Roger Farnen biked onto Portland’s Broadway Bridge Monday to join the crowd watching demolitionists blow up the Centennial Mills water tower, one of those odd events that, like fireworks or a car wreck, turns hundreds of necks to rubber.
Farnen wasn’t just another gawker. A few hours earlier, the newly celebrated 65-year-old had filed for his pension from ADM, the mill’s last operator, which shut it down in 2000 and sold it to the city’s economic development agency.
Twenty-six years later, Farnen can still feel the heat off its roaring machinery. The pleasant aroma of crushed wheat. The thrum of fans and the clamorous din of a 24-hour operation that made ear protection compulsory for the former superintendent and his crew…