Always looking for ways to make quick money in college, I beg friend Sharon Gates Buskell to take me on as a Polaroid Camera Girl. It is a perfect job. Polaroid provides equipment, film, and jobs. You just show up, take folks pictures and sell the attributes of the camera. Sharon agrees and I am in.
I float from one gig to another. Pay is good and somehow much of the film designated for any job gets used before returning the equipment to Sharon. She doesn’t mind. She is the queen of spreading the perks of our job around.
At one of our school dances she brings her camera and takes pictures for a dollar apiece. Otis Redding is the headliner. In those days headliners hung with the crowd and partied as much or more than we did. I snag Sharon just as she reaches the last shot in her last pack of film.
Friend Sandy Baker and her date Stevie Wonder (she called him that because he was short and sexy), get wind of my goal. They want to be in on the action. I agree but I get to keep the picture. (Years later I send a scan to Sandy in Germany where she lit off for right after graduation and never came back). It’s one of the best dollars I ever spent. You can barely see “Respect, Otis Redding” signed on the photo sleeve but it’s there.
A few years down the road I’m finished with school but still working a few Polaroid gigs now and then. It is the point where I have just met Donny at Church of Our Savior in Sandson. The annual Christmas bazaar is gearing up. Becky Upton has put Donny & I together making games for the kids. Donny makes my bean toss idea into a reality. First of a bazillion crazy ideas of mine he makes real. We have hit it off. But possibly the deal sealer that put us on our lifetime path together is when I volunteer to take Polaroid photos for bazaar goers in exchange for a few dollars to the bazaar funds. I have film. I have flash bulbs. I do not have a camera. Donny offers his Dad’s Polaroid. It has not seen a lot of use and needs batteries. Donny takes me to Sandston Pharmacy where I meet the local druggist, Tony Mehford. He considers us a couple and chats for a long time. And in hind sight I have just had my first date with my lifetime partner. The perks of being a Polaroid Camera Girl.
