Chapter One
I was ready to start the fourth grade, the year we moved to Izee. Prior to that time, the Miles family had lived in Bates, Oregon. Bates was a company owned, sawmill town, too. The biggest difference was that the houses in Bates were painted, on the outside.
My sister, Rita, had married her high school sweetheart, in June, and had moved to Eugene, Oregon. We would not be able to see her more than a couple of time a year - as it was ninety miles to the paved highway, and then over two hundred miles from there. My brother, Robert, would begin his high school in a few weeks. Robert would have to be boarded in Canyon City or John Day, Oregon. The Izee school had only first thru eight grades available in its two rooms.
Mom had assured Dad and me, "Robert will be just fine. He will only be fifty-eight miles away. He can come home on the weekends and for spring vacation. We know how important it is to get a good education."
Mother had never attended high school, herself. Born Mildred Heck, with eight siblings, she was working in a Baker City laundry by the time that she was twelve years old. As the dominant parent, Mother never expected too much of my father. Her kids were her life and she could handle everything.
Mom had never known her father, a Nez Perse Indian, who, like her mother's other three husbands, had died young in Baker City, Oregon. All that she had known about her father was that he was a Catholic. She had made his religion her own. Her mother was a Nazarene. Back then, some people called them