Tag Archives: Summer

Bookend Poems on Autumn’s Arrival

by Woody

Poems about autumn, which arrived almost unexpectedly yesterday and as silently as if sneaking in on tiptoes for summer still seems in the air, surely outnumber all the leaves of reds and golds and flaming oranges in a forest of maple trees.

Not unexpectedly, one of the best of these poems was written by Emily Dickinson, a short offering published in 1896 and titled “Nature Poem, 28: Autumn.” It reads, in full:

“The morns are meeker than they were, / The nuts are getting brown;

“The berry’s cheek is plumper, / The rose is out of town.

“The maple wears a gayer scarf, / The field a scarlet gown.

“Lest I should be old-fashioned, / I’ll put a trinket on.”

The nuts here on the Golden Coast may not be getting brown, but our mornings certainly are noticeably meeker than before. Too, our evenings now grow darker, earlier. Indeed, it is as if the setting sun is in a race to call it a day a little sooner each evening. Soon, a walk on the beach may require a gayer scarf.

Greeting autumn with a hello embrace means in turn bidding a melancholy adieu to summer. Indeed, I love summer and will miss her dearly. In the heart of my youth, summer was without question my favorite of the four seasons for two reasons: warm weather and no school.

I have since learned that choosing a favorite season is a fool’s errand. It is like asking me to choose between Steinbeck, Hemingway, Twain and Shakespeare. Impossible.

Spring, for starters, is blooming flowers and flying kites and, as Tennyson poetically observed, when young men’s fancies turn to thoughts of love – so what’s not to love about this fair season?

Summer is beach outings and pool parties, fireflies and fireworks, ice cream and vacations – again, what’s not to adore fully?

Winter, meanwhile, is cozy fires and family gatherings, mistletoe and Auld Lang Syne and the New Year’s promise of approaching spring – how can you not love all that?

Thus, my favorite season is whichever one is currently visiting. And right now that is autumn. Many call it “fall”, but I think “autumn” is lovelier. By either name, its arrival brings with it…

…a crispness in the air that is invigorating.

…coffee shops and market shelves offering Pumpkin Spice This, Pumpkin Spice That, Pumpkin Spice Everything!

…corn mazes and hayrides and pumpkin patches and school children spending half an hour to select The Perfect Pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern with all the care of a bride choosing her wedding dress.

…carving jack-o-lanterns, going trick-or-treating, and having an excuse as a grown-up to dress up like a superhero.

…comfort foods such as homemade soups, chili and cornbread, marshmallows toasted over a fire, pumpkin pie/bread/pudding/cookies/coffee.

…football and Thanksgiving.

…fall foliage showing its true colors, not as grandly in Southern California as on the East Coast and Midwest, yet in a way our limited-edition outbursts of Monet-worthy leaves-scapes make them all the more precious and beautiful.

Speaking of leaves, fall’s arrival brings to mind another of my favorite poems, a bookend to Dickinson’s “Autumn.” Titled “Fantastic Fall” it was written by my daughter, Dallas, then in the fourth grade:

“Fall is a great season, here is my reason:

“The leaves on trees turn golden brown,

“Then the leaves fall DOWN, Down, down…

“You rake them into a giant hump,

“Next comes the good part – jump, Jump, JUMP!

“Leaves sail through the crisp autumn air,

“And fall down, Down, DOWN everywhere!”

Yes, right now I love autumn best. Until winter rings my doorbell.

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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

 

Fair Makes Big-Eyed Kids Of Us All

by Woody

The John Mellencamp song “County Fair” comes to my mind every summer with one lyric especially making me smile: “Kids with eyes as big as dollars / Rode all the rides.”

That, in a single image, sums up the Ventura County Fair to me – kids getting their thrills on carousels and trains, sky swings and the Tilt-a-Whirl, small roller coasters and the giant Ferris wheel.

My favorite Ferris wheel memory is captured in a framed 8-by-10 black-and-white photograph. Snapped candidly by a Star photographer three decades ago, before newspapers became colorful, it still hangs on my daughter’s childhood bedroom wall. In it she is 4 years old with excited eyes as big as dollars, me seated tight by her side with one arm around her, as we soar high skyward. It was her first VC Fair and she says it remains one of her earliest vivid memories.

Alas, for the past two years, kids – and teens and adults – making new Fair memories was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic causing the event’s first cancellation since World War II. Happily, that changes this Wednesday (Aug. 3) when the “VC Fair Rides Again.”

The Fair makes kids of us all. If not the rides, then the win-a-stuffed-animal games or various exhibits or concerts or chocolate-covered bacon will give you eyes as big as silver dollars. The Fair is more timeless than baseball and for a week and a half each summer becomes our favorite pastime.

Speaking of baseball, legend has it Babe Ruth played an exhibition game nearly a century ago in the mid-1920s at Seaside Park which is, and has been since 1914, the site for the Ventura County Fair that originated in 1874 at the Pierpont Bluffs. This claim to fame makes the current fairgrounds all the more special. After all, while throwing baseballs at milk bottles on the midway you can imagine you are trying to strike out The Sultan of Swat.

The Fair is also special because of spinning, dipping, whirling rides with enough G-forces to make a NASA astronaut’s stomach woozy.

The Fair is special because the food can also make your stomach spin with offerings that include almost anything you can imagine served on a stick, deep-fried or dipped in chocolate – or all three.

The Fair is special because it serves as an excuse for parents to play hooky from work for an afternoon.

The Fair is special because of the amazing exhibits of paintings and photography, handmade quilts and home-baked cakes, and on and on.

The Fair is special because of the midway games, no matter if the basketball rims are too high and so bent out of round that LeBron James would be lucky to sink 1 out of 4.

The Fair is special because the carnies are such colorful characters.

The Fair is special because of the 4-H junior livestock auction and blue-ribbon rabbits the size of English bulldogs!

And, not least of all, the Fair is special because of the ocean-side Ferris wheel that affords a soaring seagull’s-eye panoramic view that is beyond spectacular. This magic is magnified if you are 4 years old, or thereabouts, or sitting beside such a kid with eyes as big as silver dollars.

Mellencamp’s song concludes: “Well the County Fair left quite a mess / In the county yard”

Indeed, come August 14, after the tents are folded, the rides taken down, and the trucks loaded up, there will be quite a mess left behind. But that’s how the best parties always end – with a happy mess and lasting memories.

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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

Summertime Is Marbles Time

by Woody

This may be a surprise to some readers of this space, but I am not losing my marbles. To the contrary, I am gaining them.

For this I owe my great gratitude to a teacher who interrupted his discussion of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” one spring afternoon and shared a personal story. A philosophy, really.

Mr. Hawkins explained he kept a large jar on his dresser and every time something wonderful happened in his life he would drop a marble inside. Smooth pebbles, shiny pennies or pieces of sea glass would also suffice, he noted. His goal was to fill the jar, and a few more, during his life. The marbles themselves weren’t the real treasure, however – the act of noticing each special moment was.

All these years later, I can quote only two lines by memory from that Shakespeare play – “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” and “Though she be but little, she is fierce” – but I have collected a rising mountain of marbles. In doing so, I have come to notice something: summertime is marble time.

As my wise teacher importantly emphasized, something need not be a monumental pinch-me event – hitting a home run, stealing a first kiss, earning a diploma, winning the Pulitzer Prize – to be deserving of a marble. In fact, oftentimes the simple pleasures are quite worthy.

Simple summer pleasures such as…

Gazing at the stars that always seem brighter on a warm midsummer’s night.

A sweet summer romance.

Catching fireflies, catching frogs, catching “running” grunion in the midnight moonlight.

Running in the sprinklers, running your first marathon or fastest 5K, running after the ice cream truck.

Enjoying a Popsicle or ice cream cone that tastes better, and colder on your tongue, on a hot summer afternoon.

Sleeping in a tent, be it in the backyard for a slumber party or on a camping trip.

Visiting any National Park – or ballpark, Major League or Little League.

Hiking to the top of Yosemite Falls or along the trails in Ventura’s Harmon Canyon.

Climbing Mount Whitney or climbing a tree more lovely than a poem.

Writing a poem about a marble moment.

Skinny dipping in a pond for the first time – or most recent time.

Wine tasting, pub crawling, beach walking.

Spending an afternoon wading in the tide pools, collecting seashells, building a sandcastle.

Visiting one of the Channel Islands.

Watching – really watching – a Pacific sunset more beautiful than anything on display in the Louvre.

Going fishing, even if you bring home nothing more than a sunburn and a smile and a tall tale about the one that got away.

Teaching your son or daughter to ride a two-wheeler – doesn’t this ALWAYS happen during the summertime?

Daydreaming while gazing off the Ventura Pier.

Spending a week at your grandparents’ home and hearing stories about what your dad (or mom) was like as a young boy (or girl).

Flying a kite with your grandchild.

Attending your high school reunion or revisiting old memories with a college friend.

A backyard barbecue with friends is always better in the summertime.

Playing outside until one of your parents hollers, for the third time, for you to come inside for the night.

An evening walk hand-in-hand with your spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/child – or hand-in-leash with your dog.

Riding a merry-go-round or Ferris wheel at the fair with your child/girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse.

Watching Fourth of July fireworks.

A picnic with your favorite person in the world.

Be you 6 or 96, don’t be a mortal fool: make a point this summer to recognize – and savor – as many new marble moments as possible.

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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

 

Christmas in the Summertime

by Woody

The elementary schoolchildren stepped off the yellow bus, weary after another long day in the classroom and wearier from a school year that still had two more days remaining before summer break, and suddenly their faces lit up with Christmas-morning smiles.

I wish you could have seen them.

Some of the kids even sang out with the glee of carolers and I wish you could have heard them as well.

The reason for the excitement was because a handful of volunteers greeted them at their bus stop bearing surprise gifts to celebrate the beginning of summer vacation. “Burgers & Balls” is what Mary Anne Rooney and Mike Barber called the special event they organized, although truth be told the children were actually all given Subway sandwiches not hamburgers.

The boxed meals were welcomed treats because these schoolchildren come from low-income families. More specifically, they live in Nyeland Acres, a community of about 2,800 residents just outside Oxnard. Most specifically, they live near the giant Santa Claus visible from the 101 Freeway. Rising 20 feet high from the belt buckle up on a brick base designed to look like the top of a chimney, the iconic 10,000-pound statue is believed to be the world’s largest Santa.

Built in 1947 and originally located near Carpinteria, Barber famously rescued and moved Santa to Nyeland Acres in 2003. A former ironworker by trade, Barber repaired and refurbished Santa to its former glory and then some. Moreover, each December for the past 15 years he has helped stage the Santa-to-the-Sea Half-Marathon where entrants donate toys that are given to the neighborhood children.

That’s not the half of it. Mike and Mary Anne work tirelessly year-round with The Nyeland Promise to provide local residents with an array of support, resources and advocacy programs ranging from free medical clinics and health education to food pantries and safe drinking water to connecting every home with free internet and providing funding for every resident to attend the first two years at Oxnard College.

And, most recently, 200 schoolchildren received a burger (disguised as turkey and ham sandwiches) plus a soccer ball, basketball or football.

The Nyeland Promise actually had an assist passing out the sports balls – from generous Star readers. Because so many of you donated to my annual “Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive” after the deadline, too late to be delivered to deserving children last Christmas, those bonus balls instead found happy hands a little belatedly.

As I said, I wish you could have been there at the giveaway. Bus after bus, kids descended the stairs with heavy strides that soon grew bouncy. Their colorful backpacks – gifts from The Nyeland Promise ten months ago and filled with school supplies – also seemed to become lighter on their shoulders as they excitedly lined up like youngsters waiting to sit on a mall Santa’s lap.

One young boy wore a “SK8 the Infinity” T-shirt and two sisters wore matching sparkly shirts proclaiming “Life Is Beautiful” and every kid wore a beautiful infinity-wide smile.

One of the volunteers was especially memorable as well. Emily, a high school junior, is an example of The Nyeland Promise helping youth achieve considerable promise. Personable and bright, Emily boasts a 4.5 grade point average and dreams of becoming a pediatrician. Spend even a few minutes with her and you will walk away convinced that a stethoscope is in her future.

In a happy coincidence, one of the bus stops was barely a football pass away from Santa, who at this time of year is adorned with giant sunglasses. Christmas in summertime, indeed.

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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

 

Music to a Beach Boy’s Ears

by Woody

Ask a hundred people to name their favorite piece of music and you are likely to get a different answer from each, from the Beatles to Beethoven, from country to classical, from Amadeus to Zeppelin.

This question came to mind the other night as a much-needed Southern California rainstorm was drumming madly on my rooftop and rat-a-tat-tatting against my bedroom windowpanes. Buddy Rich and Keith Moon never played more magnificently.

Rain is the best lullaby of all, I thought while lying in my warm dry bed, but before drifting asleep I considered the subject further.

Reaching back in time, back to my youth in Ohio, back to humid summer weekends at our family’s modest cabin with a nearby pond and a not-far-away lake, I conjured up another magical melody: the chirping of crickets; joined occasionally by bullfrogs croaking their basso notes a short walk away; and in the distance, much less frequently, the eerie-but-beautiful lonesome howls of coyotes.

Moreover, instead of counting sheep to fall asleep one could count a cricket’s chirps for 15 seconds, add 40 to that number, and arrive at an approximation of the outside temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

Winter nights, where winters are truly winters, have their own soundtrack for inducing slumber. If you listen closely with eyes shut, I swear you can hear snow falling. Rather, I suppose, one actually hears an absence of noise as the snow muffles out all but the loudest of sounds. All the same, it is a beautiful lullaby indeed for as Mozart noted: “The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.”

Nearly as hushed as snowfall and softer than tap-dancing rain, with a cadence slower and more soothing than a cicada’s summer song, is to fall asleep to the whispered breathing of someone next to you. Here, too, the music is in the silence between notes, between inhalations and exhalations.

And yet, pressed to choose just one song to fall asleep to, I will opt for a percussion performance of waves crashing on the beach. Even in daylight, this is my favorite music, but at nighttime the ocean’s song is tenfold more mesmerizing.

One of the magical properties of music is that it is a time machine. Hearing a specific song can instantly transport us back to where we were – and who we were – when we first heard it and listened to it frequently.

Such was the case for my wife’s recent birthday when our family, all seven of us, rented a beach house in Avila Beach – or “Vanilla Beach,” as three-year granddaughter Maya renamed it. It was a long weekend of paradise.

During the daytime, the cymbal-like crashing waves were largely drowned out by talking and laughing and all other goings on of life. But at night, after the moon rose and “Goodnight Moon” had been read to Maya and we had all likewise gone to bed, the surf raised its volume pleasantly. Again, the music was as much the silence – the sea rising into a gentle swell, rising into a wave, rising into a vibrating crest – between oceanic muffled thunderclaps.

And again I was transported back in time, back to 1972, back to when I was 12 and spent the entire summer at Solimar Beach with my godparents. For a kid from the Midwest who had never before seen an ocean, falling asleep to the Pacific’s pacifying cadence was even better than listening to a rooftop symphony of rain or concert of cicadas and coyotes and bullfrogs.

All these years later, the surf’s song remains my favorite lullaby.

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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

 

 

Autumn Comes Knocking

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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Autumn Comes Knocking

On The Front Door

            Were you, like me, caught off guard by a guest who came knocking on your front door this past Monday?

Even though I was expecting her, she still seemed to arrive surprisingly early. Yet when I checked the clock – the calendar, actually – it turned out she was perfectly on time: September 23.

Yes, autumn is here.

Truly, I should have heard her pull into the driveway. After all, for the past few weeks dawn has suddenly had a pleasant chill to it.

At the least, I should have heard her walking up the front sidewalk a moment before she knocked. I mean, the setting sun has seemed in a race lately to bring twilight noticeably a little sooner each evening. Goodness, I’ve even had to turn on my car headlights many evenings, something that in summer only seems necessary on a late night out.

Oh, how I love summer and will miss her dearly. In the eyes of my youth, it was without question No. 1 of the four seasons. Top two reasons: warm weather and no school.

Presently, however, if you asked me my favorite season I could not say. It is a fool’s errand of a question, a Sophie’s choice. It is like asking me to choose between Steinbeck, Hemingway and Twain. Impossible.

Spring, for starters, is blooming flowers and flying kites and, as Tennyson observed, when young men’s fancies turn to thoughts of love – so what’s not to love about the season?

Yet summer is beach outings and pool parties and vacations of travel and ice cream cones and bike rides – again, what’s not to love?

Winter, meanwhile, is cozy fires and family gatherings, sledding and snowboarding, mistletoe and Auld Lang Syne, and the New Year’s promise of approaching spring – how can you not love all that?

Thus, my favorite season is whichever one is currently visiting. And right now that is autumn. Many call it “fall”, but I think “autumn” is lovelier. By either name, its arrival brings with it …

A crispness in the air, even on our Golden Coast, that is invigorating.

Markets and coffee shops offering limited-edition Pumpkin Spice This, Pumpkin Spice That, Pumpkin Everything!

Hayrides and pumpkin patches and children spending half an hour, or longer, selecting The Perfect Pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern with all the care of a bride choosing her wedding dress and shoes.

Linus and The Great Pumpkin.

Carving jack-o-lanterns, going trick-or-treating, and having an excuse as a grown-up to dress up like Batman or Cat Woman.

Comfort foods such as homemade soups, chili and cornbread, marshmallows toasted over a fire, pumpkin pie/bread/pudding/cookies/coffee.

Leaves that show their true colors, not in the widespread explosions of oranges and reds and golds that our East Coast and Midwest friends enjoy, but in a way our limited-edition outbursts of Monet-worthy leaves-scapes here make them all the more precious and beautiful.

Speaking of leaves, autumn’s arrival always transports my mind’s eye back to a giant pile of leaves that took forever to rake together. It was in my friend Dan’s well-wooded backyard, back in Ohio of my boyhood, back when I was about 8.

Above the pile of leaves rose a colossal tree and from a strong branch hung a rope tied to an old tractor tire. We took turns pushing each other on that tire swing, soaring higher and higher still, before launching ourselves airborne and flying towards a giggling crash landing on Mother Nature’s leafy mattress of red and orange and gold.

Yes, right now I love autumn best.

Until winter rings my doorbell on December 21.

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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” …

Column: Summer Beach Bucket List

by Woody

A Beach Bucket List For Summer

In recognition of today being the summer solstice, here is my plastic beach bucket list for the next three months. I encourage you to come up with your own list – and, importantly, then check off as many items as possible this summer.

Help a kid with a beach bucket build a sandcastle.1-sandcasle

Extend my streak since age 2 of watching fireworks every year on the Fourth of July.

Watch a sunrise somewhere new.

Watch a sunset, with the Channel Islands as a backdrop, on an evening when the clouds on the horizon glow so vibrant a field of wild flowers would seem gray by comparison.

Visit my ancestors’ roots in County Cork, Ireland, for the first time.

Fly a kite for about the 100th time.

Tour the Guinness Brewery in Dublin, Ireland, and – as when visiting The Original Ghirardelli Ice Cream & Chocolate Shop in San Francisco – do some sampling.

Take a tour (with a companion designated driver) of a local winery and do some sampling.

Visit The Original Ghirardelli Ice Cream & Chocolate Shop in San Francisco and spoil my dinner.

Do a cannonball off a diving board. Bonus: get a family member wet.

Walk barefoot in cool grass, on warm sand, and on hot blacktop to feel like a kid again.

See a local play.

Enjoy an ice cream cone outside on a day so hot the treat melts and drips faster than I can eat it. And it has to be ice cream, not frozen yogurt. And make it Rocky Road. And add a vanilla scoop for my dog, Murray.

Visit a metropolitan museum.

Go to a local art show.

Spend part of an afternoon watching surfers, kite surfers and, if I’m really lucky, dolphins surfing.

Daydream looking at clouds and stargaze on a clear night.

Listen to live music at a local intimate setting.

Go to a concert at a big venue.

Listen to Vin Scully give a concert.

Enjoy a glass of lemonade from a kid’s stand – and leave a crazy tip.

Go on a hike where I’ve never been before.

Walk hand-in-hand with my much-better-half on the beach where we met.

Ride a paddleboat at the Ventura Harbor and the Ferris wheel at the Ventura County Fair with my adult daughter who will always be my little girl.

Take advantage of my son being in Washington, D.C. for the summer and visit the National Mall for the first time.

Take a selfie with my son and Abe at the Lincoln Memorial.1-fireworks.png PM

Go up in the Washington Monument.

Wear out a pair of new running shoes.

Go for a run in the rain – hopefully Ireland or D.C. will make this possible since Ventura likely won’t.

Go to an author’s book talk.

Read 10 books.

Marvel at the artistic tall stacks of balanced rocks at Ventura’s Surfers Point and try my hand at maybe going four high.

Participate in a beach clean-up day.

Hammer some nails for Habitat For Humanity.

Search for the best taco in Ventura County.

Search for the best micro-brew in Ventura County.

Have dinner “out” from five different local food trucks.

Have the owner of a food truck or restaurant name a sandwich “The Woodrow.”

Write a poem – and memorize one.

Join in on a kids’ water-balloon fight.

Roast marshmallows and make some s’mores.

Catch-and-release a trout, a firefly and a butterfly.

Play a spirited board game until the wee hours.

Go unplugged for one entire weekend.

Go unshaven for a full week.

Do not go unplugged the final week of summer in order to watch the debut airing on PBS of Ken Burn’s newest documentary – “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History” – which I saw the gifted filmmaker talk about in person at a sneak preview a few months ago. It looks fantastic.

Try to heed Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” Or at least once every week this summer.

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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”

Column: Celebrating Summer

by Woody

Turn! Turn! Turn! The Season is Summer

 

            Remember when you were six or 12 and summer was a three-month recess and the only interruption to your fun was being called inside for dinner?

 

Then adulthood arrives and carefree summers depart.

 

            One of my earliest summers of freedom was 1965. This was also the year The Byrds’ version of “Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There Is a Season)” hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts.

 

            I have this song stuck in my head because everywhere I turn, turn, turn, I see reminders that the season now is summer. I also hear, taste, smell and feel summertime’s touch.KidsPlaying

 

            Here are a few recent encounters, broken down into the five senses.

 

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Sight.

 

            Four girls and a boy, all between the ages of about four and six, playing on the grass at a local park. Specifically, they are racing around a small mud bog created by a faulty sprinkler.

 

            The giggling grows louder. The kids grow wilder. One of the girls cuts a corner too closely and a sneaker gets sucked off in the mud.

 

            The laughter, of course, instantly doubles in decibels. Soon another shoe is snatched. Instead of an obstacle, the mud bog has become the main attraction.

 

            Did I mention the children are wearing nice clothes, not swimming suits?

 

            I should also mention they are being watched by the mother of one of them. More accurately, she is a contender for Mom of the Year. I say this because of her reply when I passed by and commented on – and laughed at – the messy delight.

 

“It’ll all wash off,” she said, smiling happily.

 

            What a beautiful attitude. And what a beautiful summer it promises to be for those five kids.

 

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            Sound.

 

            Watching a collection of elementary school-age kids play different games at a summer day camp is fun, but listening to them is the real joy.

 

            For example, judging from the laughter and squeals of delight, even playing in mud can’t compare to throwing spongy playground balls at one another. Part of this is surely the novelty because many schools have banned dodge ball. Safety issues? In half an hour of battle no tears are shed, no Band-Aids required.

 

            Meanwhile, if you have never heard a game of outdoor musical chairs that begins with 30 kids and 29 chairs and one boom box, you are missing out.

 

            This, however, paled on the noise meter measuring the fun of a supervised water balloon battle!

 

            In other words, this 2013 day camp is a success because it duplicates the everyday summer life of kids growing up in the 1960s.

 

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            Taste.

 

            A lot of things just seem to taste better in the summer. Hamburgers, hotdogs or basically anything fresh off the barbecue, for example. Watermelon, certainly. All county fair foods. Iced tea and lemonade, margaritas and beer.

 

            But it says here nothing improves more in tastiness during the summer (and this is saying something because it’s delicious year-round) than ice cream. Amazingly, ice cream may taste its very best not on a blistering summer day but rather on a dreamy warm midsummer night.

 

            Rocky Road, to my taste buds, is best of all.

 

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            Smell.

 

            Just as hearing an old song can be a time machine of sorts, so too can scents.

 

Few things transport me back to my Wonder Years of summers as quickly and powerfully as the smell of sunscreen filling the air at the pool or beach.

 

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            Touch.

 

            Speaking of the beach and swimming pools, one of summer’s special senses of touch can also be seen and heard: the “ouch-ouch-ouch” and “hot-hot-hot” mutterings of someone as you watch them quick-stepping barefoot across broiling sand or cement.

 

            Meanwhile, instead of the soles, summer romances touch souls and hearts with held hands and kissed lips.

 

Turn, turn, turn. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

 

And summer, taking the best from the verses in the Book of Ecclesiastes, is a time to laugh and dance and embrace and love and cast time away.

 

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. His new memoir WOODEN & ME is available for pre-order at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.