In the middle of October, 2006, the Grade Seven students at Brewer Middle School took a field trip to a building that they had seen from a distance for most of their lives, but had never visited up close. The tour guides were various city officials and the future developers of the old paper mill. It was raining quite hard and the students were poorly equipped with flashlight, which added to the overall effect of the visit. What follows are the essays, as written, by roughly half of the students. The essays are presented as written by the students, hoping to preserve their turns of phrase, their usages and their idiosyncrasies as writers.

Anna Berube
As we entered on to the properties of Eastern Fine Paper Mill it looked like a spot where you could have a hunted house in a movie. It was Kind of Scary. There were broken windows and old Bricks on the wall of the outside.

Before we went exploring we met Thomas Niemann the guy who is going to rebuild the old Mill to something new. Also we met students from the University of Maine who were our guides. The History Channel awarded the Folk-life Center a 10,000 dollar grant to work with the students and to study how when the Mill closed it affected workers who lost there jobs and the Community. That is why we went to the mill.

When everybody was in the Building it was dark and dusty .We had to go thru little hall ways that were dark a wet. You could barley see any thing I did see spider webs all over the walls. Then we went in to a big room with metal hanging from the ceiling and metal sticking out of the floors. I think the Machines were there. There were some machines still there but they were rusty and had chipped metal all over. On one Machine I saw a Half a bottle of Coca-Cola. I wonder how long has the Coca-Cola been there. Also I saw a dead Pigeons on the floor. That was really gross. We had to go thru this big hall way. Right when I turned the corner this pigeon came flying over our heads. It scared a lot of people. Also we had to go up and down stairs it felt like they were going to break on me when ever I took a step. They squeaked a lot. We saw big wholes with Metal in them they were there when they had the machines. We had to go down to the basement and we saw an elevator and names on the wall form the people that had been working there for many of years. All over the floors was water. There was not a spot where it was dry. The whole way thru the tour all you heard was kids talking, water dripping and Pigeons.

Then we had to go back up stairs and go out side to go to a different part of the Mill. We went to the other part of the Mill where all the big machines are. All the guides just talked. The guides Asked as some questions like: What are some ideas you think we should make with this old Mill into? Some students said that they wanted to make it in to an ice rink? Would you come back when we get done with this project? Everybody answered there questions. Then he asked did we have fun we said yes.

As you can tell I had a great day at the Eastern Fine Paper Mill. Some parts of Mill were kind of scary. Over all I had a lot of fun and I learned a lot about Eastern Fine Paper Mill!

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