(Editor's Note: Jerry Robinson's column this week continues with the diaries of 100-year-old Gertrude Finney, former White Center librarian and community leader.)

Diary 5

Highline High School opened in 1924 with 5 grades--4 high school and the 8th grade.

Some from White Center had attended West Seattle previously. The first graduating class numbered 12; the first full 4-year class, 36.

During school term we rode the streetcar to Burien then walked 7/8 of a mile down a narrow dirt road to school, then back in the afternoon.

School buses were provided in '26 and '27 but if one turned out for athletics (all after school activities) we walked home. There were many of us from White Center area so we usually walked along what is now 1st avenue. It was woodsy and sparsely developed then. But as most of the students lived on the east side of 16th it was closer.

Some of us who liked to dance somehow convinced the owners of the Burien Theater to let us use it for dancing. The seats in clusters were moveable so we'd shove them to the sides, wax the floor (with what I don't remember except it was a powder.)

There was a piano on stage and we took turns playing that while others brought their instruments to play too. Quite a few were very talented. Then when our time allowed was up we replaced the seats after sweeping the floors, then the long trudge home.

I remember taking off from Highline one afternoon after attendance had been taken 4th period (1st class after lunchtime after which no one was counted absent.) Word got around, so when the fellow with the car we were going in emerged from the driveway, the car was jammed packed with kids who popped out of the shrubbery along the driveway.

Diary 6

We headed for Luna Pool (long gone) near Alki. "No chasing" said the signs all around the pool area, but when about to be caught and smacked (when wet it hurts) we girls dove into the cold-water pool on the ladies pool. Sissy boys wouldn't follow into the cold and didn't dare go into the ladies pool.

In summertime, we kids would head over Prentice Hill (now 106th) to Seola Beach Road to go swimming in the Sound. We pocketed small potatoes and apples at home to toss into the bonfire we built against the bluff of sand. Oh, the water was cold-- that's why the bonfire.

We often walked up the beach to the sand and gravel pier built out to load barges with the sand and gravel dug from the area now known as Arroyo Beach.

If the tide was in we'd sneak out to the pier to dive; if it was out, we climbed the ladder at the end of the pier. Chased off by the pier? Sure. That was part of the fun.

We also sometimes found ourselves swimming in a pool of Sole, which we could catch, bare handed with many a cut until we learned how to clap them between our hands instead of grasping them. Cleaned and roasted on stick around our fire they tasted good with our roasted apples and potatoes. Even without salt, which we never remembered to bring from home.

If we waited too long on the beach and the tide was high, it was up the bluff of sand to Marine View Drive and the long way home. The owners of the beach homes were not happy to have us walk so close past their houses. We learned that early when one day we were greeted by a partially one-armed man with a shotgun across it. Back and up the bank for us.