The Windmill seemed to tower above us at the time and it was rickety looking. I wanted to climb it like the man in my dad's picture, but I never did. I don't remember if it's because my mother put the fear of God in us or if I was too scared too. I don't remember being scared of much in those days, so it must have been forbidden. But wouldn't that have made it all the more tempting to a rambunctious tomboy? Uncle James' house was a small white wooden structure, and the water was drawn from a well on the property and stank of sulphur. Don't think we fetched it with buckets or anything. It came from the tap, I'm not that old. Visits were filled with good homemade food, I remember fried chicken and white gravy, banana pudding, cream corn and lots of lemon to make the smelly water palatable. We ate gathered around the warm sunny kitchen or on the occasion that more than one of my uncle's sisters were visiting we would disperse. Some wandering outside to eat on the kitchen steps facing the windmill. Others into the living room to eat perched on the western style couch with wagon wheel printed cushions that faced the old telephone cabinet (the kind where you talk into a trumpet shaped mouth piece and hold the cone to your ear) on the joining kitchen wall or maybe in one of the chairs next to the west wall that was littered with finds. I remember seeing, what to me, was a huge rattle from what must have been an enormous rattle snake that had been found on the ranch.
Uncle James has been employed for the same rancher in Prosper, Texas for my entire life, and I suspect at least 20 years prior to that. That job almost killed him once, and he still has a knot on the side of his eye that bears witness to the accident. My memory of those days is fuzzy and old. If my recollections were a photograph they would be the faded tin-type made more romantic by the passing of years. I can't tell about those days without telling of my uncles brush with death. This is how I remember the accident.
I was in elementary school when my mother got the call. In my family you didn't leave kids with the sitter. My cousins, Kelley and Deedee, were our sitters. So we all packed into the car. Most of the time it was my mom and dad and my aunt Emma and Uncle Stan along with my sister, me, Kelly, Deedee and their brother Gene, so there was never enough room in the car but we didn't notice it was togetherness. We drove to the hospital where my uncle lay, his sun leathered face slack with sleep. His tan hide wrinkled by the elements and age a dark contrast against the crisp white starched linens of his hospital bed. I had never seen my uncle in anyting but jeans and long sleeved pearl-snap shirt. The paper gown they placed him in turned him into a stranger, a man that was still and weakened, not the heroic cowboy that wrangles cattle and rides horse back through the blistering Texas sun day in and day out. What had happened to bring down such a figure?
In the nature of our family we were gathered there, my fallen uncle and his 11 remaining siblings, the adults talking in hushed tones. The children, knowing better than to make noise or otherwise be noticed, strained their ears to catch a whisper of what had befallen our Uncle James. To my child's imaginative mind and my adult's embellished misremembering, the incident was thus: durning the night a howling storm came up. Lightening cracked the blackened bruised sky as swollen clouds dumped their torrents of rain, and the wind blew the falling moisture driving it into night like a thousand sparkling needles. My uncle was there a pale figure outlined in the flashing light of the storm. Rain dripping from his cowboy hat, his muscles strained against the wet shirt sticking to his lean torso as he held onto the rope that was attached to the wild-eyed horse who had been spooked by thunder. The horse reared, it's cries muffled by the screaming wind and booming thunder. The animal began to thrash about creating chaos in the rain. Finally, lashing out and kicking the rain glittered pipe fence, James was taken by surprise as one of the rails which had become loose spun on it's axis hurling itself with a wet sickening thump like a hammer to watermelon into my uncle's temple.
The force of the blow knocked him unconscious and dropped him into the marshy mud of the corral. He was brought from the wet cold thundering darkness into the too bright and deafeningly quiet hospital room where we were all scared and worried. A blood clot in his head was the biggest concern, but men of that caliber don't let a little thing like a head injury stop them. Tough as boots he is.
I mentioned he still works for the ranch. I don't think he will ever quit. He isn't a man that works a job. He is a cattleman, it's a life style. As an adult, I don't get to visit with my ma's family like I did when we were younger. Infact, the last time I saw Uncle James the passing of time coupled with my growth and the lack of seeing one another confused our meeting. He didn't remember which one of Beatrice's kids I was until I said, "It's me, Amber Dawn". I'm sure to him, I'm still a scruffy, dirty tomboy. I miss those days, the simplicity of life. The goodness of being together. The screechy sound that windmill made when the breeze would slowly spin it on a lazy summer afternoon.
The photo at the top of the page, inspired this reminiscence and it's hard for me to chop the story up, because those days were years of my childhood but they stretch out in my mind like one long hazy summer afternoon. Growing up, we didn't have money. I grew up in a trailer. We took vacations to visit family spread out all over Texas. My uncle James' house was only one of many stops. Another frequent family adventure was to my uncles Stan or Boddie's dairy farms in Sulphur Springs Texas. The old windmill is a symbol for me of the simple happy life we led growing up in the country. It's a reminder of my family, who I am and where I'm from.
The picture at the top, was taken of an old windmill remarkably like the one in the picture that my dad still has and the one that still stands in my memory, but it was in a field littered with the new-age windmills. This prompted me to think: What quaint fond memories will those trigger? Is some kid going to look at the photo below in 20 years and say: "Once when I was little a most respected and beloved uncle had one, and it forces me to remember the laughter and innocence of being a child."
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