Windmills of Your Mind

Mulder’s Farm, Deuel County, South Dakota

In this drafty shed on an abandoned farm lies this set of blades for a windmill.

Once used to supply groundwater to animals and gardens, the windmill had evidently become obsolete even before the farm’s demise. It was saved, perhaps it had been damaged in a storm, maybe the farmer thought he could rebuild it some day.

That day never came.



Once vibrant fields now overgrown with weeds,
Whispering of agricultural deeds.
The barn poses in a shabby dress,
Its laboring over, it takes a rest.

Rusty plowshares rest in the field,
No longer guided by hands that wield.
The windmill creaks in the restless air,
A sentinel of the past singing there.

A humble farmhouse, abandoned.
Standing in silence, unwanted.
The stone foundation is cool to the touch,
Reminds us of seasons past and such.
A victim of time's embrace,
A portrait of a once-loved place.
What once was real it now seems,
Is just a painting of broken dreams.

The B&B from Hell

20 Years Ago on FITK

In the fifties and most of the sixties, air travel was the province of the well-to-do, with airfares quite high (even compared to today’s inflation-adjusted prices) but toward the end of that era new de-regulations and the rise of low-cost charter flights changed the scene.

So, in the summer of ’73 I found myself waiting to board a round-trip flight to London for the grand total of $168. I had a traveling companion but neither of us had any experience abroad. We waited. And waited. The 7 P.M departure time passed. The new departure time of 11 P.M. passed. As well as the 1 A.M. mark. Finally, at 3 A.M., we boarded, flew into the rising sun, and arrived in Gatwick by late-afternoon. We took the train into London. It was getting late, we booked the only available B&B, “That’ll be the Rowan’s,” the clerk at the lodging placement centre said, with an arched eyebrow. We were so exhausted by then that we would have slept in St. James Park.

We trundled (with luggage) about a mile, finally ending up in a somewhat shabby part of London and found the address. We went to the door and a grim looking woman answered. We explained our needs, and she agreed to let us a room: “Two night minimum, pay in advance.” We agreed and followed her to our ‘room’. When she opened the door, a disheveled drunken man raised his head off the bed. It was a brother-in-law who had just ‘dropped in’. She had another room, and we went in. That one was really more of a prison cell: one high barred window, a bare hanging light bulb, no decorations, two small metal beds with a mattress(?) stuffed with wood shavings covered with a worn sheet and tattered blanket. Oh well, we thought, what are looks—we’ll be sleeping anyway—and after using the W.C. (which really was a closet - about two foot square) we tried to sleep. That was when the choir of watch dogs in the square behind the house began their nightly concert. Then, from the other side of the door, we heard a young girl screaming “Don’t let him touch me! Don’t let him get me!” The landlady's daughter was being molested by her ‘funny uncle’!

Amid this cacophony, we finally, after 36 hours awake, managed to drop off to sleep. We woke early, about 5 A.M. and quickly decided that ANYTHING was better that this. We quietly left without breakfast.

Later that afternoon we actually found a very nice hotel in South Kensington, and spent several days there in a place that was really quite civilized. Since that time, I have spent many nights in B&B's and guesthouses and have found most of them to be wonderful experiences (The Paradise House in Bath is aptly named), but my aspirations of becoming a World Traveler was almost nipped in the bud by THE B&B FROM HELL!