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.

Matt Colley
The mill had been closed two years earlier, and it looked as if they had just left one day. It still had bottles of old soda half full, and peoples clothes and shoes.

After it was abandoned people had came and took out all the machinery. All over the place there were parts of the machines that had been removed like bodies stolen from the grave.

It was very dark. There were many holes that seemed never to end, and there were lots of birds. People had came and broken windows and they had left there markings in spray paint. Although we did not go everywhere it was fun, yet somewhat scary. 

Some of us had a weird feeling in our throats from the old lead paint, and the chemicals that were used there. There were also many dark hallways that we did not go down.

We had a few former workers with us telling us which machines did what and where they were. They told us about when they had worked at the mill, and what they had done.

The mill goes back to many peoples grandparents. It is sad when you hear that where generations of people had worked that they are all locked out one day because the mill closed. My great grandfather was one of the people who had worked there.

When we were in the finishing room we thought that we saw a ghost of a man working on a machine down the hallway. Then we found out that it was a reflection of a light hitting the wall just right. Over all we enjoyed the trip.

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