The following is part of a serialized story, Everyone Thinks I Dream of Chocolate. You can find the first chapter here.
The Old Town Mill was built around the 1800s as a textile factory. At the time, it was a prospering business. Old photos show the Mill as a prime example of the industrial age ramping up and progressing along with the dawn of the Capitalist Age. After the American Civil War, the world seemed to move on. Textile mills weren’t in as high a demand and the factory closed shop. The area around the town continued to develop, change, and terraform. Yet, the Mill remained.
Through out the last two centuries, the Mill has survived by constantly repeating cycles of hibernation and reincarnation. Someone would come along with a new business idea that would reawaken the commercial power of the place, only to shut their doors a few years later when the power of novelty had worn off.
At one point it was a circus. There are pictures that hang at the Mill of those times, my favorite being the elephant balancing itself on a ball. The black and white photo is blown up on a giant canvas, representing a time when the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey could get away with their hardcore carny antics without a mob of vegans picketing the events.
That business folded at some point. Sometime later, the Mill became a Christmas tree factory. It must have done really well because at some point they went from seasonal to year-round production. Perhaps they took inspiration from the old circus days and expanded into a Christmas-themed amusement park of sorts. Kids walked around different rooms made to look like Santa’s Workshop and even had Santas for hire. Of course, you can only keep up seasonal businesses for so long. Even party stores know when to change the decor and this project eventually folded as well.
Some time in the 70’s someone bought the property and decided to convert it into a mall. Why not? It was a bunch of other things before. Why not a mall as well. It was designated as a historical site so there were tax benefits. The land itself was next to a forest with a river and walking trail making it a popular spot already. There was the local town right across the street, small but a potentially loyal customer base.
By the time I arrived at the Old Town Mill, the place was just over 200 years old. Stepping inside, the main entrance, Lou’s Chocolate Shop rested on the edge of the East Wing but the proximity to the entrance made it a sort of unofficial welcome kiosk. It split the two sides of the Old Town Mill like the Korean Border. Like the 38th parallel, using this as a border was messy and inaccurate, but it did the job.
In this way, the mill was something more akin to an indoor city. It was a mall by all definitions with the shops but the aesthetic gave it a different flavor. Regular malls are modern, sleek, prestine, and sterile. Only when you step inside a store do you get any sort of personality. Even then, the theme is often corporate to some level and you can feel the manufactured personality baked into the decor.
The West Wing was the older side of the mill. It retained much of the industrial origins, with brick walls and steel railings. The ceilings had overhead lamps that managed to maintain a Noir-esque darkness, the bulbs bright enough to light the way while dragging out the shadows hiding behind the corners. Various parts of this wing are sectioned into studios. Walls had been built to divvy up the space and glass windows looked into these spaces. Many of them were personal artists studios or business offices, unopened to the general public. There were some businesses, however. The restaurant, Bull Horn Tavern, had been there since the Mill opened as a mall in the 70’s and the family had a long history with the current owners. Brenda’s Salon as well as Future Fashions were next to each other, across from the Bakery and the Coffee House.
The East Wing was built in the last century, expanded by the guy who envisioned this place as a Christmas paradise. The ceiling is a wide open space covered in a sun roof glass. There are little lanterns to light your way but the sun is the real provider of light. The floors are made of bright orange wood planks with a glossy finish. Sunlight from above bounces off the floors, illuminating the area from above and below. At night, the bulbs right under the glass roof illuminate making the place look just as bright as it is during the day. Having been meant for Santa’s workshop, there is a cozy, warm feeling about it all. It is as if the space is meant to be in perpetual daylight, a mesmerizing, sepia vibe to contrast the West Wing’s Dashiel Hammond grit. Together, both sides act as wings, one of angelic light and the other of devilish dark, emissaries of a nostalgia for a time that most people alive have long forgotten.
The stores in the East Wing act as the main “mall.” It has two stories, the vertical escalation further giving the space a feeling of small, condenced city. Walking past the chocolate shop on my left, there was a bear themed gift store, a clock shop, and an art supply store. On my right, There was a book store, a clothing shop, and an artisan gift shop. On the top floor was a game shop, photo studio, and an adventure course office (with a course right out back within the forest).
It might be odd to view it this way, but I always saw the Old Town Mill as a pocket dimension of sorts. Old Town itself is a nook. People don’t go there unless they have a reason. Many people drive right past it for years before they step into the mall, often telling me they only discovered it on a whim. They tell me it is like them are walking into a time machine. I agree but even more so, I would describe it like a museum that travels from world to world, collecting merchants from the strange corners of human culture.
The stores inside reflect this nature. Here, you won’t find the modern edge of sleek comfort, pricing, and convenience. The bakery, for example, opens at 6 in the morning and closes at 2pm. Employees get up even earlier, relying on traditional methods rather than the cryo-technology of modern refrigeration to keep all the food preserved straight from a factory.
All of the stores are owned by small business owners, not corporate suits. Lou’s Shop itself made all their products by hand and we made them right in front of the customers to prove our point.
None of these stores would survive in a traditional mall. The wouldn’t be able to compete with the steep competition of the corporate owned chains and the resources that allowed them to pay the high rent while providing low costs.
At the Old Town Mill, the businesses had lower rent thanks to the county classifying the location as a historic landmark. It was able to survive in this pocket dimension that was accessible to those who seeked the niche services that the businesses provided. It had a magical quality in the way that its existence was something of an open secret.
Despite the fantastical description I give the place, the Mill is rather relaxed. On many days, there are seldom any customers. Mostly, you get drifters who act like lost spirits in purgatory. It is as if the Mill has gone into a retirement while maintaining an antique shop as a hobby, leaving behind the industrial spirit to the rest of the worlds. Meanwhile,.
As a result, the clientele of the place was wild and varied. Most of them are old people who come to the Mill the same way old people go antique shopping (in fact there is an antique shop in the basement of the West Wing). They all held their own stories, came from subcultures that I wouldn’t even know existed unless I talked to them. They came here to this market place to get what they needed before returning to the multiverse, to worlds that I would hear about but never access myself. The Old Town Mill was a way station, an inbetween for people travelling to and from the many social realities that we create through a thing called culture.
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8. Marshmallows
Danger Wonka 