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.

Molly Dalton
As we walked through the old, dark mill, the way it might have looked when it had closed, as if everyone that worked here had just gotten up and left.  They just left.  Everything just left in the same place.  There were old food wrappers and old, dirty rags.  We walked up the darken stair way.  Mr.Burby's group was huddled together in the center of the old, smelly mill.  A voice of an old mill worker started, "This is where we stored the paper.  There is on old storage room over here.  We kept lots the paper in this room."   When we were walking from room to room, I was holding on to Caroline, for my life.  She had the flashlight.        

The classes started again, walking towards another part of the mill. In the spot we stopped we were looking at these huge tubes.  I remember during the talk we had with the mill workers during the Maine studies class assembly.   "Back when I was working there it was one of the hotter months, there was this one guy who was so hot he jumped into the mixers and started swimming around."       

Then I had made the connection that these were the exact tubes he was swimming in.  Next we headed to this walkway type thing.  We were walking in between them.  All you could here were voices of the students and water drip dropping into the old, dirty mill.       

In front of me were Tony, Michael, Preston, and many of their friends.  The lady from the Bangor Daily News came by and asked Tony a couple of Questions about the mill.    Michael was begging the lady to put his name in the paper.  But it turned out it wasn't going to be.  She took their names any way and she said 'I will say a few of Tony's friends think an ice rank would be good.'     

When we were done in there we headed down to the basement.  There were lots of stairs and it was very creepy looking.  We headed down and down until we couldn't keep going down.  In the basement, we saw this red door.  On it were old mill workers and the dates they had worked.  Beside the old door was a deep hole.  Mr.Burby had said that an old elevator went their.  After we were done in the creepy old mill, we headed towards the sun light which sounded good right then.  I was excited to leave the mill and go back to school and see my mommy.  The mill really scared me and I wanted to leave.  A voice stated, "We will be heading down to the chemical room."     

The thoughts of going back into the mill frightened me.  I was so scared to go back in the mill.  When we were walking down this wet, brick ramp I saw this dead pigeon.  It was gross and all shredded.   As we kept walking we stopped and the mill workers talked about the room.  It was very dark and scary.     

We finally headed to the buses and this time I new we were leaving.  On the bus every one was talking about the mill.  I was glad to have finally left the mill. Later at my house, before I went to bed I was going to shut my light off.  And when I did Erin screamed and said she felt like she was in the mill.  

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