Arkadelphia: The Most Enthusiastic Teacher

      While all this drama was going on in our lives, Goldie was creating havoc in our house. She had developed a taste for leather, and we would sometimes find a belt buckle in the floor. The belt was gone. We found a baseball batter's glove in the floor. When we asked Corey's friend Brandon if it was his, he said, “No, mine still has the fingers in it.” We bought him another. Midnight was doing fine out in our fenced in yard. I have to admit, to save our leather, we sometimes let Goldie visit Midnight for awhile, sometimes too long. Goldie developed a rash, and her long hair looked a mess. When we took her to a Vet, he gave us a chewing out. “You can't treat a dog like that like a yard dog!” We all felt guilty, and we got her rash cleared up, put all our leather up out of her reach, and took better care of her.

      We had Goldie bred to another Lhasa, and she produced a big litter of puppies. That was a very educational experience for all of us, when the puppies were born. But when the time came to sell the puppies, there was high drama in our house. Kinley loved Crooktail best, he was the smallest and weakest as well as having a deformed tail, and Kinley always loved the “Under dog,” so to speak. The girl whose family provided the sire had rights to the pick of the litter, and she chose Crooktail. Kinley disliked that poor girl from then on.

      Whitey was always the superior one, from the moment he was born. He was larger, stronger, smarter He went next. The family who bought him swore to us he could later count to ten by barking. I never personally witnessed it. Soon, the whole litter was gone, and the kids weren't properly caring for Goldie, again, and Barbara and I were totally distracted trying to make a living. A nice lady who we knew would take care of her wanted her so she went to a new home, another traumatic day in the Gillum household.

     I helped Barbara photograph a beauty pageant. After we had photographed 12 girls, shot a full roll, I started to reload the camera. There was no film inside! I was in panic. I quietly asked Barb, “Didn't you load the camera?” “No, I thought you did!” She quietly started locating each of those girls, brought them around, and we reshot each of them. Nobody ever knew. Not a good thing to be telling around, at that point in Barbara's photography career.

      We were shooting a wedding in Little Rock. Our Hasselblad went down on us while finishing up the pre-wedding shots. That sort of trouble just never happened with that type camera, the most reliable of its day. That was the model taken to the moon for photographs, the one they knew they could count on. We had gotten a little too sure of it, and didn't take a really good backup. We never made that mistake again on any job we couldn't re-shoot. I ran to our bag for the backup camera, a 35mm I used for wildlife photos, covered with camo tape. I ripped the tape off, then discovered a small device needed to hook up the flash was missing. I told Barb, again with panic in my voice, “Get in place for the coming down the aisle shot. I'll go buy a part.” I drove madly to Camera Mart. Fortunately, It was open on Saturday morning. Fortunately again, they had it. When I got back to the wedding, the bride was about to start down the aisle. I walked briskly past her to Barbara, who was standing in position, smiling confidently with an unusable camera. I slipped her the part, she hooked it up, and got a great shot. Again, nobody ever knew.
      Finally, just before school started, a biology teacher in Arkadelphia was moved up to an administration job. I got his job! The next morning, I was in the principal's office, ready to go to work. He laughed. He didn't even know I had been hired yet.

      Corey was in football practice that morning. He still laughs about looking up on the hill, and seeing me waving a biology book at him.

      With my kind of “help” out of her way, Barbara slowly began to turn the business around. And I was the most enthusiastic teacher in town that year, 1982.