Paul Randolph Rush | 29 October 1953 – 21 June 2025

Began as a Request

Angie, the wife of Paul’s son, Jason, asked me for some fond memories of Paul for the memorial service. This is what I sent her with some additions.   So here goes… in 4000 words or so which does not seem hardly sufficient for nearly 72 years on this planet.

Paul, the Curmudgeon

I say fondly, I say with all kindness, my brother Paul was a curmudgeon. Perhaps the best explanation as to what a curmudgeon is, I encountered in Jon Winokur’s book, The Portable Curmudgeon. In that book he describes a curmudgeon thusly:

“A curmudgeon’s reputation for malevolence is undeserved. They’re neither warped nor evil at heart. They don’t hate mankind, just mankind’s absurdities. They’re just as sensitive and soft-hearted as the next guy, but they hide their vulnerability beneath a crust of misanthropy. …They ease the pain by turning hurt into humor. They attack maudlinism because it devalues genuine sentiment. . . . Nature, having failed to equip them with a serviceable denial mechanism, has endowed them with astute perception and sly wit.

Curmudgeons are mockers and debunkers whose bitterness is a symptom rather than a disease. They can’t compromise their standards and can’t manage the suspension of disbelief necessary for feigned cheerfulness. Their awareness is a curse.

Perhaps curmudgeons have gotten a bad rap in the same way that the messenger is blamed for the message: They have the temerity to comment on the human condition without apology. They not only refuse to applaud mediocrity, they howl it down with morose glee. Their versions of the truth unsettle us, and we hold it against them, even though they soften it with humor.”

I truly cannot think of a better description of Paul.  He had a heart of gold, but the absurdities of the world were often too much for him.

A Baseball Game

For another window in the essence of my brother Paul, I recently discovered that he had been carrying around a bit of guilt from our childhood for almost 60 years. Hopefully, it was only minor.

It was the spring of 1967. We were still living in Italy. The Navy provided many recreational activities for the sailors and their family.  Since my father was a civilian contractor working with the Navy, they allowed us to participate.  Paul and I were on the same baseball team in whatever is the recreational league that follows Little League, Pony Baseball, I believe.  I was 15 and Paul would have been 13. The issue was that we had a coach new to the league who did not know the kids.  He failed to pick anyone for his team who could pitch. So he went about trying each of his players in that position.  He even tried me, who generally played outfield.  He did so without practice or instruction.  It was the worst half inning of baseball in my sports career.  Kids were teasing me about it until we left the country.

The coach decided to try the kid who played first base as pitcher.  He brought me in from center field to play first base… again without practice, coaching or instruction. A kid named Phillip was batting.  He hit a ground ball to Paul who was playing third base. Paul scooped up the grounder and threw it to me at first base, a little wide to the home plate side. All I knew about playing first base was to keep your foot on the bag and catch the throw. I forgot about the runner, reached for the ball with my foot still on the bag.  Phillip plowed into my left arm, breaking both the bones of that arm. It was not quite a compound fracture, but you could see the jagged ends of my bones outlined in my skin.

Not for a nano-second did I consider Paul at fault for my injury. If I thought about it, I blamed myself for stupidly reaching in front of the runner.  As an adult, I thought of it with a little more nuance.  If anyone was at fault, it was the coach for not giving me more coaching at a position I had never played. However, that is not how Paul saw it.  He blamed himself for the wide throw that resulted in my broken arm.  I only discovered that he felt this way during a brotherly round robin of texts.   It truly surprised me.  I am sorry he carried this guilt around for 50 some odd years.  But that was Paul, sometimes taking too much responsibility for things of this nature.

Paul, a Safe Haven

I sometimes have described my career path as circuitous.  My life definitely has had what feels like more than its fair share of ups and downs.  Paul, and him giving me temporary living space, always seemed to be a safety net for me when the storm was raging.  I did the same for him on a couple occasions.  Here again is yet another window in the kind heart that was Paul.

We Whup Butt

We were in Pine Beach, NJ.  It was around 1960.  I was in 3^rd grade; Paul would have been in 2^nd or 1^st.  The elementary school we went to did not provide transportation if you lived within a mile of the school. I remember it being a long walk, but not onerous.  Occasionally, we would ride our bikes. While I do not remember, I assume that our mother drove us to school on bad weather days, although, I do have a strong memory of yellow raincoats from this time. Remember, it was a different time and parents were not hovering over their kids like they do nowadays.

Our mother was frequently admonishing us to not get into fights. Her admonishments were very current in our home at this time as there were a couple boys who were picking on us relentlessly as we walked home. Not that we were afraid of fighting, it is hard to grow up in a household full of boys if you are, but we were definitely more afraid of our mother than anything those two boys could do to us.

One afternoon we had had enough.  I do not remember us saying anything to the other; we turned in unison, rushed the boys, and started whupping on them.  They backed off a bit, and started throwing rocks at us.  We simply picked up their rocks and threw them back at them. This is when they tucked tail and ran. They did not bother us after that.

We strutted all the way home, if it is possible to strut while you are floating. Needless to say, we did not tell our mother.

Mashed Potatoes

I don’t make mashed potatoes very often, but when I do, I think of Paul as he so dearly loved them. It was a rare occurrence, as there was a passel of hungry boys to feed in our house growing up, but occasionally there were leftover mashed potatoes.  Paul would sneak into the kitchen late in the evening and fix himself a bowl of his favorite food which he then carried up to his bedroom. Thing was, he would put the empty bowl under his bed.  Our mother would find the bowl with the dry, crusty remnants of mashed potatoes a day or two later and go ballistic.  Paul would do the same thing with his own special blend of Hershey’s cocoa, sugar and milk or maybe water that he mixed into a paste.  Again our mother would blow her top when she discovered the empty mixing bowl under his bed. Paul just trooped on with his unauthorized snacking much to the dismay of our mother.

Paul was never much on other vegetables.  More than once he would try one trick or another to avoid eating them, including the old peas in the napkin trick which has seemed to have never fooled anyone. Unfortunately, it all too often became a test of wills between him and our parents.

A Little Teasing

Paul liked to tease. When I moved to Arkansas I took a job with the Arkansas Department of Health as a County Sanitarian, aka Health Inspector. The job had me inspecting a lot of restaurants. Of course, Paul spent a big part of his career managing restaurants. I would on occasion drive over from Arkansas to spend a day or so with Paul.  Once, when I arrived he was still working at the restaurant.  Being between lunch and dinner he was the only one minding the store. He was actually working in one of the public restrooms replacing the seal at the bottom of the toilet. Then an order came in. He jumped from the bathroom to the kitchen to start preparing a pizza without washing his hands… or so he pretended. Once he realized he had gotten my health inspector side all in a tizzy, he went and washed his hands thoroughly.  He then actually made the pizza. Decades later he liked to bring it up as he had gotten my goat so completely.

Paul, the Builder

Perhaps Paul should have gone into construction. As a kid, Paul was probably the most gregarious of us brothers. He would gather up a group of boys and build forts and shacks.  I especially remember a monster snow fort they built under Paul’s direction after a deep snow fall in Toms River, New Jersey.  At least I remember it as being New Jersey.  We moved so much that sometimes the places run together.  I can think of a tree house we built a different time we were in New Jersey.  I recall a couple shacks he and his cronies built in the woods, at least one of which could have been a passable abode in a favela in Brazil.

Paul, the Business Rival

The second place we lived in Italy was north of Naples on the road to Rome. The villa was less than a kilometer from the Mediterranean Sea and a wonderful beach.  At the time, it was essentially full of summer homes for richer Italians from the two cities.  While crowded in the summer, there were almost no one there in the winter except a few expats, like ourselves, who lived there year round.  Since there was almost no one there, services, like garbage collection, were not available. My father had us dig a pit across the road from the compound we lived in.  We would put our garbage in it, and then burn it.  Not sure where the idea came from, but I started collecting the garbage from other expats to do the same.  I seem to remember charging a quarter a week.  Remember, this was the 60s.  Paul decided he wanted to get in on the action, and started a competing “company”.  This rocked along for a while, and then we decided to merge our two operations. We also provided other services such as cleaning patios, watching dogs; whatever we could get someone to pay kids to do.  I remember that I saved enough money to buy a used stereo from a kid whose family had been transferred out.

This rocked along nicely until the summer people started returning, and with them the Italian who normally collected the garbage. He did not like the competition, and I imagine the pit was probably illegal.  The police came and had a brief discussion with my father, and we were out of the garbage business.  Luckily for my father, it was the police and not the Naples Mafia. We were able to do the other parts of our business, but the “real” money had been in the garbage.

More Baseball

Again we are in Italy, at the villa north of Naples.  It is summertime.  There are a couple of workmen working on another villa.  I am not quite sure how it started, but Paul had given one of the workmen the hook ‘em horns hand sign. This is not an innocent gesture in Italy.  It has several meanings, most of which are very offensive. One of the workmen was hell bent on pounding on a 12 year old kid, my brother Paul. Our mother, who spoke reasonable Italian, on hearing all the commotion and yelling, came running from our villa.  What I remember most is that she kept trying to explain to the workman that the hand sign meant two outs in baseball in America… all the while waving the offensive hook ‘em horns hand sign at him.  I doubt very seriously that he bought that, but he desisted in his efforts to give Paul a beating. It was not so funny then, but it became a classic Rush family story and a good example of how brazen Paul could be at times.

Paul Stops a Cat Fight

My senior year of high school I had an eye operation that kept me out of school for two or three months.  During this period I had a couple girls who would visit me.  I did not see this as a problem as one was slightly older and out of school. She worked evenings as a waitress and visited during the day. The other girl was in school and came over occasionally in the evenings.

It was Christmas time, and the first girl was in the basement rec room with me.  The second girl came over unexpectedly, carrying Christmas presents. Our mother, seeing a situation developing, left the house to go visit with a neighbor, but only after first summoning me upstairs to greet girl number two. I learned afterwards that girl number one was trying to go up the stairs from our basement to kick some derriere. Whether it was mine or the other girl’s posterior, I do not know, but Paul managed to keep her downstairs, somewhat calm, preventing a horrible situation from getting even worse.  Thank you, Bro.

A Song

I am not sure this is a fond memory, but it is a strong recollection. I was trying to pin down exactly when this transpired.  Best I could come up with was autumn of 1971.  I had dropped out of college after my freshman year for various reasons, mainly as I was not yet  ready to be serious about my studies.  For the sake of me I cannot remember what I did that summer.  It is a total blank in my mind, but in the autumn I had moved back into to my parent’s house.  It was not the best time as my father’s career had hit, as the Mexicans say, a mala rancha.  I did not stay long, my mother invited me to leave after only a short period of time. As I expressed in Rev. Joe Goes to The Big House, a story from around this same time period, “my folks would never have been in the running for the Ward and June Cleaver Parenting Award. The reason they had children, let alone 5, is unclear to me.”  But, you know, you have to play the cards you are dealt.

What I remember most about that brief sojourn back into the parental embrace was that Paul had acquired Grand Funk Railroad‘s album Closer to Home, which came out in 1970. On this album is their most recognizable/popular song I’m You Captain , a 10 minute studio song. Something about this piece of music really spoke to Paul.  He would sit in his room and play it over and over, not the album, just this particularly track.  This went on for days.  It may of well gone on for weeks or months, but I was gone, busily trying to find some place to sleep at night.

I cannot hear Grand Funk Railroad, and especially this song, without thinking of Paul.

Just for grin and giggles here is a link to the song on YouTube: I’m Your Captain

Paul, The Warrior

I have been racking my brain trying to remember exactly when this was, but I cannot come up with something more than the first part of the century. I am thinking it was after my father passed away in 2005.  I believe that by this point Paul had begun to work for a pole barn company doing sales and getting orders ready to go out to the customer’s site.

I do know Jason had been out of high school a few years.  Paul, having managed two or three pizza restaurants over a period of many years, left Jason with pizza sauce running through his veins. Jason was working for one of the big chains of pizza restaurants, preparing pizzas and doing deliveries.

One ill-fated afternoon a call came in to deliver a pizza to what turned out to be a vacant, possibly abandoned house. As he was going up the sidewalk to the front door he was jumped by three individuals.  I remember one of them as being a female.  They nearly beat him to death with a baseball bat, took what little money he had, and went inside and ate the pizza. Not being the brightest of criminals, they left sufficient clues behind that even the Muskogee Police could crack the case. At least one of the individuals received a sentence of 25 years for attempted murder.

Jason was not dead, and managed to get back to his car.  The major head trauma left him thinking unclear, rather than going to the emergency room, he was trying to get back home where he and Paul both lived.

I am not sure what initiated the original traffic stop by Muskogee’s “finest”, but they decided this nearly comatose individual who someone had just tried to murder as being someone hopped up and crazy on drugs.  They then proceeded to give Jason another beating, including a choke hold that caused him to aspirate something so that he could not breath.

Paul was coming home about this time, recognized Jason’s vehicle, saw his son on the ground with a cop on top of him.  He rushed through the assembled mob of the “to serve and protect” types and put his body between them and Jason.

It was at this point that the police realized that maybe their knee jerk reaction had been wrong.  He was rushed to the Muskogee hospital who immediately had him transported to Tulsa via helicopter.  Jason spent over a week in intensive care and it was definitely touch and go for a while.

If we had lost Jason, I have no doubt that Paul would have been close behind.

That was Paul, willing to take on the whole Muskogee police force to protect his son.

(I am sure that I got more than the dates jumbled, but it was around 20 years ago, and most of what I know about the story, I got second hand.  I would be glad for someone to clear up my facts in the comments.)

The Red Green Show

Paul absolutely loved this Canadian comedy show.  To the point that it was frequently a topic of his conversation, or he would be quoting a line from the show. A few of his favorites being:

“the handyman’s secret weapon – duct tape”

“If at first you don’t succeed, use more duct tape” 

“If women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.”

The last resonated with me as Paul seemed to find women more perplexing than is common with most of us men. 73 years old and I am still trying to understand the other half of the species.   He tended to come across as misogynist, but I hearken back to the curmudgeonly trait of being oversensitive to explain that.

He even went as far as to purchase (or were they a gift?) a pair of the red and green suspenders the main character wore on the show.  He wore them a lot.  They were as much a part of his style as was his omnipresent vest and hat. Perhaps Paul identified so strongly with the show as the characters  were always jury rigging some strange contraption or scratching their heads about the women in their life.

More

I could go on with fond memories, but that seems enough for now.  Plus a few of my fond memories of Paul are not PG rated!

And We Grow Up

When we were small, Paul and I were very close.  My mother told me I used to call him my little Paulie, and was very protective of him.  Then I became a snotty-nosed, semi juvenile delinquent teenager, much too cool to be messing with younger brothers.  Something I regret to this day.

Then adulthood dropped like an anvil on both of us. There were jobs, school, wives, family, and we grew apart. Paul spent several years in California when I was in my 20s and early 30s. Since neither of us had much money, traveling for pleasure was out of the question, and we grew apart not seeing each other for a very long stretch of time.

For many years, my brothers and I, and our father would buy season tickets to University of Oklahoma football games.  If you knew Paul, you knew he was a big Sooner fan… and an Oakland Raiders fan.  A few times as a group, we brothers would go down to a Rangers baseball game.  But by that time, I was living in another state which kept us apart more than the short drive merited.

Paul’s Purpose

Paul’s joy in life, and the thing that gave his life meaning, was his son Jason.  I am not sure how Paul’s life would have gone without his son, but I know it was better with him. We should all have had a father that loved you as much as Paul loved Jason.

 Regrets

We all have regrets in life.  One of mine is that I was not a better brother to Paul (and my other siblings) when we were younger. Another is that I did not work harder at maintaining a relationship with Paul as an adult. However, it was difficult the last several years as Paul withdrew into himself, turning more and more into a semi-hermit. But, you know, the vast majority of us do the best we know how to do.

If you exclude my ex-wife, my brother Paul was the one person over whom I have shed the most tears.  He had a life defined by an overfondness for The Herb.  Reality, at times, was too much for him.  I understand.  Sometimes it is too much for me. This fondness led him to opt for jobs where it did not matter. This frequently left him at the lower end of the earnings curve.

He also had a life marked and marred by tragedies which I am not going to get into here.  I knew some of the demons that Paul was running from, but I am sure I did not know them all.

Say what you will about my parents, they managed jointly to create children well on the right side of the proverbial Bell Curve, including Paul.  He knew this at one level, but always seemed to have a bit of an insecurity about this. Perhaps this was from being held back a grade, something my mother regretted allowing.  Perhaps it was being a bit cross-eyed and having to wear glasses from an early age. Who really knows the depths of another person’s soul?

On the other hand, Paul set the parameters of his life, and lived according.  You had to admire this independent, I-don’t-give-a-damn-what-they-think, streak of his, although I frequently did not understand why he chose to live as he lived. However, he seemed more than content with his life style. The reality was that I was not walking in his moccasins and he seemed to do what made him happy. And he always took care of Jason, for that matter, the reverse was as true,  Jason always took care of Paul.

Life!

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