Today we spent a great day together with the family. The official program started at 10:00 in the morning where we all went together to the Scout’s visit of the Historic Schwamb Mill in Arlington on Mill Lane. The Mill is just off Mass. Avenue at the height of one of my favorite Dunkin Doughnut stores. This store is just on our way when we go to soccer practice on Sundays and therefore I have bought a coffee or two there. So not surprisingly we swung by, got a bunch of doughnuts, munchkins a green tea and an ice-coffe and off we were to the Schwamb Mill. We were not the first but also not the last so once we arrived the visit started pretty soon. It turned out that the Mill did not stay a Mill for long and in fact the main operation was soon based on a steam engine and later on an electric motor. The ‘Mill’ specialized in frame making and one of its staples, the oval frame. The Factory itself was build the time when Abraham Lincoln was the president. It was about to go out of business because it would not run economically anymore in 1969 when a woman from Arlington decided to take it upon her to preserve the beautiful sight. All the old machines are still there and there is a small production of selected frames, in particular old style frames sometimes requested from a museum and restoration work ongoing. The first floor houses the production hall while on the second floor there is some art exhibition and storage. The guide showed us around and had lots of interesting things to report. Most of the kids of course just watched the machines and were most impressed when our guide switched on the machinery and one of the big work tables started to spin keeping a tool on an elliptic path which made the table wobble quite a bit. Ivan enjoyed Cal’s and Connor’s company while Markus was running around and was difficult to control.
Later in the evening when it was bedtime we did a little nightwatch. Gisele wants to watch a mouse, to be more specific she would like to look at some pictures of a baby mouse. Ivan wanted to look for a cool Harry Potter image, but we did not find anything he liked. So we started to look for some Star Wars picture. And after some initial browsing he decided Luke Skywalker was the most interesting one, but pressed to choose one picture he chose…. R2D2 the awesome little robot, oh sorry he is a droid.
