Tag Archives: writers

Act I: Literary Walk Turns Serendipitous

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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Literary Walk Takes Serendipitous Turn

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” said the great playwright Tennessee Williams, who died 34 years ago today – Feb. 25, 1983 – one month and a day shy of turning 72.

The kindness of a stranger, with serendipity at play as well, made Williams leap off the printed page to life for me a short while ago. It was an encounter worth sharing.

Act One:

While in New Orleans on vacation, my wife, son, daughter, son-in-law, and I visited William Faulkner’s house in the French Quarter. In the upstairs study, in 1925, the future Nobel Laureate wrote his first novel, “Soldiers’ Pay.”

Inside William Faulker's house turned bookstore and museum.

Inside William Faulker’s house turned bookstore.

Tucked away in an alley off famous Jackson Square, the home is now called “Faulkner House Books” and is a combination of charming bookstore and museum – with the emphasis on the former. While browsing books and memorabilia, we learned that another important 20th literary figure had once lived nearby: Tennessee Williams.

People collect many things, from postage stamps and baseball cards to fine wines and first-edition books. The later interest me, and greatly, but rare books are also generally beyond my bank account, and greatly.

As remedy, I have begun collecting visits to the homes of famous writers. My compilation includes John Steinbeck, Edgar Allen Poe, Thornton Burgess, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and my top-shelf hero, Jim Murray, to name a handful.

The opportunity to add two more icons to my archives in a single afternoon was not to be passed up.

A Google search for directions revealed there was no reason to desire a streetcar – or Uber ride – to get to Williams’ home from Faulkner’s house. Less than a mile away, we decided to walk.

“We” now consisted of my son, daughter, son-in-law and me, for my wife begged out to go shopping. It wasn’t long before she seemed to have made the wiser choice.

1TennHouse

Hoping for some literary osmosis from Tennessee Williams’ house in the French Quarter.

A right turn when we should have gone left turned us into lost wayfarers. Tempted to quit our quest, we decided “in for a dime, in for a dollar” and pressed on.

At long last we arrived at 1014 Dumaine Street. With green shutters and matching ornate ironwork railings on an iconic French Quarter-style balcony, the two-story yellow house is attractive.

It was also, to be honest, a little disappointing. The only thing marking it as special is a small bronze plaque out front proclaiming:

“Tennessee Williams owned this 19th-century townhouse from 1962 until his death in 1983. Here he worked on his autobiography, Memoirs, in which he wrote, ‘I hope to die in my sleep . . . in this beautiful big brass bed in my New Orleans apartment, the bed that is associated with so much love . . .’ He always considered New Orleans his spiritual home. This home is dedicated a Literary Landmark by Friends of Libraries U.S.A.”

Even the plaque is less than remarkable with its raised words weatherworn and hard to make out.

Unassuming as it all is, with no tours either, we reverently stood in the quiet street and studied the house as one might the Mona Lisa. Suddenly, a voice broke our reverie.

“Do you know what that is?” a man asked, his friendly tone made even more so by a Southern drawl. He was dressed business casual; tucked under one arm was a stack of papers, folders and an iPad; round-rimmed glasses and thinning gray hair added to his professorial look.

“Yes, it’s the Tennessee Williams’ house,” my son easily answered.

“Do you know who he is?” came a follow-up question that was little more difficult.

“Of course,” my daughter replied. “He was an author and playwright – a great one. He wrote, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘The Glass Menagerie.’ ”

The gentleman smiled, pleased.

“Not many people seem to know who he is anymore,” he said.

Tennessee Williams talked about “the kindness of strangers.” We were about to experience the kindness of one stranger. A stranger who, serendipitously for us, personally knew Tennessee Williams.

Intermission. Act Two next Saturday.

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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_cover_PRCheck 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”

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Pilgrimage to ‘Authors Ridge’

by Woody

 Woody’s new book STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: STRAW_CoverEssays on Life, Love, and Laughter is available for Pre-Order HERE NOW!

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Pilgrimage to Bridge and ‘Authors Ridge’

This is the second in a four-column series on my recent travels to the Eastern Seaboard to visit my son – and visit much more.

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1NoethBridge

The Old North Bridge, in Concord, Mass.

Sixty miles north of Plymouth Rock, I made a pilgrimage to another “ground zero” in American history: the Old North Bridge in Concord, Mass., where the Revolutionary War erupted on April 19, 1775.

The replica bridge, like Plymouth Rock, proved much smaller in person than anticipated. Also, similarly, it made my imagination whirl as I surveyed the landscape, my sight rising from the Concord River to the high ground where the Minute Men held the advantage.

Surprisingly, a different ridge proved to be a higher highlight for me.

On our rental-car drive to the Old North Bridge, my wife and I made a short detour to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Specifically, to the upper area near the back called “Authors Ridge.”

1AuthorsRidgeIt is a fitting name because on this picturesque-as-a-thousand-words tree-shaded ridge, all within an acorn’s toss of each other, are the graves of four significant 19th Century American authors: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Call it Ridge Rushmore.

First up is the Thoreau family plot which has a shared monument stone the size of a chest of drawers bearing the names, birth dates and dates of death of parents John and Cynthia D., as well as their offspring John Jr., Helen L., Henry D. (Born July 12, 1817, Died May 6, 1862) and Sophia E.

Surrounding the monument are six small headstones, each barely bigger than a hardcover book, reading: Mother, Father, Sophia, John, Helen and …

… Henry.

How perfect this is, for as he famously advised during his life: “Simplify, simplify.” No dates. No full name. Simply “HENRY” in all caps.

Modest be it, Henry’s marker readily stands out for it is decorated like a Christmas tree, albeit instead of with ornaments and lights it is adorned with a classroom’s worth of pens and pencils of various colors leaning against it, some with messages and names – “Thank You” and “Bless You” and “Anna” and “Steven” on this day – written on them by worshipers who made the pilgrimage to pay homage.

This shows you how very small, and simple, HENRY's marker is.

This shows you how very small, and simple, Thoreau’s HENRY marker is.

Originally, I left behind a pen but quickly thought the better of it and instead balanced a yellow No. 2 pencil – after writing “Simplify” and “Woody” on it – for in addition to being a writer, poet, philosopher, naturalist and surveyor, Thoreau was a renowned pencil maker.

The headstone for the author of “The Scarlet Letter” is slightly larger than Henry’s marker, and rests upon a pedestal, yet it too is simple, reading only: Hawthorne. It also has a few pens left at its base, as well as coins and stones balanced upon its arched top.

A flat rectangular stone, whitened by the elements and flush to the ground, marks the grave of Louisa M. Alcott, author of “Little Women.” A Union nurse during the Civil War, Alcott’s grave also has a small American flag, the sort a child might wave curbside at a Fourth of July parade, with a “U.S. Veteran” medallion on its staff. Expectedly, the site is graced with a collection of pencils and pens.

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s gravestone, meanwhile, is a refrigerator-sized hunk of beautiful raw granite. Attached is a copper plaque, long ago having turned a handsome green patina, decorated with four flowers on top and below reading: Ralph Waldo Emerson / Born in Boston May 25 1803 / Died in Concord April 27 1882.

Lastly, the plaque quotes this line from his poem “The Problem” –

“The passive Master lent his hand / To the vast soul that o’er him planned.”

The problem of where to place pens and pencils to honor the word master Emerson has been solved by admirers who have wedged pennies and dimes between the plaque and granite, some of the coins at 90-degree angles to form mini-shelves. So it was I balanced the pen originally intended for Thoreau’s marker.

Leaving “Authors Ridge”, breathtaking in both its beauty and literary hallowedness, this line from Thoreau came fittingly to mind: “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

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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-cover-mock-upCheck 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: John McDougal, Bibliophile

by Woody

BannerBooksJohn Barnes & Nobles’ Resident Bibliophile

 

While American workers play musical swivel chairs, plopping into a new job every 4.4 years on average according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, John McDougal has marched around and around as the workplace Muzak has changed from Madonna to Sheryl Crow to Alicia Keys to Taylor Swift.

 

Earlier this year McDougal celebrated his 30th anniversary at Barnes & Noble Booksellers. The Ventura store even has a banner on proud display recognizing the rare feat.

Talking books and writers over a beer with John McDougal is a real treat.

Talking books and writers over a beer with John McDougal is a real treat.

McDougal has seen the bookstore landscape change greatly over the past three decades. For starters, Barnes & Noble was still B. Dalton’s when he began working at its small store in the old Esplanade Mall in Oxnard.

 

He next worked at the single-story Barnes & Noble in Ventura at Main Street and Telephone Road and a decade ago was part of the lock-stock-and-books relocation into a grand new two-story B&N where the old 101 Drive-In theater used to be.

 

“A lot has changed,” McDougal reminisces. “I remember when we used carbon copies for orders. We looked up books on microfiche – and we still couldn’t tell you if we actually had it. But it was a small store, so we kind of knew.”

 

Today’s store is a much larger with countless more titles, but McDougal still usually knows if a book is in stock without checking the modern computer system; where it is located; and what’s inside the cover.

 

For good reason here is how one fellow employee introduces him to customers seeking a reading recommendation: “This is Mr. McDougal and he knows every book in the world.”

 

John McDougal, born and raised in Oxnard, says he was a “library kid” and to this day reads more than a book a week. Asked for some of his Hall of Fame reads, he replied: “One of my all-time favorites is T.H. White’s The Once And Ancient Future King. I re-read The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame again and again. Little Big Man by Thomas Berger. Steinbeck, of course. Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It . . . .”

 

He was just getting started.

 

John McDougal is 56 years old with a boyish mop of curls – albeit now salt-and-peppered with a matching goatee – that defies gravity. Add in round wire-rim glasses and he brings to mind a wise and kindly college professor.

 

The 8-year-old library kid is now an adult bibliophile as evidenced by the three glass bookcases in the front room of his home, each filled with “my treasures” as he calls his rare collection.

 

While he loves old-fashioned bound books, McDougal is a growing fan of e-readers because they allow him to find out-of-print titles he has been searching decades for in used bookstores.

 

“Not everyone likes to read what I do,” McDougal allows. “Everyone has different tastes. Some people want to read what’s popular right now; others are open to wider suggestions.

 

“I ask questions and then do my best,” he continues of his magic formula for recommending books. “It’s pretty gratifying to have someone come back and say, ‘Thanks! That was great! What should I read next?’ ”

 

A new question McDougal hears, prodded by the anniversary banner, is: “When are you going to retire?”

 

“Maybe in another 30 years,” he answers. “I’m having too much fun.”

 

In honor of his loyalty and longevity, McDougal is being given a celebratory trip anywhere in the world. He plans to take his wife LoRena to London, which will bring this tale full circle.

 

You see, while McDougal’s official bookstore anniversary is Feb. 22, 1983, he actually worked at B. Dalton’s for two years following graduation from UC Santa Barbara in 1979. After saving some money, he quit and packed his backpack for Europe.

 

“I wanted to travel before going on to the next stage in my life,” he recalls of the 13-month odyessy that followed. He eventually rushed home when his girlfriend informed him she had met another guy.

 

“It had a happy ending,” McDougal says, smiling because that girlfriend became his wife. This time LoRena will be at his side flying across the Atlantic – no doubt with a carry-on book that comes expertly recommended.

 

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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 at www.WoodyWoodburn.com and Amazon.com.