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.

Tony Bischoff
When I first stepped into the mill a very distinct smell rose up into my head. It smelt old and dingy. When I was at the mill I saw some things that you wouldn't necessarily find in an old, dark, long lasted paper mill. Some things that I saw were signs, graffiti, a half filled coca-cola bottle, tools and even a dead pigeon. It was dark, it was creepy, it smelt weird, and it was cool in some sort of way.

The Eastern Fine Paper Mill could have been all sorts of things including a prison, a sunken ship that had just been pulled up from hundreds of feet of deep blue ocean water, a monster's belly or maybe even a tomb full of dead things or dead people, or both. And basically all I have to say is that, that mill was very, very freaky.

It was cool going into a place that has a lot of history because it makes me feel good to be part of it. Going in there was awesome. It felt like someone or something was either watching you or maybe even following you. It was like a base in the Civil War that had just been blown up. The pipes made it scary. The pipes were like the bones in the monster's body. The forty one acre lot made it like a never ending maze. It was so big that if someone went in there alone then that person would probably not be able to get out unless the used the numbers  above the doors or if they used a map hanging on the wall or something else to help them find their way out. The mill is about one hundred years old witch probably means that the mill could fall at any time. The most remarkable thing to me about the mill to me is that the mill lasted for so long without having people tear it down.

People in Brewer are planning to tear the old mill down, but I think that would be a bad idea. To me that would be like winning a million dollar check and then just shredding it in a blender. Although it would be a bad idea, in a way it would be a good one because in order to build something extravagant, they would have to because of all its rust and chipping paint. It was a good experience for me because not a lot of people in this world today will be as lucky as me to visit a place like I did on October 12. I know for sure I am very fortunate and it would also be nice to go again. 

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