Returning to Regina was certainly
different than my first visit nine years earlier. It was beautiful. The city
was green and warm. No snow. As a student you rarely got to see how beautiful
Regina could be. You come when fall is beginning and winter drops in fast and
you leave as the snow is melting and it generally looks dirty.
We needed to turn in the U-Hall
ASAP. We were going to drop it off in Montana to save a pile of money. We were
already at our return due date and neither of us had any place to live or store
our things.
The college offered the use of the
basement of the administration building for us to store of things. To me, that
was the old dining room. Della didn’t want to do it, as she was concerned about
everything we owned being on display for all to see. I saw her point but other
options would cost more than we had.
Bill called the morning we were to
return the truck and asked if we could hold on one more day. They had a lead on
an apartment and hoped to sign a lease that day. So we waited. That afternoon
we moved he and his wife into their new apartment. That evening we unloaded the
Walker possessions into the college showroom. The next day we drove to Montana.
We spend one more night with the
Roses and then Dave Rambo had found a place we could house sit for three weeks.
While not excited about house sitting with two preschool kids, we took it and
earnestly began our own house search the next day.
We secured the assistance of Pat
Richards (fellow student from our days at CBC) as our realtor. We met, talked
about our needs and finances. She expressed doubts that anything would be
available that we could afford, but said she would see what she could do. We
only had $500.
She came back a couple of days
latter and said she might have a house. The couple were leaving town in the
next week and still had not sold their place. Pat was willing to relinquish her
commission and broker a private sale to bring the cost of the house down. There
were problems with the house and we would have to take it as is.
We met with Roger Moyer, departing
music faculty member at CBC, who made us a deal we could swing. Pat assured us
we could not do better anywhere and it may be our only option. We needed $1500
down payment so I called my father to see if they could help. He sent us the
extra $1000 needed. Next was a mortgage. That was difficult. After a couple of
inspections, The Royal Bank came through with contingencies: 1) the house must
be rewired within six months. 2) The house must be painted within six months. It
was August. Who knew how soon snow would come.
I had no idea how we would
accomplish either one, but we agreed. All we could do was pray.
The deal was finalized before the faculty
and staff meetings a week before school began. We secured from some early
arriving students to help us move our things and attempted to get settled
before school started.
Everything was so hectic that I
had to leave some things to Della to do on her own. One of those was getting
Rodney registered for kindergarten. It wasn’t a big deal since she was familiar
with getting around Regina. She was comfortable moving here. She got him signed
up at Connaught Elementary School, just five blocks from our place at 3813 Victoria
right across the street from lawn bowling. Did you know that bagpipes preceded
every Saturday lawn bowling tournament at 8:00 a.m.? I really appreciated the early morning wake up calls. Felt like I must be in the RCMP. Groan.
We were semi settled in time for
me to figure out what on earth I was doing. Both Dt. Wakefield and Dr. Bynum
had a great deal of input on my course outlines — thankfully. I knew all my courses ahead of time,
but had one twist that week. Did I have any interest in drama? I guess the powers that be remembered I had written and directed a play as a student, acted in dozens of skits and they may have also found out I wrote a missions play while at University Drive in Saskatoon. Obviously, I had an interest.
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