Stephen Cernek and I have some things in common. We both grew up in towns on the edge of the Adirondacks whose economies were shaped by paper mills — he in Corinth, myself in Plattsburgh — and we both graduated from high school in a turbulent time — he in 1969, one year after I did.

One difference between us is that Cernek has written a memoir of those times. The “Beater Room Boys” describes growing up in a mill town that was undergoing change that no one saw, or chose to see, coming until it was too late. The chronology spans a period from prosperity, when International Paper’s huge Hudson River Mill was cranking out miles of paper 24/7, through decline that was at first so gradual no one noticed, to its abandonment and demolition, devastating the village’s economy, social structure and hopes. The book ends with the author’s unsuccessful attempts to resurrect a sliver of the mill’s remains into a museum showcasing paper-making in Corinth.

Cernek’s frankness is a strength of the book. He’s not above admitting he broke some rules as a kid, or that his high school guidance counselor was lazy and disengaged, or that the Vietnam War, which claimed a couple of his high school classmates, was a stupid mistake. His analysis of the turmoil of the 1960s, with its destruction of so much that was considered sacred in the complacent 1950s — family loyalties, catechism classes, sex and drug taboos — is dead on, no punches pulled. He points out that the company knowingly polluted the Hudson and nobody complained, for economic stability came first.

Cernek is a good story-teller, although he sometimes bogs down in excessive detail. I was not interested in painstaking descriptions of every room in the house where he lived as a child, the son of a mill worker and a housewife. And as in most all self-published books these days, there is sloppiness. Capitalization, punctuation and paragraphing are inconsistent. Repetition is rampant; we are told over and over that forces beyond their control caused Corinthians to witness, helplessly, the slow demise of their largest employer. And one would expect a college professor, which is what Cernek escaped a bitter and demoralized Corinth to become, to know the difference between “sprang” and “sprung” or “lie” and “lay,” but then almost nobody else does anymore, either. We read about the “damning” of the Sacandaga River, and John Lennon’s partner is Yoko One.

Oddly, the title characters don’t show up until very late in the book. They’re kids holding down, and occasionally blowing off, summer jobs in the massive mill’s Beater Room, which is also not defined until near the end — a stifling vault where wood pulp was beaten into the proper consistency for feeding to the enormous paper machines. And the book’s subtitle, “Growing up in an Adirondack Mill Town,” is a bit deceptive, given that Cernek calls Corinth an Adirondack community sometimes, and not one at others. Perhaps he wavers because the Blue Line runs smack down a street through the middle of town. Half of Corinth’s population lived inside the park, with its vexing APA regulations, and the other half outside.

Another difference between Corinth and Plattsburgh is that Plattsburgh had more going for it than just a paper mill. Two mills, in fact, plus county government, a SUNY college, an Air Force base (now gone, to be truthful), a busy tourist industry thanks to Lake Champlain plus Montreal, only an hour away. Maybe the lesson to be learned from “The Beater Room Boys” is, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.