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