PABLO — Monte Jennison never thought he’d be back at the Plum Creek Saw Mill, but that’s exactly where he found himself last Thursday morning. As he walked through the rain and stopped by his old work station, Jennison, of Polson, remembered life before the mill closed. Employed there for 20 years, Jennison had not been back since nearly a year earlier when the mill officially shut down. Rick Dennison his friend and former co-worker, called him up asking for help loading some items he had purchased the night before at the mill’s auction.

The auction held Wednesday lasted from nine in the morning until nearly midnight, and brought with it a final sense of loss. The file room, like other buildings around the mill, carries memories of when the mill was active. Clocks tick away the time unaware that workers no longer watch them waiting for the end of their shift.  Calendars abound, stopped on June of last year, still marking the passage of time, but in a way no one had foreseen.

“I had no idea I was going to be here today,” Jennison said. “I thought I’d never see this place again.”

Maynards, a liquidation, auction and appraisal company hired by Plum Creek, operated the sale. 

“It definitely exceeded expectations,” Mike Seibold, a special project manager out of Maynards’s Vancouver office, said of the auction. “It was a better sale than expected.”

For full story, pick up the June 24 issue of the Lake County Leader