I always envied my grandfather having seen the first airplanes, then having lived to watch all six of the moon landings. During the interim, he saw the age of airships and dirigibles come and go, and delivered newspapers which declared the Titanic had sunk on its maiden voyage.

After my mother and her siblings arrived, he worked for the New York Electrical Street Railway Co., maintaining the power for Manhattan’s trolley cars, and eventually becoming a self-employed electrician. Grandpa told us a story about his mother and father indicative of the changes he witnessed. Reading aloud from a newspaper one evening, his mother told the family, “They say the same electricity that runs the street cars will soon be in our homes.”

My grandfather’s father instantly responded with, “Anna, mark my words, it will never come to pass!” which closed the discussion, because it was accepted that father was always right about these things. To that end, around the turn of the 19th century, my great-grandfather, in his wisdom, also pronounced that nothing was left to be invented, and technology had hit its peak.

For a family outing, my wife, mother and I decided to head upstate to Mars Hill, to see the wind farm. This is the string of 24 giant windmills atop Bare Back Mountain. Each tower stands about 150 feet tall, and the trio of blades cycle about 60 times a minute. To my eyes, they are not unpleasant to look at. The white towers are futuristic, sleek and far less of an eyesore than the common cell phone towers that have popped up like toadstools all over the state. That being said, the towers are not uniformly welcomed by the neighbors, and not being a resident of Mars Hill, I won’t pick at their arguments.

While I was present, all but two of the whirling structures came on line, generating clean electricity from the sun’s stirring of the atmosphere. There is noise. It reminds me of a seat onboard a trans-Atlantic flight, but perhaps not that loud.

Our family once lived directly under the flight path into Bangor International Airport and while military and commercial jets constantly passed over our home, we rarely heard them. It was a sound we filtered out, or simply accepted. Of course, Mars Hill was silent before last year, so the mesh of generator gears may be deafening to those living nearby, at least for now. One home has a sign in the yard which reads, “Honk if you hate the windmills,” which is an odd way of registering a plea for quiet, but again, I don’t live there.

Eventually we met up with a gentleman who was very positive about what the generators do and how they accomplish their purpose. He directed us to a location down the line where we could park and observe the towers at a near distance. One word: awesome.

My mother is 91. With several of her friends, she shares the opinion they arrived in this world at the right time and are making their exit in the right time. She remembers gasoline as selling for as little as a $1 a tank-full during the Depression, then spiraling to affect the price of everything we purchase today. She doesn’t like foreign oil being the lifeblood of the country in which she raised her children. Modern politics and the current war have her down.

But mom was totally engrossed by the windmills. Several times she said, “I wonder what my father would have thought of this.” While we stood in awe, a local couple came by jogging and asked us, “What do you think of those?” I replied, “I think they are great!” His companion quietly shook her head. “You wouldn’t think so if you had to live near them!” he responded, continuing his walk down the road.

Listening and watching, we stood for about five more minutes. As my mother leaned on her cane for support in the brisk breeze, I asked her what she thought of the wind mills. Enthusiastically, but in all innocence, mom said, “I think they’re the cat’s whiskers!”

Richard Glueck of Winterport is a science teacher at the Orono Middle School.