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.

Ian Forrest
I remember walking through the doors into the mill, on that eerie day.  When I first saw the inner part of the mill, I thought I was going dumpster diving

The place was a dump, holding many memories of its past.  On the floor lay broken glass, water, old clothes, feathers of birds that lived in the mill, and old boxes of paper.  But what mostly filled the old abandoned mill were darkness, dark rooms, and hall ways. Almost everything had a little bit of darkness in it.

As we toured the old mill, rust was all around us, puddles of rust, rust on pipes, even some rust on glass.  It was creepy walking around in the dark with only flashlights leading the way.  Then as we walk by where the #1 paper machine I noticed a bucket on the floor that looked like it had been placed to catch water from a leak in the ceiling (the bucket was full of water).

There were many sounds and smells in the mill.  In one room the smell of it gave me a taste in my mouth that tasted like blood.  There was the sound of metal hitting metal.  Then there was the worst smell of all the smells, it smelled like dog poop.

As we were nearing the end of our tour we passed an old red elevator door, with the initials of former mill workers sketched into it.  We walked into a separate building. As I walked down a ramp I noticed the names Marlee and Fred spray painted on to a concrete wall, and in my mind I wonder if those people got married?  

More and more questions popped into my head.  What was the highest paying job? How many names were on the red door? Who was the youngest person working in the mill? Who was the oldest person working there? How many people who worked at the mill got married to each other?

We got on the busses and left.  I remember looking back at the broken windows, barbed wire on the fence, rusty chains, and torn up tar.  The bus turned a corner and the mill was out of sight.

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