Incoherent Scribblings

The Bridges (and Quilts) of Madison County

Hogback Bridge
Originally uploaded by blondelibrarian.

Last weekend was the annual Covered Bridge Festival in Madison County, Iowa. Now if you are thinking, “Hmm… it seems to me I have heard of these Madison County Bridges before,” you would be right. A few years ago (10 or so to be exact) there was a movie that starred Clint Eastwood and Meryl Steep entitled The Bridges of Madison County that you might (or might not) have seen. This movie was based on a book of the same name by Robert James Waller that you might (or might not) have read. (In case you were wondering, I have not seen the movie, but I have read book.)

Now, Madison County had this annual covered bridge festival long before the book or movie ever came out, but when the book was on the best-seller list and the movie was filmed on location (Clint and Meryl apparently even bought places to live in Madison County while they filmed), the festival became heavily commercialized and a huge tourist attraction… And in all my years in Iowa living less than 50 miles from Madison County, I had never attended the Madison County Covered Bridge Festival until last weekend.

On Saturday morning about 10:00 I stumbled downstairs in my blue and green IKEA robe to eat my morning bowl of oatmeal when Mom (who had been awake for a couple of hours) bounced into the kitchen and said, “Let’s got to Winterset today! They are having a quilt show as part of the Covered Bridge Festival.” I had planned a fulfilling day of nothing, but since Mom seemed so excited I decided I could take a shower after all and get my butt out of the house to see quilts and bridges. So I did and a little more than an hour later we were on the road.

With the exception of these covered bridges, the festival is a fairly typical small town festival. The town square was blocked off and full of craft and food vendors selling things at outrageous prices that for whatever reason you must buy and/or eat. And is tradition at these types of things, before we could see the bridges or quilts Mom and I had get our sugar rush by buying very crispy funnel cakes covered in powdered sugar. Once we could face the afternoon we purchased our tickets for the quilt show and covered bridge tour. And because we are always in such a rush to do things, we finally even managed to get the next to the last tickets for the last scheduled covered bridge tour of the day.

While we were waiting for the bridge tour, we went to the quilt show. I think this is the first quilt show I have ever attended and I was totally enamored by all of the beautiful quilts. Each quilt was displayed wonderfully with a little document next to it that not only had the quilter’s name on it, but a story about the quilt. Some were quilts that grandmothers had quilted for grandchildren, but the ones that I liked the best were the ones that had “history” to them: You know, the ones that someone puts together after inheriting grandma’s (or great-aunt’s or great-grandma’s) scrap bag. Someday I hope to piece together a quilt top (actually it is on my 1001 Days list) and this little quilt show really inspired me: I just wanted to rush home and start piecing away!

Finally it was time to load up on the school tour bus and go see the bridges. Our guide was a Madison County native so he gave us a lot of interesting history about the bridges and the surrounding area. As a librarian I was slightly offended that all of the interesting trivia bits he gave concerned the movie instead of the book, but sadly in this day and age I suppose it is likely that more people on the bus had seen the movie than had read the book. Six covered bridges remain in Madison County and all six are on the National Register of Historic Places: We saw four of them and got to get out and walk around on two of them.

It was a fun day and Mom and I considered going back the next day to see the parade, eat more funnel cakes, and finally try one of those pickles on a stick, but it rained and I had to work on Sunday night anyway.