A windmill stands in a field west of Winchester on Rt. 50. It is perhaps the last of its kind in the county. Such windmills were once a common sight. In the frugal economy of small farms in the days before rural electric power, the windmills supplied power to pump water for livestock. Guided by a rudder blade, the spinning fins faced the wind and would slowly turn even in gentle breezes. Some windmills were attached to small electric generators instead of water pumps, and these generators in turn were attached to a bank of batteries so that the power generated could be stored for later use. At night after the wind died down and the land was dark, a few simple lamps would brighten the household.

In this way, facing the winds of change the windmills helped farmers make the transition from the world of oil lamps to electricity. About 1920 my grandfather worked as a country mechanic. From the back of a Ford pickup truck and a wooden box of tools, a portable forge, handpowered drill press, anvil, and vise, he drove the back roads welding wagon tongues, mending gate hinges, sharpening saw blades, mending leather drive belts, and repairing windmills and generators. I think he knew where it was all heading. He understood electricity, even ran a small diesel generator and supplied power to a few neighbors long before any rural electric authority strung the first wires or set the first poles. Yet in his own house, the farmhouse of my childhood, only oil lamps and wood stoves supplied our needs. He would not allow electricity in his own house. Even in the mid-1950's when rural electric power was as common as the automobile, we still trimmed the wicks of the lamps and toted the block ice from the wagon that stopped at the farm on Saturday mornings.

New winds are blowing now across the Tennessee Valley and the windmill on Rt. 50 stands still, frozen in the sky as the land and people change around it. It has been left behind in the world it helped prepare for. Local power lines run down the road now and lead out to every house and barn. Enormous regional lines of TVA tower above the trees and fields and carry electricity across the South. In the barns, the stalls have given way to tractors. In the house, the food is more often from the supermarket than from the smokehouse, cellar, or ground kiln. The Mason jars long since gave way to the freezer. This windmill stands in a hayfield, and around this farm there are still many working farms. Along the road, wheat and corn are grown, hay is made, cows are milked, and hogs are fattened for market. Thus it has been here for more than a century.

But next to the farm is a new road, and across the way a new subdivision. Once there were only farms here. Now the farms and the farmers compete for the land. Recreation and household lots generate more money for the county than farming. Each year more and more new houses are build along the roads. And more new people come to live in the houses. The old lanes, the tree-lined shelter belts that grew up naturally from the work of birds as squirrels along the fences that lined the roads, are being bulldozed out as the roads are widened, graded and ditched. The same bulldozers clear out the heavy tangles of the thickets and open the view. A new brick house or two or three are built and flowers planted and drives paved.

In the fields, the bales of hay are mostly round because the young men to hoist the old square bales are mostly gone, casualties of "Credit cards and Camaros" as one farmer said. After high school, the children go to Motlow or MITSU, or UT and then find jobs all over the country. The grandchildren of these families are strangers to the land, its ways, and often to their own kin. Then an old man dies or has a stroke, and after the nursing home, the widow moves to town because it is closer to church. The farm is leased, then sold. The trees in the back are cut, the land sold again, and lots are laid out and streets surveyed. The new houses here will pay for the water lines, the highway department, for the trash convenience center, for the fire hydrants, for the ambulance service, and the sheriff's patrol.

Men born on farms and who lived here all their lives then begin to speak of industry, hoping that some enormous corporation will arrive to create work, keep the young people here, and pay the bills the farms cannot pay. Commissions and boards study our problems, taxes are debated, and problems mount even as the new residents shift more and more quickly away from the values and vision of this land of farmers. Already the dynamic of a new, semi-urban population drives the agenda of tax and election. They want their roads paved and their fire insurance rating low. These new men know where the money is and where the power is and their agenda will not be forestalled. Some of them are our sons. They neither hunt nor plow. The know more about ski boats than mules or tractors. But now the land is theirs. They do not even notice the windmill.