My Turn: A familiar feature of the rural landscape remembered

By Hank Reeves
   The opening scene, or should I say sound, in the movie “Once Upon a Time in the West” will bring back a flood of memories to anyone who has ever lived on a farm that had a windmill. I recognized the relentless abrasive sound long before the camera showed its source, a windmill which, much like the Tin Man, was crying for a drop of oil. Without periodic maintenance, all windmills suffered this malady.
   The windmill on Brookdale Farm is gone now. It was one of the last remaining mills in Burlington County, or New Jersey, for that matter. One thing’s for sure — it was one of the tallest. A construction crew came with a crane and took it down in a couple of hours. There was no sympathy shown by the wrecking crew; they did not think about this old wind catcher that started pumping water for the house and barn over a hundred years ago.
   As I watched this above-ground burial it occurred to me that I had been around this windmill since I was 11 years old, 62 years ago. And with regret, I realized I never took a picture of it. The image in my mind is of a steel structure some 70 feet high, topped off with a 9-foot rotary fan of blades directed by a huge rudder to keep it wind-ward. At the 40 foot level there was a water tank which provided a strong water pressure and was big enough for a man to stand up right inside it. The tank was replaced with a new one in the late forties.
   The huge rudder at the back of the rotary blades was a victim much like road signs across the country, in that it was used as a target, as evidenced by all the rusting bullet holes. Marksmanship was not required in hitting it because of its size. If you shot from the back of the house, the distance was far enough from the mill that there was a pause before the 22 long rifle was heard hitting the rudder.
   Two-inch square sections of wood connected the fan gears called a motor to the pump. It ran through the water tank and was attached to metal guide strips all the way down. On one corner support was a 3-foot handle with a wire in the middle that turned the mil on or off. The wire ran from the ground to the top of the mill.
   Once in a while someone forgot to turn the windmill off. This resulted in the tank overflowing 50 feet in the air. When this happened, the cows enjoyed standing around under the mill on a hot summer afternoon as the cool water sprayed down from above. But forgetting to turn the windmill off almost caused a catastrophe when it overflowed one winter night and the water froze from crossbar to crossbar all the way down to the ground. It was a miracle the tons of ice did not topple the windmill over, but left bent metal as a reminder. Checking the pumping status of the windmill became part of the day’s ritual after the milk house was washed.
   A severe drought in 1957 caused the farm’s surface wells to go dry, which necessitated having a deep well dug. The old windmill which served the farm for over half a century stopped pumping water.
   With the mill no longer in use and in disrepair, the raccoons found a home in the tank by climbing up the foot square wooden chute that enclosed the pipes. Somewhere along the way the wire broke that turned the mill on and off so the fan ran continually.
   I climbed as high as the tank a couple of times with a colony of wasps coming out on one occasion, but my acrophobia was the reason I could not go to the top.
   With no one to lubricate the mill’s working parts and with no way to turn it off, a rhythmic screeching soon developed which could be heard every time the wind blew. You could say it was like a cry for help.
   After several of the blades fell off it exposed the metal ring, which allowed a couple of turkey buzzards to take up residence, perching on the mill each morning. This definitely was a sign the end was near. The fan no longer turned and a strong wind caught it causing it to bend the top 20 feet of the tower over much like an old man who can no longer straighten up. Funny how you don’t think you will miss something but find you do.
Hank Reeves is a retired district insurance agent and registered representative who grew up in Chesterfield and is a resident of Columbus.