Are You Finish?

Paris, Texas

December 10, 2019

While I was taking photos of the Eiffel Tower today, I volunteered to take a photo of a fellow who was trying to take a selfie. We started talking and turns out he was passing through on his way to Texarkana. He is from Finland and travels around the world doing maintenance on paper mills. But not general maintenance; his specialty is the ”winder” which is the last step in the process where paper is wound on spools to be shipped elsewhere for processing. He described to me how a paper mill works - essentially big machines doing a lot of cool stuff. Each mill has its own power house which uses wood waste as fuel to generate electricity and steam for use in the plant.

He told me the story of the real Eiffel Tower. How it was built for a world fair and was intended to be only up for a year. But that the French army began to use it as an antenna and well, it stayed up.

Can anyone confirm the veracity of that story?