Paul Corbin
Paul has a column each month in Life In The Ozarks.

Paul Corbin was born in 1914, and has cramed 125 years of experiences into 93 years. He has lived through two world wars, witnessed the transition from the horse and buggy to the automobile and space travel, all the way to the moon. He heard the first feeble voices of radio, and listened as it spread to instant communication to all parts of the world, and outer space. He watched the flickering pictures of the silent movies, and witnessed the arival of television.

He was part of a family of ten that grew up in a four room unpainted house, on a 50 acre farm, where the family income was less than $500.00 per year.

He graduated grade school in 1929, with no idea of going to High School, as the nearest high school was 5-1/2 miles away and there were no bus transportation. He got a job at the local sawmill, makeing $1.00 per day, and soon decided that he was never going to get very rich at this job, so he decided to walk the eleven miles a day to "earn my high school diploma."

There were eleven in his graduating class of 1933, all except one sporting beautiful green and gold school sweaters. He was also the only one that did not have a school ring.

When Paul graduated, twenty-five percent of the adult men were without jobs, so he took the menial job of selling 'Watkins Products' house to house. "On this job, I guess I worked a little harder than the average dealer, because at the end of my first year, my picture was on the front page of the Watkins News Bulletin. The caption read, "Corbin Wins, Sets All Time Record". It was quite a surprise" His hard work quickly brought him a promotion to Distric Manager for the State of Mississippi. "I continued to work at this job until gas rationing during World War Two made it impossible to continue," says Paul.

At that point Paul moved back to his hometown of Advance, Missouri where he opened a Ben-Franklin Store, which the family owned and operated for 40 years. He retired in 1973 at age 58, and spent the next 27 years traveling and workeing on Archaeological sites in most of the Western States.

Paul bought his first computer at age 85. He published his first book, "Reflections From Missouri Mud" in 2002, and a second one, "Fragments Of My Fickle Mind" in 2007. "For the past six years I have been writing articles for four different magazines and two newapapers."