I couldn”t help but admire Josh, my neighbor. Joshua Farnsworth is no great shakes as a farmer, but he has a razor sharp perception. Only a great mind like his could have seen a way to make his invention of a wind powered truck even better. The original idea was something special, but Josh never rests on his laurels.
“The blades of the windmill are 6 feet in diameter. They aren”t big enough to catch enough wind,” he said.
By this time, the neighbors watching Josh work on his invention had gone home to feed the pigs or the chickens or whatever errands they had. I stayed. Josh sat on his stoop on his back porch while he thought about it.
“I need a bigger windmill,” finally he said, brows furrowed with the effort of a great mind.
Next morning I dropped over. We had fried eggs again, (which his automatic egg delivery system had dropped into the kitchen). Then Josh and I drove in his wind powered truck to Curley”s junkyard. We sped along at a steady 3 miles per hour ignoring the catcalls and curses from the drivers of the long line of automobiles and trucks that collected behind us on Highway 20.
“What I need is sheet metal,” was the first thing he announced to Curley when we got there.
Curley”s big blue eyes opened wide in his round pie face. Moving slow because of the 300 pounds of well fed lard Curley carries on his short, fat carcass (Curley loves the extra-large pizzas from Hamlin”s Pizza Palace across the road), he took us out back where the sheet metal was. Pizza is what Curley has for lunch along with two or three Cokes and a sugar bear claw or two for desert.
“This here sheet metal might be good for windmill blades, Josh. I”ll cut it up for you on my cutter. How big you want the blades?”
“Make ”em big. Here”s the pattern,” he said.
He gave Curley the pattern. He had marked it out with a Magic Marker pen on five of Bruno”s Grocery shopping bags taped together.
“That pattern”s twice as big as the other ones. The blades will give me a 12-foot windmill. They should give me the power that I need for sure.”
In his garage, Josh took the old windmill apart. He welded the new larger windmill to a 12-foot angle iron tower. The taller tower had to clear the ground with the bigger windmill fan. You may speak of your men of genius but they can”t hold a candle to Joshua. Josh used what he had on hand to tie it all together; that old standby and the farmer”s friend, hay baling wire. Every farmer has tons of wire for baling up his hay around Labor Day each year.
When Josh was done he said, “Now let”s see what she”ll do.”
(To be continued).
Gene Paleno is a writer and illustrator living in Witter Springs.
