A funny thing happened back in September of '57. My older brother, Timothy Carl Paulitz, tumbled into the world, with a garden trowel in one hand and a mushroom in the other. And ever since, the Paulitz family �C and the Paulitz yard �C have never been the same.
Being his younger brother, I've known Tim my entire life. And, I must say, helping others has always been his passion. He was active in service clubs in high school and college, including the Circle K fraternity, where he slept in a rented closet barely large enough for his tiny bed and desk. This association organized haunted houses for special-needs children, Bloodmobiles, and other charitable projects. Scaring kids and sucking blood, all for a worthy cause...
In high school, I wrote a term paper about the Joshua Tree, a Yucca-like plant from the Mojave Desert. Before the days of Microsoft Word and spell-checkers, I used an electric typewriter, a high-tech alternative to the obsolete, old-fashioned manual typewriter of the time. Somehow, I misspelled a key word in the assignment �C countless times. The word was "Bernardino", as in "San Bernardino", the county in California where these plants thrive. Back then, making such an error meant one thing �C retyping everything. Running the spell-checker and reprinting wasn't an option in those dark days of the twentieth-century.
Tim, my big-hearted older brother, offered to retype the paper - the entire report. Every last page. And that he did. I was eternally grateful. Over twenty years later, I still have that composition, a testament to the kindness and thoughtfulness of my big brother Tim...
To this day, Tim volunteers in soup kitchens and homeless shelters, where he is sometimes mistaken for the transient residents. It must be his unruly hairdo and wrinkled attire, which I've seen him ball-up and toss into his suitcase �C before, not after, a trip. I sincerely doubt that Tim owns an iron or a comb, but if he does, they're probably buried under a huge mound of junk. Somewhere...
My big brother has a healthy obsession for the plant kingdom. Consequently, our yard in Montclair was blessed, although others may prefer the term "infested", with "Four-O'clocks", an invasive tropical plant with vibrantly-colored flowers and large green leaves. Our grandfather Baba supplied the seeds, becoming an unwilling conspirator in transforming the Paulitz dwelling into a Four-O'clock oasis. Tim was our family "Johnny Appleseed", sowing such horticultural surprises as "Johnny-Jump-Up's", with small purple and white flowers, a few maple trees, and an apricot tree - which faithfully yields an abundant harvest each summer, even today. Wherever Tim calls home, from the plains of the Rocky Mountains to snowy Montr��al to the Pacific Northwest, he gets his hands dirty. Scattering seed, tending plants, watering, weeding, fertilizing, pruning, and gathering the goodies for all to savor �C nurturing his chlorophyllous friends is one of Tim's passions, to say the least...
Tim is also a fungus fanatic. Once, en-route from California to his new home in Colorado, Tim and I took a detour to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon - to mushroom-hunt, of course. By day we hiked through moist, wooded areas, searching for specimens. Come nightfall, Tim and his mushroom buddies broke out microscopes and reference books to identify the samples. It was good, clean fun �C especially watching the frenzy over fungus fragments!
Another of Tim's pastimes is an afternoon nap. Or morning nap. Or anytime nap, for that matter. Whether hosting guests in his Colorado apartment or visiting my brother Greg in Northern Idaho, any time and any place are great for a delightful daytime slumber. During college, Tim even slept in his truck between classes. The most unusual place I remember Tim taking a siesta was on the grounds of the Japanese Gardens in Spokane �C in plain view of summer tourists. My brother Tim loves sleeping so much that he moved to Pullman, Washington, named for George Pullman, the inventor of the railroad sleeping car. Now that's a real fan of horizontal hibernation!
Tim loves books - especially weathered classics with a wisp of dust on the cover and lots of dog-eared, wrinkled pages. When I helped him move from California to Colorado, we filled a trailer, floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall, with stacks of them, and his brand-new truck struggled to pull the heavy load over the Rocky Mountains, not unlike the famous locomotive known as "The Little Engine That Could". In Tim's office at Colorado State University, one of his bookshelves actually sagged from the strain of his beloved textbooks. Whatever new town my big brother visits, his first stop is the used bookstore, with its musty odor, antique shelves, boxes of unsorted volumes, and countless dusty hard-covered novels just waiting for Tim to open and explore. He loves books so much that he even married a bookworm. His wife Nancy once worked in a used bookstore in Washington State. I guess bibliophiles tend to stick together!
In addition to classic literature, Tim also collects vintage vinyl and shellac phonograph records, in various formats (33, 45, and 78) from various decades of the last century. For years, Tim hoarded boxes of 78's at the homestead in Montclair, but eventually his beloved treasures ventured north to Pullman, where they, along with his prized collection of classic writings, clutter up every room of his home. In fact, he even stores literary works in his bathroom. Just in case...
My big brother prides himself "corrupting" me by exposing me to Jim Morrison and "The Doors", the American rock band from the 1960's and 1970's. Expose me he did, but I wouldn't call myself "corrupted". For a few years in the 1980's, I purchased a "Doors" vinyl album, opened it, dubbed it to cassette tape, gift-wrapped it, and set it under the Christmas Tree for Tim. He returned the favor with "Beatles" albums, although he had the good taste not to copy them first. Good taste was not my forte in Christmas gifts, I guess. I once gave Tim a huge industrial electrical insulator from an electric company where I worked. It weighed several hundreds pounds and had absolutely no functional use, making it a true "white elephant". The insulator eventually made its way to Northern Idaho, where it is used as a garden decoration. I'm glad someone found a use for that piece of junk!
Tim is our family's most outspoken liberal, never voting for a Republican in his thirty-two years of casting ballots �C and, if asked, he will gladly tell you why. To tease my older brother, I gave him various gag gifts during the 1980's and early 1990's, including paper doll books of Nancy Reagan and the George H. W. Bush family. The latter was eventually returned to me via Dad, probably never opened by Tim, and now sits in my bookcase in Northern California. Now, I am the proud owner of a collectible paper doll book which includes images of George H. W. Bush, the forty-first President of the United States, posing in his underwear.
My big brother has a unique sense of humor �C politically and otherwise. During the first Bush presidency, Tim drew a caricature of George H. W. Bush, parodying his now famous quote "Read my lips..." �C with the personal of touch of the President wishing Dad a "Happy Birthday". Tim collects and writes puns, and prefers originals, not those endlessly forwarded over the Internet. For Christmas one year, Tim wrote a series of Yuletide puns, of which my favorites are "Man Wrecks the Malls with Plows of Raleigh" and "Wild Leopards Wash Their Spots by Night". Recently, Tim entered ten original puns into a contest, hoping at least one would receive the grand prize. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.
Tim is also an imaginative storyteller. When asked by an Irish Presentation Sister, whose order taught an entire generation of Paulitz children, what planet we lived on, he replied "The Moon". Even then, he was years ahead of his time! Being a loving older brother, he told my sister Patricia that she was actually a slave my parents purchased to do his chores, and later decided to adopt. He told me I was an ape acquired from the San Diego Zoo and trained to behave as a human. After forty-three years, I'm almost there...
All in all, my big brother has done a lot of living in his short fifty years on Planet Earth. He never met a mushroom, plant, used book, or classic vinyl record he didn't like, and loves getting his fingernails dirty. He doesn't own an iron or a comb, but does possess an eccentric sense of humor. Tim is never too busy for a "nap attack", and is an overall "fun guy". Just ask his mushroom friends!
I hope this scrapbook comes as a complete surprise to my older brother, as it was five decades in the making, but I won't hold my breath. When Tim traveled round-trip between Denver and San Francisco on Amtrak, some twenty-some years ago, I decided to surprise him by hopping on his train in Oakland and tagging along with him to Colorado for my summer vacation. After climbing into his train, I found his seat and revealed my covert conspiracy. To which he said, with a face of stone and the emotion of a turnip, "What car are you in?". Needless to say, Tim doesn't surprise easily.
To his academic and professional colleagues, he is known as "Timothy C. Paulitz, Ph.D." or "Dr. Timothy C. Paulitz", but outside of those circles, he's not one for fancy titles �C or fancy clothes �C or fancy anything, for that matter. He likes to keep things simple. So we call him "Tim". And my big brother, the newest quinquagenarian in the Paulitz family, wouldn't have it any other way...