Diane Becker

A task force has been set up to design a new Nebraska state flag, as it's often rated among the nation's worst. It's not very artistic — just the state's seal in the middle of a large blue expanse. Nebraska needs something unique, something easy to recognize, something that represents our history and can be drawn by a child. I nominate the depiction of a windmill to be our new state flag. Let me explain.

Anybody who's lived on a farm in the last century can attest to how important windmills have been in growing agriculture in Nebraska. When you don't have a water source like a stream or pond in a pasture, you've got to do something, and windmills were the answer. Windmills don't need electricity — just free Nebraska wind to pump clean water out of the ground. What can be a better deal than that?

I remember the windmill we had on a pasture north of our farm that pumped the coldest water ever into a long 8-foot pipe, which deposited the water in a huge metal cattle tank. My dad kept a can on a hook nearby to get a cool drink at the end of the pipe before it hit the cattle's water. It would come out in spurts as the pump went up and down. It was the best water to drink for humans and livestock.

Even when many farmers were able to string electricity to the water pump to fill an automatic waterer, they kept the windmills around on their farm places for aesthetics. There's something about the look of the windmill that just says agriculture and goodness.

I'd have a windmill in our backyard, but they aren't especially trouble-free. That's probably why most were converted to electric water pumps. My husband, Tom, greased and oiled his pasture windmill and provided regular upkeep. It's since been replaced by an electrical pump.

The Persians are said to have been the first ones to use a windmill in 500 A.D. to propel boats on the water. Windmills after that were used all over Europe and Asia mostly for grinding grain and pumping water.

The iconic American windmill didn't come into existence until 1854. It was different from the wide stone-base windmills you'll see in the Netherlands yet today. Connecticut farmer Daniel Halladay is credited with the invention of the American windmill design we're all familiar with. His design with the tall tower and four-blade style started out as wooden structures with wooden blades, but by the end of the 19th century had evolved into a structure with numerous steel blades on steel towers.

In 1930, the number of windmills in the U.S. peaked at 600,000, and windmills were produced by companies like Aermotor, Appleton Manufacturing, Fairbanks-Morse and Dempster Mill. There are only about a tenth of those left. We have one of them in our tree line.

Our windmill is from the lesser-known Fairbury Windmill Co. and is missing a blade. The thing with windmills is that a gale-force wind can damage the blades. And it has been victim to other hazards – like the person with a gun who thinks it's fun to shoot at the top of windmills for target practice.

When you ask a young person to draw a windmill for you, they'll most likely not draw a picture of the agricultural windmill and instead will draw a three-blade wind turbine. When we look out our kitchen window to the west at night, we can see the synchronized red blinking of the 81 wind turbines near Petersburg, which is about 40 miles away. There are estimated to be about 539 turbines in Nebraska that produce about 7% of Nebraska's electricity. We're fourth in wind energy resources in the nation.

That's because we've got wind. There's a cool wind map at neo.ne.gov that shows where the highest winds are in Nebraska. We average only about 7 meters per second around Madison, but west of us they're more in the 8.5-meter-per-second range, which makes a difference when you're looking where to put up a million-dollar tower.

But I'm not advocating putting a depiction of the three-bladed wind turbine on any Nebraska flag. To me the traditional agricultural multi-bladed four brace tower is a prettier design. It represents the settling of Nebraska when the first farmers and ranchers needed water on a regular basis — clean, clear water that they depended on windmills to make available to them for their families and livestock.

The windmills that still dot the Sandhills and many farms throughout Nebraska also represent the precious water resource we have in Nebraska, and it represents the wind energy and wind turbines that we're using more each day.

So, Gov. Ricketts, when you're looking at the proposed designs that will include lots of different symbols from across Nebraska, take a long look at the humble windmill. It's the ideal design with its symmetrical tower and rosette design. Livestock, corn, wheat, soybeans and the skyscraper-to-Chimney-Rock design you see everywhere are all too hard to draw. The windmill, though, is one of the simplest most elegant representations of the best of Nebraska. Put it on our flag.

Becker writes from Madison.