Paul's Page
Jerry and Paul
For books Paul has published, click here.
Mom always wanted me to be a writer.
Dad said, "Paul? Just write the way you talk. Your mom and me? We always enjoy how you love to tell us stories when our family's around our dinner table. So just write the same way you tell us a story. To hell with trying to use fancy words, phrases and sentences. You don't have to try to write like Hemingway or Fitzgerald or all those other damn fancy-schmancy writers you're always reading."
I regret how it wasn't until I was beyond age 40 that I tried to take his advice.
June 2017: Paul revisits the Southwest High School
Choir Room =======>>
Student: “Oh, Sir? Sir? What are you doing here? We are about to close up. How long have you been sitting there?”
Paul: “It’s about time somebody showed up! I have been here since 1959.”
Student: “Oh, no! Why is that?”
Paul: “I’ve been waiting for the bell to ring."
I cherish moments of being within each new day. That's why I possess cherished memories of my past. This song captures that feeling:
In conjunction with this piece, see photos below of some of the family homes
Quest for Closure
A Resolution to Resolve Our Family’s Abiding Mysteries
At the end of the last century, within a small café, Tracey and I were having breakfast with a kindhearted Minneapolis policeman.
He insisted that with his professional guidance, Tracey and I could resolve the decades-old unsolved mysteries of who murdered my father in 1966 and the subsequent disappearance of my youngest brother, Rick.
He said it might require sparing 10 hours a week of our time.
Tracey and I chose to accept his help.
Two years later, he concluded that what we experienced while trying to resolve the unsolved mysteries would make a great movie.
I knew nothing about how to write such a speculative screenplay. But after reading some “how-to books” on the subject, I plunged in.
Since then, I’ve been discovering the agony and the ecstasy of attempting to write and continually rewrite what has now become the latest rendition of my spec screenplay.
What now appears here upon our family’s website, along with my spec screenplay Above Justice, are some documents I created while engaged in the long process of writing and rewriting it.
If you can spare two hours, I now invite you to read Above Justice.
Songs
Since my high school glory days I have from time to time enjoyed singing along with songs contained in my record collection of “pop tunes.” Here are some I recorded while singing along with them within my living room:
During my high school glory days (between 1956 and 1959) I enjoyed the privilege of singing songs with more than 100 kids in our school choir.
Our teacher showed us how we could memorize and sing songs together without being accompanied by any musical instruments.
The teacher insisted our voices were musical instruments.
Each year we performed more than 30 formal concerts, including the annual concerts in which we performed for several Minneapolis TV stations.
During the past 60 years I’ve somehow managed to retain recordings we made within our school’s choir room. They are monaural recordings because we only had one microphone.
The scratched vinyl tracks on the record albums are the result of 60 years of countless dulled record needles. The older I become the more I marvel at what we as teenage kids could accomplish as we sang together.
Here are some of the songs we recorded during 1958 and 1959:
Happy Moments
In Dad's TR3 in front of the family home at 5025 Vincent.
Yup, that's a lot of snow.
The Yellow Brick Road runs right through Columbia Heights.
Wedding day, Tracey and Paul, September 27, 1986
Larry, Sylvia, Paul.
Paul, always keeping up with the latest technologies and fashions
5000 Beard Ave. So., Minneapolis:
Family Homes
"The Queen Mary" at 50th & Chowen Ave. South, Minneapolis:
