Tag Archives: grandfather

The Rest of the Story About ‘Bruno’

by Woody

And now, as radio legend Paul Harvey used to begin his popular segment, the rest of the story…           

Back in December when my second granddaughter, Auden, was born, I mentioned in this space that her older sister Maya calls me Bruno instead of Grandpa or some other variation of.

Readers continue to ask me where this nickname came from and Father’s Day weekend, since my daughter and son originally gave me this pet name, seems an apropos time to share the answer.

“Masterpiece Maya” and her “Bruno.”

To begin, let me go backwards. I had a great aunt named Wibbie – well, that is what my siblings and I called her because that is what my dad called his aunt ever since he was a little boy because that is what came out when he tried to say Elizabeth.

Another nickname from a boyhood, mine, that stuck – my oldest brother, in reference to a character in the B.C. caveman-era comic strip, began calling me Grog and still does.

Shakespeare’s Juliet famously says, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet.” Similarly, what’s in a nickname can smell as sweet as any rose.

Sweet names I call my son Greg include Little Grog or Grog, Brunjun (a contraction of Bruno Jr., stay tuned), Gregburn (a contraction of first and last names) and its abbreviation GB, Funcle (because Maya does), and Greggie, but rarely Greg.

My daughter Dallas once asked me why I have so many nicknames for her – Dally, Dalburn, Bingo-bum (a word she made up at age 4 and often called me), and Meatloaf (as obscure as Wibbie for Elizabeth) to name a handful – and I answered: “Because I love you far more than a single nickname can possibly hold.”

“Why Meatloaf?” you now ask. One long-ago day I was picking Dallas up at kindergarten and as she came out of the classroom I overheard her best friend, a boy she had gone to daycare with since age 2, tell her, “Bye, meatloaf.”

On our drive home, I asked why the boy had called her meatloaf and she giggled and explained, after very likely first calling me a “silly bingo-bum,” that he had actually said, “Bye, my love.”

I thought that was just about the cutest thing ever and my favorite private (until now) term of endearment for my daughter was born. She in turn still calls me Meatloaf and Bingo-bum and Daddy; my son calls me Big Grog and Pops; they both call me Dadburn and Bruno and, by extension, to them my wife and I are sometimes The Bruns. So many sobriquets, I like to think, because of so much love.

Now back to Bruno and its origins. When my daughter and son were quite young, about 6 and 4, there was a TV commercial for a local pizza chain that ended with the cartoon mascot declaring, “Bruno’s hungry!”

Kids being kids, they thought it was spit-your-milk-out hilarious when I began announcing dinnertime by saying in a loud mascot-mimicking voice: “Bruno’s hungry!”

They playfully started calling me Bruno and all these years later Maya now does as well; as will Auden, who by the way carries my mother Audrey’s nickname; as will their future cousin, Woodchip, which is how my son and his wife Jess – GorJess to him, Jessburn or JB to me – refer to their baby daughter due in three months, so loved that even in the womb she already has a nickname.

And now, as Paul Harvey would conclude, you know the rest of the story.

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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.

Part 2: From Cold War to Warm Heart

by Woody

Picking up where I left off last week…

“Your assignment,” Miss Bauer, my first-grade teacher, told the class while passing out oversized pieces of Manila art paper, “is to draw the most important person in the world.”

When it was time to share, my classmates showed off crayon pictures of baseball stars and football heroes, presidents and movie stars and other famous people, and I held up a portrait of a bespectacled man wearing a plaid fishing shirt, with a black doctor’s bag in one hand and a fly rod in the other.

“This is my grandpa,” I said happily, proudly.

My esteem for Grandpa Ansel, my paternal grandfather, has not diminished in the passing decades. As evidence, my son’s middle name is in his honor.

Grandpa Ansel, my two older brothers and me.

While my memories of Grandpa are about as thin as one of his fly rods, I do vividly recall the way he softly whistle-hummed when he was concentrating,such as when tying fishing flies; and also when he hugged me, the quiet lip music as soothing as a cat’s purr.

Here is something I else I have never forgotten. I was maybe 7 years old, which would mean it was the final year of Grandpa’s life for he died in 1968 at age 76, and I was playing with little green plastic army men. This being during the Cold War, my American mini-G.I. Joes were naturally shooting up evil Russian soldiers.

Grandpa interrupted my war games, getting down on hands and knees on the carpet, and told me, gently but earnestly, that Russian boys were no different than me – they liked to fish with their grandpas, ride bicycles with their friends and play sports with their brothers, and probably loved orange soda almost as much as I did. Of a hundred family stories I have heard about Grandpa, to me this one has always encapsulated the humanity and wisdom that was woven into the fabric of his being.

All these years later, I was recently told a new story from seven decades past that doubled the height of the lofty pedestal on which I view Grandpa. The gift remembrance came from a former patient of his, for Ansel was a longtime country physician in the small rural town of Urbana, Ohio.

In 1954, Suzie was a high school senior with a college boyfriend. Her mother snoopily intercepted a love letter, had reason to think her daughter might be pregnant, and took her to see Dr. Ansel Woodburn. That choice was made for two important reasons: four years earlier, Ansel had delivered Suzie’s youngest sister; perhaps more chiefly, Suzie’s family had since moved from their farm just outside of Urbana to Springfield, some 20 miles away, and her mother thought an out-of-town doctor might prevent gossip.

“Needless to say, my parents were very angry,” Suzie says, adding: “My dad was not kind to me at all and my mother was no nicer.”

While there was only icy acrimony at home, Suzie was embraced with great warmth in Ansel’s medical office.

“I have never told anyone, not even my four children, about this episode,” Suzie confided to me. “It happened so long ago and life has moved on with a great force to live each day looking forward.”

Here and now, with me sitting in her Camarillo living room, Suzie looked backward. What she saw, and shared, began with heartbreak but in the end put birdsong – no, a soothing whistle-hum as she also remembered my grandpa doing – in her heart as well as mine.

To be continued, and concluded, next week.

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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.

Trying To Be Like My Grandpa

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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Still Trying To Be

Like My Grandpa

            October 5 was the birth date of my Grandpa Ansel, the only grandparent I knew, so he is especially on my mind today. I was only 7 when he died, yet he lives on in my memories and core values.

An art assignment when I was in the first grade goes a long way in telling you about my grandpa.

“And who is this?” asked Miss Bower, studying my crayon portrait response to her prompt: “Who is the most important person in the world?”

“My grandpa,” six-year-old-me replied, matter-of-factly, as though it were so obvious no answer should have been required.

“All your classmates drew portraits of President Johnson,” Miss Bower noted, adding: “Your grandpa must be very special.”

Me: “Yeah, he’s pretty ginchy.”

To be honest, the thought of drawing a portrait of the President of the United States never crossed my mind. In truth, I wondered why my friends had not drawn pictures of their grandpas.

Grandpa Ansel with me (red shirt) and my two brothers.

After all, it wasn’t the President who patiently showed me how to bait a fishhook. Certainly the President had never set down his fly rod to calmly help me untangle a bird’s nest of fishing line in a backlashed spinning reel.

It wasn’t the President who taught me other important things a boy needs to know, like how to skip flat stones across the water; how to whistle; and how to pound nails without bending them.

The President never gave me a ginchy handcrafted wooden toolbox for my fifth birthday – or taught me funny old-fashioned words like “ginchy” which means “cool.”

“Grandpa, how come you don’t use worms like I do?” I once asked while “helping” him tie a fly in his basement fantasyland workshop of tools and endless jars filled with fishhooks, feathers, fur and other paraphernalia.

“Oh, it takes a mighty skillful fisherman like yourself to catch a fish with a worm,” he answered. “That’s why you always catch big fish while I catch the little ones. I’d better stick to using flies if I want to have a chance to keep up with you.”

“Okay, Grandpa – but if you change your mind, I’ll share my worms with you.”

Grandpa shared lots of important things with me, like how to look a man in the eye when you shake hands; The Golden Rule; and that little boys in Russia are the same as little boys in America, this being during the Cold War.

“Which way is the wind blowing?” I would ask Grandpa whenever we went fishing. Before answering, he would moisten his index finger in his mouth and then dramatically extend it high in the air as I mimicked him.

Upon seeing which side of his finger-turned-weather-vane dried first, Grandpa would whistle-hum happily before responding: “I do believe it’s blowing from the west.”

Always, the wind was blowing from the west.

Always, this excited me and I would then recite by heart a poem Grandpa had taught me:

“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.”

Growing up, I wanted to be like Grandpa Ansel; ten months ago, I truly became like him – a grandpa. With fishing as a metaphor, I want my granddaughter Maya to always feel like the wind is blowing from the west when we’re spending time together.

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FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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” …