Thursday, September 15, 2011

Founder's Lair



PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Squirrels hide their acorns in the empty Hendey factory in Torrington, while downstream, at the bottom of the valley, where the old sailing ships used to come up from the sea, the last of the old brass mills chugs on. We're back at the foundry where MIke is still pouring copper billets.

Mike is the beginning of the process. At the front of the shed, beside the train track, a flatbed truck is unloading scrap buckets from the processing mill halfway up the track, up the river, up the valley in Brass City. The billets Mike casts here will leave there as copper tube. I'm told this working, pre-WWII production line is the last of its kind. I wonder what the squirrels think of that.