We skidded to a stop along Hwy 83 beside a dry arroyo just east of San Angelo, Texas, and turned off the car. “I don’t know if I can do this,” I told my wife.
Turning to look at her, I saw that they had taken her also, as her eyes turned like little boat propellers. “We’ve got to press on,” she said.
Everything was going great; we were admiring the rich West Texas countryside, enjoying the gray rolling hills dotted with mesquite, creosote, and scrub oak, the rocky ridges, and the dry basins. Then we topped a hill, and far into the distance we saw them: the huge, spinning windmills, looming starkly in the mist like something dropped from an alien ship.
It was no big deal at first. They were just there, something foreign in that otherwise bucolic scene, though without menace. The closer we got, the stranger we felt.
“I can’t stop looking at them,” said Rose.
“Me either,” I said.
We went on, those looming monstrosities pulling us forward all the way, when finally I told her, “They’re making me dizzy.”
“They’re making me sick to my stomach,” said Rose. “And I’m getting a headache.”
We agreed to quit looking, but it was little use. The closer we got, the larger the windmills became and the more of our attention they commanded.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said, but was saved by a declining river basin whose far side shielded us from the spectacle. But as they climbed out of the basin, there they were again, more magnetic than ever.
We had so much riding on the trip. Having canceled our plans to go to Europe, we knew we had big shoes to fill. Then some friends from church invited us to San Angelo, and we realized, “Who needs Europe when you have the expansive U.S.?”
Now the windmills were putting it all in jeopardy.
I pulled back onto the road and we tried to ignore them, making it finally to the other side, where we thought we’d put the blasted things behind us.
But as we settled into the first meal of the trip – the exquisite and authentic Armenta’s Cafe – I found myself stumbling over my words in conversation with our new friends. I chalked this up to road fatigue, but then Rose grabbed my hand on our ride back to the hotel, her eyes turning like wagon wheels.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
“It’s your eyes,” I told her.
She admitted that she’d not quite found her equilibrium yet, and I confessed the same. Nor did I sleep well that night, my dreams haunted by modernist nightmares of computers, watches, electric cars, and windmills.
I told her about it at breakfast the next morning.
“I don’t feel the best either,” said Rose, “but can’t we still have a good time?”
“I thought Texas was different,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, more like us. I thought the leaders of the state had more sense than this. It just doesn’t seem right. The Republic of Texas and … windmills? Do you know it costs nearly five million dollars for one? Do you know how many families and businesses could be helped if they didn’t do stupid things like that?”
We drove to the state park to clear our minds. There were no windmills in sight, but I was still dizzy at times, and it wasn’t easy keeping the car on the road.
“Are there windmills in the park?” I asked the ranger, who ignored me, stamped my ticket, and hurried us on.
We walked around unsteadily. It was the same beautiful landscape, but there was just no wildlife, and every time I closed my eyes, I could still see those dizzying windmills turning like something terrible coming for us all.
“This is great,” I said out loud, “But where are all the animals?”
“They’ll be here in a minute,” a voice behind us said.
It was an old Texan, his face with seams like dry riverbeds, eyes ancient and green as the Concho River. He told me about the park’s bison, how they came out every day around this time, and how it was his favorite thing to look at them. He’d been coming for years, and would likely be doing so till he died. When I asked him if he grew up here, he smiled and said: “You might say that. My ancestors go all the way back to the Alamo, and before that, they were from east Tennessee. Way back yonder they were Scotch-Irish, but I don’t know a whole lot about that.”
The bison were slow in coming, so we kept asking him every question we could think of; then I couldn’t help telling him about the windmills.
He chuckled. “They call them turbines,” he said. “They make us all sick. In fact, there’s a better way in and out of here, so when you head back home you won’t have to see those damned things at all.”
Suddenly there was movement across the fence, and when I turned, a huge brown blob was making its way from behind a clump of creosote. It came and lay beneath a tree just across from us and we stood there watching its mythic head, its prehistoric form.
“I’ve never seen one this close before,” I told him.
“After all these years, I still love being around them,” he said.
As crazy as it sounds, this was all it took. In short, those angular, elaborate modern contraptions were simply no match for the beauty and power of the divinely created order, and when we left the park that day, Rose and I had our equilibrium back.
I didn’t get the man’s name, but it doesn’t matter, for in a very real way his message wasn’t from him, it was from Texas itself: “Texas is Texas, so don’t let the windmills fool you.”
We saw jackrabbits, chased roadrunners, and our friends took us to an amazing place called M.L. Leddy’s, where we were fitted for our own custom-made cowboy boots. We can’t wait to go back again, but I can tell you this: we won’t go the way of the windmills. And if Alabama ever tries to bring them here, well, they’ll have one heck of a Texas fight on their hands…
Along with his father, Allen Keller runs a lumber business in Stevenson, Alabama. He has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and an MBA from University of Virginia. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to [email protected].
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