Minor Mystery of the Day
In the first photo of 'Rolling Mill Bank Road' you can see the beginning of a guard-rail on the right in the distance. By photo number three I had walked to the missing bridge area and continued poking around taking photographs of ducks, leaves and such. As I was returning to the truck, walking along the verge between the guard-rail and the waters of North East Creek the walking area narrowed so that I was forced closer to the inside of the guard rail where at its beginning I noticed a folded bit of paper stuffed inside (photo one). Photograph two is obviously the unfolded paper and its' message - "Item has been removed n you are trespassing". I'm guessing that some item, probably marijuana or pills, maybe just cigarettes or even some innocuous object secreted therein was removed for some reason and the 'secreter' was sending a warning to whomever they thought was going to take it. Then I noticed someone - dressed in camouflage-fatigues but doubtfully army personnel - not too far away in the bushes and obviously trying to look as though they were not watching me. It made me uncomfortable enough that I just got into my truck and drove away.
Chew More Gum Factory - Circa 1920
Sometime in the late '30s early 40's while walking this particular stretch of Rolling Mill Bank Road with my dad, he told me about working for the Chew More Gum Factory as a kid of about 12 to 14 years old at this very spot where the race from the dam farther up the North East Creek flowed here -second photo -under the road to re-merge with the down stream creek. I think it was located where the cement base is just visible in the first photograph. His job was to take a metal hammer and beat away at the hard candy encrusted walls of a large tumbler machine that had worked all week tumbling thousands upon thousands of layered candies commonly called 'Jawbreakers'. His pay had been minimal he said but he could take home bags of the broken away pieces of the hard candy that he had pounded away from the metal walls of the huge tumbler. Even then, when we walked there, the building was gone and no one else I knew then - or since - remembered that long ago Chew-More Gum factory. And other water powered businesses that gave the road its' name are long forgotten. If the road remains unbridged this whole stretch of town road will revert to nature and haunt of homeless people dreaming away their existance.
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