Sticking out of the debris beneath the first floor was an iron bar or shaft, about five inches in diameter, so George and I and a couple of hired help went to work, and on hands and knees we finally managed to dig enough away to stand upright and eventually came to the top of the old turbine which was so far rusted as to be beyond reconditioning. We uncovered the complete wheel pit, the floor of which was about twelve to fifteen feet below the level of the first floor of the mill. This pit was made of hard pine, 2½ inch planks, set against 12 × 12 hard pine uprights, and was about 10 foot square and probably 12 feet deep to the lower shelf, called the “tail race.”
We had a rough time removing the old turbine with some hydraulic jacks, muscle power, and the sage advice and help of friend George.
Now, George is a married man, blessed with three children, and I noticed in our local newspaper one evening shortly after we had started work that his wife had experienced another happy event. George had not mentioned this to anyone, including me so when I suggested the next day that this was a bit of a surprise, he said,
“You know, it was news to me, too. Last night about three o’clock, my wife woke me up and said, ‘George, I think you have to take me to the hospital.’
“I muttered, ‘What for?’, and she replied that she was going to have a baby.
“You know”, said George, “I do declare that is just what happened.”
I suppose everyone has a desire to investigate, to explore into the past, and to relive some of our history and past traditions. This mill and its restoration has provided us an excellent opportunity to test our ability to do what the old folks did. They were able, with their crude tools, to build this mill and to actually make it grind corn in excellent fashion, even to the extent of doing a thriving business. It is interesting to reflect that they did not have the modern power tools available today, nor did they really have the time we have today, but these folks really built for permanence.
Eric Sloane aptly puts it by saying,
“What a shame that with all our timesavers and with our abundance of wealth, we do not have the time today and apparently cannot afford to build the way they did or to use the excellent material they did.”
Why is it impossible for our builders and architects to construct a house with a bow roof, for instance, a little more overhang on the rake, a box return with gutters, a decent-sized chimney, and many of those small things that lend charm to a house and give it character and dignity? Why are we satisfied with chicken houses, or is it that we have not made the progress we thought we had?