Paul’s Story
Starting out: Well hope your day is going well and allow me to tell you a bit about myself. I grew up as the third of three children…so yes that makes me the baby of the family. We lived in the suburbs just east of Kansas City, Missouri by the name of Independence, and we lived pretty much on the east end of that city. For those who may know the area is was called Fairview Heights. We grew pretty much like most of the people growing up in the fifties in track homes our parents bought for 12,000 and financed that over 30 years. My family was never what you would call rich as we rarely went out to eat and the closest to that was Dad stopping by McDonalds picking some hamburgers, and just to show my age that is when you could get 10 for a dollar.
Growing up: The oldest was my brother follow by my sister only 11 months behind him, and then me at 4 years behind my sister. I rarely play with my siblings as they were simply just so much older. My sister passed away in a car accident when I was 11 years old, so those of you reading this that have lost a sibling at a young age knows there are some vivid memories associated with that. I was an extremely small child but not tremendously thin my weight was pretty much in proportion to my height. To give you an idea I had my tonsils removed when I was four and they had to use a yard stick to measure my height. I was in Boy Scouts and had gone to Camp for two weeks out of the summer. There were approximately 700 to 1000 kids there and they would have a contest called “King PeeWee” and this crown went to the smallest kid. Yep you guessed it I won it and at the time I was 12 years old and won with a weight of 54 pounds…yeah pretty small.
At the age of 13 I started playing the drums and use to have them in the basement playing to records, which consisted of Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, Rolling Stones, and the occasional James Brown. I continued to play the drums all through high school, which for those who care I went to Fort Osage High School. I’m one of those guys that were decent at most sports without really trying, which for the most part I didn’t. However, I was pretty proud to get a Varsity letter in my freshman year, in a school of over 2000 kids. Just like every school there were different categories of groups within the school like jocks and so on…but I was the class clown and most people really like me I guess because I was funny and small. Either way I was able to easily move between all the groups and had many friends in every category. High school was fun but not the best of times.
After High School: I continued playing the drums and at 17 started playing professionally, but it was really sporadic. After graduation I started playing more often until finally playing for a living and kept playing for the next 30 years. I preformed in a 5 state area and was fortunate enough to open for some bigger acts like Charlie Daniels so I did pretty well.
I was married the first time, which was probably not my best choice and the only thing good that came from that marriage was my three children. The oldest a Boy followed by two girls, and my kids came pretty much as fast as you can have them each one being roughly 11 months apart. I stayed in the marriage for a while, not really sure why, but if I had to guess I would say it was that Catholic up bring that says once your married it forever. Which is a great thought but it just wasn’t working for me or her, nor were the kids benefiting from it. I’m guessing you can figure out the rest of the story on that. That is pretty much all about me and if anything clicked with you about some memories just send us an email and we can talk, I love to talk about old times, which is now a bit scary because I’m doing things, saying things and sometime even acting like my parents and that is definitely a sign of getting old, but still young at heart. If your really interested you can just jump over to the page about Linda and I and you can see what has went on with our lives after we met.
Thanks for stopping by,
Paul
