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.

Justin Grevencamp
As I entered the paper mill I saw a very big and dark place and it seemed like it was going to a very scary place but it wasn't scary after all. When we started walking around I was mysterious because of the smell and how old it was. At I thought I was going to fall through the floor. After walking around for two minutes we went up these stairs and they were so old I thought I was going to fall through them. After we got of the stairs we went around a corner and there were a lot of boxes and packages of paper. Once we they were done talking about that part of the mill we turned around and started heading to a part of the mill. Then we went down the stairs turned a corner and we turned another corner and there was a waterfall coming down from the ceiling to a pit were the paper making machine was. As we passed that we went through a door way and we went to a room with two big holes in the ground that were circular and as I looked down them I saw round columns that come half way up the hole. We got to a place with a lot of metal columns coming from the ceiling to the floor and that's where I saw a dead pigeon and a river rat. After we got there we started talking about changing this part of the mill into a hockey rink. Then we went down another set of stairs and went past a big red door but I didn't see it but when we went back I saw all the names and stuff on it and it had a date on it that said 1801 but I didn't believe it and then I saw a 1920 date and I did believe that. Then we went up the stairs and we walked all the way back to where we came in. After we did that we went into another part of the mill. When we entered we went down a concrete ramp into a big room and I was one of the people to stay on the ramp because there wasn't enough room in there. In the place there was a machine that went all the way to the ceiling and in some places it was round and in some places it was weird shaped. Then we turned around and walked out the doorway and headed for the buses and after we were on we left for school.

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