Solar Design Execution Gone Wrong, a tribute

When my father was in college his final project to get his degree in architectural design was a plan for a plywood mill that would be lighted during the day entirely with solar power, saving the day shift lots of power lighting electric (incandescent at the time) lights.

The idea was that the sawtooth roofs, seen here in the distance, were galvanized corrugated steel on the inside to take the light coming from the (vertical) South-facing windows and disburse it nicely over the work area below. The angle of the roofs was figured in for our latitude to cause maximum light in the winter with some protection from the sun in the summer.

A company wanted to build a mill by Dad's design, and they asked him to come (to another state) to oversee its construction and he did.

When the mill was done, he applied for an entry-level labor job there and worked at that mill for 41 years before retiring, refusing many promotions over the years to remain a part of the common workforce.

Dad never mentioned to me (or Mom, I think) his college background, except late in life when he told me how he paid for his college by being part of a traveling black-face minstrel show. I heard the details of his education from his mother (my grandmother, who was very proud of her son), and the details of the design from his father (my granddad).

The reason for this panorama photo is it shows the mill in the distance on the right and the footbridge on the left, which were connected by a straight path shown curved here, distorted by the panorama process. The workers parked in the lot across the creek, crossed the footbridge and walked across the field to the mill. I saw it when I was a kid very similar to what we see today, because Granddad and Dad both worked there for a while, and Granddad liked to show kids interesting things.

With me being an only child, Dad was afraid of my getting hurt in dangerous places, so when Granddad got a job elsewhere my field trips to the mill stopped.

Then, a big new mill was built in front of the old one and I never saw the old mill again. I assumed it had been torn down, and only got to go as far as the parking lot and sit in the car with Mom while Dad would run across the bridge to the new (standard arched-roof ) mill to do an occasional quick errand.

So imagine my surprise as Annie and I drove by today and I saw from the street not the "new" mill built in the 1950s but the original mill my dad had designed in college! The "new" mill had outlived its usefulness and been torn down, but the old mill, built before WWII, is being used!

Annie insisted that we go back and look at it, and I happily complied. What a thrill to go out in that field and look across at what I only had child-hood memories of, pretty much in the same condition as I had seen it some 50-odd years ago!

As I was standing in the field, looking across on a sunny day, I noticed doors open, and I peered in expecting to see the interior brightly lit by the sun streaming in through the windows.

But, no. What I saw was the bluish glare of halogen lights - On a sunny day! - WHY?!

Then I realized that as I stood there looking across the field at the beautiful designed mill in profile that I was looking SOUTH>>>and the windows are facing WEST!!!

I could see my father arriving on scene in 1940, having traveled a fair distance, ready to oversee the building of his dream only to see the foundation already in place and ORIENTED THE WRONG WAY!!!

And yet he stayed in town, doing fill-in work in the local university until the mill's construction was completed.

Then going to work in the mill for the rest of his career, never looking back.

He met my mother in that town and was a faithful husband and a good father to his only and most precious, child - me.

It took me a while to wrap my head around all that, and I haven't blipped for a while until I could. I think even though I have some more recent pictures to put up, I'll put them in a temporary folder and leave this one for a while in case somebody might notice it - as a tribute to my dad.

He was a good man.