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.

Rowan Bost
As we stumbled quickly into the large opening in the mill, dripping wet from the rain, we quickly took out our flashlights and put down our hoods. Tap...Tap...Tap...Tap.  The mill closely resembled a pirate ship, slowly sinking to the ocean floor.  The spirits of the old pirates were whispering to each other and their blood was dripping as fast as the water coming in, pushing us further into the depths.  The people showing us around were surprised by our reactions because when they once worked here it was a happy place...now...not so much.  As my friend Sarah and I walked through the old pirate ship we saw the shadow on a flashlight that looked like a large rodent and all anyone could hear was the screeching of our voices.  We were terrified, but we kept walking.  

"Turn on your flashlight!" Sarah screamed at me, "who cares if you waste the battery?" she insisted as we trembled along, hooking arms.

The tour went on but our hearts seemed as if they had stopped. We crept up a long flight of stairs, making sure not to touch the railing because of the gritty, grimy and filthy metal.  The 107 children whispered and shone their flashlights down the long, dark hallways.   The former mill workers, the Economic Development Director and the head of the Niemann Capital LLC, Tom Niemann, were preparing to talk to us about the former workers.  As they told us, we were asking ourselves questions such as "Who was the last person to walk out of this building when it was closing down?", "What kinds of things made this mill a great place to work?" and "What did people do when they found out the mill was closing?", I wonder.

Everyone wandered down the narrow hallway into the basement where we examined the uncommonly large, red elevator door with the names of many employees who once worked at the mill, scratched on its surface.  It was unreal.  It just blew my mind how many people had been employed at the "sinking pirate ship".

The mill, although it smelled like blood, was home to birds, spiders and rats and maybe home to something my friends and I would call "ghosts", was very interesting.  As I walked out of the mill I looked at the former mill workers and tour guides and saw the mournful look in their eyes; I felt their pain.  To my surprise, I was feeling every inch of sorrow that had crept into their hearts.  The mill no longer looked like a sinking ships but instead, a graveyard.  The water dripping was no longer blood but tears.  Now I see why this was such an interesting place.  So many memories.   

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