Windmill Song

February 2006

Settlers of the Great Plains often found that water was harder to get at their new homes than where they used to live. To solve this problem, inventors re-imagined wooden windmills as water pumpers for the Midwest. 

Instead of the giant wheels of Holland's windmills, the American windmills had a smaller wheel of wooden blades that turned to catch the wind. These machines could easily pump water from deep wells. The windmill rapidly became an essential piece of agricultural equipment and a key to a better life in the Midwest. 

The Aermotor, brought to market in the late 1880's, was one of the first all-steel windmills. With a revolutionary set of gears and a carefully engineered ability to respond to the slightest puff of wind, the Aermotor was a reliable and popular machine. It is still manufactured today.

 Dempster was another major windmill manufacturer, and there were many others. Windmills made by the hundreds of competitors in the windmill business can still be seen and enjoyed in the collections of Nebraska towns, museums, and individuals.

In old images of Nebraska, I notice that many citizens of Nebraska's small towns had windmills in their backyards, even into the 1930's and 1940's.

Every ranch child of the Nebraska Sandhills has the windmill's song embedded in his memory. It's a repetitive melody with the tempo set by the wind, a creak and a groan as the mill turns and the sucker rod moves, and an alternating gush and trickle as the water pours out. It was the soundtrack of my childhood.

As the windmill pumped, the fresh, cold water poured out of a horizontal pipe that extended a couple of feet beyond the edge of the stock tank. To get a thirst-quenching drink, we cupped our hands under the water flow and leaned over the tank to drink from them.  It was best not to drink at the moment in the pump cycle with the strongest gush of water from the pipe. That could instantly fill a nose with water.

The overflow from the water tank almost always created a windmill pond. The tank and pond supported a wetlands flora and fauna greatly different from the surrounding landscape. Waterbirds chirped around the edges of the pond. Frogs sang, and dragonflies hovered above the water. 

We had a windmill in the greater yard around our house, barn, and other buildings. Its tank was positioned to provide water to cattle on both sides of a fence that divided two pastures. My sister and I spent hours in my childhood, making aquariums in a quart jar with snails and moss from the windmill tank, and playing around the windmill pond. On a hot day, getting a bit wet was a bonus.

Grandpa Harry Sees had goldfish in the big wooden windmill tank in his barnyard. I think they were large, but probably not as monstrously huge as they seemed when I was little

By the 1960s, electric pumps had taken the place of windmills in the farmlands of Iowa and Illinois. My father had a small business in rebuilt windmill motors from Iowa. He became acquainted with a retired plumber from central Iowa. This fellow drove around Iowa's farmlands, purchasing unused windmills to restore. His son climbed the old windmill towers and helped him get the motors down. He preferred Aermotors, but he occasionally bought Dempsters, too. 

When the rebuilder in Iowa had a batch of windmill motors ready, my dad took the pickup and trailer and hauled them home. I think he advertised them in the local paper at times, but mostly, the neighbors all knew that if they had windmill trouble, Charlie Hill probably had a good rebuilt motor on hand that he would sell them at a reasonable price.

Now sun power is beginning to replace wind power. Solar panels can run a pump, and ranchers don't have to climb a windmill tower to service them. The windmills of the Nebraska Sandhills may fall into disrepair and disuse, just as they did in Iowa and Illinois a few generations ago. 

Counting the Dead Ones

February 2006

I've enjoyed online forums ever since we got a computer and the internet. I've especially enjoyed reading the Ranchers.net Bull Session Forum. Most of its members are cattle ranchers, and most of their conversations and photographs center on the joys and difficulties of ranch work and raising cattle.

I have some knowledge of ranching because I grew up on a Nebraska cattle ranch. My brother and sister-in-law still ranch in south-central Kansas. However, a lot of what I know about ranching is at least a generation old. Things have changed a lot since I was a ranch girl, and ranchers are using new methods and tools. Even on the most remote of ranches, technology advances and knowledge increases.

Some things don't change much, though! I'm reminded of that when I see photos of cows and their newborn calves in the springtime.

Seeing a picture of a mama cow and her baby makes me think of being a little girl, taking a ride through the pasture with my Daddy to check the cows and calves in the springtime. He always referred to those trips through the pasture as "counting the dead ones", which was his way of saying that he was braced for the worst, though hoping for the best.

Memories of a Moon Lake Childhood

January 2006

Aunt Cleona mentioned a coconut peanut brittle in her 2005 Christmas card, and I asked her to send me her recipe. When she sent it, she included several other favorite holiday recipes and a long letter too. Here is an excerpt (and my comments in brackets.)

One thing I remember your Dad talking about is how Freddie Wales came one time and how he [your Dad] liked his [Freddie's] cowboy boots. He asked Mom and Dad for a pair, but guess they didn't approve. Anyway, he said he saved up his money and got him a pair as soon as he could. Never wore anything else after that. Also remember your dad having a pair of black leather chaps.

One time I remember I guess he went to get on his horse or off. Anyway somehow he got his foot caught in the stirrup and the horse was dragging him and someone managed to grab the reins as the horse went to go out the gate or your Dad probably would have been drug to death.

Then he asked me one time when he was here if I remembered Mom frying our pet rabbit for supper and none of us kids would eat any of it. I can't stand rabbit to this day. [This was during the Depression. Cleona continues with a memory of another unhappy childhood event.]

I remember one other time I had an accordion type valentine and I'd got it from my teacher. I'd left it in the window standing up. I came home from school and asked Mom where it was and she'd burnt it.

All them good old days riding horseback to school facing that old northwest wind and so cold you could hear the screech of horse hooves on the snow. Them are some of my memories. Don't regret any, just the way it was.

We were fortunate to have the artesian wells and a tank with a house over it to keep our cream and milk, etc., cold. It would make your arm ache to reach down in that water. It was that cold. We could put a gallon syrup pail of milk in there when we first started to milk and it would be cold by the time supper was ready. Them syrup pails also was our dinner buckets when we went to school.

I remember Dad putting a fence on top of a fence because snow drifted clear over the fence and sheep were walking out of the pen on the drifts. Then it was my job to stay on a horse all day in summer time herding them sheep. One evening I was bringing them in and a coyote came out of the swamp and grabbed a lamb. I got it run off but that lamb always had a big knot on his neck but it lived.

It was also Charlie's [my dad's] job when I was little to keep me in the yard. Of course I'd find a hole and crawl out.

One time I remember all three of us getting spanked. Guess we'd had some spring rain and we all played in the water.

Also remember Charlie getting on his ice skates when the lake [Moon Lake, south of Johnstown, Nebraska] was frozen in the wintertime. We'd probably be going to Grandpa Clark's and Dad would drive on around the end of the fence out onto the lake. I was always afraid the ice would break through. You'd hear it crack. Then we'd pick up Charlie down on the other end of the lake. He'd skate that far.

In summertime, turtles would come out and lay their eggs in the sand along the lake. Then when they hatched, they'd go back to the water.

There was springs in that swamp. We used to fill our water jugs when we were going to the hayfield. In the wintertime, the spring water going out into the lake, when it was so cold, there would be like a fog above the water.

There was flowers that looked like your tiger lilies. In the spring of the year, the carp would come up the creek and you could catch them with your hands. Lots of times we'd see an old mother duck with her little ones swimming in all that water.

It was also Charlie's [my dad's] job when I was little to keep me in the yard. Of course I'd find a hole and crawl out.

One time I remember all three of us getting spanked. Guess we'd had some spring rain and we all played in the water.

Also remember Charlie getting on his ice skates when the lake [Moon Lake, south of Johnstown, Nebraska] was frozen in the wintertime. We'd probably be going to Grandpa Clark's and Dad would drive on around the end of the fence out onto the lake. I was always afraid the ice would break through. You'd hear it crack. Then we'd pick up Charlie down on the other end of the lake. He'd skate that far.

In summertime, turtles would come out and lay their eggs in the sand along the lake. Then when they hatched, they'd go back to the water.

There was springs in that swamp. We used to fill our water jugs when we were going to the hayfield. In the wintertime, the spring water going out into the lake, when it was so cold, there would be like a fog above the water.

There was flowers that looked like your tiger lilies. In the spring of the year, the carp would come up the creek and you could catch them with your hands. Lots of times we'd see an old mother duck with her little ones swimming in all that water.

Cleona also wrote in her letter that her son Lonnie's favorite pie is coconut. Coconut pie was my dad's favorite cream pie, too. On a bread recipe, she noted that it made a good dough to fry and powder up with sugar. This reminded me that my mom sometimes fried bread dough, as a fast way to have hot bread for dinner even though the dough wasn't ready to bake. We all loved it.

Cleona's comments about baking made me think that Grandma Nora (mother of my dad, Uncle Harold, and Aunt Cleona) was probably a baker of coconut pies and a fryer of bread dough, too.

Cleona Mae (Hill) Allen was born on 12 May 1929 in Wood Lake Township, Cherry County, Nebraska and passed away on 10 Jul 2009 at Independence, Montgomery County, Kansas.

In the comments to this post, David Netz, a cousin, asked if Dennis remembered eating rabbit as a child. Dennis answered that he remembered it being on the table, but that he had not eaten any of it if he could help it!