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.

Shannon Dapice
As the bus, full of seventh grade middle school students pulled into the parking lot of the old deserted paper mill, I shivered thinking, "Do we really have to go in this old dump?"   Everyone chattering and laughing as we got of the bus, I was quiet, filled with questions. How in the world did this used to be a running factory, and people actually worked her?  We entered into the "old dump" as I had called it, stepping over worn out soaked cardboard, and pieces of ragged clothing.  All of sudden something hit me in the face; it wasn't something you could feel but an awful smell: the smell of mold, and a deserted run down building. We kept walking farther and farther into the dark.  That building was dirty, cold, and kind of junky because of all the dead machinery.  We kept walking, and were totally freaked out by the pigeons, old clothes, and all the loose screws on the ground.  I kept hearing the sounds of water dripping down the run down wholes in the ceiling and walls that were slowly crumbling.

On we walked with only flashlight and friend in hand through the ancient mill. The mill had so much water flowing into it from the hard rain that was falling from outside.  It is hard to really believe that this factory actually used to be running.  Did people actually like working here?  If they did, from what I had seen so far, I can't see why!

We stopped in a huge room, and everyone crowed into it.  The room was dark except for the light that was shining through the big eerie windows, huddled all together in the dark cold.  There was stuff sticking up from the floor that must have been where ancient machinery used to be.  We kept walking through the mill, tripping over wires and pipes on the floor.  We walked up several dozen stairs, as we were going up I could feel the ceiling getting lower over my head.  It felt as if the room was closing in on us.  

As we entered the small room, or at least it seemed at first, it ended up being huge.  The ceiling was low, and you didn't have to duck but it seemed like you would've.  There was this huge old red door that happened to be an elevator door that had looked like hundreds of names and initials on it.  It was amazing that so many people had worked here for so long. Yes, this building was disgusting and dirty, but at this time I didn't notice it.  I was so shocked by what lay on that big red elevator door.  Left behind memories, friendships and much more was what I saw.  

We left that room and went back through were we had first come in off the bus.  Good, we are finally leaving the smelly place, or so I thought. We had left the main building and went into another smaller building.  This one wasn't nearly as big as the first, but had very, very high ceilings.  It looked more like what I expected the whole mill to look more like.  Entering this building, we had to go down a steep part in the floor.  At the end was a large puddle that we had to slide up against the wall to get around it. Then after we got around enormous puddle, there was a dead pigeon lying on the floor.  

     "Eww," a bunch of us girls said as we saw what was left of the bird.

The pigeon, and feathers were sprawled out around it and was so disgusting looking.  The bird was dead, but what had killed it?  No one seemed to know.  All we had seen so far were more pigeons and some spiders and other little insects.  None of the people who were showing us around knew that the bird was even there, so they couldn't have done it.  A rat was the only thing I could think could have possibly killed the pigeon.  

Everyone stopped in the middle of the room as the guide told us what had gone on in the room with such high ceilings. She also told us about a man whose father and grandfather had worked her.  So, that is one of the reason that some people worked here, I thought to myself. Other family members had worked at the mill so they wanted to too.  I found it amazing that so many people had worked her out of the hundred years that it was running.  Then it came to me, this was more then a place to work, a stinky old building, and then a run down deserted factory.  It was a piece of history! This building had been more running for one hundred years, that is older then all of my family members and I thought they were old.  As we got on the bus to go back to school, I knew that I was coming back with more of an appreciation for the Eastern Fine Paper Mill.

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