Uncle Cliff Windmill

A One-Eyed Farmer, a Borrowed "Truth", and the Price of Seeing Clearly.

(A borrowed camp-fire story, retold and seasoned in Johan Niemand’s voice)

Now listen carefully, this is not my story.

It was already old when I first heard it, and like all proper camp-fire tales it’s been borrowed, stretched, bent out of shape and passed along with the same respect you’d give a half-full bottle. I’m just the latest oke warming his hands on it.

They say it happened near Kuruman, South Africa. Proper dry country. The kind of place where the soil has the personality of an old taxman...hard, joyless, and deeply suspicious of effort.

The farmer’s name was Uncle Cliff Windmill, because if you asked for him anywhere within thirty kilometres, nobody mentioned his house or his land. They just said,
“Ag, you know… the uncle by the windmill.”

Uncle Cliff tried everything.
Mealies shrivelled.
Squash sulked.
Tomatoes died of embarrassment.

The soil didn’t reject crops aggressively, it simply refused to cooperate, the way some men refuse to dance.

So they lived on canned beans, Springbuck, Rusks and when times were good they added chicken.

After a few years of this, his wife ... a patient woman who had reached the end of patience ... put down her fork one evening and said:

“Cliff, I’m not threatening you. I’m just informing you. Either the beans go… or you go. And because I’m a reasonable and respected woman, I give you a third option… I go.”

Now Uncle Cliff loved his wife.
And he loved his farm.
But beans had started appearing in his dreams.

So he made a decision: he would wean himself off beans ... gradually, with dignity.

That’s when he noticed it.
A wet patch near the windmill.
A cracked dam wall.
Dark soil. Soft. Smelling alive.

He planted cabbages.

For the first time in years, something came up. Proper leaves. Fat little green promises. Uncle Cliff checked them every morning like a man watching calves being born.

Then the steenbuck arrived.

Quiet as guilt.
Polite as a thief.

Every night the sprouts vanished. Every morning neat little hoofprints mocked him.

At first Uncle Cliff tried a scarecrow.
Then the dogs.

Eventually, he reached for the shotgun.

One moonlit night he took five litres of wine — not because he planned to drink it all, but because the night was long and the buck was clever and his trusted dog.

By three in the morning, about a litre remained, and Uncle Cliff’s thoughts had loosened their grip on reality.

That’s when the steenbuck appeared.

He fired.

The moon survived.

The dog ran home, the buck bolted, hit the fence, tangled itself and before sense could arrive, Uncle Cliff decided he’d catch it by hand.

The steenbuck disagreed.

One kick later, Uncle Cliff lay in the dirt, staring at the universe through only half of it.

Hospital.
Doctors.
Sympathy.
And a glass eye...

Back on the farm, nothing felt straight.

He went back to the doctor.

“I can’t see properly,” he complained.

“Well of course not,” said the doctor. “It’s glass. But if you bring me a real eye… we can do something.”

Uncle Cliff shrugged. A positive soul by nature.
“Oh well,” he said. “That’s life. Fifty percent is still halfway there.”

Three years passed. He learned to shoot from the left shoulder. Life went on. They still had to eat. He even found creative uses for the glass eye — watching his beer when he went to the toilet, unsettling his poker playing partners or keeping an eye on the labourers while he napped.

Then came the agricultural show.

One blistering hot day, Uncle Cliff got stuck in the bar... no sense looking at tractors when you can listen to good stories over cold beer. There he met a smooth-talking Pretoria sales rep with a good heart, deep pockets, and one important thing in common.

They both drove light blue 1980 Chevrolet El Camino V6 bakkies.

When the rep left, Uncle Cliff followed him.

“Traffic cops,” he muttered. “They’ll stop the rep first first.”

Ten kilometres from the showgrounds and three kilometres from Uncle Cliff’s farm gate, on a sharp bend, the sales-rep’s El Camino left the road.

And the salesman left the earth, doing selling elsewhere.

Standing there in the dust, hat in hand, Uncle Cliff made a decision that didn’t feel good… but felt practical...

The transplant worked.

The eye was a bit blurry when reading, but Uncle Cliff never liked books anyway. As long as he could aim straight, life was acceptable.

But conscience has long legs, so a month later he went to the scrapyard to buy something — anything — from the wreck.

Starter? Sold.
Alternator? Gone.
Seats? Torn.

Eventually he bought the ashtray and the lighter.

As he left the wreck he said, “poor guy, what a pity”, the manager shook his head.

“Strange case,” he said. “Police still can’t figure out how a man with two glass eyes drove all the way from Pretoria to Kuruman… and only crashed here.”

Uncle Cliff nodded politely.

And somewhere near Kuruman, cabbages still grow — but only when the dam wall leaks again.

---

Fireside Takeaway

Sometimes the land will only give when you stop trying to take.
And sometimes, when you try to see better by borrowing another man’s eye…
you end up seeing far more than you wanted to.

Pass the coffee. 🔥