By the time Jack was ready to go to school, the gym and classroom additions had been built.  He attended Seneca School from 1959-1968.  He went through all eight grades and remembers there were about a hundred students.

          Even though he lived just across the street from the school, he was nearly always late.  The reason he gave us for his tardiness was that he had had enough of school by the time he got to the first grade!  He used to toddle across the street to where the library is now.  The principal who taught class there would pull Jack in through the window and he’d “go to school” with the big kids.

          His first grade teacher was Mrs. Joanne Radinovich.  He said, “They must have ruined her, because she only taught one year.”  Other teachers were Mrs. Elliott, Mrs. Hendricks, Mrs. Esma Reynolds, Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Hansen, and Mrs. Klabo.  The principals during this time period were Mr. Blodget, Mr. Babcock, Mr. Alstott, and Mr. Perreard.  All the principals taught classes, and everyone got along fairly well, although there were some occasional quarrels.

          The kids who Jack went to school with all played together and they were all friends.  You could call them crazy, especially during recess, when there was plenty to do, good and bad.  They had the swings, monkey bars, a slide, a merry-go-round, and the Giant Strides.  On the Giant Strides, if you were smart (some may call it dumb) enough, you could get the big kids to push you, sometimes almost six feet in the air!  Sometimes kids would get hurt when they let go.  Aside from all this equipment, they also played tetherball, hopscotch, four square, catch up (with a ball and bat), and football.

          School sports were basketball, football, baseball, and volleyball.  They had a track team and went to track meets.  They had Babe Ruth baseball and Little League.  Jack played basketball, baseball, and flag football.  He also played in the men’s sports, and outside of school, more baseball.

          As you can see, the school hasn’t changed much.  The only major changes are in the teachers, the play equipment, and the drop in student population.

          From the house across from the school, Jack later moved to E Ave.  He never did live in one of the cheese boxes, which he knew as the Wright’s Cabins because a Mr. C.J. Wright owned them.  By that time they were pretty much abandoned.  Once in awhile someone would live there for awhile.  Sometimes Jack and his friends would go over behind the cabins and tip over the outhouses!

          He and his friends would go up into the hills and play “army” and “guns.”  They also went swimming in the pool, fishing, out to Big Tree, and played in the mines out at Porcupine Rock.  In the winter they went hookybobbing and ice skating.  On gym nights they would play basketball.

          If anybody ever got hurt, they went to the company nurse, Carine Williams, since the doctor was so far away.  If the injury were serious, the nurse would either call the doctor in Burns or send you to him.  Jack’s family “doctored” in Burns, but Jack remembers getting lots of penicillin shots from Carine Williams.   

The swimming pool was a favorite attraction and Jack remembered lots of details about it.  It was about thirty feet wide and seventy-five feet long.  There was a fenced off area for the little kids that was about two feet deep.  The big pool was three feet deep at the north end to nine feet deep for the big kids.  There was a wooden diving board and the older kids would jump so hard on it that it broke.  It was replaced with a steel diving tower about five or six feet high.  There was a deck around the pool so the parents could watch the kids swim.  The pool was heated by steam from the shops.  After Hines shut down, people tried to heat the water with an oil furnace, but it was too expensive.

          At the south end of town was the business district.  Part of that was the brick store and restaurant.  Only employees of Hines Lumber Co. could eat at the restaurant.  The store had everything in it, including clothes, work boots, hardware, and appliances.  There was also a bar, a service station, and the movie theatre.  Jack remembers seeing movies there in black and white, and also color.  He doesn't remember what he saw, and said he was too little to sneak in or know anyone who did.  He remembers the school teachers taking the kids there for a movie at Christmas time after the theatre had closed.  Up above the store, there was a big plain room called the Coconut Grove.  Ladies would play cards there, and work crews would have safety meetings.  Cold cuts and refreshments would be served as a reward for a safe work record.  Dances were held up there too.

          People could use Seneca money in the business district until Hines Lumber Co. shut down.  Jack still has a few quarters and dollars left. 

          The old hotel is a little bit north of the business district.  It had a big lobby, a caretaker’s residence at the north end, little rooms (room for a bed and a closet), and a common bathroom and shower room.  It was heated by steam from the shops (which also heated the store).  Jack enjoyed trick-or-treating at the hotel because they gave him nickel candy bars.

          In 1970, Jack started his working days in Seneca at the planer mill pulling green chain in a crew of high school juniors and seniors.  After high school, he worked at the mill for one more year.  He said the mill was muddy in the spring, and hot and dry in the summer.  Lumber came in from Izee to get planed.  They had a sorting chain to separate the lumber, and then it went through the planer.  The planer shavings were burned in a boiler to make steam for the dry kiln.  The mill was in a big L shape.  It had a loading dock for loading boxcars,  a planer, and a wigwam burner.  There were also corrals there and loading chutes for the animals to ship them out by rail. 

Then he went to work as a choker setter.  He also drove cat and skidded logs, and worked his way up to his favorite job, falling trees from 1976 to 1982.  When Hines Lumber Co. shut down, then he continued logging until 1996.  In those days, the woods jobs that were available were choker setters, landing crew, cat skinners, timber scalers, fallers, truck drivers, shovel operators (loaded logs), road crew (built roads), bull buck (or falling boss), bull choke (assistant foreman), and side foreman.  The loggers got paid $100-$150 per day.  Every job paid a different rate.  When Jack started as a choker setter, he made $8 an hour.  It was the lowest paying job in the woods.  The millwrights and graders got paid $11-$12 an hour, and the chain pullers got paid $7 an hour.  The people that were paid the most were the high rollers.  Working out of Seneca there were about 30-40 loggers, and about 75 loggers working for Hines in all.

          The tools that he used on the job were a power saw, a falling ax, a snow shovel to dig around the tree to cut a twelve-inch stump in winter, measuring tapes, fire tools in summer, and a fire extinguisher.  He had to supply his own tools and a truck.  He wore caulked boots and a hard hat.

          He liked being in the woods, and he really liked cutting logs at his own pace.  He was paid according to how much work he got done.  Jack liked to be around the work crew, and he loved seeing the animals out in the woods.  One day on the job he was setting chokers, and when the cat came to get the logs, it stirred up a yellowjacket nest.  At the time, he didn’t notice or hear them.  They got in his clothes and in his hard hat before he finally paid attention.  He tore off running to the landing, stripping his clothes off on the way.  By the time he got there, he was pretty much naked.  But he didn’t mind much, since he got to lie around in the crummy the rest of the day.  Luckily, he wasn’t allergic to bees, because he was stung many times. 

          Jack said he was not in Seneca when it was fifty-four degrees below zero, but he does remember fifty below.  He was logging out at the Biggs Place .  He wore long johns and lots of wool.  They would leave the cats running all night, and they spent a lot of time building fires to keep warm.  Once he burned up a saw completely when he set it by the fire to warm it up!

          Speaking of the early days, Jack said Camp One was already gone by the time he arrived on the scene.  It was pulled out in the early ‘40s, and nothing was left.  He did not get to see any of the logging horses in action, but he did go with Mr. Kintz and Junior Saunders one time to get a couple of logs with horses in Silvies Valley .  Junior had a contract to get tamarack, and he used Mr. Kintz’s team of horses.

          The main line of the railroad ran east out to Summit Prairie.  Logs were trucked in and loaded on the train.  The logs averaged from twenty-five inches and up in diameter.  The biggest log cut was around seven feet across on the stump.  The train brought the logs into Seneca once a day.  In Seneca, the train picked up the lumber cars, then took the whole load down to Hines. There were about twenty-five log cars on the train, and about five or six boxcars for the lumber.  On the return trip to Seneca, freight was brought in.  This included coal, big logging equipment, and some farm equipment. 

As a boy, Jack and his friends would go over to the shops, where the men would let them ride in the caboose to the planer mill.  The kids would get suckers and little treats, and then ride back to the shops.  Later he remembers taking Jerry Wayne Pettijohn’s old ’49 pickup, letting some air out of the tires, then driving on the rails.  Those old pickups would fit on the tracks perfectly.  Once in gear, they just let the pickup go, and the boys would climb in the back and shoot squirrels. 

Jack had been inside the Poison Creek tunnel, but never did ride the train through it, although Mr. Seebart did.  The tunnel was about fifty yards long with a bend in it, and it was dug out of the dirt, so they had to support it with trusses so it would not cave in.  At one time the tunnel had been considered as a bomb shelter during the cold war.  During WWII, Hines Lumber Co. placed guards at the tunnel and on the trestles.

          There have been lots of changes in Seneca since Jack grew up here.  There used to be about four hundred fifty people living here when Jack left in 1990, but now there are only about one hundred eighty.  A lot of the houses are gone now.  When Hines Lumber Co. went out of business, people moved because of the lack of jobs in Seneca.  The pool closed because there was no longer a heat source.  The Olive Theatre closed in 1960.  Jack thought it was because people were getting television at home.  The store burned in 1982.  At the time, Jack was living at the southeast end of town where Paiton lives now.  He remembers hearing the fire alarm and looking out the window to see a big orange glow.  By the time the volunteer firefighters got there with the equipment they had, it was too late.  The fire burned so hot that they couldn’t put it out.  The building burned from the motel units at the south end all the way down to the theatre.  The service station at the north end was spared.  Everybody knew the fire was caused by arson, but it was never proved.

          As for wildlife back then, Jack remembers seeing lots of deer, but not as many elk as we see now.  There was much more forest, with much less underbrush than we have now.  They didn’t have the huge fires either.  Five hundred acres was considered to be a big fire.  Logging crews fought fires, and the fires were fought very aggressively.

          In closing, what Jack remembers most about Seneca was the fun of growing up with all those people, and the fun at work.  There was no lack of entertainment.  Seneca, and the people who lived there,  made an unforgettable history.  We will try to keep this town up and going for as long as we can!