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Life in a small town is a delicate balance between the past and the future. Any movement of the metaphorical fulcrum on that balance has an equal and opposite affect on its inhabitants in the other direction.
So, what happens when one of the major employers of a small northern Wisconsin town, a pulp mill, decides to shut its doors after nearly a century of existence as a significant employer?
In this case, after fifteen years, the abandoned mill continues to stand as an off-white and rust-trimmed guardian on the shores of a vibrant blue river…slowly collapsing, like a failed parent, on itself and the unmet expectations of those wanting and needing its constancy.
In the beginning, life was good as dairy men from the surrounding countryside poured twenty, thirty or even forty years into the mill. Their families and their town prospered.
Sons and daughters conceived of college-educated lives beyond the large smoke stack peering down on the town from impossible heights.
But as the years progressed life in and around the mill changed. Unions formed, out-of-town ownership bought and sold the mill and the country became more environmentally aware.
Inexorably, like a patient on life support, the Pulp Mill let out a final, great breath in the mid-1990s leaving its dependents alone.
Today, like a morning-after memory, seen but unseen by its inhabitants, the body of the Mill still presses itself up against the horizon even as its insides rot and decay.
Step inside, ignore the graffiti and the peeling paint, and the drink in the memories and the industry of the Mill’s former workforce as they cling to the visitor like a noxious sulfur dioxide cloud.
It’s 1995 again. Grab your cup of coffee. Use Old Roy Fritz’ locker and fire up the boiler because a load of poplar is coming in on the morning train.
KK
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