Chapter 7: Finding a Studio

I realized that I really needed a place to shoot my models in town. It was already getting cooler, we had three nights of freezing temperatures already, along with some rain!

On the farm front, Dad and I had gotten the wheat planted and it was already peeking out of the soil. The equipment was all winterized! It would be June before he needed my help again.

I need a studio, a place to develop film, make photo shoots, this is especially important with winter coming, and I needed an office. Even though I was a big kid, and looked more like eighteen, I was still a sixteen year old kid! I needed to do everything I could in order to be taken seriously, professionally. I need to talk to a realtor, I decided, pulling out the phone book. Turning to the real estate section of the Yellow Pages, I found three agencies, but only one locally. I called the number, and a woman answered. I told her what I was looking for, that it had to be in town, it needed to have several rooms, with lots of natural light and it should have some room for parking cars. It could be a house, or a business/warehouse building. It could be run down, or new, it could be downtown or on the outskirts of town. I told her the name of my company, and what we did. Then I shut up, she would take it from there, or not. She suggested that a house would probably be better than a building, but she had a few listings of both that might meet the requirements. We agreed to meet on Saturday at 10:00AM at her office.

I arrived five minutes early, she was dressed professionally, looked to be in her late thirties, and was very attractive. I introduced myself, she looked at me dubiously, obviously expecting an older man. I assured her that I would be paying in cash. I could see her breathe a sigh of relief at that revelation. Her name was Alice Cole, she was around 5’6” tall, slim, brunette, and a nice looking lady in her mid forties. The first place she wanted to show me was just two doors down from her office. A two story with a basement, it had a wrap around porch, and a turret. Inside the rooms were small, the ceilings were high. Perhaps because of the porch they were dark. It was a beautiful house, but I didn’t think it would be right for me. We moved on to the next place.

We walked back to her office and left in her car. We didn’t go far, just a block, to another house. This one was older, a little larger, it had a large back porch off the kitchen, with a smaller one at the front entry. The rooms were larger, there was a large basement, three bedrooms were upstairs, and the master bedroom was downstairs with an ensuite bathroom. There was a half bath under the stairs and another full bathroom upstairs. It was bright and airy due to the large windows lining the outside walls. The backyard was large and was enclosed by a 8’ privacy fence surrounding a nice patio with nice landscaping. I thought that this one would work, but I may as well look at the others.

The next property was downtown, a block away from Main Street, it had been a shoe repair business at one time. It was a long narrow building, on a long narrow lot just big enough to accommodate easement requirements. There was a small foyer with a counter running across the width of the room, a bar hatch allowed passage to the back. A wall with shelves and a door leading to the back which had been the cobbler’s workshop. A door in the very back led outside to a small backyard, then an alley. It was small, dark, and while I could make it work, I felt that the second house was much better.

The last place she showed me was also a commercial property, it wasn’t as nice as the cobbler’s place. So we went back to the second place, the house with the nice backyard. As we had looked at the other properties, I realized that I needed a backyard for outside photo shoots. We looked the house over, I liked it, it would require a little work here and there, but it would work! We sat down and I found out that this was an estate sale. The lady who had owned the house had been a widow for many years, she and her husband had the house built at the turn of the century. They raised their three children here, entertained her twelve grandkids, she had lived past the death of her husband by ten years, dying peacefully in her sleep a month ago. Her children, now in their late fifties and early sixties, were selling the house because their lives had taken them away from this small town. The asking price for the place was $35,000, but Alice thought they would take $32,500! I suggested we offer $30,000 and see what happened. It turned out that they were in a hurry to sell, and mine was the first offer they had received. They sold it to me for the $30,000 I had offered. We closed on it a week later.

I had already contacted a contractor here in town that did renovations, we had gone over my list of things I wanted accomplished. Such as a reception area, and a kennel, Trace was going to be busy with more than girls. A large gazebo, and the most important was to build a darkroom for developing film, and enlarging print’s, I wasn’t going to stop using the mail order place because I figured they and Frank were together somehow. I didn’t want to kick that can. The contractor could start as soon as we closed. I was also having a sign made for the front yard to advertise that this was a business and a professional photography operation. All of this would be completed in two weeks.

The two weeks went quickly, the girls and I practiced the rules I had established. They couldn’t do all of them every day, but they tried. With the weather cooler they could wear sweaters without a bra, long skirts or dresses without panties. At lunch, we found time and places for us to meet and perform oral sex on each other. It was dangerous and if we got caught parents would be called, not a problem for some of the girls, but I would have a problem.