The Mill

            I grew up in Manville, Rhode Island, a village on the Blackstone River, four miles south of Woonsocket.

            The Blackstone has been called the hardest-working river in the United States. It is not long, flowing a mere 48 miles from its source near Worcester, Massachusetts, to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where it empties into Narragansett Bay. But In those 48 miles the river drops 1,300 feet, supplying waterpower for 200 years to a string of mills along the way. One of those mills was in Manville. I say “was,” because a complex of retirement homes now covers the area where the mill once stood.

            The Manville mill has a long history. At its apex in the early decades of the 20^th century it was the largest textile mill in all of New England, with over 100,00 spindles, 4,200 looms, and as many as 3,200 workers. Then the Depression hit, reducing production by 50%. In 1932 employment dropped to 400. But fortunes were soon to change. When World War II produced a great demand for cotton cloth, it turned Manville into a boom town. Some 2,500 mill employees worked three shifts, 24 hours a day, to satisfy the demand. Sadly, the good times did not last.

            The post-war period saw many of the Blackstone Valley textile mills move south where labor was plentiful and cheap. The Manville plant was no exception. Unable to restore the mill’s glory days, the owners closed its doors in 1948. From then on, the mill would be used as a storehouse by various companies. But that was not the end: it would come less than a decade later with a disaster seared in my memory.

            The month of August in 1955 had been hot and dry, and people were hoping for a little rain to break the spell. On August 18^th they got a lot more than hoped for. A dying Hurricane Diane passed over the area and deposited a record 9.5 inches on Woonsocket. Some surrounding areas got as much as 11 inches.  Cold Spring Park where I had played Pony League baseball was under water. Several streets were washed out. Flood waters threatened industrial properties all along the river. One man was electrocuted when he tried to remove a live power line from his son’s car. Then it got worse.

            The dam at Horseshoe Falls above Woonsocket broke. The local newspaper described water five feet deep pouring down city streets, carrying away a television set, a couch, an empty showcase, a mannequin; cars from dealerships on their sides, upside down, on top of each other; mud all over everything. 

            Towns downriver fared no better, especially the mills in places like Albion and Ashton where my mother had worked in 1943. Raging waters ripped the steel bridge in Berkeley from its moorings; debris piled up against other bridges; spectators gathered above to watch the tumbling waters.

            I went down to the Manville bridge to see for myself. The river was so high I couldn’t tell where the 18-foot dam was. The water barely passed under the bridge, which had been 30 feet above the river before the flood. I saw a refrigerator float by. Others said they had seen coffins. That may very well have been true, because when the Horseshoe Dam broke, the rushing waters carved a huge swath out of the cemetery below. Dozens of caskets went for a ride through Woonsocket streets looking for a new final resting place.

            Spectators came from all over to view the worst destruction of all. Standing on the bridge, they witnessed the mill’s weave shed, which had straddled the Blackstone for more than a century, topple into the boiling, flood-swollen river. With it went the five-story brick tower jutting from the west side of the mill. Then a huge section of the main building, undermined by the torrent below, fell into the river. A wall collapsed, taking with it a section of flooring and the roof above. It wasn’t long before thousands of cartons, which had been perched precariously on the edge of exposed floors, began to plunge into the cascading surf.

            The demons of destruction weren’t finished. Less than a month later the mill burned to the ground. People came from all over to see it; so many, in fact, that their cars blocked some roads needed by fire equipment to reach the blaze.

            The Manville fire was the largest fire in Rhode Island history. People who looked down from Woonsocket saw a huge cloud of smoke; some thought it looked like an atomic bomb had been dropped. The smoke could be seen from Providence, 20 miles away.

            Authorities could not agree on how the fire started.  A friend and former classmate of mine claimed to have the definitive version. He told me that that sparks from acetylene torches used by welders working on the roof during repair operations had fallen through the roof and ignited rubble on the floor below. The flood had destroyed the water lines that fed the sprinkler system, and by the time fire engines showed up, the fire was out of control, fed by exploding barrels of chemicals, walls with who-knows-how-many coats of paint, plus 800,000 square feet of wooden floors impregnated with a century’s worth of oil drippings from hundreds of textile machines.

            Within minutes the blaze was so hot it destroyed a nearby crane. Fire companies concentrated on wetting down buildings across the river. Fortunately, winds carried the fire downriver, and the village was spared. Five hours after the fire started there was nothing left to burn.

            A large flock of pigeons circled the remains for hours. They had roosted in the mill towers and now had no place to land. The same could symbolically be said for the many hundreds of villagers who had earned their living in the mill before a flood and a fire had reduced 200 years of history to a pile of smoking rubble.