because I am anti-local businesses, but because I think we should all make an effort to shop locally every Saturday.

For example, one study claims that for every $100 spent at a local businesses, $68 remains in the community versus just $43 for chain stores.

*

I’m steamed at Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg for announcing that he, and his wife Priscilla Chan, will give away most of their fortune – 99 percent of their company shares with a current estimated value of $45 billion – in an effort to make the world a “better place” for their newborn daughter, Maxima, and others.

Why am I ticked? Because hitting the “Like” button for this Facebook post seems wholly inadequate, as does a modest donation to The Star’s annual Julius Gius Bellringer drive.

However, small local donations – to any cause – matter, so we all need to follow Zuckerberg’s example and give what we can.

As me hero John Wooden used to say, “Small things add up to big things.”

*

I don’t much care whether Los Angeles gets an NFL team because I am a lifelong Cleveland Browns fan (pronounced “sufferer”).

Well, the Brownies – 12 seasons without a playoff appearance, 21 years without a playoff win, 51 years without a championship – ticked me off yet again last Monday night.

As they lined up for a last-second game-winning field-goal attempt against their archrival Ravens, I told my wife: “Because they’re the Browns, you just know the kick will get blocked and returned for a touchdown.”

My old Star sports page colleagues Jim “Swami” Parker and Derry “Deuce” Eads were never more clairvoyant: the blocked kick was returned 64 yards into the end zone as time expired. Even for the “Factory of Sadness” Browns, it was an impressive way to lose.

*

Speaking of losing, Kobe Bryant ticks me off for not retiring two years ago instead of turning the Lakers into a West Coast “Factory of Sadness.”

*

Telemarketers who ignore the No Call List get me more steamed than a freshly made Starbucks Holiday Pumpkin Spice Latte in any color cup.

*

I’m also steamed at Adele, the pop megastar whose comeback album broke the all-time record for first-week sales with 3.38 million.

You see, I pre-ordered “25” as a gift for my daughter only to now learn that for the same price there is a Target Deluxe Edition available with three bonus tracks.

*

It annoys me when the salsa is gone before the tortilla chips are.

*

Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like it when guys wear hats in a restaurant. Many of them remind me of a quip my writing hero, Jim Murray, once told me at the sight of a young man wearing a ball cap backwards in the press box dining area: “I bet he has his brain on backwards, too.”

*

I will end my bah-humbugging here before providing too much evidence that my own brain is on backwards.

*  *  *

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

• Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com
• Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon

Woody’s new book STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter is available for Pre-Order HERE NOW! In time for the holidays!

*   *   *

‘Holiday Ball Drive’ needs rainbows

The images, in both pictures and thousands of words, coming out of Paris the past week have been overwhelmingly horrific and overpoweringly heart-wrenching.

And, over and over, also heartwarmingly magnificent: taxi drivers shutting off their fare meters and rushing people out of harm’s way; citizens opening their homes to total strangers; and, most remarkable – yet also somehow common in times of terror and disaster – heroes rushing not away from danger but towards it to help.

In a kaleidoscope of dark images, I choose to focus on these brightly colored ones of people helping one another.

It is not only in times of tragedy we need to try to be, as the late Maya Angelou put it, “the rainbow in someone else’s cloud.” It is every day. Most certainly, this includes the holidays.

Dorothy Jue Lee, a longtime Venturan who passed away last month at age 81, was a rainbow daily. Growing up, she helped others while working in her family’s singular Jue’s Market.

In adulthood, for nearly four decades as an educator, she was a rainbow in the lives of school children.

Too, she served on more service groups and philanthropic boards than there are days in the week.

Here is how I also remember Dorothy: being a loyal and generous supporter of my annual “Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive” which strives to provide gift sports balls to local disadvantaged youth.

Last year, for example, Dorothy personally gave me two NBA basketballs and one official NFL football to pass along for her, saying: “As a retired elementary teacher, I know how valuable balls are for children.” A few days later, she donated two more Christmas-morning smiles.

Being a rainbow is easy: just drop off a new sports ball at a local Boys & Girls Club, YMCA, youth recreation center, fire department or house of worship – the organizations’ leaders will see that the gifts wind up in deserving young hands.

New this year, here are three businesses that have agreed to accept balls (Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., through Dec. 21) which I will pick up and deliver to kids in need: in Camarillo, the Ventura County Star offices at 550 Camarillo Center Drive (near the Premium Outlets); in Thousand Oaks, Mustang Marketing at 3135 Old Conejo Road (across the 101 Freeway from Home Depot); and in Ventura, Jensen Design & Survey at 1672 Donlon St. (near Target on Telephone Road).

Why sports balls? To begin, a basketball or football or soccer ball does not need batteries, will outlast most toys, and promotes exercise.

Actually, to begin, let me retell a story from about 20 years ago. I was at a youth basketball clinic when former Ventura College and NBA star Cedric Ceballos awarded autographed basketballs to a handful of lucky attendees.

Leaving the gym afterward, I happened upon a 10-year-old boy who had won one of the prized keepsakes – which he was dribbling on the rough blacktop outdoor court and shooting baskets with while perhaps imagining he was Ceballos.

Meanwhile, the real Ceballos’ Sharpie signature was smudging and wearing off.

Curious why he hadn’t carefully carried the trophy basketball home and put it safely on a bookshelf, I interrupted his playing to ask.

“I’ve never had my own basketball,” the boy answered matter-of-factly between shots.

That Christmastime, visions of the boy – and other boys and girls like him who don’t have their own basketball to shoot or soccer ball to kick or football to throw – danced through my head. So I asked you dear readers to help make the holidays happier by donating new sports balls.

You responded that year, and every one since, like MVPs – Most Valuable Philanthropists.

This year’s holidays will not be the same without Dorothy Jue Lee. In her honor, I am kicking off the 2015 drive with two NFL footballs and three NBA basketballs.

Who will you honor with your own gift ball or balls? Email me at woodywriter@gmail.com so I can add your generosity to this year’s tally.

Together, we can turn the clouds of many children into rainbows.

*  *  *

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

• Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com
• Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon

 Woody’s new book STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter is available for Pre-Order HERE NOW!

*  *  *

Side-trip Adventure Brings a Smile

This is the fourth in a four-column series on my recent travels to the Eastern Seaboard to visit my son – and visit much more.

* * *

The loveliness of Walden Pond in person is threefold beyond expectations, but 80 miles southwest – as Sammy Jay flies – I happened upon a small body of water that not only rivals Henry David Thoreau’s famous basin, it lives up to its own name: The Smiling Pool.

Most likely you are not familiar with Sammy Jay and his fellow characters who lived in, and played near, The Smiling Pool and neighboring Old Briar Patch in “The Bedtime Story-Books” series written by Thornton W. Burgess beginning in 1910.

My often-read copy of The Adventures of Buster Bear.

But the various “Adventures of” Jimmy Skunk, Grandfather Frog, Old Man Coyote, Bobby Raccoon, Jerry Muskrat, Buster Bear and a menagerie of forest friends wearing clothes were my dad’s favorite stories in the 1930s; mine in the ’60s; and, in turn, my daughter’s and sons’ most-requested in the early 1990s. The tattered book jackets and finger-worn pages of 20 hardcover editions reveal how often they have been reread.

Sometimes you take a trip and other times, I believe, a trip takes you. The latter can be better.

After my wife and I were shown the Mayflower Society House, where pilgrim descendant Ralph Waldo Emerson was married, in Plymouth, Massachusetts; then unexpectedly stumbled upon “Authors’ Ridge” where Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott and Thoreau are eternal neighbors in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord; followed by a visit to nearby Walden Pond, it was apparent an “author” theme had grabbed our road map.

So it was that in Cape Cod I serendipitously learned the Thornton W. Burgess Society Museum was in nearby East Sandwich. A side trip beckoned me like Chatterer The Red Squirrel to a pile or acorns.

Burgess, who was born in 1874, is certainly not as acclaimed as the Fab Four at Author’s Ridge. However, during the first half of the 20th Century, it was claimed at the museum, he was as popular as Sesame Street is today.

By the time of his death at age 90, Burgess authored more than 170 books and had 16,000 stories syndicated in newspapers across the country. His work was also published around the world in French, Spanish, German, Italian, Swedish and Gaelic.

And yet “The Bedtime Story-Man” was far more than a children’s author. He was a popular figure on radio from 1912 to 1960, including a show about nature.

Painting of Thornton Waldo Burgess

Indeed, Burgess was at heart a conservationist. He collaborated on a series of books that proved instrumental in the growth of a fledging organization created in 1910 – The Boy Scouts of America. Too, he helped found bird sanctuaries and in 1918 successfully lobbied Congress to pass the Migratory Bird Act.

His legacy lives on in the non-profit educational Thornton W. Burgess Society with the mission: “To inspire reverence for wildlife and concern for the natural environment.” He wrote his bedtime stories with the same goal.

Housed in a two-centuries-old home that overlooks The Smiling Pool – looking down at it from a hill the curved pond resembles a smile – and Old Briar Patch of Thornton’s youth, the museum also features Green Briar Nature Center; Briar Patch Conservation Area; and Green Briar Jam Kitchen, America’s oldest commercial jam kitchen dating back to 1903 and still looks original, where school children see fruit preserves made without preservatives.

There is also, of course, a writing wing. To see hundreds of rare-edition Thornton Waldo Burgess books, some familiar to my eyes, was a time machine back to both my childhood and my early parenthood.

Outside, admiring the Smiling Pool, my trip’s author theme intensified as a quote from the other wordsmith Waldo – Ralph Waldo Emerson – came to mind: “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”

I smiled, imaging Buster Bear and Reddy Fox doing exactly that below.

In the closing paragraph of each bedtime book, Burgess tells the reader what adventure he will write about next. This especially made sense because his books originated as serialized newspaper stories.

And so, because the advertised four columns proved insufficient for my Eastern Seaboard adventure, we will pick up from here with a bonus chapter next week.

* * *

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

• Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com
• Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon

 Woody’s new book STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter is available for Pre-Order HERE NOW!

*  *  *

‘I went to the woods’ at Walden Pond

This is the third in a four-column series on my recent travels to the Eastern Seaboard to visit my son – and visit much more.

*  *  *

We begin today where I left off last week: “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

This quote by Henry David Thoreau aptly describes “Authors Ridge,” where he, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson rest in shaded peace beneath picturesque woods in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.

Too, his sentiment beautifully depicts a scene less than two miles away, south on Walden Street through town, passing Emerson Playground and Thoreau Street, and then a bit further.

Two miles by car – and seemingly 200 years by calendar.

Indeed, this summer past marked the 170th anniversary of Thoreau’s celebrated experiment in self-examination and independence that began in July of 1845.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,” Thoreau wrote in his transcendent treatise, “Walden, or Life in the Woods,” which was not published until 1854, eight years before his death at age 44. “And to see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Visiting where Thoreau lived for two years, two months and two days in a one-room cabin he self-reliantly built – at a frugal cost of $28.12 – is to see those pages brought to life.

This author’s ridge, among pitch pines and hickories, is more gorgeous than I had imagined. Conjure up the most scenic pond you have ever seen, multiply that loveliness threefold, and still you will come up short of the view of Walden Pond below.

Unlike Plymouth Rock and the Old North Bridge, both being much smaller than anticipated, Walden Pond in person is grander. It seems more a lake.

The cabin, which measured 10 feet by 15 feet with two windows – and held a bed, small table, desk and two chairs – is long gone. It was dismantled for scrap lumber – just as the Mayflower, I learned earlier in this trip, was used to build homes after its return voyage from Plymouth to England.

The cabin site – specifically, the second-hand chimney bricks – was discovered in 1945, the centennial of the start of Thoreau’s retreat. Today, nine square granite posts, each about four feet tall and connected by a chain, mark the outline of the cabin.

A few paces to the side is a rock pile, perhaps 20 feet square. It began modestly in 1872 when Bronson Alcott, a lifelong friend of Thoreau, visited Walden Pond and placed a few stones to mark the cabin’s location. Ever since, admirers and disciples from the world over have extended the tradition.

Walt Whitman came in 1881, writing afterwards: “I too carried one and deposited on the heap.” John Muir did likewise, twice, in 1883 and 1893.

I now belong in the company of Whitman and Muir.

Some making the pilgrimage embellish their tributes with Thoreau quotes: “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it,” was printed in black marker on a triangular stone I saw.

In chalk, a round stone read: “breathe deeply + live wildly”.

A book cover-sized flat stone was filled fully: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

Reflecting on Thoreau’s song, I considered how these nuggets would fit nicely in 140-character Tweets – and yet how appalled he would surely be by Twitter, by texting, by our un-simplified modern world where the masses seem too distracted by consumerism to live wildly.

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined – H. D. Thoreau,” read another stone in the pile.

One more: “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”

But here was my favorite rock lyric: “Thoreau’s mom did his laundry.”

It is true. Thoreau regularly broke his contemplative solitude with a half-hour walk to his parents’ home to enjoy his mother’s apple pies and – time out from self-reliance – he would bring his dirty clothes.

* * *

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

• Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com
• Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon

 Woody’s new book STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter is available for Pre-Order HERE NOW!

*   *   *

Visiting America’s Rock of Ages

This is the first in a four-column series on my recent travels to the Eastern Seaboard to visit my son – and visit much more.

* * *

Printed in red letters on a white background, the poster-sized wooden sign reads: “Welcome To The 17th Century.”

Meanwhile, 20 yards from where I stood at “Plimouth Plantation” – Plymouth purposely spelled phonetically the way Governor William Bradford did in the 1600s – stood a red vending machine with familiar white script: Coca-Cola.

Plymouth Rock on display inside its zoo-like cage.

It was a microcosm of my visit to Plymouth, Mass: While trying to step back nearly 400 years in American history, one foot always seemed to remain firmly planted in the 21st Century.

For instance, the Mayflower II, a replica of the famous ship the Pilgrims sailed on to America in 1620, is docked beside motorboats with sleek modern sailboats cruising in the backdrop.

Still, if you narrow your aperture on the full-scale reproduction (about 100 feet long and 25 feet wide), you realize the Mayflower was extremely small to carry 102 passengers in the cargo hold – plus 30 crewmen on deck. Indeed, what a cramped, claustrophobic, courageous journey their 66 days at sea must have been.

With a dose of imagination, the Mayflower comes into focus like a wooden Apollo 11 with two tall masts. Stepping onto Plymouth Rock, as legend claims the Pilgrim party did, was arguably a bigger leap for mankind than Neil Armstrong’s first lunar footprint 349 years later. After all, those 102 Pilgrims have an estimated 32 million descendants today while the population on the moon remains zero.

Looking down at the Roman-like structure that houses Plymouth Rock.

Consider just one passenger, John Howland. It is remarkable the ripples this single settler had on American history. In fact, world events actually hung on the single strand of rope Howland miraculously managed to grab hold of after falling overboard during a storm midway through the voyage.

Because Howland was rescued from the frigid Atlantic waters, he completed the journey; was one of 51 Pilgrims to survive the first winter of illness and hunger; and ultimately had more descendants than any of his fellow passengers.

Moreover, his descendants include U.S. presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and both George Bushes. Also, literature’s Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ralph Waldo Emerson. None of these important figures would have been born had Howland perished before grabbing that fateful towline.

Leo Martin, a renowned historian, was our guide for a foot tour of all things Pilgrim. He dressed the part, wearing a brown felt hat and matching shirt with laces at the neck, tan knickers, red stockings and – Coca-Cola-like juxtaposition – modern walking shoes.

The two-hour field trip was far more fascinating than the classroom lectures of my youth. One nugget: Leo noted that Bradford brought 400 books on the Mayflower – more volumes than Harvard had when it was founded.

Our tour guide for all things Pilgrim, Leo Martin.

While the Pilgrim colony library was large, Plymouth Rock is not. Indeed, it underwhelms many largely because it is so small. Originally 15 feet long, three feet wide, and weighing 10 tons, what remains visible on shore today is only about the size of a queen mattress.

No matter. “The Great Rock” gave me goose bumps.

Plymouth Rock rests inside a steel cage, like a zoo animal almost, to protect it from thieves who would chip off souvenir chunks. Five feet above, at street level, the sacred site is surrounded by a beautiful open-air outdoor columned structure resembling a Roman temple.

A piece of Plymouth Rock is on display a few blocks away in Pilgrim Hall, America’s oldest continuously operating museum. Rubbing the stone is said to bring good luck, much like kissing Ireland’s Blarney Stone promises the gift of eloquence. I remain hopeful still of receiving both rewards.

Too, I have rubbed a tiny slice of moon rock in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and, honestly, touching America’s Rock of Ages was an equal thrill. After all, if the story of Plymouth Rock is true and not apocryphal, then this modest boulder is ground zero for 21st Century America.

“I believe the Pilgrims did step on Plymouth Rock,” Leo told me, and I choose to believe him. As Hemingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

* * *

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

• Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com
• Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon