The mill did lend itself as a gift shop and a lobster stand in the past few years, but as it stands today, completely restored in all authenticity it is doing exactly the work it did originally, with the same machinery, except the turbine which had to be replaced.
II
So many people have asked me,
“What are you doing this for?”
“Is there any money to be made grinding corn?”
“What are you ever going to do with this useless old building?”
And most people, when they get an answer, sadly walk away shaking their heads, wondering.
I suppose no one person or no one episode gave rise to my thought in acquiring the mill and entering upon a program of restoration, unless it could be what I have heard in the various entertaining stories of people such as C. Milton Chase, Dean of the Massachusetts Town Clerks, and retired Town Clerk of Barnstable, who tells most engaging tales of his trips as a young lad to the mill with a horse and team, carrying corn to be ground.
Perhaps I was fired by my friend, George Kelley, a ponderous, phlegmatic, Cape Codder, attempting to perpetuate some of the characters of old Cape Cod, personified in Joe Lincoln’s stories; and perhaps by the stories of Walter B. Chase and Howard Hinckley of their nostalgic remembrances of the old mill.