Where have all the windmills gone

In the Heartland 

Remember the song Where Have All the Flowers Gone? It reminds me of the Kingston Trio. My mom had one of their records.

When I was a kid and my dad took us to Nebraska to visit our grama we used to count windmills to liven up the horribly boring drive. My dad grew up on a farm and he could spot those windmills from miles away. He always beat my sister and me, and won the windmill counting game. Johnny Carson was a Nebraska boy you know.

But there are hardly any windmills anymore, and what few we saw were broken or not working. They're silent sentries, gettin' no love out there on the big, wide, lonesome prairie.

I guess they've been replaced by more efficient electic water pumps. Some towns are fussing over the emergence of the huge turbine windmills. Those are a whole different animal compared to the windmills of long ago.

There's a large scale wind farm near Palm Springs. It does have a beauty of its own, but I also miss the open desert. I remember how the land looked before the windmills were there.

Photo taken 8/22/06.