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Page Five |
I tried to say goodbye to Victoria, and to the people of my world there...
...and with the gift of a job through Dan and his dad, I moved to...
Fort St. John
... and worked for Haliburton, driving trucks like this one to oil rigs
I rented this lovely villa right on the Alaska Highway. I was lucky - there was nothing else available in the city. It had no bedrooms or kitchen, and I was cooking on a hot plate and washing dishes in a little bathroom sink. Then I took in my new homeless buddies, Bill Woods and Aldo Zuliani who had come from Ontario looking for work. It was more than cramped, but our brief friendship is, to this day, a fond memory. You can click on this Motel 49 to see the whole thing in its splendour.
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Yikes- I looked like Michael Jackson looks now! |
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Yes, the last time I took pictures of myself in a weird mirror was in 1978.
The next time I would do this was twenty
five years later
But good Bill moved
back east. I saw him only once since, in Sudbury in 1980.
Must try to track him down again.
Aldo and I met more work-hungry guys visiting from all
corners of the country,
and did our best to enjoy the time. Enjoying a stubby or two here, at the
highest
elevation we could find.
I used to look at the horizon and the endless rolling hills, and couldn't help but wonder how many hills it was to the ocean.
It was not an altogether bad place to live or job to work in.
But it wasn't for me.
I think I will always remember the specific mental turning point.
There's almost no rock or gravel up there, so in the spring the roads from the highway up to
the wells become soup after the slightest rain. On one such occasion the rear end of
my
truck sank to about waist-deep.
Being that we had no mobile-communicating ability, we had
to walk about half a mile up to the well to ask for the Cat's help.
The mental axe fell, so to speak, when, upon every step my boot sank half-way to my knee in mud. The 'walk' lasted an eternity, or was it only a moment, and I knew that I had to find a way to return to the ocean, to Victoria, to my family and to my friends.
Glad I went; Gladder to return.
| And besides, Kitty missed me. Yeah. |  |
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© 2005 Eric Porcher
SWINEHALL .COM
Page created: January 2003
Updated: June 07, 2005
