Pat Paul: teacher, basketball coach, Joliet sports writer

Patrick F. Paul
April 3, 1955 - June 28, 2007

I really need to take some time to eulogize this dude. Please forgive me if this writing is rather clunky or in other ways not the best piece of writing, but I just want to get all my thoughts out.

Mr. Paul was my eighth-grade teacher at St. Patrick's Grade School in Joliet, Illinois. I went to St. Pat's for seventh and eighth grade after my family moved from Bourbonnais to Joliet. In seventh grade Mr. Paul was my teacher for reading and social studies as well, so I had him as a teacher for two years. Shortly after I got to work yesterday, my mother called me and told me that he had died from liver cancer. Wow. I was shocked. I never knew that he was sick -- indeed, he only knew about the cancer since January or February. I remember he said that nobody in his family had ever lived past the age of 50. I was happy to see that he lived past his 50th birthday (and just recently realized that his older sister also had beaten that family streak), but I really wish he'd lived to see many more years.

You may have noticed from the size of the scrollbar that this is going to be an extremely long post. Well, it's gotta be. Mr. Paul was my favorite teacher ever. It's just amazing how well you can get to know a guy in two short school years and just how knowing him can really have an effect on your life.

The picture at the top of this post is one I took of Mr. Paul on our eighth-grade class trip to Great America in May of 1988, shortly after graduation. That pose is very typical of him, as indeed he is a unique guy. (Yes, he passed on, but that doesn't mean he no longer exists; ergo, I'll refer to him in the present tense.) Speaking of Great America, that was the year that the Shock Wave opened. Mr. Paul was really excited about riding that roller coaster. I think it went something like 250 feet high and went as fast as 60mph and had several loops and corkscrews. Mr. Paul always loved thrill rides. I get motion sickness on those kinds of rides (plus, I don't like being upside-down!), so I passed. Heh....I remember walking past the American Eagle, which is one of those roller coasters that at one point was in the Guinness Book of World Records for speed or something, and I believe to this day it's a wildly popular ride at Great America (and other Six Flags parks). What did I see? Mr. Paul had just gotten off the American Eagle, and he had this huge smile on his face and I watched him run like a madman off the ride that had just finished, and he again ran like a madman to go right back on it! (Seriously, I was amazed he could run as fast as he did -- he was a big guy -- but man, I never saw anybody run so fast!)

That was really the last time I saw him as Mr. Paul, my teacher. He was a sports writer for the Herald News (it used to have a hyphen in the name, so if I slip and insert the hyphen, please forgive me) -- or, as most Jolietans call it, the Herald Snooze, as it's such a boring paper, with its sports section being its saving grace. I went to Joliet Catholic for high school, so I got to see Mr. Paul quite a lot when he covered the games. I got to see him in church a lot, too, as he always went to 10:00 mass, so we kept up. Every time I saw him after eighth grade was over, we'd shake hands, and he'd always say, "Ooh! Great handshake!" Even when I last saw him a couple of years ago, he complimented me on my handshake, as if he were the one who taught me how to shake hands. Ever the wisecracker, when I introduced him to my wife Lisa that day, he had to say, "Oh, you mean Saint Lisa, if she has to live with you!"

From what I could always tell, most people absolutely loved Mr. Paul. There were some people who hated him, though, and whom he kind of rubbed the wrong way. I could understand that, as there were times when he tended to be a little bit sexist, and sometimes one of his teaching methods involved humiliation (indeed, once because of circumstances beyond my control I didn't turn in a major research paper in on time, and he had to ask me in front of the entire class why I didn't turn it in). Despite personally experiencing some reasons that people wouldn't like him, Mr. Paul always was, by far, my favorite teacher, and someone whom I thank God I had the privilege of knowing. Indeed, as saddened as I am by his passing, the sadness immediately goes away with practically every memory. As I've typed this blog post and during the things I've shared about Mr. Paul with my wife in the past day, I had to stop because I was laughing so hard.

Teacher
Needless to say, Pat Paul was a great teacher...and others must have thought so, too, as he taught at St. Pat's since he graduated from college, and he kept that job for the rest of his life. I always saw him as more of an explainer than anything. He helped us understand exactly what caused certain things to happen in history, and often was socratic in his teaching techniques. He'd get so into teaching certain things that he'd have the entire class chanting things. At certain points we just knew went to chant, in unison, until he gave us a conductor-like "stop" gesture, "IT'S JUST NOT FAIR!" He was a very emphatic guy, too -- he would often slam his pointer on his podium or someone's desk just to emphasize, say, the gusto George Washington had against the British. By the end of the year, his three-foot pointer was reduced to something that wasn't much longer than a finger.

Sometimes he'd "underline" something on the blackboard with his pointer. It was clear that the only reason he'd do that was to freak people out with the squeaking sound -- and the sound would be heard not only by the students in his classroom but also by Mrs. Harms and her class in the room next door. Mrs. Harms would respond by having people go to the wall and pound on it.

At St. Pat's we'd eat lunch in the classroom. Mr. Paul could smell tuna a mile away. He'd look up and yell, "WHO HAS TUNA?!" Whoever it was who had tuna would be banished to the coat closet in the back of the room until the tuna was gone. I remember Jeff Belom was small enough that Mr. Paul was actually able to close the door behind him.

One thing Mr. Paul would do is if two boys would ask to use the bathroom within a short time, he'd make one wait for at least two minutes after the other would return. He explained that he had to do that in case one was sneaking a smoke from Mr. Fenili's stash of cigarettes (Mr. Fenili was the maintenance guy, who also recently passed) and lighting another one for the next person -- he said he figured it'd be about two minutes before the cigarette would completely burn out. Of course, he said this all tongue-in-cheek....we think.

Every day he'd have Julie Zolecki go down to the teachers' lounge to bring him coffee. Why her? Well, because the way she'd mix the creamer and sugar was just the right touch. Yup, he had a designated coffee girl in the class! One day when she was absent, Jeff Belom got pissed at him for being so insistent that SHE be the one who got him coffee every day. He nagged Mr. Paul into letting him do it the day Julie was absent, so just to shut Jeff up he let him do it. He took one drink of the coffee and nearly spit the whole thing out all over the place!

Speaking of Jeff Belom...Mr. Paul was always good for a loan, like if you need to borrow a dime or something to make a phone call or whatever. Every day after taking roll, he'd run down the list of people who owed him money: "Barrett, you have the ten cents you owe me?....Engle, you have the thirty cents you owe me?" Mr. Paul had, next to the classroom door, a garbage can with a miniature basketball hoop over it, and of course he'd always be attempting to sink a shot from his chair in front of the podium all the way at the other end of the room. One day he decided he was going to throw out a piece of paper, but behind his back. Jeff Belom opened up his mouth and said, "I'll give you ten dollars if you make it!" Yeah, ten dollars isn't much, but mind you, to an eighth-grader, that's gold! He threw the wadded-up paper around his back, and the damn thing went right through the net! So added to the list every morning: "Belom, you got the ten dollars you owe me?" He eventually paid, too!

One thing that I love to tell people about when I tell them about Pat Paul is the coin bank he had that was a bust of Abraham Lincoln. Guess where the coins go in.

I mentioned before that I first lived in Bourbonnais. That's a pretty useless town in the Kankakee area. Kankakee itself is just a really crappy place to live. I always knew that, and I always hoped that I'd get the hell away from there, so I was thrilled when my parents decided to move to Joliet. Mr. Paul took great joy in reminding me that I was from Kankakee. On my first day at St. Pat's, he told the class that Kankakee is the armpit of Illinois. I totally agreed with him, but he disagreed with me why. He pulled down a map of Illinois and pointed out Kankakee, and showed that it was located right under the arm of Illinois that Lake Michigan chewed off, ergo it's the armpit of Illinois. Anytime I made a stupid mistake in class or did something not right, he'd tell me that it's understandable because I was from Kankakee. He said, "But next year, you can't use that excuse, because after a year, you're no longer from Kankakee."

Indeed, a few years ago, he sent me an e-mail about the St. Pat's alum newsletter. The subject line of the e-mail: "Hey, Kankakee boy!"

The Stories
In particular I remember the stories Mr. Paul tell. That's undoubtedly what really made people have such fondness for him, that we all became part of his life with these stories. I remember his story about when he was in eighth grade -- at St. Pat's -- and someone had written some nasty stuff about Mrs. Martis, one of the other teachers (and she was the music teacher when I was there), and it hurt her so much that she was in tears. As usual, the eighth-grade boys were blamed for it. (Mr. Paul said the eighth-grade boys were blamed for everything.) It was announced that the eighth-grade boys were being kept after school because of what was written on the wall until somebody confessed. Mr. Paul was talking about how it looked like one of the kids was just about ready to crack, nearly in tears. The kid said, "It was me, I did it!" The principal said, "Okay, what did you write?" "The Cubs Will Shine In '69." heh....turns out that not only did the eighth-grade boys know exactly what was written and that it was about Mrs. Martis, but none of the eighth-grade boys actually did it -- it was a fourth- or fifth-grader!

Then there was the time when St. Pat's allowed kids to go home for lunch. Mr. Paul and his friends would always go home for lunch to watch the Bozo Show and watch the "Bozo buckets," as he'd call it. (If you don't know exactly what the buckets are, please look it up -- I don't want to explain the whole thing now!) But one day for some reason, he missed it. When he got back to school, his friends asked him, "DID YOU SEE IT?!?!" "What?" Mr. Paul explained that his friends told him that a kid missed a bucket, and Bozo did his whole "oh, that's too bad" routine, to which the disappointed kid replied, "[blank] you, Bozo!" (Remember, Mr. Paul was telling this story to twelve-year-olds in a Catholic school, so he actually said the word "blank" when telling the story!) Bozo's reply was, "Now, that's a Bozo no-no!" The kid's reponse to that: "Kiss my [blank], clown!" Mr. Paul said that he refused to believe that, they must have been putting him on. But as he walked around the playground during post-lunch recess, EVERYBODY was talking about it. He walked around and overheard choruses of "DID YOU SEE IT!!!??!?" We all asked Mrs. Harms later about it, if she remembered anything like that from that time, and her response: "Oh my God, it must have been true, then! I remember hearing rumors about that!" My friend Robin, whom I met years later and had kids in St. Pat's around the same time I was there, also told a similar Bozo story. "No, he didn't say eff-you or kiss my ass. I know who the kid was. He actually said 'Cram it, clown.'" (I think she even attached a name to the kid.) Unfortunately, years later, I found this story online. But it was still a good story!

And of course Mr. Paul's story of his first haircut, when his dad took him to Banana Joe's, and it was such a disaster that his father was throwing up outside.

I was surprised at how many times the Herald-Snews would refer to Mr. Paul as "Boomer" in their stories eulogizing him. Why? Well, because in one of the stories he told us, he mentioned that one of his friends called him "Boomer," and that was the only time we ever heard of that nickname. We asked him why he was called that, and he refused to tell us. But apparently it's something all of his many friends called him.

Man, I could go on about the stories Mr. Paul would tell...

Two Miracles
Mr. Paul was very proud of what he considered two miracles that he performed, each being the resurrection of a pet. One miracle he said he couldn't take full credit for because a vet helped him out, but he temporarily brought his dog Smokey back from the dead. His other, uhh...miracle...was the result of when he lost his temper. As his story went, he had a goldfish, and one day he noticed it was floating...not moving at all, not reacting to any nudging, tapping, whatever. He got so mad that he picked up the lifeless fish out of the bowl, squeezed the hell out of it, and angrily threw it back in the bowl. Much to his amazement, the fish came back to life and swam around the bowl!

Basketball Coach
I had the pleasure of playing basketball for St. Pat's in the eighth grade and had Mr. Paul as a coach. We all learned tremendously from him. He had established two goals for us: a trophy in every tournament and 25 wins for the season. Unfortunately, we missed the 25 wins goal by one game, but we did get a trophy in every tournament, and he was proud of us for doing that. The fact is, we were a kick-ass basketball team, and Mr. Paul is the reason we were.

I can still remember the plays...there were "Open" and "Motion," plays that didn't require a lot from the center except maybe setting a pick. The team favorite was a play called "Spread," in which pretty much every player on the court got to handle the ball at some point, depending on the position of the guard, and this meant that if the time was right, any player could score. Of course, there was a play that Mr. Paul called "Irish," and one day he came up with a new play that he couldn't think of a name for, so he asked us to come up with a name for it. We decided on "KATS," which at least back then was a commonly-used acronym for "Kick ass, they suck." Mr. Paul liked that particularly because when the guard would yell the name of the play, the other team would be put off -- "WHAT?! We don't suck!" Because there's no shot clock in eighth-grade basketball we had a stalling play called "Four Corners," which was just that -- the guard had the ball, and the other four players would go into the four corners of our half of the court. The guard would very slowly dribble around, walk up to one of the four corner players, and throw the ball to each other.

Even something that's seemingly insignificant to the sports world in general as eighth-grade basketball was a big deal for Mr. Paul; he took it quite seriously, but definitely knew how to make sure we had a good time as well. But one thing he definitely took seriously was beating St. Paul. It was his life's mission, it seemed, to make sure we never lost against St. Paul. I don't know why them in particular. Yes, they played extremely well and they were a tough opponent, but to this day why they were Mr. Paul's target, I have no idea. I remember in particular the St. Pat's basketball tournament in 1988...the night we played against St Paul...Mr. Paul was seriously revved up, complete with an excited grin that just refused to leave his face. Mr. Paul felt the need to wear a white shirt and a tie for the occasion. This was not the championship game of the tournament, but the game was extremely important to him. After Mr. Paul talked to us in the locker room and got up and left, assistant coach Pat Ryan gave us a little pep talk. "Okay, guys, you saw the look on Mr. Paul's face. He's really been looking forward to this game. Winning this game is much more important to him even than winning the tournament. He's even wearing a tie, that's how important it is. So play your hearts out, guys..."

I should disclaim that Mr. Paul was never someone who disliked wearing a tie, but if he wore a tie to a basketball game, you knew it was important. I remember Jim O'Brien calling me the night of the game against St. Ray's and telling me that the word from Mr. Paul was that we were all wearing ties to the game. The annual St. Ray's game was important because basically they were too good to be a regular opponent, never played in the tournaments, and...they had a three-point line. I remember after the game (which we lost!), Mr. Paul proudly announced that Jim O'Brien was not only the first person in history of St. Pat's basketball to attempt a three-pointer but also the first to sink one!

Then there was Braceville, a school that was in the middle of nowhere -- so much so that the toilet town Braidwood was probably considered a major city in Braceville. I seem to remember Mr. Paul told us that the Braceville game was a guaranteed effortless win. Unfortunately, I was sick that night, so I didn't get to play that game. Mr. Paul told me that he overheard a couple of Braceville players say, "Man, did you get a look at the fixin's they got here? They have an electronic clock!" Yie... (My teammates told me that yes, Mr. Paul was telling the truth!) Mr. Paul told me it was a shame I was sick because I would have gotten a lot of playing time and probably even my name in the paper. Sure enough, I saw that Jason Harms, another second-stringer like me, got a mention in the write-up -- usually if you scored more than 10 points in a game your name would make the Herald-Snews in the grade school basketball reviews.

Mr. Paul spent significant time teaching me how to really shoot a free throw. I had always wondered why he picked me to be his model freethrow shooter, considering that I was only a second-stringer and didn't get nearly as much playing time as Ed Clark, our main center, and that I pretty much warmed the bench for many games. But he worked with me almost every single day of practice and showed me how to stand, how to position the ball, and how to aim, until it became second nature. After the season was well under way, I found out why: whenever there was a technical foul against the other team, Mr. Paul would send in a second-stringer to shoot the free throw. It was obvious he wanted to make sure there was some kind of way to make sure everybody could get playing time whenever possible. I rarely got to play in games against tough opponents, like St. Ray's or St. Jude's (in fact, one time when we played St. Jude's, Mr. Paul had me go in for Ed Clark, right up against Charles Jones, who at the age of 13 years was six-foot-two and a damn good player!, I had to restrain myself from yelling at him, "ARE YOU F**KING NUTS??!!"), but if they got a technical foul, either Jason Harms or I (or both of us) got to shoot the free throw. Having said all that...I got a lot of playing time against some of the not-so-tough opponents, Holy Family in particular. During one tournament I played most of the game against Holy Family. During the game I got fouled, so I got to shoot a free throw. Mind you, this was well into the season, and I'd had plenty of playing time for a second stringer and even scored a respectable amount, but I got up to the free throw line and sank the first shot. Now...we were already beating the crap out of Holy Family in this game, but despite that, and the fact that it was only one point added to our already outrageous score, the crowd went nuts. I have no idea why. But you know what? It felt good.

Professional Sports
Anybody who has ever known Mr. Paul even for the shortest time can instantly tell you his three favorite sports teams: L.A. Lakers, New York Yankees, and Green Bay Packers. (Wow...now that Mr. Paul is gone I can say that all Packers fans suck!) Mr. Paul hated the Chicago Bears and especially their fans. In fact, his hatred for The Bears was so big that he would much rather see the Bears lose than the Packers win. (Man, I'm sure glad I wasn't within 10 miles of his house during the opening Bears Vs. Packers game last year!) I remember one day there was a picture in the Sun-Times of Mike Ditka losing his temper and throwing a wad of chewed gum at the crowd. Mr. Paul felt it necessary to hang that picture up in his classroom to show one reason he hated the Bears. In his last column for the Herald-Snews, Mr. Paul lamented that the Bears were going to the Super Bowl. I wouldn't not be surprised if that's exactly the way he would have wanted his final column to be.

Mr. Paul also made his Yankee fandom well known. He had a plush Yankees doll on his desk in the classroom; of course, once in a great while, there was a very, very brave (read: "stupid") person who would attempt to kidnap it for ransom. One of his favorite stories to tell was about Mickey Mantle. He told this story to us in the classroom, and the day Mickey Mantle died he related it in an article he wrote for the Herald-Snews. As I remember in both stories, Mr. Paul went to Comiskey Park when the Yankees played the Sox one day during his childhood. Mickey Mantle comes up to bat. Mr. Paul yells, "Hey, Mick!" Mantle turns around, smiles, and nods to Mr. Paul. That...was probably the greatest moment of Mr. Paul's life: Mickey Mantle acknowledged his existence! I saw in one of the numerous Herald-Snews articles eulogizing Mr. Paul that the Yankees were running out onto the field from the dugout when that moment happened, but I seem to remember hearing that it was when Mantle was up to bat, but that doesn't matter; the point was that Mr. Paul's lifelong idol knew that he existed.

Final Thoughts
I realize that I'm going on and on and haven't even scratched the surface of my memories of Pat Paul. Very briefly...he kept telling us to bring ties to school because he was going to show everybody in the class how to tie a tie, including girls, who could theoretically later in life impress their husbands by helping husbands get dressed; he never did show us, though, mainly because not everybody remembered to bring a tie. Mr. Paul always said how he took French in high school and found it to be the easiest thing in the world to learn; I remembered that when I had to sign up for a foreign language in high school, and sure enough, I always aced French, so I have Mr. Paul to thank for that. When we studied World War I, Mr. Paul wanted us to get a feel for what it was like for soldiers to fight in the wilderness, so he borrowed a portable stereo record player from another teacher and put on Pink Floyd's "Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict;" he then told us how he used to love to freak his dog out by playing that. He played Allan Sherman records to us that happened to correspond to certain lessons; in particular I remember "America's A Nice Italian Name" and "You Went The Wrong Way, Old King Louie;" to this day I'm an Allan Sherman fan because of that.

I imagine someday a St. Pat's alum or an old friend of Mr. Paul's will write a biography on him. Heck, I imagine I could write volumes just on the two years that I had him as a teacher. Again, I need to mention how blessed I feel to have known him, how lucky I was. I'd like to end this paean to Pat Paul with...

---

Boomerisms
Being the unique guy he was, Mr. Paul had his own vocabulary. Shortly after I learned of Mr. Paul's death, I recalled a lot of words and phrases that became part of the vernacular in his classroom. Here's what I remember so far...

Bimbo Box
The "Bimbo Box" was, quite simply, the lost-and-found box in Mr. Paul's classroom. I remember once in seventh grade I thought I left something in Mr. Paul's classroom, so I got to school early the next day to check the Bimbo Box. I went in, and instead of Mr. Paul, there was this nun who had to be at least 243 years old; it was Sr. Marguerite, who regularly subbed for him if he had to take a day off. Man, it felt awkward explaining to her that I needed to check the Bimbo Box.

Dirty Scum
When we'd have homework assignments to turn in that may have been more than a page long and ergo required stapling, Mr. Paul would pass his stapler around. If there were no staples left by the time it got to you, you were a Dirty Scum. If it ran out of staples a SECOND time in one passing-around and you got the stapler that time, you were a Double-Dirty Scum.

Five-Minute Birthday Party
I found out what the Five-Minute Birthday Party was basically by being the first of the 1986-1987 school year to receive one. If Mr. Paul found out it was your birthday, here's what the five-minute birthday party consisted of:

• Your classmates would serenade you with "Happy Birthday To You" with the "you belong in a zoo" lyrics.
• Mr. Paul had a few birthday candles in his drawer. He'd pull one out, light it, and have you blow it out. It may or may not be a trick candle. (Mine was a trick candle.)
• You'd get to bounce a rubber ball once.
• Mr. Paul would give you a penny. If you shared your birthday with Mr. Paul, you'd get a nickel.
  
• You'd have the privilege to look at Mr. Paul's prized Bozo button.
• Finally, you'd get to blow the Oscar Meyer Weiner Whistle. Unfortunately, it went missing for a while, so the first few birthdays of the 1986-1987 school year were celebrated instead with the Good'n'Fruity Choo-Choo Charlie whistle. In either case, Mr. Paul would sanitize it by wiping it on his shirt, then hand it over to you to blow. He'd also show you how you could play different notes on the Oscar Meyer Weiner Whistle.

Frank Watkins Memorial Study Corner
Sometimes for misbehaving in class, a student would be banished to the southeast corner of the classroom, named for a former student from the class of 1986 who was constantly getting in trouble and never did his work. Mr. Paul would sometimes talk about the things Frank did. One thing in particular that I remember him talking about was the project Frank did for the science fair literally at the very last minute, start to finish, on the day of the science fair. Within walking distance of St. Pat's there was a convenience store called Day-n-Nite (which may or may not still be there). What Frank did was go to Day-n-Nite and bought three kinds of ketchup and dribbled them down a large piece of cardboard, and the project was basically comparing the three different ketchups. All I know is that he obviously didn't have Mrs. Harms, who never would have allowed him to get away with that! Mr. Paul always said that Frank was a smart kid, but just didn't do his work; one of Frank's former classmates later told me that that was not true at all, that Frank really was a moron. I remember Mr. Paul saying that Frank was such a problem in school that he wasn't allowed on the class field trip and wasn't even allowed to graduate with his class (they mailed him his diploma). Sadly, Frank was murdered in a drive-by shooting in 1992. Whether Mr. Paul renamed the study corner to avoid disrespecting Frank and his family I don't know; I never thought to ask the many times I saw Mr. Paul after graduation.

Gil Bell
I should disclaim that the spelling of this Boomerism is approximate, and that it might not even be so much a Boomerism as it is a term that was used within his group of friends or if he had a friend named Gil Bell or what. But something that my classmates and I noticed was that when Mr. Paul would tell us a brief story about something rather incredible, he'd tack on "Gil Bell." One day I flat-out asked, "Okay, what does that mean, anyway?" I thought maybe it was something that, had I been going to St. Pat's longer than I have, that I would have known, but it turns out that nobody in the class knew. Mr. Paul explained that you never, ever lie on a "Gil Bell," and if you're ever caught lying on a "Gil Bell," you are never to be believed again. I guess I could give you this theoretical example: "I shot three holes-in-one yesterday. Gil Bell!" I remember once Mr. Paul told us something that seemed particularly outrageous. We said "Really? Say 'Gil Bell!'" He hesitated and said, "Gilbert Bell." We remembered that he told us that any variation of the phrase "Gil Bell" doesn't count, and that it has to be the exact phrase, so we knew he was yanking our chains.

Holy Farmers
Holy Family School/Church on Larkin Avenue in Joliet. Rarely did I ever hear Mr. Paul say "Holy Family." About 99.44% of the time he'd say "Holy Farmers." I'm not quite sure why he called it Holy Farmers. He did once say that it's a fitting description, but I just don't know.

Mr. Paul Ultra-Luxury Cruise Liner
In short, this was the name of the Cadillac that Mr. Paul had when I went to St. Pat's from 1986 to 1988. I was one of the lucky few -- I think there were five -- from the class of '88 to ride in that vehicle. My dad and I once carpooled with him to a basketball game, and I was also among the group of students that rode with him on a class trip. To me, it really was pretty luxurious -- the first time I rode in it, I was amazed that music was coming from...the rear doors! (You see, I was always used to the relatively lame cars with boring AM radios that my parents used to always get!) Mr. Paul's dream car was always a Mercedes. I don't think he ever ended up getting one, but he always made sure he got the nicest car he could afford. The last time I saw him I asked him whether the name "Mr. Paul Ultra-Luxury Cruise Liner" applies to every vehicle he gets, and I seem to remember he said no, that each vehicle had a unique name.

Roughhouse Basketball
Mr. Paul once told us about a variation of basketball that he used to play with his friends, and it's pretty much what it sounds like -- pretty much anything goes. The scoring system was different, too -- you'd score two points for a shot that went in, as usual, but you'd also get a point if you merely hit the backboard, so the best strategy was to get as close to the basket as soon as you could, and repeatedly hit the backboard with the ball as many times as you could and just when you were about to get clobbered, you'd sink the ball. I've never played roughhouse basketball, nor did I ever feel brave enough to do so.