Did not sleep well last night but to my credit still managed the bicycle circuit this morning. Am now treating this chronicle more as a journal without monitoring my thinking as i might with a strictly essay form - while this might be taxing for you the reader, for me it is helpful to dwell in more of a stream-of-consciousness mode if i am to keep it up day in and day out. Today i will shift gears and focus on other characters, because there is just so much one can say about oneself without others beginning to get a good idea of just how crazy you are - we wouldn’t want that would we¿ Scott Paulsen was a 26 year old charismatic 6th Grade teacher at Mesa Verde Elementary School where my family lived. The housing tract we lived in was brand new and were we lived in the North of what before it became the City of Costa Mesa, was reputedly named Goat Hill - more mythical than actual. We moved there because Pop had trained at the Santa Ana Air Station which became the site of one of my Alma Maters, Orange Coast College. Each of the 4 children attended Mesa Verde Elementary and all had had Mr. Paulsen for the 6th grade except the oldest brother who lucked out with Dame Beaumont who could have been a stand in for Bette Davis in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane”
Mr. Paulsen was a keen and thoughtful educator of the “old school”, so much so he inspired my mother to become an instructor when it became clear we could not keep up with Joneses on Pop’s salary as a teacher, and ma was big on keeping up with the Joneses. The first day of classes when it was my turn to learn, Mr. Paulsen had all the students stand up and introduce themselves to the rest of the class - so did. “Good Morning class, my name is Joseph Stevens.” Mr. Paulsen promptly interrupted me and declared, “you’re not Joseph - your name is Todd, I know your Mother and father, Harold and Marty; I know your oldest brother is named Bradley; I had your sister Kristin in my class two years ago; and I know you have a younger brother Casey - your name is not Joseph, your name is Todd.” It is true what he said, though not entirely accurate. My namesake is Joseph Vernon, my maternal grandfather who died long before i was born. What could i do? Years later when it came time to open a checking account the nice lady asked me what name i would like printed on my checks, i said “Joseph T. Stevens” - patience is our friend. After this event, i was not quite the same eager student i had been on the first day, but a curious child by nature. So when Mr. Paulsen rearranged the seating and i was given i seat in the front row i once again felt the spark of learning in my heart - and of course enjoyed sharing with anyone who would listen, obviously.
Well what a surprise while entertaining the youngster to my left with my erudite understanding of that day’s lesson - “Thwack” · my head rang for minutes until i realized Mr. Paulsen very much didn’t like competing for the class’s attention and he was a dead aim with the chalkboard eraser. School, was a frolicsome environment, and a complex social incubator. For example, we would play softball against the other 6th grade classes, and Mr. Paulsen opened the naming of our team to competition - he picked mine · “Paulsen’s Pulverizers”, i could bust a gut so proud was i, though as a ballplayer - it just wasn’t in the cards for me. Quite the opposite, one lunchtime Mike Lambert convinced me to steal Mr. Paulsen’s Winston cigarettes from his coat pocket while he was busy pitching during lunch recess. Yeah, you guessed me and mike got busted smoking in the dirt piles back of the Kinney Shoe Store. But Mr. Paulsen was a good egg, so much so that when our dog Snoopy the beagle would break out of the yard so he could follow the scent of younger brother Casey when he became a student with Mr. Paulsen, and instead of making a big stink, he just allowed my brother to bring the dog home - one more eccentricity of the Stevens’ clan.
Scott and Liddy - Mr. and Mrs. Paulsen are woven into the very fabric of my life many decades later. I owned an old building with my last wife near Eagle Rock. Scott and Liddy came for breakfast and we stood on the roof patio toasting champagne in the direction of Occidental College where they had been college sweethearts. It was also the same house where sitting in the den commiserating about the breakup of my marriage when Scott announced, “No I’m not a Democrat, I’m a lifelong Republican.” It was as though all the underpinnings of assumptions i had made throughout my life was simply pulled out from under me in one swell foop, and not. He, Mr. Paulsen more than any other conservative i have ever known, and having worked thirteen years in aerospace, i’ve known many - is as principled and loving toward all people of our nation with a profound regard for the complexities of we are faced with. For a while, i was a wage slave as a broker’s assistant in a commercial real estate firm, later an agent able to make my own calls. Though generally one of the least exciting and more venal assignments in my long employment history - there were moments. On one occasion hammering the phones i struck up a conversation with a nice enough guy and started reeling him in - what turned out, was that he and his brothers owned a 215,000 sf shopping center at the SW corner of Hollywood Blvd & Vermont, just down the hill from Frank Lloyd Wright’s, Hollyhock House.
The reason i share this is that one of Mr. Paulsen’s children was in the real estate trade entered his firm into the bidding for this property; also it happened just as the Los Angeles real estate market was taking a nosedive in the 2005 recession. For me it was a lesson in greed and stupidity - in my initial conversation with the owner i had thrown out a figure od $100 million, which he could not get out of his head. The bidding eventually stalled at $80 million something, and the brothers wouldn’t budge. Months later the market had tanked and the property was finally sold years later at a 1/3 of what they could have had in hand without greed as their guide. Now i sit removed from the “sturm and drang” decades and portraits later loving my friend that hit across the side of the head with a projectile when i deserved it. I ask you reading now what you can do to relieve the suffering at your elbow? “Humans of New York” started as a phenomena much different than it started, just like when Mr. Paulsen loosed his cannon across my disrespecting cranium - we can learn · i did enough to encourage him Mr. Paulsen to paint him and his wife Liddy, knowing me to be not only “Liberal” but radical to the point of dying in Vietnam. (he heartily approved of my travel plans to VN when we spoke last - likely our last). Scott Paulsen is a loving influence in my life that i am grateful for · i struggle to say that about everyone i meet, for no other reason than how much his kindness has made me a better human being.
jts 14/05/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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