This article by Ray Spitzenberger first appeared in IMAGES for August 26, 2021, East Bernard Express, East Bernard, Texas.
Many folks in rural Texas erect Texas-style faux windmills on their property to give their homestead a rustic, country look, though some do have the real thing that actually pumps water for the cows. Whether faux or real, there is something about a Texas-style windmill (which looks like an oil derrick with giant fan blades on the top) that I love!
A few of us are old enough to remember when working windmills were quite common. Many farms in Lee County where I grew up had working windmills, and I was told that years ago at least one local Catholic school had their water supplied by windmill power. In those days, there were more windmills in Texas than in any other state.
No doubt, that’s why we call them “Texas-style windmills,” but, ironically this style was “invented” by Daniel Halladay in Connecticut. So the “Texas” windmill is really an “American” windmill.
Of course, Halladay didn’t invent windmills per se, as wind-control machines have been around in Europe for centuries and used in Asia before that. The European-style windmill was brought to Texas by Dutch and German immigrants and were very different in looks and operation from what later became American windmills. The fact that the Dutch and German windmills were so cumbersome and needed constant maintenance motivated the “invention” of the American windmill. The European windmills had four gigantic (about a hundred feet) “sails” or blades attached to an octagonal hut, a tower, or a roundhouse.
Probably the two most famous windmills in the world were located in Paris, — one faux and one real. The Moulin Rouge (Red Windmill) is a faux windmill that still stands near Montmartre in Paris; the Moulin Le Galette (Pancake Windmill) was also called “the Moulin Blute-Fin,” but I don’t know if that one still stands or not. Toulouse-Lautrec made the Moulin Rouge famous, and Van Gogh helped make the Moulin Galette famous.
The Moulin Rouge was built by Joseph Oller as a cabaret in the shape of a windmill because Oller was apparently nostalgic about the working windmills once so common in Montmartre. So it was never a “real” windmill. It first became famous for giving birth to the Can-Can. Toulouse-Lautrec was hired to paint posters to advertise the Moulin Rouge, posters which were later acclaimed as great works of art, thus increasing the fame of the already famous cabaret.
Vincent Van Gogh, a Dutch artist living in Paris, and a friend of Lautrec’s, preferred going to the Moulin Le Galette for evening entertainment. The Galette was a real windmill, still in use as a mill, but also serving as a cabaret for the working class. Poorer families went there for cheap entertainment, — to dance, to drink, and to eat the galettes (pancakes) the windmill-cabaret became famous for.
Lautrec, the son of a French Count, could afford the bar bill at the upscale Moulin-Rouge. Van Gogh, on the other hand, who sold no paintings in his lifetime, had to live on the meager allowance his brother sent him. It seems a bit ironic that after he died, Van Gogh’s paintings of Moulin Galette nightlife became so valuable they could have bought all the cabarets in Paris. Yet Van Gogh loved the pancakes at his special pancake house, and he loved the humble folks who came there.
The concept of the windmill changed very dramatically over the centuries and is still changing. You don’t have to travel very far in Texas to see lots of yet another kind of windmill. Huge turbines with aerodynamic blades are now seen, helping Texas to produce energy. ERCOT reported in 2017 that wind power accounted for at least 15.7 percent of the electricity generated in Texas. This is not what we used to mean by “Texas-style windmills.”
The ancient windmills in Europe and Asia were quite different from those still in use today, and I’m sure Europe and Asia are now building wind turbines, too. From milling grain to pumping water to generating electricity, just by harnessing the power of the wind, how the face of the windmill has changed!
-o-
Ray Spitzenberger is a retired WCJC teacher, a retired LCMS pastor, and the author of two books, Open Prairies and It Must Be the Noodles.