So, there we were now living in this little town in the middle of nowhere. As you entered the town from the south, you descended a long hill. Like going down, down into a pit. Of course I had already been there with father, on his job interview, so I already had a sense of the place. At first, like every other move I remember making, there was initial uneasiness. Having to make new friends, go to a new school, learn your way around. But at least we had met some neighbour kids, and they were really nice.

I don’t recall if we moved from the house on Foster to the house on Fir before the school year started. And I don’t recall exactly when I came to the realization that we, the new family, were now a bit famous. That we were kind of Big Shots in town, because of father’s job as the Town Clerk and Secretary Treasurer. It was kind of weird, but I liked it, being a big shot. That feeling didn’t last, and just as well. But what it did do was significantly speed up our integration into the town life.

We didn’t live in the house on Foster that long; one or two or maybe three months. Then we moved to Fir, a small patch of houses on a hillside just north of town. It was like a suburb of a micro-urban place. It was nice. It had three bedrooms at least, though the house seemed to be built in sections. The main section, probably the first built, had the kitchen , one bedroom and the entrance porch. Off the kitchen was another small bedroom that seemed like an add-on. That was where the Evil Sister hid out. The living room, bathroom and master bedroom seemed to be in the new part of the house. I say new because it wasn’t quite finished. There was a door to the outside that opened up into thin air. I had to share a bedroom and double bed with the Angel Monster, who hadn’t quite graduated from his stint as a bed-wetter.

Our part of the house was above the lower floor that was accessed from a driveway that dipped below ground level. It was like a walkout basement. This lower level was where the homeowners planned to live. They weren’t there when we moved in, they were in Terrace, BC. A young couple, they were absentee landlords for the first little while. It may have had something to do with the cleanup required. Apparently there had been a sewage outburst in their part of the building and remediation was required.

But there we were, living in the suburbs, on top of a hill, looking over our new domain. From our living room window I could look out over the valley to the graveyard on the other side of the highway; I could see the ranch land where my soon-to-be friend, Steve West, raised cattle with his family, I could see clear across the whole of Clinton to my new school on a distant hillside and I could look onto the roof top of Mr. Bunker’s house, who, as my shop teacher, would show me how to solder and build a wooden tool box.

We had become Big Shots indeed.