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.

Gabby Craig
As I walk into the cold, dungy mill on October 12th I wondered why were we coming here what was the whole purpose of this trip was it because the teacher's wanted us out of the school or was it really educational who knows but to get you thinking I will tell you what happen on this day October 12th in the Eastern Fine Paper Mill.

As I enter the Mill the first thing I remember is getting this cold feeling that I felt that the people who worked there are still there in spirit. I saw that there was trash and broken glass and a lot of chemicals on the floor. The first place we went to was this big gap of a room. It seemed that this hole might have been a place where people could talk and eat lunch but the real thing it is a passage way that enters into the mill.

The next thing I saw was a place were the workers pick up there paycheck kind of like an office space were after they are done working for the day they exit out of that entrance.

As my school left the grungy office like space, we went by all sorts off stuff like clothes they were really dirty and it looked like some homeless family lived there. As we walked passed that we went up these narrow yellow stairs and came up to two big spaces I once again was wondering what this was? I listen to the experts and found out that this was actually the place were the mill workers cut wood and sawed stuff for everything.

When I went by that I saw tons of tape used for wrapping stuff and sealing stuff. After that we went back down the unstable stairs and went by the clothes and garbage .During this time I once again wondered, what is this stuff and what was it used for but I was just about to find out in the next room were they distributed the paper. Now this room was huge. This was probably one of the greatest rooms because this is where the magic happened. In where the paper machine [which they sold to Malaysia two years ago]was located there was all kinds of stuff that was gross and so bad I didn't even want to look at it like dirty water falling from the broken up ceiling and dirt all over the place with cockroaches and worms.

As we left the horrid, ghastly rooms we enter the last part of the mill that the people were going to show us and that was were the history was on a big red door. Now this door was no ordinary door this door was signed by the former mill workers, leading the dates back to 1801 now there's history.

As you can tell this journey was not only fun but memorable that it could be passed on to generations of people it was nice to know that I was an eyewitness on this mill called the Eastern Fine Paper Mill.

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