WINDMILL & WILFRID

Vollis and his dad moved houses. They didn’t box up people’s belongings. They transported whole buildings. And bridges. And barns. Each job threw up new problems so the work required a creative mind. In his 20s Vollis was stationed on the island of Saipan in the South Pacific, he was an Air Force staff sergeant. The skills he’d acquired working for his pop in North Carolina were put to use again. Thousands of army uniforms were laundered in a huge washing machine powered by a windmill he’d made from parts of a decommissioned B-29 bomber. When he returned to his home town of Lucama he opened a repair shop. He used scrap from the local junkyard, timberyard and boatyard. He retired at 65 and, never having been ‘the type to sit down and do nothing’, he began to construct windmills, 50 foot windmills. In the mid 90s the man who ‘just built windmills’ became known as an artist. Wilfrid interviewed him for the art magazine ‘Raw Vision’ and bought a small whirligig (windmill). Vollis’s local town, a faded trading centre, has now stopped hosting the annual Tobacco Festival Parade and instead hosts the Wilson Whirligig Festival.

17 Nov 2013