Sunday, July 3- Winterset and Des Moines, Iowa

Robert: Sorry to bother you, but I've got a feeling I'm lost.
Francesca: Are you supposed to be in Iowa?
Robert: Yeah.
Francesca: Well, you're not that lost.
  ...The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

     Julie has always been a big fan of John Wayne and his movies.  There was no question in our minds that if we were going to come to Iowa, we were going to stop at the John Wayne Birthplace and Museum in Winterset, just south of Des Moines.  While there, we would probably visit at least some of the famous covered bridges of Madison County, since they were all close by there.

     As we were driving into Winterset, Julie saw signs for our first covered bridge, the Holliwell Bridge from 1880.  We all got out and explored around there, taking pictures and admiring  the view.  Emma even went down to the river below.  Scott saw in the brochure that this bridge was in the movie, and we started it with the misapprehension that it was the most important bridge in the story.  When we learned that it was not, we knew that we would want to visit at least one more bridge before the day was over.

     The John Wayne Museum came next and it certainly did not disappoint.  After Julie posed at the larger than life statue on the outside, we went in to the impressive and relatively new facility.  The gift shop had all sorts of books and memorabilia on the Duke, of course.  The woman who sold us our tickets said she was having a great day because she got to talk about John Wayne movies all day.  We started our visit by watching the 11 minute film. It starts with a message from John Wayne's daughter and the rest is made up entirely of clips from his movies.  The entryway to the theater is designed to look like the front of the Iowa Theater in Winterset, and they said that the seats had come out of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.   Abby was a little restless here, but she wasn't as loud as the guy behind us who was naming all of the films and actors that he recognized, so we didn't feel too bad.

     There are two sides to the museum.  One has a focus on his movie career and the other, more on his personal life.  We knew that we wanted to see the movie side first.  We enjoyed the costume pieces that the museum had on display, with each labelled to the movie it appeared in.  We saw his cavalry uniform from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, his hat and coat from Rio Bravo, his shirt from The Searchers,the famous coat and eye-patch from True Grit, his shotgun from McLintock!, his shirt from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, jackets from The Green Berets, and other such items.  There was a lot of artwork and commemorative items on display.   We were intrigued by how he commissioned coffee mugs for the cast and crew of his movie productions and many were on display here.  While the other wing of the museum focuses on his personal life, there were still quite a few large items from the movies.  Julie liked the two wheeled cart from The Quiet Man, and Scott liked the model of the set of The Alamo and the prop wooden cannon that was used in that film.  John Wayne's green 1972 Pontiac Grand Safari that he drove around Newport Beach in California was the centerpiece of the room.  The station wagon had been modified so that he could slide in and out of it more easily.

     After touring the museum, Emma sat at a picnic table with Abby while Julie and Scott went into John Wayne's birthplace next door.  In May of 1907, Marion Robert Morrison (later known as John Wayne) was born in this modest little white house.  The interior has been decorated with furniture representing what the family might have had in those early years, but they did not spend long in this house.  The family soon moved to California, so he probably had few memories of living in Iowa himself and didn't talk of it much.

     Emma knew that her mom was a big John Wayne fan, but she seemed surprised that her dad liked him too. Scott has noted that he isn't very versatile, but always seems to play the same character-- sometimes dressed as a cowboy, and sometimes dressed as a marine.  Even when he appeared on Laugh-In  in a giant bunny costume, he was still that slow talking, tough character.  But that character is a much loved one and a larger than life one, and one that has made a big impact on American cinema.  Emma might not have been very enthusiastic about the John Wayne museum because of racist statements he made that have recently resurfaced, and it almost felt like his daughter's comments before the introductory film were meant partly to address those concerns.  His co-star, Maureen O'Hara said, "To the people of the world, ...John Wayne is the United States of America.  He is what they believe it to be.  He is what they hope it will be. And he is what they hope it will always be."  Scott thinks that when certain people talk about making America great again, they have this partly-real but mostly-mythical image of America in mind.  It's important to notice that whatever shortcomings John Wayne may have had are probably shortcomings in the rest of America as well. 

     It was getting to be time for lunch, but everything in downtown Winterset was closed on Sunday (including the Northside Cafe, which was featured in the Bridges of Madison County movie) so we couldn't eat there.  We drove out John Wayne Drive and found a Pizza Ranch.  Julie had seen a number of them in Iowa and wanted to try it.  It serves everything buffet-style.  The pizza was only ok, but there was a chance to sample a lot of different kinds and toppings.  Unfortunately, it also meant that if you found one you liked, it might not be there when you went back for seconds.  We had Buffalo chicken pizza and a macaroni and cheese pizza, among others that we tried.  There was also a desert pizza that was like an apple coffee cake.

     Now, we had originally planned to maybe go to Pella today to see the Dutch things there, but we managed to fit that in yesterday (and learned that the shops wouldn't be open on Sunday anyway).  That left us with a big open time today.  We had wanted to see one or two of the covered bridges of Madison County, but now that we had extra time on our hands, we went to see all of them.

     There are six covered bridges in Madison County.  In both the book and the movie, the character of Robert Kincaid (played by Clint Eastwood) was looking for the Roseman Bridge in order to photograph it for National Geographic.  This bridge is the one that gets the most screen time and the most visitors.  It is a few miles southwest of Winterset and was built in 1883.  We got some pictures here, but not as many as at the first bridge we saw.  There is a gift shop near the bridge and Scott bought a copy of the novel, The Bridges of Madison County.  He and Julie had watched the movie to prepare for this trip because neither of them had seen it before, but we haven't read the book yet, either.  [Neither of us really liked the movie because we didn't like the character of Francesca, played by Meryl Streep.  Maybe the book will make her and her actions seem more natural.  We did like the scenery though.]  

     It was a little hard to get to the first two bridges because they lay a few miles down dirt and gravel roads.  They seemed a bit remote, and the dust that we were kicking up behind us was piling up on our back window in thick waves.  The third bridge was similarly hard to get to, but it seemed like each successive bridge on our list was a little easier to get to.   The third bridge was called the Hogback Covered Bridge from 1884  By the time we got to that one, Julie was expressing her disappointment with the bridges over all.  To us, they all looked the same, and we had certainly seen how much they look alike when we mistook the Holliwell Bridge for the Roseman Bridge earlier in the day.   Also, she doesn't think they compare very favorably to the bridges that she has seen in Pennsylvania, partly because they are dark tunnels with solid walls and without windows to look out when you are on the bridge itself.   They are also covered with graffiti, which certainly detracts from the atmosphere.  The fourth and fifth bridges were close together in Winterset.  The Cedar Bridge, from 1883, was in a park setting and it was the first and only bridge that we were able to drive our car right through.  We had to get out and walk if we wanted to get close to any of the others.   Abby liked driving through this one because she likes "Tunnels!"  It is also the bridge that was on the cover of the novel.  The fifth bridge, the Butler-Donohoe Bridge from 1870, is in the best setting, though it was moved there from its original location.  It is in a Winterset city park, so there are playgrounds and other amenities near it (i.e., restrooms, that we needed by then).  We didn't let Abby see the p-l-a-y-g-r-o-u-n-d-s though because we were trying to get her to take a nap by that time.  After doing five of the six bridges, it seemed a shame to leave without heading out of town to the east to see the last bridge, the Imes Bridge from 1870.  It is the oldest remaining bridge of the original 19 that were in Madison County, but since it is not in its original location, it is pretty easy to get to.

     After the bridges, we returned to Des Moines.  Scott wanted to see Harding Middle School.  Every year that he has taught seventh grade and the U.S. Constitution, he has used the example of the Supreme Court case of Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District.  In 1965, young Mary Beth Tinker and a group of other junior high students and high school students decided to wear black armbands to school in order to protest the Vietnam War.  The school had made a rule against such protests and suspended the students.  The students and their families sued the school district on the grounds of a violation of their First Amendment right to free speech, and the case eventually made it to the Supreme Court.  The Court decided in favor of the students.  The Court's decision said that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."   The Court did go on to say that the right to learn outweighed the right to free speech in schools, so if the student protests were interrupting the ability of other students to learn, then the school has a responsibility to stop those protests, but in this case, the black armbands were protected speech and the students should have been allowed to go about their day.  This case was important enough to be mentioned not once but twice in New York's state curriculum for social studies in middle schools when Scott started teaching.  He hoped that there would be an historical marker of some sort, but there didn't seem to be any.  He did get his picture at the entrance of what was then Warren G. Harding Junior High School as a symbol of how the students did not check their rights at the front door.

     It was getting later in the afternoon now, and Scott had been wanting to try an Iowa favorite that we saw on YouTube.  It is a "loose meat sandwich," and it is halfway between a hamburger and a sloppy joe.  There isn't any sauce on it and putting ketchup on it is apparently frowned upon.  The sandwich is known as a "Maid-Rite" and comes from restaurants by that name.  We found one in a mall in Des Moines and Scott gave it a try.  He said it could easily make his list of local cuisines that he would like to have again but that would be difficult to find away from their original localities.  The girls all thought that the loose meat sandwich sounded gross, so after Scott was done, we went to a noodle restaurant for them.  (The guy at the Maid-Rite was nice, though.  He gave Abby two free hotdogs because he was closing up and didn't want to throw them out.)

     After dinner, Scott wanted to see the Iowa state capitol building since we were in Des Moines anyway.  We saw a number of ethnic neighborhoods as we headed there, including an Asian one and a Hispanic one, judging from the storefronts we were seeing.  When we got to the capitol building, one young girl looked like she was getting her quinceañera picture taken on the steps.  Some of the smaller domes had scaffolding around them, but the large central dome was very impressive.  The gold leaf on its roof was brilliant as it reflected the afternoon sunlight.  Next to the capitol, we stopped at a monument that is the state's memorial to the soldiers and sailors of the Civil War.  Scott got some pictures there and commented that the female figure depicting the state of Iowa was unusually suggestive for a war memorial and must have been controversial when it was unveiled. 

     We were not far from our hotel and made our way back so that Abby could go swimming.  It is our last night in Iowa, and we have an early start to get to Omaha tomorrow.