Winterset is about half an hour’s drive from the airport side of Des Moines, and there is a choice of routes. The most direct route is also the most lovely. Veterans Parkway and mostly Cummings Road glide through the rolling hills and fields of corn unencumbered with traffic. I don’t think I passed more than a handful of vehicles. And I am reminded that Iowa is not Kansas. Not flat. Not the home of wheatfields. Grant Wood, painter laureate of the Iowa landscape, presented her as voluptuous Gaea, fecundity, placid, languorous form. It is only in the machinery and occupants that the masculine intrudes.
Covered Bridges
Cedar Covered Bridge
Winterset anchors Madison County, which was made famous for its bridges by a saccharine novel (1992) and an equally cloying film (1995). I entered town through the Cedar Covered Bridge. The road in reminded me of the pilgrimage route to the memorial to Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens and pilot Roger Peterson. Wild flowers grow along the roads, flecks of color edging the fields. A dirt track turns this way and that, and suddenly there is a place to stop. It was quiet, the parking area well shaded. The adjacent park welcomes visitors with tables and a grill.
On the other side of the bridge I headed to the Winterset City Park and another bridge. The Cutler Donohoe Bridge, named for the homeowners at either side when it was first built, was later moved here in 1970. The struts and woods inside are a canvas for lovers and Kilroys who would document that they had been there.
Central Casting
County Courthouse
I thought coffee and maybe a treat was in order, and the Garmin I call Portia found a likely establishment on Court Street. What a downtown. Several parks and memorials. Wonderful brick and stone buildings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A community that resembles a set for a small-town love-story movie set in somewhere between 1910 and 1960. The magnificent County Courthouse dominates the town center.
Iowa Quilt Museum
Across the street from the Courthouse is the Iowa Quilt Museum. It is not a collecting institution but for ten years has organized exhibitions of the most exquisite, daring, and inventive works of textile art. This show I saw was the Tenth Anniversary Show and included works from the best of the quilters and collectors who had contributed to past installations.
I fell into conversation with the director. I learned that one of Winterset’s luminaries was George Stout, veteran of World War I and one of the “Monuments Men” who saved so much, so many buildings, paintings, sculptures, decorative arts and more from annihilation by Allied and Axis bombs alike, as well as the depredations of Hitler’s goons who were stealing for an intended museum and for their own homes and sales in dark and dishonest markets. And yet, all the tourists want to see is the house where John Wayne lived.
An Evening with Writers
autographs
A pleasant couple of hours before setting up for my talk on From The Depths: Dyslexia, Bipolar Disorder, and the Triumph of Art. Following my talk was the weekly meeting of a writers’ group. Some gather in the meeting room at the Library, others who zoom in. They kindly let me sit in.
It’s an orderly meeting, participants called on by their chairperson. Each person submits something to read: a new piece, poem, short story, or recent work on a novel or memoir. Anyone with comments to offer offers them. Sometimes critique was pointed; it was never unkind. An excellent gathering.
The Road Home
It was late when I returned to my car. How late I am not sure, but dark. Portia planned the most direct route back to the hotel; still almost no traffic. Still the calm of farms, fields, and hillocks, although the darkness absorbed what lay more than a few feet from the road’s edge.
Into the hotel. Into bed.