Thanks to all.
The one thing I will miss most of all is that monthly call.. "Joe you have to see this"... Whether it was a new splice, a new cutter, a new fixture that only he would understand.. it was a call I would always look forward to. We'd have lunch or coffee and then I would waste a day in his shop.
After my late uncle and Mark, Paul was definately my next best friend. We would talk ideas, cams, mechanisms, color matching and materials. He would always say.. you should do this (cuemaking), I said.. no thanks, I leave this up to qualfied personnel only.. he would chuckle.. He would say I had a quick quip for everything.
We never haggled over a single thing. He said this was the price, this is the discount, done deal. We saw eye to eye on a lot of things. Everytime he made me a cue, that would push the limits, and he knew I would list it, even just for the sake of showing it. I would say, what if someone wants it? He said, sell it, I can make you the next best thing.... another one.
Paul was a man that no one could ever say a bad thing about, ever. He was impossible to dislike, he worried if he was late with a cue or a repair.
In my opinion, he took a forgotten art, reinvented it, and made strides that hadn't been seen in a lifetime. I think George Brittner, Rambow, they would have loved him. He could have made cues in the 1910's, 60's or whenever. How he loved figured woods, he made tulipwood palpable, he used kingwood, chechen, other woods I haven't seen used since.
People ask me about his total output of cues. In my estimation, it's under 300, it might be under 200. He would make a batch of 5, quit for a few months, tweaking this or that, then another batch. Paul didn't need the money, he made them purely for the challenge that the geometry posed.
I used to think that mentally, he was at war with Archimedes.
Paul was a great friend and will be missed, especially by me.
