Windmill Lakes

Windmill Lakes was a real place I used to ride my BMX bike to as a teenager in the 1980s, traveling down lonely paths in search of nature. I loved that bike; it had a Redline frame stripped to chrome, a Mongoose seat and handlebars, and sky blue GT rims. I rode to the lakes a lot by myself. It was one of the few places I could be alone and think. In the suburbs, near Hobby Airport, it was about two and a half miles away from my house. I would usually roll a joint before taking the trek to the largest and most secluded of the lakes.

Riding past Windmill Lakes Apartments to a suburban park with a baseball diamond, the secret way into the blocked-off forest trails was through a large slit in a twelve-foot chain-link fence. I would peel it open, slide my bike in, and then crawl inside the off-limits area. It had a spooky vibe on the abandoned, overgrown hiking trails. I had to walk my bike along a winding path to get down to the top of an embankment for a perfect view of the water. Small beaches dotted the side of the lake, only accessible by climbing down a slope while hanging onto exposed roots. I loved going there and getting high. It felt dangerous and cool, like the Judas Priest song “Breaking the Law.”

It wasn’t always fenced-off with ‘no trespassing’ signs. In fact, Windmill Lakes used to be a teenage hangout, an escape from suburbia. Once an abandoned sandpit, an open-pit mine quarry, it was filled with water in the late 1950s, creating an underground recreation area for hippies and motorcycle gangs. Around 1983, the apartments were built, but the other shores were pure wilderness. Teenagers would party there, drinking beer and smoking weed on the small beaches and swimming in the deep water. Sometimes teens would bring canoes and row out above the depths of the lake or to the overgrown mysterious island. A pier once connected the apartment complex with a rickety walk over rotten wood but was worth it for the adventure and not having to brave the swim that others dared. In those earlier times, parties were wild, and the police rarely broke them up. Metal would rock out as teenagers swam in the shallows and tanned on the shore. I was one of the lucky ones who experienced the scene before and after its fall—after the bad things that ended it with police tape and a chain-link fence.

There were some drownings, but the incident that shut it down was legendary. Handed-down stories change with every retelling. I believe this one is no different. The story began with some teenagers hanging around and drinking in the sun as usual, with a few of them swimming and fooling around. On a dare, one teen swam out towards the island. About halfway there, he got close to a canoe where some dude was chilling with a couple of pit bulls. The splashing water upset the dogs, and they jumped in and attacked him, thrashing the poor guy in some kind of bloody frenzy. Girls screamed, and everyone freaked out. By the time the cops came, most of the teens had split. The police search even brought in divers, but they never found his body. Since the lake was an old quarry, there were all kinds of caves and stuff down there, deep under the water. I often wondered if his body was still down at the bottom, trapped in one of those caves, when I got high on the banks of the shore.

Once I had swum out to the island, at the deepest point, it became a struggle. A cool undertow pulled at my body, causing me to panic. Fighting it from pulling me under, I closed the distance. I made it without drowning but was nervous about swimming back, so I walked barefoot on the rotten pier and trails to my friends’ chagrin.

How many bodies were in the lake? I pondered each time I rode my BMX bike home. It was a morbid preoccupation I had with death, from horror films to dark music, that I grew out of after my car wreck. All these years later, I still wonder if he is still down there at the bottom of the lake. Even now with most of the trails gone, the memory of the isolated forested lakes from the 1980s crosses time to haunt me.

Dean Cade