There on the front page of the New York Times recently, I saw a story about wind turbines twice as high as the Statue of Liberty. And there are 78 of them on the West Texas property of a rancher named Louis Brooks, near Sweetwater, Texas.

Soon, according to the Times, Louis will add another 76 of these windmills for which he is paid $500 each, every single month. That’s a lot of expensive wind.

Such machines, generating electrical power of about 1% of our national need, will soon be producing up to 20% — they are so popular. (Although not with people who think they are unsightly and dangerous to birds, etc. There are violent objections to them in Nantucket and other places, but not in West Texas.)

I had a real connection to this story. Back in the forties, I was in a West Texas college with a delightful roommate named Nita Mae Boyd. She was nicknamed “Tootie” by her father Jack Boyd, who had raised her from a pup after her mother died early in her childhood. This adorable girl was one of the beauties of the rodeo circuit. In time, “Tootie,” or “Dearest Nita Mae” as I always called her, married the World’s Champion Cowboy, one Louis Brooks.

These two, with their “Nudie of Hollywood” custom-tailored western clothes, their twirling lariats and their lore of the cattle country, were my first introduction to fame. They liked to drag me around with them when they rode in panoplies of the Old West, making fun of me as a “tenderfoot,” who often literally just fell off of her horse. I was such a terrible rider that Louis Brooks finally gave me one of his championship belt buckles, saying, “Tex, this one is just for trying so hard.” I still wear it.

After they married, “Tootie” and Louis worked the ranch Jack Boyd had left in the family. They survived the local annual Sweetwater “Rattlesnake Round-up” and tornadoes, thunderstorms, snowstorms and drought, plus the oil boom and the oil bust so common to Texans. They were very much in love and raised a charming family while they were also raising champion quarter horses. They tried to restore their land by not overgrazing it.

Today, the late Louis Brooks, world champ, is immortal in the Cowboy Hall of Fame and Nita Mae, still alive and beautiful, is in the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Fort Worth. She was inducted along with other worthies like Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and is now married to G. K. Llewellyn.

The Louis Brooks in the Times front-page story is her son. Sitting in Manhattan and thinking that the Brooks-Lewallan families will be in financial high cotton once again from wind machines, is one of the most delightful things that has happened to me lately. Life, like wind machines, goes round and round and sometimes comes full circle.