Rose showing off her skills during her class' final gymnastics routine:
She has practiced for two hours every day since last year to be able to reach this point!
Afterwards we went to Chik-fil-A for free sandwiches. You had to dress like a cow to score the free food. This is as far as we go:
My friend Scott was touring with his band and played a show at the Vaudeville Mews in Des Moines. They put on an awesome show and the bands that opened for them were great, too. It was a really fun night!
I completed my regular pilgrimage to the Boston office. The road construction was worse than ever, which limited my tourism options, but at least I had some free time to be a tourist and check out some historical stuff while I was there. (The hotel is not historical.)
The Cobblestone restaurant was originally the management offices for the people who ran the textile mills nearby. It's a very old building and well maintained, with a unique atmosphere. There were pictures on the walls of the mill owners and managers from the early 1800s, as well as jackets from vinyl jazz records (which was kinda random).
On my last day there I visited the Boott Mills Museum, which was the largest producer of textiles in the U.S. for many years. Much of the surrounding area was at one time occupied by dozens of large mills that were powered by a canal that branched off of the Merrimack River and employed children and adults in extremely hazardous working conditions.
This view shows the canal alongside the museum:
Most of the old mills have either been torn down or have been converted into condos and apartments like the one below. The mill buildings have characteristic towers at intervals with spiral staircases inside.
These are the same looms that were used in the 1800s and are still maintained and operational for the purpose of demonstrating to visitors how they worked. Fortunately the museum provided earplugs because it was deafening in there!
There are a variety of looms in this room from different eras. The one below has a battery of thread spools that could be quickly replaced as the thread ran out. Prior to the invention of these rotating thread batteries the women operating these machines had to reach into the machine while it was still in motion and try to grab spent spools out and then replace them with new spools. There were medical logs on display showing the staggering number of employees who ended up with broken fingers and wrists and often even lost limbs as a result of this work.
All of the machines were leather belt-driven and the belts were connected to an iron driveshaft along the ceiling that connected to huge steam-powered pistons at the end of the room. Women would sometimes get their hair caught in the belt and would lose chunks of hair and scalp. Sometimes their clothing would get caught, pulling them into the pulleys and crushing limbs.
Below you can see a bolt of fabric being produced. Each demonstration machine was set up to produce a different weave of cloth or a different pattern using dyed thread.
This glass cutaway model shows what the interior of each floor of a typical mill would've looked like in the 1800s. The raw cotton was spun into rope, yarn, and thread on the ground floor before going through dying and refining processes on the floor above. Then the third floor shows the early looms before the thread batteries were invented. The women had to remain attentive and quickly replace the hundreds of spools as they ran out to keep the loom working. They worked 11-hour days, 6 days a week in extreme heat and humidity as the mills were heated summer and winter and steam was pumped into the buildings to keep the threads from drying out and breaking. The top floor shows the machines that I photographed above.
I dig dirty windows:
Here's an upwards view of one of the spiral staircases. Men had to singlehandedly carry enormous wooden beams down these staircases every time a beam supporting the ceiling-mounted drive shaft above the looms became warped. The high humidity in the mills caused the beams to warp constantly and as a result they had to be replaced frequently. There were medical logs on display of the men who had fallen down these stairs while trying to carry the beams down from the top floors. Many of them ended up with broken arms, shoulders, and ribs and had to walk to the hospital nearby to seek treatment. They often returned to work the next day so that they wouldn't lose their jobs.
The courtyard in between mill buildings:
The not-so-mighty Merrimack, ha. It's a muddy and fairly unremarkable river, very similar to the Cedar River.
On the way home I changed flights in Detroit. This is my favorite airport:
