Paul Karp retires after 26 years with Blaktop
Paul Karp officially retired from employment with Blaktop on March 31, 2017. He had been Blaktop’s chief sales and estimating representative for the past 26 years. Paul’s friendly personality and wealth of paving knowledge made him an ideal fit and a great ambassador for Blaktop from day one. In his 26 years with Blaktop Paul has looked at literally thousands of driveways, hundreds of miles of town road met with just about anyone who needed asphalt paving in the Upper Valley.
We love to joke about the many funny experiences we’ve had with Paul over the years and one sticks out as a classic that will live on in Blaktop lore. In years past we in the office would come out and lend a hand paving to help out during the mad rush to get jobs done in the fall. One time Paul was called out to be part of our “office crew” to pave a small job. During the job we realized we needed to tack coat a joint and Paul volunteered to fetch the emulsion bucket from the tool truck. Tack emulsion is notoriously sticky and known to get on anything that comes near it as its purpose is to bond new paving to an old worn surface. Paul, of course, was dressed in nice clean cloths having been pulled abruptly from his sales duties to help with paving. Additionally he had put on some nice leather dress gloves to use as his work gloves. We all told Paul to wait and let someone else deal with the tack bucket but he insisted and said he’d be super careful with it. Well, as you can imagine Paul ended up covered in sticky black tack emulsion from his nice gloves to his shirt, pants and down to his nice clean boots. He was a mess. We felt so bad for Paul but at the same time could not help laughing at the situation because he prides himself on being nice and presentable and having everything just right and here he was an absolute mess. That’s the way Paul did anything he attempted, by jumping in with both feet and in this case he literally covered himself in it. Ever since then his nickname has been “Tack Boy”.
Anyway Paul, we wish you many happy years of the retirement that you have so deservedly earned. Good luck, happy trails and don’t forget to stop in for a visit to relive the Tack Boy story or any of the hundreds of other stories that are so fun to here you retell.
