Once, there was a small town in South Arkansas whose entire economy was based on a single industry, a paper mill that employed more than 1,000 workers directly and supported a large number of ancillary employers, as well. The mill paid its workers generous salaries and provided them with benefits packages that would make almost anyone green with envy.

At the same time, however, the mill’s triumvirate of towering exhaust stacks spent 24-hours-per-day, seven-days-per-week belching out a concoction of thick, white smoke and steam that bathed the town – and particularly, the neighborhoods surrounding the mill – in an aroma that could politely be described as unpleasant.

One day – an especially pungent day for mill operations – a boy complained to his father, who had been employed at the mill the better part of 20 years, that the smell was often more than he could stomach.

Read the full story at Steamboat Today.