ruins | WOODY WOODBURN

“We do not take a trip,” John Steinbeck wrote in his 1962 gem, Travels with Charley: In Search of America, “a trip take us.”

In 2022, in search of the Pompeii ruins in Italy during my Travels with Lisa, our 40th wedding anniversary trip took us to tears.

To learn that an estimated 2,000 inhabitants of this ancient city died in less than 15 minutes after Mount Vesuvius, less than 15 miles away, erupted two millennia ago is overwhelming. Indeed, imagining the horror of noon on August 11, 79 A.D. brings to mind the nightmare morning of September 11, 2001.

Strolling the cobblestone streets and alleyways, ducking into living quarters and brothels, seeing the basilica and amphitheatre and the massive main city square with a colossal statue of a centaur warrior, all brought on a sense of wonder.

A narrow alleyway in the ancient ruins of Pompeii.

And yet it was a single room, small and simple, that brought on misty eyes. Here, one story represented every story on that calamitous day. Here, in a sarcophagus-like glass box, was a plaster casting of one of the exhumed victims. Here was a 14-year-old girl.

She died lying prone, forehead resting on her right forearm and left hand covering her nose and mouth, as though she were pleasantly sunbathing on a beach while shielding her eyes from the summer sun and face from wind-blown sand. In truth, she was trying to protect herself from the aerial tsunami of falling ash and swirling gasses that suffocated the residents of Pompeii – in the streets, in their homes, in their beds – long before the molten waves of lava arrived.

A steady line of tourists, hushed and solemn in expression, filed past the plaster girl with many snapping photographs as if this were merely an art sculpture imitating life – or, in this case, death.

The following day, 150 miles to the north in Rome, the Pompeiian girl seemed to reappear on the beautiful Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II pedestrian bridge spanning the Tibre River and connecting the historic city centre with the Vatican. Midway across, and also centered widthwise, was a life-sized sculpture. Instead of white plaster, it was cast iron and grey; instead of a girl in her home, it was a homeless man lying in a similar prone position with his forehead pillowed on a forearm. Again, tourists took pause to reflect in thought and take pictures.

The amphitheatre with a stage of white marble.

Shortly past the end of the triple-arched stone bridge, less than a half-mile walk from St. Peter’s Basilica where the poor are daily blessed, was a third figure in a nearly identical pose as the ancient girl of plaster and the man of iron. But this was a real person, a man, in his fifties perhaps, lying on the sidewalk with his head turned to the side as if taking a swimmer’s breath, a raggedy blanket pulled up to his scraggy-bearded chin.

For all the attention given to the sculpture of a homeless man on the nearby landmark bridge; for all the reverence paid to the Pompeiian girl who died in a famous disaster long, long, long ago; the opposite was now the norm. The person still drawing breath seemed to draw only blind eyes, not empathy.

Homelessness is everydayness in most cities worldwide, yet the manner in which passerby’s collectively sidestepped and averted their eyes from a living person whereas they visually embraced a plaster girl and a cast-iron man, this juxtaposition was as silently heartbreaking as a thunderous Vesuvius eruption.

To be continued, more happily, in Rome in two weeks after the kickoff of Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive next week…

* * *

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

Zeus was the God of the Sky in ancient Greek mythology, so it seemed like a smile from the heavens to visit Greece’s Olympia ruins – including the Temple of Zeus – under a cloudless sky as blue as the nearby Ionian Sea.

Adding a divine wink, my wife and I were there on an early September day, the exact time on the calendar the original Olympics were held beginning in 776 B.C. Still, it was difficult to imagine these historic grounds in their former glory because all that remains are toppled stone blocks scattered about like colossal headstones in a cemetery of disrepair.

Among the ancient ruins at Olympia with Lisa.

One area, however, does remain largely as it once was: the track stadium. Visitors today can even use the special entrance, called the Krypte, with its stone archway still intact overhead. To be honest, however, the stadium that awaits across this threshold is underwhelming. Unlike the breathtaking Colosseum in Rome, some 300 miles due south, Olympia’s “stadium” had no seating structure. Instead, two grass slopes rising up gently the full length of the track on both sides provided Standing Room Only for 45,000 spectators.

The dirt track is not an oval but rather a long-and-narrow drag strip measuring just over half the width, and nearly twice the length, of a modern football field. Start and Finish lines of white marble mark off a distance of 192 meters – called a “stade” – with races ranging from a sprint of one length to 24 up-and-backs equaling nearly a three miles.

The “Krypte” entrance used by ancient Olympic athletes.

Before competing in footraces, as well as events later added such as the long jump, javelin, wrestling, and boxing, athletes rubbed olive oil over their bodies and then dirt.

“Other than a dusty sheen,” noted our tour guide, Nicolette, a sandy blonde whose olive skin was undusted, “they competed fully nude.”

A javelin toss from the track’s Krypte was Olympia’s most important building, The Temple of Zeus. Nearly a matching bookend of the Parthenon in Athens, the temple had 38 limestone columns, each 30 feet high, surrounding the perimeter and supporting a marble-tiled roof that shone as white as a full moon. The centerpiece inside was a 40-foot tall statue of Zeus, made of copper and bronze and covered with gold, and considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The statue was stolen in the 5th century and later destroyed in a fire. Seven decades later, the temple was fully razed by a pair of earthquakes. Standing among the present rubble it is again hard to envision the glory that once rose here.

The historic starting line made of marble…

Speaking of glory and imagination, at the track visitor after visitor toed the two-foot-wide, inch-high marble starting line posing in runners’ crouches to have their photographs taken. More than a few let their visions run further, literally, by bolting into sprints as if a starter’s call had just bellowed.

Most of these Olympic daydreamers were men of middle age or older. One even shuffled with a quad cane. Not surprisingly, their initial dashes typically slowed to a jog by the halfway mark and became a walk for the return stade.

Invariably, except for the gentleman with the cane, the competitors resumed a sprint for the final 10 meters or so, always beaming as if the champion’s olive wreath was up for grabs.

Watching them, for I did not join in, I could not help but smile as well – with thanks that they did not take their ancient Olympic daydreams so seriously as to run wearing only olive oil and dust.

To be continued next week with more about olive oil…

* * *

WOODY WOODBURN

Writer, "Streaker" & Speaker

Tag Archives: ruins

Moved To Tears By Girl In Pompeii

Ancient Olympics Site Sparks The Imagination