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Milling Around is "Fascinating" Job for Oakton Teen From Monday through Saturday, he's Kevin Gawthrop, senior at Oakton High School. But on Sundays, he steps back a century or two to be Amos Gawthrop, boy miller and journeyman at Colvin Run Mill Historic Site. "My friends say, 'You work in a mill? What do you mean mill?' And I have to explain that a mill is where grains are ground into meal," said the 18-year-old from Vienna. "I want to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering, but this way, I can always get a back-up job as a miller," he joked. That was never his ambition; it all happened by chance. Kevin was looking for a summer position at Nottoway Park, but the seasonal slots there were already filled, so when he learned of the opening for a part-time "dusty" at Colvin Run, he decided to give it a try. And Miller Mason Maddox is so glad he did. "From the start, Kevin recognized that the mill has its own rhythm when it is running properly. He would ask things like 'Didn't the mill just speed up?' That's a signal that the grain is close to running out. And I realized I may have finally found an apprentice worthy of learning how to operate the mill." Kevin spent a season as a dusty. "His main job was to clean like crazy in the morning, carry the grain into the mill, take a fast lunch break and race back to watch the mill grinding out several hundred pounds of meal that would have to be bagged for sale -- mostly by Kevin -- and stored away. Then it was clean like crazy again, as he swept up the meal that had been scattered by the process and spread thinly throughout the entire building," Maddox explained. With spring came increased responsibilities and the opportunity to start running the mill on his own. "And that was a great honor," noted assistant site administrator Ann Korzeniewski, "because Mason doesn't let anyone else touch 'his' mill." It also signaled a promotion, from dusty to journeyman miller. "That's someone who can run the mill but isn't quite ready for a mill of his own - although he's getting there," Maddox noted. "After eight years of trying to find someone who could put up with the job and who had a true thirst to learn about the machine and its history, I was beginning to think it was an impossible task, but thankfully, Kevin proved me wrong." "I didn't think he'd noticed," said the teenager, obviously pleased with the compliment. On this particular morning, dressed out in trade shirt, waistcoat and broadfall trousers (reproductions of a 19th century workman's clothing), Kevin has just finished cleaning grain in a fanning mill. "Any business man of the day would have worn this," he said of the old fashioned outfit. "It was the 19th century's equivalent of the three-piece suit." He might be just the tiniest bit uncomfortable with the clothes - "Dressed like this, I stopped at Wendy's once, and boy, did I get wide-eyed stares!" - but not so with the work. "Fantastic!" is Kevin's assessment of his old-fashioned job. "It's a great thing to be able to see something happen, to watch it go from process to product. You run your car every day but you have no idea what's going on under the hood. Here you can see it. And I love the gears!" Kevin concluded. "The mill is the beginning of everything that's mechanical today."