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.

Mitchel Dunn
As we ventured into the Giant, it seemed we were walking into a Beast. The smell was like walking into a smelly meat market (smelled some what bad). It was dark, dusty, empty, and smelly. People said they heard echoes, changes, metal upon metal, and water dripping.

Then when we went to another room we saw holes and something that look as if it was blood on a table like as if some one cut their hand on the table accidentally.

People saw dead things like birds and rats and they also saw cool things that were marked up with names and dates and some were not like: Stairs, dust, wood, metal, cement walls, wires, Etc. Things that I wonder is how many people worked there? How much money did the get? How much paper was made?  And how many people died or got injured?

When we got outside it was as if some on covered the sun it was dark and it was raining. Then we went into the belly of the beast where the power source was. Inside it was dripping water and there was mud and dust every where and some one said they saw a dead pigeon. I did not believe the person that said that but then we were leaving the power place and I saw the dead being just laying there lifeless on the ground and then I believed the person that said it.

By time we got outside again it was raining harder then it was when we wandered into the Giant. After the two hour tour we got back on the bus and went back to our school and finished period seven and eight. After all our classes we started to pack up and go home.

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