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.

Cassie Lewis
Going on a field trip to a one hundred year old mill that has no electricity and no one has been in it for two years was not my idea of fun. It was a rainy day and you never knew when it was going to start down pouring so I wanted to get into the building as quick as I could.

I stepped inside and was met with and unbelievably disgusting smell. It was like mold, sawdust and vomit all mixed together. People were pushing through the crowd and the adults and teachers were trying to hush the students. With the mile high ceilings, the voices echoed and all you could here was yelling. It was damp and humid and it was extremely hard to breathe. The smell made it unbearable to be in there, but there was no way to get out of there because I was required to stay in the mill.

When I was traveling through the first room I was immediately was disgusting. I side stepped puddles of water with rusted metal underneath. I saw paint pealing off the walls in shades of red, orange, dark blue, and teal. People were taking pictures and I saw random flashes of light. Lights from flashlights added to the commotion.

After a while of climbing over debris and jumping over puddles we reached a large red door. It was very unique. There was workers names (and some inappropriate things) inscribed into the door. Everyone examined that very carefully. It had been about and hour and forty five minutes and I it was totally hard to breath. I just had enough of the mill and wanted to get out of there. We started to head up stairs. "Finally were leaving!" I said to my self.

I didn't realize until I left the mill how important and interesting this mill was. There is so much history in it and people just wanted to knock it down or rebuild it into some kind of strip-mall/ apartment complex. I mean as an ordinary girl of course a mall would be awesome, but on the other side it wouldn't be as good for the people who worked there. That was there second home and some people grew up there as kids, and I don't think to just tear it down and just forget about the mills history would be stupid. Maybe in what ever the architect makes the mill into they should have come kind of room or exhibit about the mill. Hopefully they just don't tear it down.

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