It is, I later learned, also home to some music festivals for has-been country and rock & roll bands and performers. Last year's festival lasted 4 days and drew over 30,000 people, earning recognition from the Nebraska Rural Development Commission as one of the top 10 community and economic development projects in the state.

I was not in town for any of the music festivals. Until I got to Nebraska I didn't even know there were music festivals at the site of the windmill collection. I made the long and scenic trip to Comstock just to see the windmills.

I'm not going to say I was disappointed, because I was not. But I did think there would be more windmills than this. Something I read in a travel guide written a few years ago said that by 2001 there would be over 100 windmills on the site. There were a few dozen in 2002.

If I was a windmill enthusiast, I would seek out more ambitious windmill displays, like the Shattuck Windmill Museum in Oklahoma. I've never been there, but someday I'll give it a visit.

Windmills are one of Nebraska's more picaresque trademarks, but for the most part they are more functional than artistic. The countryside is marked by hundreds of windmills, each one virtually indistinguishable from the previous.

I would not say that all the windmills are ugly. But their uniformity gets monotonous very quickly.

If I was in charge of Nebraska tourism I would offer subsidies to farmers and landowners who made their windmills a little easier on the eyes. I would also encourage deals between windmill owners and local companies who want to decorate windmills as advertisements for their company. That's how a few of the windmills at Comstock were decorated. I might also solicit artists from around the country to make projects of windmills.

The windmills throughout Nebraska kept making me sing the Dusty Springfield song "The Windmills of Your Mind." That happens to be the greatest hangover song ever written, in case you're ever in need.