Dad came home from work one day with his left hand in a big bandage. He had driven himself to a hospital, where his fingers were repaired by a surgeon. One finger was almost severed but was put back together and ultimately saved.
When I was young, he worked for West Texas Lumber Co. in San Angelo, the local Aermotor Windmill dealer. Later he worked on his own. Ranch owners for miles around knew he was the man to call if a windmill needed repairs or replacement from the 1930s into the ’80s. The cattle and sheep had to have water.
My brother and I are firmly convinced that no one man installed more windmills than our father. He was still climbing the contraptions after his 80th birthday and after he sold his business.
Working on these machines was dangerous, even for a professional. Windmillers free-climbed and stood with a helper on a platform—untethered—as they made their repairs.
Aermotor windmills pivot on a vertical mast, with all the weight sitting on a washer inside a small cavity just under the motor. The motor has to be lifted a few inches to replace that washer.
To lift the windmill, with all the weight of the mill and the sucker rods, a chain is tied to the push rod and the tower and then a helper has to turn the wheel by hand and hold it.
Dad always had to have a helper, of course, and I was usually his helper in the summertime and over Christmas breaks.
There were days when we would load the pickup in San Angelo with the parts of a new windmill, the rods and pipe, sand, gravel, cement—everything needed for installation. I remember once when we drove to a new well on King Mountain, south of Odessa, assembled the tower and mill, raised it up with the pickup, dug the anchors by hand, and had it pumping water before sundown.
But I wasn’t Dad’s helper that fateful day south of San Angelo.
On that day, the chain must have slipped, allowing the weight of the rotor assembly to smash his fingers. He didn’t say so, but what else could it have been?
There was something else he didn’t mention until a few days later.
His helper had reacted to the sight of the blood and started to pass out. Dad reached out and grabbed the man with his right hand to keep him from falling off the windmill platform.
I don’t know just how the issue was resolved from that point, but I do know this: While Dad’s left hand was trapped, he saved a man’s life that day with his right hand—the day he came home with the big bandage.
