Me, My Sister, The Models,The Gangsters and a Ghost ...by Bill Knell
A gaggle of models, Ingrid (right)
Me, My Sister, The Models,The Gangsters and a Ghost ...by Bill Knell
It was a warm and quiet 1971 October day at our new house on St Pete Beach. We originally moved to Florida to escape the rat race of New York City and the suburbs where we lived.
Our house in East Meadow, NY
When we first arrived we lived in a rental house just off Central Avenue in uptown St Petersburg. That gave my older parents time to find a house they liked enough to buy and use as a retirement home. My dad was supposed to retire at that time. He didn't.
Being talented in business management, he could not say NO when a close friend recommended him to a Texas billionaire who owned financially distressed resorts on St Pete Beach.
Mr Moneybags flew my dad to Texas for a meeting. The next thing I knew, my fathet was managing several struggling beach resorts. Dad was a natural born wiz when it came to business and be loved his work.
Long story short, he turned them into cash cows in just eight months. His boss was so happy that he gifted our family a new, two story, six bedroom house on St Pete Beach. It was right on the Bay and had a small boat dock.
After a few more months my dad, being the wunderkind he was, suggested several more properties up for sale to his boss. Mr Moneybags bought them and they also became very profitable.
My sister Ingrid used to be my first cousin. After her folks died in 1966, my parents adopted her. She was a model and started doing that at age five. When she moved in with us she was fourteen and had become a top teen model.
I was ten in 1966 and really liked not having to be an ‘only child' anymore. Ingrid and I always got along so well. She had lived in the Bronx which made her very street wise, but had lots of drugs and crime. Our suburban Long Island neighborhood was safer.
The only drawback to having Ingrid around was that she was kind of a Tomboy when she wanted to be and unforgiving of bad behavior directed at her. After moving in with us, she took self defense classes at a local school.
sample of self defense tech
My sis said she took the classes for self protection. I knew better. Even before the classes she was tough. At the age of eleven she best up an older boy who threatened to hurt her if she didn't give him her lunch money.
By the time she was done with him, he was in no condition to eat lunch. She didn't get in trouble because the boy's threats brought about her reaction. No one at school bothered her after that.
Ingrid took self defense classes to get her frustrations out. Models are always under tremendous pressure. Being able to practice self defense moves on others was just what the doctor ordered.
One time after she becae my sister, Ingrid invited me to go to a New York City photo shoot with her. There were several models there, the photog and his staff. When it came time to photograph my sis, the guy became annoying.
He already has a bad reputation among models and his peers, He was bossy, moody, judgemental and impatient. However, his shoots paid well for models because he had good contracts. He was famous for photographing The Doors (famous rock band) in Central Park).