Venerable Lapdog

Remembering The Wind Mill By Jay E. Bates The bushings were busted. The brakes were worn to bare metal. Not what was expected by the frugal farmer who had hand- dug the well, down into the moist earth, laying rock to prevent a cave-in. Then he had proudly erected his new Aeromotor windmill. Is there not respect for what he did to provide water for the horses? I sometimes remember in my youth, the creaks and groans and high pitch screeches of that old windmill pumping water in the wind. I would climb to the top of that old windmill just because I could and I was free to do so. From the top I could see the milk cow pasture, the weeds behind the fence next to the failed silage pit, half full of cow-shit-brown water, and the nearby slough with the sporadic crowing cock pheasants trying to attract a mate.. In my teen years, a fierce wind blew over the high Colorado plains, the windmill shrieked, iron twisted, and the top third of the windmill wrenched over and down to spin no more. The horses were now gone and red barn had starting to collapse unto itself. Yet when the winter winds still blew the crippled windmill creaked to remind us of the frugal farmer and hard working horses of the past.Sometimes large carp came down the irrigation ditch, out onto the fields where we scooped them up and dumped them in the stock tank next to the windmill. They seemed fine there eating the algae on the insides of the wooden stock tank, until with angst it seemed, they would porpoise over the sides to their demise. In winter we would break the ice on the stock tank for the cows to drink. In summer we scooped up more carps from the field to replenish our stock tank aquarium. On hot summer nights we would sometimes go out into the fields near the main irrigation ditch, light a bonfire and listen to the coyotes howling in the distance. Once I told my younger brother to take a gunny sack and wait to catch snipes as I would go out and drive them toward the fire and the awaiting gunnysack. I am sure there are worse ways to spend a hot Colorado evening then sitting alone next to a bonfire with an empty gunnysack listening to the coyotes yip, and sorting random youthful thoughts.