‘The Child is father of the Man’

February 6, 2025February 6, 2025 by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

Once upon a time, an 8-year-old boy and his father hiked to the summit of Yosemite Falls, the fifth-highest waterfall on the planet and record holder in North America with a total drop of 2,245 feet.

Afterwards, as he was being tucked into bed that night, the weary-but-proud boy smiled like it was his birthday and Christmas and the first day of summer all wrapped into one, and told his climbing companion: “This was the best day of my life.”

There is, of course, no single “best” day; no day that is the ultimate masterpiece above all others. Rather, there are days so perfect and special and memorable that they merit a hue in The Best Days Ever Rainbow.

This day had been a radiant shade of orange, the boy’s favorite color; or perhaps the brilliant blue of the cloud-dotted sky that afternoon; better yet, it was red like the cherry Squeezit the boy drank in celebration at the summit as if it were champagne on New Year’s Eve at midnight.

A quarter of a century later, precisely and recently, the boy and the father returned to Yosemite Falls to try and relive that Squeezit red red-letter day. En route, poet William Wordsworth’s worthy words came to mind: “The Child is father of the Man.”

In echo, Joe-El, father of Superman, says of his only child: “The son becomes the father, and the father the son.” So it was on this mountainside.

The first time they had climbed up, Up, UP the steep and rugged four-mile trail that would challenge a sure-hoofed Bighorn sheep, the father carried a backpack stuffed heavy with provisions for them both.

This time it was the boy, now a man of 6-foot-3 with broad and strong shoulders, who carried the full load of drinks and food. Time stutters and yesterday is today, and today is tomorrow, and in my eyes my son came into simultaneous focus as a small boy and a grown adult.

The Child further became father of this Man by leading our way on the trail. When a rising step was extra high, or the footing precarious, it was now the son who held his father’s hand to provide steadying balance and safety. Too, it was the son who made sure the father took consistent breaks to stay hydrated.

“The journey,” wrote another poet, Miguel de Cervantes, “is better than the inn.” Indeed, the ascending journey – and descending – was the best part of the day: talking one-on-one for seven hours, for a hundred switchbacks up and a hundred more down, all with no cell phones, no distractions, nobody but us, Child and Man.

Yet, with apologies to Cervantes, the inn – the summit – shared top billing. As with the first time we reached the picturesque peak, the son and father again enjoyed a picnic lunch of leftover pepperoni pizza, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and a cherry Squeezit for the boy and a Guinness for the father – and, this time, an extra Irish pint for the grown son.

Twenty-five years ago, I wrote a column about climbing Yosemite Falls with this prescient passage: “In thirty years, or perhaps forty, would these two come back here, this time with The Mountain Boy’s hand doing the holding and the steadying and the helping as the grown son and his aging father rise up the mountain again? As Hemingway’s closing words in The Sun Also Rises beautifully put it: ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’ ”

It was more than pretty. It was beautiful. Perfect. A bookend cherry Squeezit red masterpiece day.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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.

Two New Kites, One Old Memory

June 29, 2019June 29, 2019 by Woody

Flying Kites Make

The Mind Soar

On a recent afternoon with spring in the breeze, something else wonderful was in the air: a kite.

Shortly, a second kite rose.

Like bookends separated by a long row of volumes, these two park scenes played out with an hour sandwiched between. Each vignette made me smile. Together, they made my heart soar as if aided by the wind and a knotted rag tail.

Before proceeding, a third kite bears mention – this one flown a quarter-century ago by my daughter, then four. It was her first kite and she had impatiently waited many days for the wind to be strong enough for a maiden flight.

If memory serves, and I am certain it does for this remains a cherished image, My Little Girl skipped to the park while happily singing the “Mary Poppins” lyrics, “Let’s go fly a kite and send it soaring. Up through the atmosphere. Up where the air is clear…”

After getting her 99-cent rainbow kite airborne, I handed the string to My Little Girl and her reaction, along with a beaming smile, was this: “Daddy, it feels like catching a big fish in the sky.”

This was a wonderful observation considering My Little Girl had never felt the tug of a fish.

Which brings me to the first kite I sighted this spring. Another little girl, perhaps six instead of four, was flying a kite decorated with a unicorn instead of a rainbow. Watching from afar, I readily imagined she also was likely thinking of fishing in the sky …

… because instead of holding a spool of cotton string, this little girl controlled her kite with a fishing rod and nylon line in a reel. What an ingenious father she had, I thought.

Too, I thought back to climbing a tree to retrieve My Little Girl’s rainbow kite after the string snapped and it fluttered into the clutches of branches. We promptly went to a kite store and got nylon “rope” as she called the heavier string.

Time passes, but not all things change. The little girl with the unicorn kite tethered by fishing line seemed as excited as if Christmas morning had arrived on a June afternoon. When the breeze held its breath too long, she handed the rod and reel to her father and skipped off to retrieve her grounded kite; held it high overhead; and then giggled when her father got it back up where the air is clear.

I could have watched this all afternoon, but too soon the happy pair departed hand-in-hand.

Not five minutes later, a second kite flyer arrived and the contrast could hardly have been more striking. Now I watched a gentleman, in his sixties I guessed, and alone; sailing a stunt kite without a fishing reel but with multiple strings that allowed him to make it zig-zag and spin and even dive to within inches of the ground before soaring again.

Again, the fishing metaphor was impossible to ignore for the gentleman was wearing a flannel shirt, stained pants and a brim hat that begged to be decorated with tied flies. Sitting in a folding beach chair, he seemed to belong lakeside or on a pier.

As the gentleman flew his kite, seated patiently as if waiting for a big fish to strike his line, my mind returned to the little girl I had just seen; then to My Little Girl; and finally I had one more lovely thought.

I imagined the gentleman’s mind was also wandering, drifting backward on the warm breeze to memories of flying a kite with his own little girl.

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Woody Woodburn 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 books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Advice From Dads for Father’s Day

June 15, 2019 by Woody

Dadvice for Father’s Day

Father’s Day cards will be opened tomorrow, so it seems apropos to begin today with a Hallmark-worthy thought from Mark Twain who famously observed: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”

More recently, classical pianist Charles Wadworth expanded on Twain’s quip, noting: “By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.”

Or a daughter.

My friend Barry Kibrick, host of the Emmy-winning PBS book-talk show “Between the Lines,” once told me of raising his two sons: “I never worried about over-praising them and building up their self-esteem too much because there are plenty of people in the world who will try to tear them down.”

Author Jan Hutchins had a similarly wise dad, sharing: “When I was a kid, my father told me every day, ‘You’re the most wonderful boy in the world, and you can do anything you want to.’ ”

Clarence Budington Kelland, a 20th century novelist who once described himself as “the best second-rate writer in America,” made a first-rate compliment about his own father: “He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.”

Best-selling essayist Robert Fulghum put it this way: “Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.”

American inventor Charles Kettering likewise advised, “Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice.”

From attribution unknown comes this pearl: “One night a father overheard his son pray: ‘Dear God, Make me the kind of man my Daddy is.’ Later that night, the father prayed, ‘Dear God, Make me the kind of man my son wants me to be.’ ”

The rock band Yellowcard offers this lovely lyric about the power of a dad as a role model: “Father I will always be / that same boy who stood by the sea / and watched you tower over me / now I’m older I wanna be the same as you.”

Hall of Fame baseball player Harmon Killebrew apparently had a Hall of Fame Dad, the son recalling: “My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, ‘You’re tearing up the grass.’ Dad would reply, ‘We’re not raising grass – we’re raising boys.’ ”

A great attitude for dads of daughters as well, naturally.

Speaking of girls, John Mayer strikes the right chord with these lyrics: “Fathers, be good to your daughters. You are the god and the weight of her world.”

Getting further to the heart of the matter, John Wooden, who believed “love” is the most important word in the English language, said: “The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”

From another basketball coach, the late Jim Valvano: “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person – he believed in me.”

My friend and mentor Wayne Bryan, father of doubles legends Mike and Bob who are even better people than they are tennis players, advises parents: “Shout your praise to the rooftops and if you must criticize, drop it like a dandelion. On second thought, don’t criticize at all.”

In closing is a home-run thought from Hall of Fame singles hitter Wade Boggs: “Anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad.”

Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Father’s Day Story Packs a Punch

June 16, 2018 by Woody

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400 Roosevelt Court

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Story for Father’s Day Packs a Punch

The photograph is from the early 1940s, black-and-white and slightly overexposed in the outdoor sunlight.

It is of a man, in his early 20s, with a thin mustache and a thick nose. His jaw is square as a brick’s edge. His hair is dark and short and flattened by sweat. His eyes are hidden in shadows.

The man is a boxer. He is in his prime, stomach flat and muscled, shoulders broad and powerful. He is working the speed bag, which is a blur after having just been struck by his left fist.

Jimmy Harvey, an Oak View resident with a gray-and-ginger goatee and bear’s build, cherishes this picture of his father taken between 1942 and 1946 while Roy L. Harvey was in the Navy during World War II.

Jimmy saw the photo for the first time when he was 14 and promptly asked his dad to teach him to fight.

Jimmy Harvey, who I would not like to box or fight!

“He said, ‘No, you don’t want to learn from Ol’ Canvas Back,” Jimmy recalls clearly a half-century later. “I asked, ‘What does that mean?’ ”

Answered his dad: “In boxing terms it means you spend more time on your back on the canvas than fighting.”

Looking through the prism of time, Jimmy, now a grandfather five times over, understands: “I think the reason Dad never taught me to fight is I used the term ‘fight’ and he used ‘box.’ He boxed for the art of it – I wanted to hurt somebody.”

In truth, Jimmy was the one generally getting hurt.

“I had my nose broken a few times,” he allows. “I wouldn’t back down. I was just stupid. I was getting expelled from high school all the time for fighting.”

The most memorable time Jimmy refused to back down happened not at school, but at home.

“I was 16 and Dad thought I was feeling my oats a little too much,” Jimmy shares. “We squared off, looking each other in the eye, and Dad said: ‘I know what you THINK you can do.’

“I was so mad. I really wanted to pop him and he knew it. He told me, ‘Let ‘er rip.’

“I decided I was going to sucker punch him quick,” Jimmy continues, pantomiming what followed by pounding his right fist into his left palm: “He caught it.”

Awed by the feat still, Jimmy adds: “Dad looked me in the eye and said, ‘You’re not ready.’ That cooled me off a bit.”

Sparring partners, in a manner of speaking, described their relationship. “We were never close,” the son allows. “I was a product of the ’60s and Dad was of the ’30s and ’40s.”

Time has a way of shrinking generation gaps. So does terminal illness. In 1988, at age 68, Roy was in the hospital. As Christmas – and death – approached, Jimmy visited daily.

“It was a race between liver failure and lung cancer,” Jimmy shares, his piercing blue eyes suddenly awash with emotion. “I was with him when he died. That was tough. Uncle Del was there, too.”

Flipping through a photo album at the wake, Del came to the picture of his brother working the speed bag.

“I said, ‘There’s old Canvas Back,’ ” Jimmy retells. “Uncle Del asked me what I’d said?

“I said, ‘Daddy told me he was on his back all the time so they called him Canvas Back.’ ”

Uncle Del replied, and sharply: “Son, I don’t know where you got your information, but your dad was All-Navy two years running.”

Tracing a finger over the grainy boxing photo, Jimmy rejoins: “He must have really been something in the ring.”

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

Wooden & Me Kickstarter Front Photo Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

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

Dads Forge Memories

June 20, 2015 by Woody

My new memoir WOODEN & ME is available here at Amazon

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One Role of Dads is to Forge Memories

Dads have countless roles and surely one of the most important is to forge lasting childhood memories for their kids. In honor of Father’s Day, here is one of mine.

The summer of 1969, a month before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would walk on the moon and two months before Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin rocked at Woodstock, my dad planned to take my two older brothers on an epic fishing adventure in Canada. Having just turned 9, I was deemed too young to tag along.

I felt more left out than Apollo 11’s third astronaut, Michael Collins, orbiting the moon in the Command Module.

T-minus two nights before our family Plymouth station wagon with faux wood side panels was to blast off, Pop’s friend, Mel Olex, who was to fill out the travel party, fell ill. It was not the first time Dr. Olex had come to my rescue: after separate accidents he put plaster casts on my broken leg and fractured wrist.

Now, he healed my broken heart because in his absence there was room for me. After all, food for four had already been packed. For me it was Christmas in June.

For Pop, now the only driver, it was a long haul from Columbus, Ohio, north across the border to Canada’s Lake Heron. We then hopped a motorboat to an isolated island where we stayed in a one-room rustic cabin at the Westwind Lodge. The name was fortuitous for it brought to mind a poem my Grandpa Ansel used to recite when he took us three boys fishing at farm ponds:

When the wind is from the north, / The wise fisherman does not go forth.

When the wind is from the south, / It blows the hook into the fish’s mouth.

When the wind is from the east, / `Tis not fit for man nor beast.

But when the wind is from the west, / The fishing is the very best.

Fishing at the Westwind Lodge thus promised to be the very best.

In the chill of dawn we would head out on the lake in a small boat with a temperamental outboard motor that leaked an ironically beautiful rainbow of ugly gasoline on the water’s surface.

By late afternoon we would have a collection of pike, walleye, perch and bass which the lodge cook filleted, breaded, fried and served us for dinner.

The first three days we returned to the Lodge for lunch before heading out for a second round of angling. This limited how far we could venture, so when Pop learned about a distant “Secret Cove” – doesn’t every lake have a “Secret Cove” that isn’t really a secret? – where northern pike the size of VW Beetles were reported to lurk, he got the cook to pack us lunches.

Next morning, Pop gave us our assignments: Jim was to make sure the rods and reels were all in the boat; Doug was in charge of the lunches and the cooler with the sodas; and I was told to put on my life jacket and try not to fall in the lake. Again.

We were starving by the time we finally found “Secret Cove” and decided to go ashore for lunch before catching some VWs with gills. We three boys bolted from the boat and soon learned an important lesson: when standing on an uprising smooth rock landscape, don’t pee facing uphill.

Pop (still in the boat): Hey, Dougie, where’d you put the lunches?

Doug (sneakers getting wet on land): I think they’re by the life jackets.

Pop: Nope. I don’t see them or the ice cooler anywhere. Dougie, you didn’t leave the lunches on the dock did you?

Doug: Stone silence.

Pop: (We boys would have gotten our mouths washed out with soap if we repeated what Pop said next.)

While I cannot state this as fact, I am convinced the true native name of that “Secret Cove” was “There Ain’t No Fish Here Cove.”

I am convinced of this, too: hippies at Woodstock didn’t have a more wonderfully memorable summer of ’69 than my big brothers and I did at Westwind.

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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

Column: 1 Sour Tale, 2 Sweet Ones

February 22, 2014 by Woody

Sour Story And 2 Sweet Tales

Three small boys. Crayons, a toy truck, ice cream. A good-morning hug, a morning smile, tears.

First the ice cream and tears.

Dan Pearce’s “Single Dad Laughing” blog is so hugely popular his most recent post has received 10,730 comments – about 10,730 of them angry.

Not at Pearce, but at what he witnessed in a Costco and wrote about in an essay that is no laughing matter. Headlined “You Just Broke Your Child. Congratulations” the 2,000-word piece begins: “Dads. Stop breaking your children. Please.”

Pearce continues: “As Noah and I stood in line to make a return, I watched as a little boy (he couldn’t have been older than six) looked up at his dad and asked very timidly if they could buy some ice cream when they were done. The father glared him down, and through clenched teeth, growled at the boy to ‘leave him alone and be quiet.’ The boy quickly cowered to the wall where he stood motionless and hurt for some time.

“The line slowly progressed and the child eventually shuffled back to his father as he quietly hummed a childish tune, seemingly having forgotten the anger his father had just shown. The father again turned and scolded the boy for making too much noise. The boy again shrunk back and cowered against the wall, wilted.

“I was agitated. I was confused. How could this man not see what a beautiful spirit stood in his shadow? How could this man be so quick to stub out all happiness in his own boy? How could this man not cherish the only time he’ll ever have to be everything to this boy? To be the person that matters most to this boy?

“We were three from the front now, and the boy started to come towards his dad yet again. His dad immediately stepped out of the line, jammed his fingers into his son’s collarbones until he winced in pain, and threatened him: ‘If you so much as make a sound or come off of that wall again, I promise you’re going to get it when we get home.’

“The boy again cowered against the wall. This time, he didn’t move. He didn’t make a sound. His beautiful face pointed down, locked to the floor and expressionless. He had been broken.”

Pearce goes on to powerfully, and poetically, describe at length what a “gift” it is to be a dad and concludes: “Dads. Every child has the innate right to ask for ice cream without being belittled and broken. . . . Every child deserves a superhero dad.”

Manuel Sanchez is a superhero to someone else’s child.

Sanchez drives a sanitation truck in Ojai and his route takes him past 5-year-old Daniel Mulligan’s home. Daniel is autistic and loves garbage trucks. Every Monday morning he waits out front to wave at Sanchez and excitedly watch as the truck’s mechanical claw reaches out to nosily grab and empty the trash cans.

Last Monday, Sanchez did more than wave back and smile – he parked and gave Daniel a new toy garbage truck. Daniel’s mother captured the magical moment on video. Titled simply “The Gift” it has gone viral on Facebook and YouTube.

Enjoying a laugh, and a hug, with my Little Guy now grown up.

You cannot watch “The Gift” without smiling – and also sadly wishing the boy in Costco had a dad like Sanchez.

Or like Drew Daywalt.

I met Daywalt a few weeks past at Mrs. Fig’s Bookworm in Camarillo when he was signing “The Day The Crayons Quit” which is No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller List for Children’s Picture Books. As fellow dads and writers, and native Ohioans, we hit it off like old friends.

The day I read Single Dad Laughing’s heartbreaking essay, Drew shared this heartwarming post with his Facebook friends:

“I hugged Reese when we woke up this morning. And I told him he was beautiful. He said, ‘Boys aren’t beautiful. They’re handsome,’ and I said, ‘I dunno man. . . You are really beautiful in my eyes.’ He hugged me and smiled.”

In my book, that’s the picture of a superhero dad.

Column: Dads, Sons and Daughters

June 15, 2013 by Woody

Ignorance, Bliss, Dads, Sons and Daughters

Father’s Day arrives tomorrow, so it seems apropos to begin today with a hallmark quote from yesteryear. Actually nearly 140 yesteryears ago when Mark Twain famously observed: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”

Charles Wadworth expanded on Twain’s thought, noting: “By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.”

Dallas and Greg, who make being a dad so great!

Similarly, from Mario Cuomo: “I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example.”

From attribution unknown comes this eloquent pearl: “One night a father overheard his son pray: ‘Dear God, Make me the kind of man my Daddy is.’ Later that night, the Father prayed, ‘Dear God, Make me the kind of man my son wants me to be.’ ”

PBS book talk show host Barry Kibrick told me of raising his two sons: “I never worried about over-praising them and building up their self-esteem too much because there are plenty of people in the world who will try to tear them down.”

Author Jan Hutchins had a similarly wise dad, sharing: “When I was a kid, my father told me every day, ‘You’re the most wonderful boy in the world, and you can do anything you want to.’ ”

Or, as my good friend, author and coach Wayne Bryan advises parents: “Shout your praise to the rooftops and if you must criticize, drop it like a dandelion. On second thought, don’t criticize at all.”

Hall of Fame baseball player Harmon Killebrew apparently had a Hall of Fame Dad, the son recalling this: “My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, ‘You’re tearing up the grass.’

“ ‘We’re not raising grass,’ Dad would reply. ‘We’re raising boys.’ ”

A great attitude for dads of daughters, too.

Speaking of girls, John Mayer strikes the right chord with these lines of song: “Fathers, be good to your daughters. You are the god and the weight of her world.”

As for fathers and sons, 19th century French poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore asked rhetorically: “Are we not like two volumes of one book?” German poet Johann Schiller knew these two “volumes” need not share similar DNA, noting: “It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.”

Another basketball coach, Jim Valvano, shared one of the secrets to his success when he noted: “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person – he believed in me.”

On the topic of “gifts,” a Jewish Proverb states: “When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.”

Here’s some good advice from Bill Cosby when it comes time to open a gift Sunday: “Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.”

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Woody’s new book, WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” is available for pre-order at: www.WoodyWoodburn.com

WOODY WOODBURN

Writer, "Streaker" & Speaker

Tag Archives: Dads

‘The Child is father of the Man’

Two New Kites, One Old Memory

Advice From Dads for Father’s Day

Father’s Day Story Packs a Punch

Dads Forge Memories

Column: 1 Sour Tale, 2 Sweet Ones

Column: Dads, Sons and Daughters