Paul Newman: Role Model

Paul Newman is my role model.  Although he is no longer with us, I frequently find myself asking the eternal question: What would Paul do?

I know that many people admire him for the great work he did to increase the variety and availability of salad dressings in the United States. I'm sort of an oil-and-vinegar kind of guy, though, and so his contributions to lettuce enhancement do not move me as much as they do others.

I took Paul as my role model on a brutally hot day in the summer of 1997. He and I were both trapped among a horde of auto racing fans in a small converted pasture somewhere near Columbus, Ohio. Temperatures were flirting with 100 degrees. The humidity was so high we could have used waders. More than 100,000 people were competing for the three portable toilets on the site and the ChampCar race was about to begin.

The Napkin Diaries

First, a confession.  I never buy pocket-size Kleenex. I know I am contributing to the demise of the Union of American Facial Tissue Workers, which is a subsidiary of the Congress of Home Paper Product Laborers, and throwing a lot of people out of work, but I can’t help it.  It’s hereditary.  I learned at my mother’s knee to be ready for any emergency by filling my pockets with paper napkins from restaurants.

 Generations on my mother’s side have been restaurant napkin hoarders.  Worse!  They used their ill-gotten paper products to filch other restaurant offerings. For instance, my mother couldn’t resist a restaurant bread basket as long as she had a napkin in her purse.