Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories,
Speaker 1: and we tell stories about everything here on this show.
Speaker 1: And now it's time for a look back to a
Speaker 1: device that helped win the West. He used Jesse with
Speaker 1: the story of Windmill.
Speaker 2: You can drive just about anywhere in America and find
Speaker 2: windmills if you're looking for the old metal ones you
Speaker 2: see in paintings of Texas to the Midwest, from the
Speaker 2: novelty lawn ornament variety for under one hundred bucks to
Speaker 2: the towering vintage water pumps accenting skylines next to barns
Speaker 2: or pastures and cornfields, fully restored or in beautiful decay,
Speaker 2: working or not, these giant relics of Americana aren't just
Speaker 2: for decoration, and the West couldn't have been won without them.
Speaker 2: Out of the mid eighteen fifties, salesman John Burnham and
Speaker 2: machinist Daniel Halliday came up with the basic design that
Speaker 2: we would recognize today with the Holiday Windmill Company. It
Speaker 2: was relatively lightweight, nimble, It could swivel so it was
Speaker 2: always facing the wind, an angle its blades to just
Speaker 2: for speed to avoid damage and strong winds. Automatically, families
Speaker 2: and farms were able to pump water and store it
Speaker 2: in tanks anytime the wind was blowing.
Speaker 3: Right around the turn of the century. Between the eighteen
Speaker 3: hundreds and the nineteen hundreds, there was over six hundred
Speaker 3: windmill companies in the United States.
Speaker 2: Tanya Meadow is with the American Windmill Museum in Lubbock, Texas.
Speaker 3: The American Windmill Museum was started in nineteen ninety three
Speaker 3: by a lady who was a teacher at Texas Tech
Speaker 3: University and mister Kroy Harris, who is still our executive director.
Speaker 3: This building houses over one hundred and ten windmills. We've
Speaker 3: got windmills in here from as big as six foot wide,
Speaker 3: which is the diameter of the wheel. How we measure
Speaker 3: a windmill up to twenty five feet wide in diameter.
Speaker 3: The old steam engines could only go fifteen to thirty
Speaker 3: miles before they had to stop for water, depending on
Speaker 3: the terrain. You look at our little towns out here
Speaker 3: in West Texas, fifteen to thirty miles down the road,
Speaker 3: there's a little town probably sprung up there because that's
Speaker 3: where the railroad had to stop in order for them
Speaker 3: to be able to get water for the steam engine.
Speaker 3: So there was a major relationship between the railroads and
Speaker 3: the windmills.
Speaker 2: The windmill pumped the water to power the steam engines
Speaker 2: on the trains of the first transcontinental railroad out west.
Speaker 2: There's only one company that stood the test of time
Speaker 2: and continues to build them right here in the good
Speaker 2: old USA.
Speaker 3: And that would be the Air Motor Company. The Air
Speaker 3: Motor Company started off in Chicago, Illinois, laid eighteen hundreds
Speaker 3: and then in the nineteen fifties they were purchased by
Speaker 3: a Texan and the plant was moved to San Angelo, Texas,
Speaker 3: where it still is today. And they still make windmills today.
Speaker 3: Your larger ranches still use windmills. It's so much easier
Speaker 3: to put up a windmill for under twenty thousand dollars
Speaker 3: than it is to try to run twenty miles of
Speaker 3: electrical line in order to be able to pump water
Speaker 3: for your large ranches. And the Four Sixes Ranches a
Speaker 3: big one, they actually have a full time windmiller. One
Speaker 3: of the reasons that the air Motor business is still
Speaker 3: in business today is they were always thinking what can
Speaker 3: we do to make life easier? What can we do
Speaker 3: to make life better? They were one of the first
Speaker 3: ones to create what was called the power mill, and
Speaker 3: the power mill would have been a different gearing system
Speaker 3: on a building outside the barn or one of your
Speaker 3: other outbuildings, and inside underneath there would be a grinder
Speaker 3: so that they could grind their corn and their wheats
Speaker 3: in order to be able to have their flowers in
Speaker 3: order to do their breads and grains. They also were
Speaker 3: one of the first ones to enclose the gearbox. It
Speaker 3: has an oil reservoir underneath it and a big bonnet
Speaker 3: on top of it. And they said that you only
Speaker 3: had to oil your windmill once a year. Now that's
Speaker 3: a major time saving as opposed to having climb up
Speaker 3: there three or four times a day and put oil
Speaker 3: on the gears.
Speaker 2: Many of the windmills that dotted the path out west
Speaker 2: were rendered obsolete by the nineteen thirties as electric and
Speaker 2: diesel powered trains took over the railways. Once electric pumps
Speaker 2: became popular, windmills on farms went neglected and began to
Speaker 2: break down over time without proper maintenance. But some people
Speaker 2: like to get these old wind pumps working again, like
Speaker 2: Rick Ritter Saint Jacob, Illinois. He restored his flint and
Speaker 2: whaling brand windmill that's been standing on the family farm
Speaker 2: as long as he can remember.
Speaker 4: I just thought it was so cool. I never got
Speaker 4: to see it run till I was forty something when
Speaker 4: I fixed it. It always stood out here on the
Speaker 4: farm and never got used. It had weeds, vines, morning
Speaker 4: glories climbed all the way up to the top.
Speaker 5: Probably nineteen ninety. I started cutting vines at the bottom,
Speaker 5: and eventually, after all everything died on it, I was
Speaker 5: able to pull it all off, all the vines that
Speaker 5: were grown around it. I had an old guy tell me, said,
Speaker 5: you need to get those vines off there, because what
Speaker 5: will happen during a heavy windstorm with vines and stuff
Speaker 5: on there blocking it.
Speaker 4: The wind will take the whole thing to the ground.
Speaker 4: So he said, basically, even need to get the vines
Speaker 4: off of it, or else you're going to be out
Speaker 4: there with a cutting torch cutting it up. And I
Speaker 4: just a whole I just didn't want to lose it.
Speaker 4: I thought it was just a neat piece of history
Speaker 4: to have standing here, So I cut the vines, pulled
Speaker 4: it off. Took me years to get that done until
Speaker 4: we got it all taken down, which I had a
Speaker 4: cherry picker come in and take it down, and it
Speaker 4: stayed on the ground for a year while everything got
Speaker 4: repainted and refinished on it. I think they bought it used.
Speaker 4: Nineteen twenty six is the year on this one. It's
Speaker 4: been standing here since I was a kid. I never
Speaker 4: got to see it.
Speaker 5: Run at all till I was still.
Speaker 4: Actually I restored it. I must have shot pickup truck
Speaker 4: load of twenty two caliber bullets out here and whatever,
Speaker 4: And for some good reason, I just never shot holes
Speaker 4: in the windmill. Most windmills you see, if they aren't
Speaker 4: destroyed from wind damage or whatever, somebody's blowed holes in them,
Speaker 4: and especially in that crown that's on top of here.
Speaker 4: And once you blow holes in that from the bottom
Speaker 4: up especially, water gets in the top, gets into the
Speaker 4: gears and bearings, rusts, its solid, and it's pretty well junked.
Speaker 4: That's the way a lot of these got ruined was
Speaker 4: bullet holes. Basically. The other way is you would run
Speaker 4: them completely out of oil and let them spin, because
Speaker 4: what will happen. You'll get a big windstorm come up,
Speaker 4: it'll spin all the bearings in narrowill get really hot,
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden it will lock up in
Speaker 4: the inertia of that spinning windmill, will wide this thing
Speaker 4: up like a ball. Put it on the ground once again.
Speaker 4: A torch comes out and you're gonna end up hauling
Speaker 4: it away a scrap iron. So I always liked it
Speaker 4: standing here and just didn't shoot at it. And when
Speaker 4: the weeds grew up, I pulled the weeds off of it,
Speaker 4: and then eventually I fix it.
Speaker 1: And great job as always to Jesse and my goodness.
Speaker 1: There's an American Windmill Museum in Lubbock, Texas. And a
Speaker 1: special thanks if you're ever driving through, stop eye the
Speaker 1: windmill story an important part of American history. Here on
Speaker 1: Our American Story, this is Lee Habib, host of Our
Speaker 1: American Stories, the show where America is the star and
Speaker 1: the American people, and we do it all from the
Speaker 1: heart of the South Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't
Speaker 1: do this show without you. Our shows will always be
Speaker 1: free to listen to, but they're not free to make.
Speaker 1: If you love what you hear, consider making a tax
Speaker 1: deductible donation to our American Stories. Go to our American
Speaker 1: Stories dot com. Give a little, give a lot. That's
Speaker 1: our American stories dot com,