The Windmills of Your Mind

In those first days when every chimney sprouted a television antenna, people thought the gray aluminum appendages were discordant notes in otherwise pleasant architecture. My grandmother remarked that folks complained about telephone poles when they were new on the scene.  If you think about it, telephone poles are unbeautiful. We’re so used to them we’ve learned to look at the landscape as though they weren’t there.  

Now it’s windmills.  They’re large, sometimes huge, and pretty hard to ignore.  There’s one in Plymouth that stands before the graceful line of the Pine Hills, and it’s not getting good reviews.   I wonder if the Dutch, or for that matter the Cape Codders, ever  thought those early windmills with the canvas sails were a blot on the countryside.  They were necessary and designed for function rather than esthetics.  Perhaps they got in the way of the view. 

I’m taking what may be a minority stand on windmills.  They remind me of modern sculptures moving slowly and gracefully.  I like to think of power coming from the wind, which is going to blow anyway.  I’m pro windmill.

Antique windmills are a popular motif in oil paintings and those that have survived are admired by sightseers.  The tall, fan-like windmills that pump water on the Great Plains are symbolic of rural America and have become the subject of knickknacks sold in gift shops.  Perhaps today’s giant windmills will be thought picturesque, but they’ll have to become scarce first.

We can imagine an era when another power source displaces wind, and the controversial behemoths are one by one dismantled and sold for scrap.  As their number dwindles there’ll be committees of citizens who want to preserve those that are left.  Like lighthouses they’ll be seen as quaint.  Tourists will admire them for their sleek functionality.  Cameras will snap, or whatever cameras do in that future time.

Progress

He was a figure of fun as fogies often are.  From boyhood he’d learned his skills – how to put on the harness and hitch up the horse, how to doctor it when it was ailing, how to attach the feed bag.  The automobile required a different routine.  You had to choke it, crank it, throttle it, shift it, and break it.  You had to adjust the spark.  His hands knew how to slap, tug, and twitch the horse’s reins, but the steering wheel was something entirely new. 

Accessories for the horse and wagon included saddle soap to make the leather subtle, barn cats to keep rats and mice out of the oats, and a pick to pry foreign matter out of the hooves.  A curry comb kept the animal looking spiffy, and of course from time to time it had to be shoed. 

He might call the car Dolly or Nell, but he couldn’t stroke its warm velvety nose or bring it a knobby apple from the barnyard tree.  The iron tires of the wagon didn’t get a puncture and have to be changed on a wet day.  With an automobile you had to check the water in the radiator and the oil in the crankcase, the gas in the tank, and the car didn’t know the way home from the tavern late at night. 

On the other hand it was faster.  You didn’t have to feed and water it or muck out its stall on days you weren’t using it.  It wouldn’t spook at a windblown sheet of newspaper.  If the car was wrecked, it might have to be towed away, but it didn’t need to be humanely shot. 

The automobile was what our great grandfathers called progress.  It’s a word you don’t hear much these days, although technology forges ahead.  I’m thinking these thoughts because I have a new computer, and my old version of Word won’t work with Windows 7.  My mouse used to go smoothly to the button I wanted, but for now I have to search the cluttered tool bar.  I feel awkward and unskilled.

When I got my first computer with Windows I mourned my small, but hard won collection of DOS commands that had been made obsolete by drag-and-drop.  I don’t miss them now.  On the day I got this new computer I learned that there’s already Windows 8, but 7 will do.  When it has to be replaced I’ll regret having to adapt all over again. 

Mental challenges keep the old synapses firing and provide exercise for the brain. Naturally we resist.  Fogiedom is often about letting go, but it also requires accepting the new.  We grumble, but we soldier on.

Rainbow

As I drove to Vermont dark rain splashed upward from the pavement, streamed from passing trucks, and made driving an anxious chore.  I could detect the presence of fall foliage, ghostly in the gray dimness, but I concentrated on the traffic made semi-visible with each wiper stroke across the windshield. Forecasters predicted fine weather for the day we were to return, but we awoke to noise of downpour. Scrubbing plans to wend southward on country roads, we grimly hit the Interstate.

As we went along there were intervals between the showers, and flashes of sun ruined my right to grumble that we hadn’t seen it for the entire time. Mostly it rained.  But then we passed a valley veiled in mist and drizzle, but brilliant with sunlit autumn color and arched by a rainbow. I contemplated this splendor for a one-second glance to my right as I held my lane at sixty-five miles an hour.  There was a rest area coming up, and I pulled in, hoping for another look, but it was surrounded by dripping forest and afforded no view.

But the moment was enough.  Time is a peculiar dimension.  We all know it flies when we’re having fun, and drags when we’re faced with a wearisome chore, but in this case the fleeting glimpse stayed in my mind as though I’d wandered for days through an enchanted vale.  In fact it’s surprising how soon we become bored and turn away from the most spectacular vista. Beauty starved, I took the vision in, and it is with me now.  It’s good for fogies to remember that quality of life is as important as the duration thereof.