“Were you a carder or a racker?� he asked. We were standing on a sanded wood floor so recently varnished you could smell it. New paint covered all the woodwork and the walls were vintage brick.

I told him I was a carder, also foot press, power press, spot welding and set up and charge. I lost some of my hearing in a mill not too different from this one where I was sipping wine and eating Brie. I only worked in mills for a summer or two when I was young, but I worked alongside women and men who did the same machine-like task for eight hours a day, forty hours a week for eternity. How they kept their sanity, knowing it was not a temp job, I will never know. Maybe their daydreams still perch in the rafters like butterflies. Maybe that’s why artists come to live in the mills now. Monuments to the robber barons, yes, but grand and beautiful. Nothing like them is built today. So many of them have been lost to fire in the last forty years, accident or arson.

I always think of the affinity artists have for the mills as a return to balance. I love these spaces, the huge open lofts with the ceilings two stories up and arched windows to let in the sun.

This restored mill is at 60 Valley St. in Olneyville, re-incarnated as The Plant. The Cuban Revolution restaurant is opening soon next door. The Plant has an open courtyard right off Valley St., and my psychic sense tells me there will be summer concerts here. Olneyville is a tough, tired , working people’s neighborhood, with artists and immigrants and outsiders of all kinds. The really interesting places are the ones where people mix it up. Providence is full of these neighborhoods. As I continue my quest for free food and good parties I hope to visit all of them.