Arkadelphia: The Green Golf Shoes Scam

      By 1991, Barbara had built the business to a point that it was just too much for her. She had workers to handle part of the load but she needed someone else to shoot. We bought our three years back from the Missouri Teacher Retirement System (for Hannibal) and that gave me 25 years, at 75% retirement. I retired.

I did most all of the out of the studio stuff, including a lot of school day photography. School day was always marginal, because schools almost always demanded a kick back to get the job. In Arkadelphia at that time, it was 40%. For handing out the pictures. I also managed the rental properties that were building up. I quickly learned dealing with renters was not a job for the soft hearted. Every single time, and I mean every time, I listened to a hard luck story, and responded with a kind heart, I eventually paid the price. That sounds hard, I know. But it's just the truth. I turned the property management over to Bud Reeder when we left to travel a year. And I have never wanted it back. I now renovate the houses when they are left trashed badly. Might be 2 days, may be 2 weeks. But, you can't dwell on those things. Just fix it back up, keep the shell solid so it won't rot down, and go on. Through a murder in one house in 1998, through many, many drug busts, through a cross burning in the yard, through arson three days later. Just go on down the road. Don't look back. You can't hang with it if you do.

      The US mail is very safe. During the 16 years we operated the studio, mailing out many orders each day, we never failed to get the product back. Once a label came off  in the mail but we got it back.  The package was opened at the dead letter office and eventually returned. You can trust the US Postal Service!

I always thought children would most likely follow the father's footsteps in choosing a career. But, as it happened, both Kinley and Corey chose to follow the mother. But I can't blame them there. Photography offers opportunities to make wads of money quick, if things go right. Teaching does not.

      As Corey got older, He wanted to get into photography. Make some money. We took pictures of youth sports in several towns. You know, the posed, memory mate thing. Well, Corey was always a good salesman. In fact, every job he has had since he graduated from OBU was based on commission sales or his own business. He started visiting sports leagues in larger towns, and picked up a few. He re-designed the sales envelope. Where we offered four packages, his offered dozens. And, his highest priced one was at the top of the envelope. He put on a big show about it with the inexpensive ones at the bottom, little letters. He found out it was as easy to win a large league as a small one. He showed us youth sports could be big money in one day, if you do it right. We started helping on some of the very large leagues, doing multiple leagues in one Saturday. We found that by doing it big scale and right could gross many thousands in a day. I started re-thinking youth sports. I had always hated that job. But, I actually taught myself to enjoy it, having fun with the kids, and started going after larger leagues. Before long, Kinley and Mickey were getting involved in this too.  They still do this only for a living. All over the state. Corey relied on this for years, then got so big in portrait photography that he sold his sports business to Kinley and Mickey.
      Mike Loy is a good photographer. I hired him to help me a lot on sports. He taught me a lot about photography that I did not know. Once, someone told me, trying to make me mad, “Mike Loy said he taught you how to do sports photography right.” Well, I was then a full time photographer, he was part time. I told the guy, “He did. He helped me a lot.” The difference in us was, I married into photography, at a relatively old age. He had been doing it all his life. I knew the basics for what I did. And the part that was hard to argue with, I was making a living at it. I always knew my place, a “line um' up and shoot um” guy. Barbara did the portraits.

      Kinley and Corey loved to pull a good scam. I was the victim of a lot of scams. But I got Corey good once. Corey had left his golf shoes at my house. We were playing in Little Rock the next day. I called him and told him I would bring his shoes. They were the old type shaped like men's dress shoes. I went down to the beehive and bought an old pair of dress shoes, painted them bright green, put his old frayed shoestrings in them to look realistic, and put several of those white, practice golf balls on the shoestrings.

When I got to his house the next day, he walked out to get in the car with socks, only. Perfect! When we got to the golf course, I handed him the shoes. He was horrified. “You painted my new shoes, Dad?” He tried to figure out what to do. “Come on, our tee time is up.” “Well, I'll wear them. But I'm taking those golf balls off!” I don't remember exactly, but I'm sure I paid the price somewhere, somehow. Corey always, and I mean always, got you back.