Coronado's Helmet
There is a Spanish conquistador that watches us from the neighbor's roof, day and night. I never see his face, it's always hidden in shadow deep beneath his helmet. But I know he is watching me.
All of the fireplace chimney stacks here have a metal cap that pivots with the wind to prevent downdrafts in the flue, and to keep rain out.
They are shaped like flattened cones with a vane on top to catch the wind. Every house has one. The one sitting atop Frank and Joan's roof behind us is a constant, swiveling presence above our patio. It moves in the slightest bit of air, making it seem as if the concealed face beneath the helmet is always watching, watching.
In 1540, when Franciso Coronado came through New Mexico, his Spanish soldiers wore these helmets, called morions. The English called them pikemen's pots or kettle hats.
It's uncanny how similar the chimney caps look to a morion. Not only in shape, but in their constant movement, as if there is a live soldier in there, ever vigilant. When the vane turns the cap to directly face us, I feel spied upon, then the vane turns again and he looks away. Then back at us, the face always hidden in deep shadow. It's really weird.
In daytime sun glints off the metal and sends bright flashes into our living room, constantly signaling something urgent.
Jim uses the rotating helmet as a wind vane, to see which way the wind blows and predict rain. For him it's a handy piece of meteorologic engineering. But I can't help but see an inscrutable, silent, Spanish conquistador watching me all the time.
(It can't be an accident that chimney manufacturers in the southwest designed this thing the way they did for pueblo style houses, right? It just looks too much like a Spanish morion -- a fraught symbol in New Mexico -- to be an engineering coincidence. You can google rotating draft caps for chimneys all day, and no one has this helmet design. I've looked it up. Really.)
All of the fireplace chimney stacks here have a metal cap that pivots with the wind to prevent downdrafts in the flue, and to keep rain out.
They are shaped like flattened cones with a vane on top to catch the wind. Every house has one. The one sitting atop Frank and Joan's roof behind us is a constant, swiveling presence above our patio. It moves in the slightest bit of air, making it seem as if the concealed face beneath the helmet is always watching, watching.
In 1540, when Franciso Coronado came through New Mexico, his Spanish soldiers wore these helmets, called morions. The English called them pikemen's pots or kettle hats.
It's uncanny how similar the chimney caps look to a morion. Not only in shape, but in their constant movement, as if there is a live soldier in there, ever vigilant. When the vane turns the cap to directly face us, I feel spied upon, then the vane turns again and he looks away. Then back at us, the face always hidden in deep shadow. It's really weird.
In daytime sun glints off the metal and sends bright flashes into our living room, constantly signaling something urgent.
Jim uses the rotating helmet as a wind vane, to see which way the wind blows and predict rain. For him it's a handy piece of meteorologic engineering. But I can't help but see an inscrutable, silent, Spanish conquistador watching me all the time.
(It can't be an accident that chimney manufacturers in the southwest designed this thing the way they did for pueblo style houses, right? It just looks too much like a Spanish morion -- a fraught symbol in New Mexico -- to be an engineering coincidence. You can google rotating draft caps for chimneys all day, and no one has this helmet design. I've looked it up. Really.)
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| None of these look like Coronado's helmet |
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