Life in Lake City

To begin with, I must of course tell you how I came to arrive in this little mountain town. During the last few years of my life in elementary school--grades 3-5, my father began to have a lot of job-related stress and issues at a local university with which we are all too familiar. He was a maintenance man there and after some authoritial personnel changes, things weren't going well. I'm sketchy on all the details. I know that friends of his were encouranged to resign and one by one most of the people he worked with seemed to quit or be fired or what not. (Please keep in mind that this is what I'm remembering from eleven years ago). It was either in fourth or fifth grade that he finally quit and pursued alternative employment. Life with regards to money was fairly rough for my family...two parents with two high-schoolers and two in elementary school. My mom had been laid off from her job as well although she was to pick up a job thankfully within a few weeks. We'll get to that later. My father had planned in college many years before to go into Christian camping. He was on the board of directors as it was at Frontier Camp (where my older brother is currently working) but my father had always wanted to move to Colorado. There is a newspaper article from the 70's that relates this fact. My father decided to pursue this option once again. Thus began the next few years.

My father looked at many different places--Horn Creek, Deer Park, and a place in North Carolina being three I remember. He also even looked at Western State College in Gunnison, CO. We turned vacations into job hunts where we traveled as family to these places and investigated the possibilities. It got to be stressful at times. One of my cousins was married in Lubbock one summer around this time and we went to the wedding and than made a friendly visiting trip to some friends who directed a camp in Colorado. This was Redcloud. We had visited a year or two earlier in the winter but now we were to see the place in the summer-time. Call it chance or call it God (latter definitely!) but a maintenance position had opened up the week before that we were informed of upon arrival. So, those three days were spent touring and camp and thinking about this. We stayed in this horrible little small trailer called the Santa Maria of which many camp staff also hated in later years but it wasn't terrible. We had quite a bit of fun hiking around and moseying around the town. My father applied for the job. One month later he was accepted. This was the summer before my eighth grade.

The next year was spent raising support. This was fairly hard because we had to raise at least 80% before we could move. I kept praying it wouldn't happen. By this time, I had at least settled into a small group of friends and dreamed of what could be in high school. I did not want to leave. My mother admitted praying that God would put an end to it if it wasn't meant to be because things just didn't seem to be coming together over the next year and than another year. My father had been doing construction work for folk to earn money and was working very hard at that. He also made trips to the camp during convention and conference times. Support raising for a family of six--in which you now have two college students and two middle-schoolers isn't easy; especially when people are kind of baffled by the idea of supporting someone who isn't leaving the U.S. However, it slowly was coming together from family and friends. My dad quit the construction after finishing a few projects and than was hired at the high school to work on the A/C. I was wishing he would keep that job but things were still moving towards the moving direction. My parents finally made the decision to have my dad move up a little after I started ninth grade. So he did with the first few loads of our stuff. They had arranged a trailer for us at the camp. Now, my younger brother had been struggling at just about everything associated with school for quite some time and things were getting worse. When my dad came back at Thanksgiving, we found that Lake City had opened up a middle school. My parents withdrew my brother from his seventh-grade trials here and he moved up with my dad. He never looked back. He hated life here by that point.

Now I am a freshman in high school and every so often someone will ask what my parents do and I would tell them a brief description of our complicated life. Most people assumed my parents were separated...but it wasn't this way. It was just the way things were until they had enough money to finish moving my mom and I up and figured out what to do with our house. So I continued on through a great year of school overall and along came summer. Mom and I traveled up with the parents of some camp summer staff in mid-June to spend the summer with my dad and brother. The trailer gratefully was three bedrooms but had a small living area and kitchen. I spent the next seven or so weeks helping out in the kitchen because I really didn't have a whole lot else to do. I also was enable to acquaint myself with some of the touristy things of the area such as a 4WD trip and hiking and stuff. There were various quirk moments--a couple of incidents of spite towards a troublesome teenage camper/staff person; going on said 4WD trip with aunt and cousin but going unbeknownst to my parents who were very displeased with the lack of knowledge I gave them. It was mostly good times in the kitchen. I probably wasn't always appreciated and I'm betting they put up a lot with me. I began to really miss Longview and my friends though. The summer finally came to an end and we journey back to Longview...dad would being picking up yet more stuff. We traveled--in August--in a suburban--six people (two being my sister and another summer staff person) without air conditioning. There were many cranky people by the end.

I was late for school and had missed required tests to take pre-AP English so I was placed in regular English. I quickly took measures to get switched over by appealing to my teacher from the year before who took me to the head of the English dept and to which I explained why I was unable to take the tests at the the times offered during the summer (being in CO) and that I was willing and able to take them if I could. I also explained that I would be leaving after the semester to move up to said place of summer abode. They were confused by the fact that I was so assured a spot in pre-AP English until I explained the local school situation for the high school opened that very year. They let me take the test and I was switched to my great relief to a class that would offer more challenge for me.

Those few class periods of Regular English were...interesting. I walked in and surprised many who knew me as being smart. I was also of a minority skin color and mostly bored with what we were learning although it wasn't particularly really easy but just not what I was used to. Pre-AP English was mostly good stuff after transferring over...I still remember reading Rebecca , Cry, My Beloved Country and and listening to a boring tape of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The first two books were really good and I remember writing some interesting papers. Other interesting things of my semester were the horrors of selling yearbook ads, a Bible class, and a Business-Computer support class thing. My wisdom teeth were taken out at Thanksgiving due partly to jaw troubles and partly to "get this out while insurance will pay for the surgery." I was also bearing witness to trials at the church I was attending because I hadn't switched churches with my parents because I didn't want to leave my friends. I bore witness to the slow death of a church mostly due to the trials of looking for a pastor, and than having a pastor who was apparently troublesome. I should mention that I had been dating a guy off and on for the last two years at this point but it was more "serious" for this last year of Longview. That holds interesting stories in and of itself. But I was trying to get to my Lake City life. I may have to pick this up at another time. It's getting near bed time.

Anyways, the semester came to an end all too soon and I withdrew from Longview High School; finished packing up my bedroom; got my driver's license as I had just turned 16 and made myself ready for Christmas and than moving. My friends threw me a "suprise" farewell party at the church's New Year's Eve lock-in. They made a cake and decorated it quite interesting...pale green frosting with plastic wedding figures. They gave me some gifts and I tearfully said my goodbyes. We left Longview on Janurary 3 and arrived in Lake City the next day.

to be continued...
- posted by anna @ 1:48 AM