2004 Year in Review

If Windmills Could Talk

I’m not sure what it is about windmills that fascinate me, but they do. Maybe it’s the lonely cry it gives as a gentle breeze blows it around and around of sitting by itself in a cornfield or the comfort it brings of a childhood memory.

Living in town but growing up with the farm (my dad was a farmer) I remember the exhausting hot summer days of baling hay or shelling corn (us kids were on mouse and rat patrol) or building forts and tunnels in the haymow or an episode of our version of cowboys and Indians.

We would run to the pump, grab the little rusting tin cup off of the rusty piece of wire it hung from, never worrying about germs or what kind of creepy crawlies had been in it since the last time anyone had gotten a drink.

Taking turns on who pumped the water and who got the drink. Cupping our hands to catch the water and splashing it on our sweating faces. The memory of it being so cold it almost took your breath away.

This windmill’s job of pumping water is in days gone by. Its surrounding buildings have been long torn down. If this windmill could talk I wonder what memories it would have of kids like me.

by Dawn Zuidema, theCity1.com
December 4, 2004