Paper routes, France, grouse and guns

Photo: Aimee Edwards

Paul Brook

NORWAY – Paul Brook grew up in Rhode Island and moved here after he got married. Now he owns Woodman's on Main Street in Norway.

He recently took time to sit down and tell us about his life.

Q: When were you born and where were you brought up?

A: I was born May 22, 1952 in France, actually, below Bordeaux. My father was in the army. I don't remember any of that. They moved back to the United States when I was two years old.

I had started speaking French, they told me. It's funny actually, it took me six years to get through three years worth of high school French. I don't understand it at all anymore.

From there, they moved to Connecticut because he did his residency at a hospital in New Haven, he was a doctor. From there he took a job at a hospital in Providence.

I grew up in a planned suburban neighborhood called Garden City. Basically it was put together by a developer with one of the first planned shopping centers at the head of the thing, and several hundred homes behind it. It was kind of a real neat place to grow up at the time; there were kids everywhere.

Q: Did you have any siblings?

A: I'm the oldest, I've got two sisters and a brother. I was four years older than the next sister. As kids we weren't that close. We're kind of scattered around New England now, but we keep in touch pretty regularly.

Q: Where did you go to school?

A: I started off initially in public school in Garden City. Then I went to a new parochial school for four years. My parents didn't like the education I was getting there or the serious segregation of boys and girls, they didn't think that was healthy.

I got yanked out of there in the sixth grade and continued on with public schools in Cranston.

I sort of had two college careers. Based on high school guidence counseling I started off taking engineering at North Eastern in Boston, but I didn't have the math background in high school to be successful with that. Elementary calculus killed me. I quit doing that after about two years and got a job for a moving company.

That was rugged work and I decided that I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life and so I went back to college. I went to what is now Roger Williams University in Bristol. I have a degree in marketing. I did very well with that; I made the Dean's List about every semester.

Q: What have you had for jobs?

A: Actually, in high school I got in trouble with the police and I had to pay restitution for something I did. My father picked up the tab, but looked at me and said, “You will pay me back in a very short period of time.” So I wound up acquiring a paper route.

Back then it was sought after, you actually had to buy a paper route, kick back to the person you got it from. Usually the going price was two week's worth of revenues. It was a great route. It started at my house and ended at my house with about 60 customers.

I wound up parlaying that into mowing lawns for people nearby, shoveling driveways in the winter and occasionally babysitting.

Q: When and how did you meet your spouse?

A: We grew up in the same neighborhood. We probably met for the first time in kindergarten. Then we dated a little bit in high school. When I was at North Eastern we got back together again and dated then.

We both had other boyfriends and girlfriends, but she graduated from college and went back and lived with her parents and that wasn't really working out too well. At that point in time, while I was going to Roger Williams we got together seriously and lived together for a while.

About a month before we decided to move we decided to get married. We had a very small ceremony a week before we moved to Maine, so I tell people I'm still on my honeymoon, 35 years later.

Q: What did you do for work when you got married?

A: I worked for the Sun Journal as an advertising rep for about 11 years. That was a good job at that point in time. That was 20 to 39 years ago when newspapers were in their heyday. I worked for them the year they hit a million column inches of advertising.

Our office, I couldn't smoke in there. So if I wanted a cigarette I would walk into Woodman's because the guy that was running the shop for the guy that I bought it from, he smoked a pipe so nobody cared.

I walked in one day and the owner of the place looked at me and he said, “You gotta find a new smoking lounge, I'm losing too much money at this and I'm gonna close.” I felt bad about that, and I'd just come into a little bit of money and I asked him what are the chances of me buying the place.

What I was concerned about was the historical aspect of it, they'd been in business so long, I thought it'd be unfortunate if they closed. So we worked out a deal and I bought it. I continued working for the Sun Journal for about a year and then decided I wanted to get more involved in the business.

Q: Do you have children?

A: Yes, two boys. They are 28 and 32 years old. My oldest has a son. My younger one is living with an girlfriend, they've been together since elementary school.

Q: Have you done any traveling?

A: Some. When I was a teenager, two summers in a row, I traveled to Colorado and Wyoming with some relatives of mine that lived in Chicago. They had three kids and we piled into a VW bus and camped our way to Colorado and Wyoming.

Q: Which was the most fascinating place and why?

A: My favorite place to go, I try to do this about once a year, is plantation quail hunting in Georgia. Just to see the difference in lifestyles down there. It's very agricultural. Everyone is incredibly polite.

Q: Do you collect anything or have a hobby?

A: My guns, I've got a fair number of guns. My hobby is shooting, clay targets, I like to skeet shoot. Then there's a new clay target game over the last 20-25 years or so called sporting clays. It's on a course where you walk through the woods, stop at a given station and there will be a different target presentation.

Q: Do you belong to an organizations?

A: Quite a few, actually. I am secretary of Waterford Fish and Game. I'm on the board of directors of the Maine Chapter of Safari Club International. For the last 15 years or so, I've been treasurer of the Maine Chapter of the Ruffed Grouse Society. I'm also secretary/treasurer and a board member of another, charitable, organization.

Q: What is one thing you could not give up?

A: My guns. It's what I do. I think gun ownership in the United States is a basic right that we have. That's why I'm very heavily involved in the NRA. I wouldn't have anything to do, I'd go nuts. Also, I wouldn't get to meet have the neat people I do playing with guns, or get to eat the neat things I get to eat.