Thursday, March 6, 2014—Buddy Holly Sings Songs of Windmills

Bear wants to see the Buddy Holly Center. Bloodroot wants to see the Wind Power Museum. Of course we can tour both of these places in an hour. Right? Duh, Jody, make a decision. I decide on the Wind Power Museum as I fear the dreaded ear worms, songs I can’t get out of my head, emanating from Buddy Holly. I can’t bring any Buddy Holly songs to mind but I’m certain that once I heard any Buddy Holly song, it would spin in my head forever. Keith drops us off at the Wind Power Museum and disappears, driving over to the Buddy Holly Center.

At the Wind Power Museum, Bloodroot and I have our own personal guide. We learn that wind brings power—power we don’t think of back East and that windmills have been fundamental to Texans since the first settlements. We find a surprisingly environmental attitude at the heart of this museum in rural Texas, as our guide hugely supports the necessity of wind power in Texan history. “The industrial revolution,” he intones, “has its origins in the mill races used in Europe to grind corn (grain). Grain came first but remember that all ideas and inventions build upon the previous ideas and inventions.”

To wit—in 1606, the Governor of Virginia built the first US windmill, again to grind grain. It resembled a Dutch mill, but while Dutch mills remained stationary this one rotated on a post, spinning about to catch the wind.

Innovation in wind power moved west with the nation. With our near constant wind, windmills could be used to pump water, but never in a steady stream. The water spurts out as the gears spin around, reminding me of a hit-and-miss engine.

Windmills in Texas evolved with tails, looking rather like weathervanes, which would push the whole contraption into the wind. Later tails could fold up or fan out depending on the wind pressure. To catch the wind, a windmill’s blades would rotate a bit on their axes, presenting a larger surface for times of little wind. When the wind became too fierce, these same tails would flatten out the blades entirely, letting the wind pass through. A windmill without the ability to open and close would have blown itself to pieces in the force of the plains’ winds.

We also learned a bit about the first chain of restaurants that sprang up alongside the first trains. Railroad steam engines could travel forty miles before needing more water, leading the railroads built windmill powered pumping stations for water every forty miles. Towns began to grow up around the windmills where the trains would stop. Sensing economic potential, a man named Fred Harvey cut a deal with the railroads and began selling food in chain restaurants at the train stops. He hired women—the young, chaperoned, now famous “Harvey Girls.” Perhaps for the first time, women safely reveled in the freedom born of escaping the restrictions of the East, earning decent money and traveling somewhere distant on their own.

As Western settlement progressed, windmills dotted the landscape. So, we learn, the country grew up with the power provided for free by the wind. We had only to harness it.

I remember dad’s family stories of Williston, North Dakota and his disgust that, “we didn’t even have electric.” But they had two windmills. One windmill pumped water while another on the roof produced electricity on demand for my grandfather’s radio. Family lore avers that when grandfather Andrew switched on the electric windmill atop the shanty, the roof sounded as though it would fly off any second.

FDR brought electricity to the masses via the REA (Rural Electrification Authority). Local co-ops sprang up across the country. Everyone now had electricity and the windmills faded into western dreams. When I picture old farms, I always see a windmill pumping water in the background. Think Dorothy Gale!

Now, of course, we have huge new windmills dotting the land, spinning when demand rises, explaining the silence of so many windmills. The mills start up as needed.

Per Bloodroot "My parents before they were eaten by windmills."

We take some photos of ourselves by the numerous windmills as Bear returns from the Buddy Holly Center, a museum he thoroughly enjoyed. The Center has huge Buddy Holly glasses out front. Many country musicians hail from this area. The museum celebrates the music of Lubbock and west Texas including Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison, Bobby Keyes, Tanya Tucker, Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, the Gatlin brothers, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, and Delbert McClinton. Is there a desperation in the soil that drives so many to the uncertain career of flickering fame? Are there no other jobs? No other way out?

The town constructed the museum in the old train station—in Bear’s opinion, the best repurposing of an old train station ever. I vehemently disagree. “What about the Orsay?” I counter. (The Musee d’Orsay, an amazing impressionism museum, is housed in the old Art Nouveau Orleans train station in Paris.) “Okay, okay,” says Bear, accepting defeat, “the best repurposing in the United States.”

We pile into the car and head north to Amarillo. We stop at the Palo Duro Canyon, our original plan for today. Amidst the endless North Texas cotton fields, a vast Canyon opens. Pearl takes a road that goes down, down, down. “Am I driving to Hades?” the classically trained van asks.

We arrive at the Canyon around 2 PM. At the visitor center, we learn that Palo Duro was the site of the Comanches’ and Quanah Parker’s last stand in 1874. We’ve obsessed on Quanah Parker since reading Empire of the Summer Moon, a most excellent book all about the Comanches. In our travels, we have often sought Quanah, but have come up empty-handed. Here we finally strike gold and read all about his final military defeat, another point in the closing of the western frontier.

Next, the exhibits cover the geography of the Canyon featuring the various rock layers. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t remember a thing.

The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) built the road down to the canyon floor—two companies of blacks and two of whites. The CCC, a famous New Deal program started during the Depression, originally planned to hire 18 to 25 year-old men. Soon the program expanded to include World War I veterans. The men lived in military barracks, obeyed military rules, worked forty hours a week, and attended mandatory education classes.

The Corps built the visitor center into the cliff using carefully matched rock. Today people drive by it unwittingly because it blends so well with the natural surroundings.

Loading ourselves back into Pearl, we leave the visitor center and head for the bottom of the canyon. We cook a picnic lunch. Keith and Bloodroot leave at 4 PM for a 6-mile hike out on Lighthouse Trail.

I read. I watch the sun illuminate different stripes of rock layers, wishing I had retained some knowledge from the visitor center. The multihued canyon changes color suddenly and repeatedly as the afternoon wanes. I wonder if the boys will have enough sense to turn around before night falls. As the evening approaches, the light accentuates the different rock formations.

The boys wisely return around six. They speak of encountering the biggest mass of bluebirds they’d ever seen. They also met a couple lugging plein air supplies to paint out in the canyon, creating beautiful paintings in which they justifiably took great pride. The artists argue between themselves as to whether they found hauling all the supplies worthwhile.

Reunited, we pack up and direct Pearl to our last hotel, this one a mere thirty minutes distant in South Canyon, Texas. Tomorrow, our final feat, we face a seven-hour journey home.