Sophie Smith’s

Memories of Seneca

 

            This interview tells about Sophie Smith’s life in Seneca.  It tells about when she first moved there, and describes the jobs she had at school and at home.  It also describes the town of Seneca and the social life back in the 1950’s through the 1980’s as she saw it.  It contains some of the fun stories about Seneca and some funny ones too.

            Sophie moved to Seneca when she was just married on June 3 of 1951.  She was 23 and her husband Ross was 25.  There weren’t many places to live, so they rented a little three-room place without plumbing.  Around behind the house were a pit toilet and a water faucet.  In 1953 they bought a house at 3^rd and B Street .  They built on to it in 1968.  Ross added two bedrooms, a bath, utility/entryway, and a back porch.

            She mostly worked as a housewife keeping the house clean and taking care of the children.  She was thankful for the help of her husband’s sister, Joyce Hendricks, whose husband Herman also worked for Edward Hines Lumber Company.

            As far as living in Seneca goes, she liked the people, flowers, rocks, birds, cats, and dogs.  A few times she took care of a hurt bird or a cat.  Her children enjoyed Porcupine Rock and Bear Creek.  She enjoyed getting to know her neighbors and members of the PTA, Chapel Club, and Extension Homemakers.  Dodie and Rod Barott had kids about the same age as their own and lived across the alley for many years.  Carine Williams, the town’s RN, was also a great neighbor.  Sophie enjoyed watching her children grow up and being privileged to share the joys of watching others grow too.  She remembers one time her yard was filled with as many kids as would fit.  It was springtime and Tommy Lara was driving by grading the dirt street.  Sophie shared, “He came by and stopped.  The yard was full of kids.  Tommy asked if they were all mine.  I of course told him yes.”

            As far as jobs go, Sophie remembers there were the logging jobs, and during summer, there were haying jobs.  Edward Hines always had summer jobs for the college students.

            Sophie came to Seneca long after Camp one existed, but she did visit the spot where the buildings used to be.  She never rode on the train but thought her son Jerry may have had the opportunity to ride it.  She did visit the train tunnel years after it was no longer in use.

            Sophie taught at the Mt. Vernon School before she moved to Seneca.  This experience made her more interested in the Seneca School .  In the fall of 1951, Sophie did some substitute teaching.  Mr. Brown was the principal at the time.  She was the library aid at the school from 1969-1971.  She feels her children got a good education there.  She recalls that when her daughter Linda was in about the third grade, she went to Washington DC with the Seneca Rope Jumpers that Esma Reynolds led.  She shared that for many years the PTA hosted a teacher appreciation dinner.  It was held in the evening and provided food and music entertainment.  The parents got to meet the teachers from the high school as well as the school district and county superintendents.  The whole town worked together to impress these people.

            Ross’ parents lived in Mt. Vernon , so they spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with them.  Most years they had a picnic on the Fourth of July.  Ross’ mother made ice cream using real cream.  They still have the freezer they used to make the ice cream, and they use it at the Smith family campout each summer.

            When it came to getting sick with the flu or colds, most people relied on Carine Williams, a RN, who was the Hines Company Nurse.  Mostly Sophie’s family went to John Day or Burns to the doctor.  Carine did phone doctors and give them vitals and sometimes the doctors would send in a prescription and the pharmacy would send it out by the next person coming to Seneca.  Carine was more like a nurse practitioner.  She was far ahead of her time.

            When Sophie and Ross moved to Seneca, the road to John Day was the same as it is today.  The road to Burns, however, was not paved at the time.  It was paved around 1958.  Better cars over the years made the trips to both towns faster.

            The Hotel was a dormitory for single men.  It was built during World War II and opened for use in June of 1942.  She thought there might have been 700 people living in Seneca at the time and the Hotel wasn’t big enough.  Men were housed in small boxcar like buildings behind the Hotel.

            Sophie described the store and other buildings attached to it as kind of a town all in one building.  The restaurant was on the south end and served the working men who were single.  They were served breakfast, provided a sack lunch, and served dinner.  To Sophie, the store seemed huge.  It even had the post office in it.  The tavern, movie house and the gas station were also part of the building structure.  It wasn’t very long after she moved to Seneca that the post office moved to a building between the Hotel and the store.  She never saw a movie in the theater, but she supposed the movies were in color since color came out in 1927.  She remembers in the 1960’s, the PTA took the old velvet drapes from the theater to make stage curtains for the school.  Women brought their sewing machines to the gym and worked as a team to make them.  The Coconut Grove, which was upstairs above the store, was a place that she visited once.  It was a public hall used for parties and entertaining Edward Hines’ “Big Wigs”.

            As Sophie recalls, it might have been about 1958 when it got down to -43 degrees in Seneca.  She remembers running down the street telling people it was too cold to have Sunday School.  She thought she might have frozen her lungs a little.

            Sophie said the swimming pool was nice, but when Edward Hines stopped putting money out for the upkeep, her kids had not gotten through their swimming lessons.  She stated, “We were one of the few parents who did not carpool to take our kids to John Day for swimming lessons”.

            Sophie says that in their day-to-day lives there were lots of great, kind, good, joyous interactions with neighbors, but there were bumps along the road.  Not all people got along with others.  During the early years in the city of Seneca , dogs and pipes were problems.  People didn’t believe that their dog running loose could be a problem to others.  The pipes that were higher in town did not have much water flow.  The pipes were too small, but a new water system helped that.   In her overall opinion, however, she stated, “All in all, it was a good town to work in and a good town to raise kids in.”

            In her opinion, when John Saunders sold the store and it stopped serving the community, it was a blow to community life.  She said the day the store burned the fire alarm went off at 4:30 A.M. and everyone came out to see what was going on.  Fire fighters came from John Day and other towns.  Although the store was gone by daylight fire fighters were still working on it mid morning to noon.  The town’s people brought the fire fighters water, coffee, and sandwiches.  The loggers also went and helped the fire fighters put the flames out until the fire was under control.  The store was the whole business district, the center of the town and a great loss to the community.

            Ross, Sophie’s husband, served on the city council for 16 years and then as mayor for 13 months.  This was the period of time the city put the new sewer system in and paved the streets.  She felt it was a real learning experience for the town’s people and the council they elected.

            Since she first came to Seneca, many things have changed in Seneca.  The streets have been paved and it moved from being a company town to a city in 1970.  The logging got to where it needed fewer men because of machinery taking over the men’s jobs.  Some moved to John Day and commuted to work.  Wages went up some and town clean-up days helped clear out tumbled down buildings.  The fire departments from around the area burned derelict houses for fire fighting practice.  Improved transportation caused the highway department to close its station in Seneca.  That cut down the population by about twenty people.  That happened in about 1975.  Early in their married years, there were 400 people living in Seneca.  When they sold their home in 1989 and took to traveling, the population was down to approximately 285.

            When asked was the one thing she remembered most about Seneca, she responded, “Friendly people.  We were all working people.  The men knew each other at work.  The women got to know each other at the store, or clubs, or church, or PTA.  I don’t know how many times Ross and I would be visiting, and I would finally connect that man he knew at work with that wife and kids.”

            Sophie Smith loved Seneca and said that it was a good town to raise her four kids in because it was so small that she knew everybody and also she knew the kids her kids played and went to school with.  There was also a lot of open space to run around and play in.