Bob and Donna Johnston
Memories of Seneca

         Bob and Donna weren’t raised in Seneca, but moved here from Prineville. Bob was about 30 years old when he, Donna and their five children moved to Seneca in 1959.  Robert came first and lived in the “Old Hotel” while he looked for a place for his family to live. Only men could stay in the hotel.  It didn’t cost much at all to stay at the hotel.  For Bob, it only cost about twenty dollars to stay there for a month.

         There were only about three or four men staying at the hotel during the time Bob was there, even though there were forty rooms upstairs in the hotel, along with public washrooms.  Bob told us that he remembered people putting their lunch meats on the windowsill to keep them cool.  The hotel was only a small part of Bob’s time spent in Seneca; the rest of his time here was in his house on “ D Avenue ”.

         The one thing Bob and Donna remember most about Seneca is that it was very cold.  The coldest it was when the Johnston ’s lived there was forty seven degrees below zero.  The family did not know that it was this cold at the time however because their thermometer had gotten stuck at thirty two degrees below.  The kids were still sent to school, but only to come back home because it was so cold the oil lines had frozen.  People even built fires under their oil lines to unfreeze them.  Bob told us about the times when it was so cold that when the boys combed their hair back with water it would freeze and break off.  Donna kidded that it was fun to be able to “ski out of the front door”.  During the cold winters, people in Seneca wore all of the warm clothes they could find, like wooly underwear and glove liners.

         The first summer here Donna and the kids went to the swimming pool.  The pool smelled of sulfur.  The water was warmed before it went into the pool by the steam plant that was northwest from the pool (the round house and other buildings were also heated by the steam plant). The fee for the pool was not much.  There was a lifeguard that gave swimming lessons.  The pool closed down between the years 1961 – 1965.

         The store had several buildings in it.  The south end had a restaurant, next the store, the beer hall, a theater, and the gas station on the north end.  The store was a good sized building.  The store had a meat counter and other things.  Bob and Donna never used “Seneca money”, also know as tokens for the loggers from Edward Hines Lumber Co.  Bob found a quarter token in his house the other day.

         The road to John Day is basically the same old road it was in the time Bob was here.  The road is the same but the highway department didn’t sand it as much as they do now.

         Above the store there was a room called the Coconut Grove. Bob had never gone there but Donna did.  There was a baby shower in one of the rooms.  She said, “I had not known it was there”.

         Bob Johnston enjoyed his time here in Seneca, but Bob and Donna found new jobs in John Day and soon moved there to be closer to work. This was after the store burned down, the mill closed, and their children left the nest.  Bob will never forget the wonderful time they spent here in Seneca.

         When Bob Johnston was here there were numerous jobs available; a chain puller, a kiln man, a planer man, a planer feeder, a trimmer man, a lumber carrier driver, and the gypos.  There were also chain pullers. Some of them worked on the sorting chain and others worked on the slick chain.  The lumber was sent to Seneca from Izee and Unity, and then the sorted chain sorted the rough lumber, while the slick chain sorted the lumber after it was planed.  The lumber was put into the kiln to dry.  The kiln man continually checked the moisture of the lumber of the kin to 13%.  Each piece of lumber was dried to a certain percent according to the type of lumber it was.

         The planer man kept the knives sharp and took care of the thickness of each board so that the planer feeder could feed the lumber through the planer to the grader, who then graded it.   The lumber was then taken to the trimmer man, who trimmed the lumber to take out any defects.  The lumber was then sent to the chain puller, who pulled it off the slick chain, which then went to the lumber carrier driver who pulled it out on its carrier block, so the lift truck could get to it from both ends.  The packaging crew then packaged the lumber with paper and loaded it on to the train cars.

         Bob Johnston told us how the mill was set up.  When you first come to the mill across the railroad track you were facing west and the office was to the east.  The mechanic shop was 50 feet away with a small storage shed.  This shed was used to store lumber until it was shipped.  On the north side was a covered planning shed, and to the southwest end of the shed was the sorting chain.  Southwest of the chain was the wigwam burner, and south of the wigwam was the boiler room.  If you went back to the planer shed, the northwest side was the plane chain, and 20 – 30 feet west of the chain was the dry kiln.  To the north of the chain was a large storage shed.

         As a lumber grader Bob rated and typed out the lumber and used a chalk to mark the grade it needed.  Pine lumber was graded for its appearance and fir was graded for its strength.  There were 5 common grades, three or four shop grades and four or five select grades for the lumber at the mill. 

         Bob Johnston said the most fun part of his job was break times.  At break times everyone would play cribbage, and they also played it whenever they weren’t working.  Break time was supposed to be ten minutes long, but it was usually drug to fifteen minutes long.

         He remembers that the train came in each evening.  It would bring in empty cars and pick up the loaded cars.  Then it would haul them off.  The train would also bring coal and products to the school.  Even though Bob worked around and saw the train he never did ride it.  The train was big and it had fifty cars.  The logs that the train carried were two to three feet or bigger in diameter.  The cars were pretty long.  Proportionally it was cheaper then than now.  Bob never saw the train tunnel.

         Bob Johnston never had talked to Mr. Hines.  Mr. Hines’s boy would walk through the mill sometimes but never did talk to Bob.

         The funniest story Bob remembers about working in Seneca is about one assistant boss that no one liked.  The assistant boss came up behind a guy working at sorting on the chain. The worker pulled a 16 foot board that was bad, so he threw it over his head off the rack and hit the boss in the head knocking him flat on the ground.  The week before the boss had shut his nose it the door.  Bob and everyone that saw this thought it was funny, but they didn’t think anyone else would think it was funny. 

         From the time Bob and Donna came to Seneca to the present, the town has changed a lot.  The streets are paved now and the sewer system has been changed. The population has decreased a lot and there are only 48 kids in the school now compared to back then.  There were 96 to 100 kids at the time. The store and connected businesses are gone. Bob was here when the store burned down, but only remembers when it was burning. He said that the forest and the wildlife haven’t change much, but there might be fewer trees.

         Bob thinks the town changed so much when Hines went out of business and the logging went out after the Forest Service and the Highway Department moved out.  It all happened in a chain of events with Hines moving out last.

         Bob Johnston started his life in Seneca as a father and husband, and through the years he became a successful mill worker.  There is more in Bob Johnston than meets the eye.  There are stories that come from working in the mill, wisdom from being a father and husband, and pride for being able to say “I did it.”