Dear President Obama:
I could send this request to Santa Claus, but my plea might get lost in the Christmas pile. Plus, I think you can deliver with one phone call. No sleigh required.
My request is simple — and cheap, compared with the costs of financing two wars, health care overhauls, and bailouts.
Peirce Mill, the last of eight grain mills on Rock Creek, is in the midst of a renovation. Work has begun. Friends of Peirce Mill have raised $1 million toward putting the 19th century mill back in operation. But in order to make the wheels turn and the stones grind, they need $500,000 for a pumping system.
Surely, amid the billions in stimulus funds, you can find a half-million for Peirce Mill.
No doubt you have passed by the mill many times. It is the handsome stone structure on the west bank of Rock Creek where Tilden Street and Park Road cross Beach Drive. It lies on the banks above the falls. The outside is perfectly preserved from the time it was built in 1829.
Back then, according to “Peirce Mill: Two Hundred Years in the Nation’s Capital,” the lands around the federal enclave were a virtual bread basket of farms.
“By 1840,” author Steve Dryden writes, “milling had become Washington’s dominant industry.” The well-told tale of the mill encompasses periods of slavery, the making of local magnates such as Joshua Peirce and the Shoemaker family, and now the restoration of the mill.
At sundown on a recent afternoon, Dryden gave me a tour of the mill. An environmental activist and writer, he fell in love with the mill when he responded to a call for volunteers by Friends of Peirce Mill a few years ago.
“I am drawn to this kind of elementary, fundamental, and authentic structure,” he says. “This represents the production of a basic foodstuff done the way it had been done for thousands of years. It was the original way we produced stone ground whole wheat.”
We entered through a locked door to the ground floor. The three floors are a jumble of wheels and pulleys and belts, shafts and gears and posts. Many of the parts and beams are from the original building and machinery. The massive, 200-year-old stones are ready to grind again.
“Flower would come out of this chute, into the circular bin where these rakes would cool it,” Dryden explains. “It’s amazing all of this worked at one time.”
It worked until 1993, when the park service shuttered it. Says Dryden: “Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren used to come here to learn about history, the environment, food production, nutrition.”
As president, I’m sure you could arrange for a tour. Michelle, Malia and Sasha would enjoy it, too. All it will take is $500,000 and another year of work and you can come see the mill in action.
One call and a gift for all of Washington. Easy peasy.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
