The municipality where I live is a suburb of St. Louis. My house is less than 3.5 miles from the city limits of St. Louis. I point this out just to establish the fact that I do not live in a rural area. All the houses in my immediate area are ranch style houses built in the late forties to late fifties. They are single story brick homes with two to three bedrooms; not 100 year old farm houses from a bygone era. Again I’m trying paint a verbal picture showing that there is nothing rural about where I live. So why is it that one day while out walking with my camera I noticed so many houses topped with weather vanes like one would find on a barn out in the country?
Three out of the five weather vanes in this post are roosters and one is a horse. That makes sense to me as both animals fit in with a farm related theme. I don’t get the nautical theme below, especially here in the Midwest. Yes we are surrounded by water in the St. Louis area but it’s the Mississippi, Missouri, and Meramec rivers. At most I’d expect an old river boat, or a Jon boat in deference to the small Meramec River. Even more curious is the small one story brick ranch about a mile east of my house that has a large bottlenose dolphin for a weather vane.
Some pain on the cupola seems to be in order.
When I’m out for a walk I am very conscious of which way the wind is blowing; especially in winter months as I try pick a route were I’m walking into the wind as little as possible. Unlike the typical farm weather vane on top of a two story barn out in the open, these weather vanes are on one story houses, many of them in low lying areas, and most protected by large numbers of oak, sycamore, and sweet gum trees. Very little wind is going to get to them and what does reach them will probably not be able to turn the direction indicators because they most likely have been immobilized by gunk (don’t you love it when I talk technical) and rust that has been building up for the past 50 – 60 years. So if people are truly using these to determine wind direction I think their efforts are in vain.
If I really need to know the wind direction (and for whatever reason I can’t figure it out on my own) I can just look at one of my three or four weather apps. With them I can get more information about the wind (current and hourly forecasts) than I would ever need.
The words buggy whip and carbon paper come to mind. (Oh yeah, and 8-track.)
Thanks for stopping by.
David
It's Complicated 
Never trust weather forecasts! Chuck the wife outside and let her report.
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Fun post! Next time I go for a walk I’ll search the roofs for weather vanes.
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Thank you. I guess it wouldn’t hurt if we all looked up a little more often.
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Nostalgia for our agricultural roots more than function, I’d say. Nautical ones speak more of the owner’s love of boating or the sea. I like them better than 8-tracks, however!
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I was exploring around the WordPress Dashboard a few minutes ago and decide to look at the spam postings it said it had saved me from. Why I looked I don’t know, can’t remember last time I looked. Anyway I found your comment there and immediately “rescued” it from the erroneous and libelous classification. I agree with all three of your statements; however, they still look a bit out of place to me.
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Oh, those dreaded spam folders… thanks for rescuing my comment!
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David this is a neat ideal for shooting and very well done. I think maybe there are so many in your area because it was the taste for time, maybe? Needless I like seeing them wherever they are ….. perhaps a tastes of my time 🤔 . Well the ” buggy whip and carbon paper” is bit before my time taste 🙂
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Thanks John. I enjoy them too, it was just fun to make fun of them.
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