Margaret (Tout) Schatz

     

Change is all around us.  Change is something that happens every day.  It can be good, bad, or sad.  For Margaret Schatz, change in Seneca , Oregon came with so many memories and emotions that it was hard for her to express it in words.

Margaret has lived in Seneca her entire life, from 1947 to the present.  She was born in the hospital in Prairie City .  She used to live on A St. , and now she lives on Park Ave. with her husband, Keith.  She never lived in one of the little cheesebox houses, but she had been inside of one.  She said it was very small, and everything was right there in front of you.  They had tiny little cabinets.  There were outhouses in the back.  Once some boys were fooling around in the outhouse and one of them fell in!

Margaret attended Seneca School from 1953 to 1961.  In fact, her dad, Floyd (Whitey) Tout, helped build the new part of the school, because he worked for Hines Lumber Co. and all the employees donated a day of wages to build the gym and the new classrooms.  When Margaret was in school, the principal was Hilliard Brown.  There was just one grade in each class, not double like it is now.  She liked her first grade teacher, Mrs. England .  Mrs. Brown taught second grade, and wasn’t Margaret ’s favorite.  The third grade teacher, Mrs. Rickie, was nice.  Her hardest year was fourth grade with Mrs. Lulu Hendricks.  She liked Esma Reynolds, and had her for both fifth and sixth grades.  The seventh grade wasn’t so great with Mrs. Hendricks again.  Her eighth grade teacher, Mr. Blodgett, was strange.  He burned down his own house!  She said that many of the teachers back then were not very nice and didn’t praise students. 

Margaret had many friends in school.  She named Sharron Southworth, Helen Seebart, Shirley Rushing, Keith Schatz, Linda Weeks, Jerry Beverage, Don Klabo, and Tuffy Rider.  At recess they played on the Giant Strides, the merry-go-round, the swings, and the slide.  They played tetherball and practiced rope jumping.  Back then, the older kids were out front for recess. The road still crossed the schoolyard out in front.  The younger grades were out back.  The swing set frame we have now is the same one Margaret used, but the swings have been replaced since then.  The school did not let the girls play in team sports, because they thought it was too rough on them.  Margaret was one of the famous Seneca Rope Jumpers instead.

Kids had lots of things to do in their free time.  Margaret and her friends liked to play a game called “Ditch ‘em.”  They would split up into two teams.  One team would go hide in places like alleys and garages all over town.  There were lots of cubbyholes to hide in.  The other team would have to go find them.  For a team to win, they would have to find all of the other team and bring them to their base.  Another favorite game was Kick the Can.   They would also hike up to Porcupine Rock and play at Big Tree.  She liked pogo sticks, too.

The movie theater was a prime attraction, but it went out of business fairly early on.  One movie she remembers seeing was The Maze.  It was in black and white, and she had to pay a dime to get in.  She knew of kids who would sneak in without paying.  Dietz Lenz was one, and Keith Schatz admitted to sneaking in three times. Every Christmas the school would take the students to the theater to watch a movie as the teachers’ gift to the kids.  The school held Christmas plays there too.

Margaret said the swimming pool was great, and it was perfect for all ages.  Hines Lumber Co. built the pool so the kids would have a place to have fun and so employees could cool off at the end of the day.  It was heated with steam from the steam plant.  One area was fenced off in the shallow end for the little kids.  It had a spring board at the deep end, which was about nine feet deep.  You had to pay to get in.  Normally, her parents just got a family pass for the season.  Her dad hated water and didn’t want the kids to swim, but her mother made them take swimming lessons.  After Hines pulled the steam, the kids still swam in the pool, but it was just too cold.  She wishes we still had the pool today.

Margaret never got to go up to the Coconut Grove above the store, though she always wondered what it was like.  She knew that there was an apartment up there.  She does remember the big store building, though.  Outside it was red brick with lots of big windows.  There was a restaurant, a theater, a barber shop, a tavern, and the store, of course.  The store was really big and had everything you wanted, such as food, clothes, and tools.

Seneca money was used in Margaret ’s family.  From payday to payday, people might not have enough money to last, so using Hines Lumber Co. tokens was like a payroll deduction.  The tokens were just for use in Seneca.

Margaret remembers the hotel as being big and dark with a lot of rooms.  It was for men only, so it was off-limits for kids.  There were laundry machines in the basement, and showers also.  The rooms were small.  They had black metal bed frames and brown army blankets.  The men could use a hot plate in the room, but most would eat at the restaurant.  The restaurant would pack their lunches for them too.

Margaret ’s family would spend Christmas at home.  There was always a lot of snow.  They would walk out to get a tree.  They also celebrated the fourth of July, but they didn’t have fireworks.  Her family went to Burns a lot more than they went to John Day .  The road to Burns wasn’t paved, and there were no guardrails on the mountain.  People could ride the stage to Burns if they wanted.  The stage was the little truck for mail.

On the coldest days, Margaret remembers trying to stay warm by staying in the house.  She couldn’t breathe outside.  Nothing started, and the loggers couldn’t work.

The company nurse, Carine Williams, took care of everyone.  She was the nation’s first nurse practitioner, and she knew everything.  Her office was in her house.  Margaret remembers tick shots, and how much they hurt.  There was a big, long syringe and dull needles.  It was all glass and metal then, before plastic.

There were lots of loggers living in Seneca then.  Even with more houses, the town was still full.  The hotel was full too.  The railroad had boxcars sitting along the tracks, and kids could get hurt easily if they played over there.  The train was just north of town, where the industrial park and the Carpenter log cabins are now.  The school bus stopped at the train tracks crossing the highway.  Margaret ’s dad loaded logs on the train with a machine.  She remembers huge logs and a long train to hold them all.  She did get to ride on the logging train.  She also went in the tunnel and said it was very impressive.  She thought it was amazing how it was built and how well it was built.

The mill was big.  There was lots of sawdust and big scrap mill ends to burn.  Railroad tracks came from it, and the stockyards were there.  The Basque people came with large herds of sheep.  They would cook large pots of mutton stew over open fires.

          There used to be many available jobs in Seneca.  There were logging jobs, work on building and maintaining the railroad, mill work, and mechanics.  There was work in the store, restaurant, tavern, mill office, post office, service station, the school, the Forest Service, and the highway department.

          Margaret started working when she was 35 years old.  She has worked as a teacher’s assistant for the Seneca School since 1981.  She likes helping the teachers, and her favorite part of the job is working with the students.  She enjoys the way they treat her.

          Margaret Schatz has lived in Seneca since she was a baby, and she has seen a lot of change over the years.  Hines Lumber Co. is gone.  Logging was the livelihood of the town.  When it stopped, so did the jobs and a lot of people moved away.  The Hines shops are gone, and so is the mill.  The swimming pool is gone too. 

          She thinks the theater closed because of money problems.  It went up in smoke along with the store.  The fire was really hot, and Margaret could feel the heat from her house.  She couldn’t leave the house because it was so hot.  She said it was just too horrible to describe, but she remembers everyone on the front street spraying down their houses with water. 

          In town, there are street lights now, and the streets are paved.  On the west side of the highway there was a beautiful horse pasture, which is now the city’s golf course.

          According to Margaret Schatz, Seneca School is about the only thing this town has left.  She encouraged us to keep working and fighting for our school to keep it open. If and when it goes, the whole town will go with it.