When Paul sells Street Roots, he likes to make people happy and treat them with respect
Paul West has something very special: the ability to have a good day no matter what.
“I always get up and say: It’s going to be a good day,” Paul said. “I never have a bad day. Well, I do, but I try not to. Life’s too short for that. I’ve been doing it all my life. I’ve been on my own since I was 13.”
Paul grew up in northern Idaho in a mining town called Wallace. He was a beloved grandson whose grandmother Irene and great grandmother took away from an abusive mother to keep him safe.
He said Grandma Irene “taught me a lot. Manners, respect, loyalty. Very important. Nice lady.”
Irene owned an old rooming house where miners and “all kinds of people” lived. Paul helped out by cleaning floors and painting the building. His resourceful grandmother also owned three gold mines, which she passed on to Paul’s Uncle Bob.
Paul stayed away from the mining industry, “a dangerous, dangerous job,” but he used to dig some gold out of his uncle’s mines for fun. “I was 13, 14. It was just me and my uncle.”
“I was really, really close to my uncle,” Paul said. “Spent a lot of time with him. I lived with him for a while. We used to go waterskiing all summer. I love waterskiing. I miss waterskiing. Out on Lake Coeur d’Alene, I’d waterski all day.”
When his grandmothers died, Paul felt the loss deeply and left Idaho.
Early on, Paul ran a White’s Concessions food trailer.
“I traveled all over the United States. Elephant ears. Curly fries. Buffalo sausage. Bloomin’ onions. Fajitas. All kinds of stuff,” he said.
When Paul got to Oregon, he made cabinets in Forest Grove for several years, did landscaping and stocked goods at Safeway and Albertsons grocery stores.
Paul especially liked managing a gas station in Beaverton.
“That was a cool job,” he said. “I had a lot of good friends there. Everybody was very nice.”
That job ended when his marriage ended.
“I’ll never do that again,” he said. “I lost my house. Lost my job. Everything.”
These days Paul relies on what he learned from Uncle Bob: “If you have a bad attitude, you have a bad day. Have a good attitude, have a good day.”
Paul sleeps on the street to avoid “the drama” and body lice he once caught at the shelters. His tent and phone were stolen, so he carries an 80-pound backpack to keep his remaining possessions safe.
Often starting at 6 a.m., he sells the Street Roots newspaper at the corner of Southwest Fourth Avenue and Alder Street, outside a pharmacy and Starbucks. There, he said, “I like to make people happy. I like to treat people with respect and show them respect.”
Paul has even sold the newspaper to Gov. Kate Brown.
“The governor, she’s a nice lady, really nice lady. (She asked) ‘How’s your day going?’ Acted like a regular person to me,” he said.
“It’s the little stuff that’s important; it’s not the big stuff, you know?” Paul said about the connections made, back and forth, when selling the paper. “The little stuff means a lot. ‘Good morning. How you doing? How’s your day? Have a great day.’ It always means something.”
While many people hurry by his street corner, Paul easily makes friends with the people who stop. He has regular customers who worried about him when he was in the hospital, “awesome cops” who keep him out of trouble, and a pharmacy owner who exchanges gifts with him at Christmas.
Paul said that he takes things day by day and that friends are all you really need.
“Most of my customers, they’ve become friends,” he said. “Just the way we talk with each other, the way we treat each other. We’re equals out here.”
Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots
