Alas, the closest I got to Francesca was the driveway to her Iowa farmhouse, and the classic old home has been turned into a tourist attraction. I drove on without stopping. During the rest of the day the weather was too perfect for creating great pictures of covered bridges, so all I got were a few postcard-pretty snapshots of these beautiful old structures. There were lots of visitors to the bridges--most of whom had undoubtedly read THE BOOK and/or saw THE MOVIE.

In fact, I encountered one young couple at the Imes Covered Bridge near St. Charles. They were driving a yellow Ryder truck from Boston to California, where they had landed new high tech jobs. On this sunny day they had detoured to see the covered bridges after falling in love with the novel--and each other. The young woman asked me to take their picture together; after the smiling snapshot they drifted inside the bridge to engage in some heavy kissing. I was embarrassed to be photographing during their passionate embrace; then I was irritated that their big yellow truck was parked where it would show up in all my pictures. Soon, holding hands, they walked to the Ryder truck. I thought they were leaving, but instead they opened the back doors of the truck, disappeared inside together, then closed the doors. They should have posted a note saying "If you see this Ryder truck rockin', don't come knockin'!."

So that's how my fantasy of life in small town middle America ends; modern reality intrudes upon our ideals of the past.

I'm sure that Madison County and Winterset are wonderful places to live, but perhaps I got carried away thinking that the simpler America of John Wayne and Red Delicious apples can be a model for the America of today. After all, though I grew up munching Red Delicious apples in the '50s and '60s, I now think they are flavorless. And John Wayne, despite his tough-guy-with-a-soft-heart film persona, no longer is a hero to me. His conservative politics seemed a way to compensate for his choice to make movies rather than serve in the military during World War II. Then he spent the rest of his career playing the tough-guy soldier and cowboy characters that made him a legend. The ideal versus the hypocritical real ...

America today is a diverse place. No longer do we all eat the same types of apples, all watch the same TV shows, or all drive domestic cars made by the Big 3 manufacturers. Times have changed and, for better or worse, there is no going back to a past that might seem better in our hazy recollections of it. Indeed, I'm inclined to think that right now is America's Golden Age. Today we have incredible options; we can choose where to live, what to think, and what to do with our lives. Our current freedom makes now a great period to be alive in America.

For a short time in the 1970s, my wife and I lived in a dusty desert town in Utah; we liked the sense of the old west that still survived there. But when I returned after a two decade absence, the place had undergone a Cinderella transformation, with convenience stores, office buildings, and hundreds of brand new homes where tumbleweeds had once tumbled. It felt like an alien place to me, and it was then that I realized--like the old saying goes--that you can't go home again. The past was a good time, especially in our recollections, but we just can't go back. Nor should we want to.

Winterset comes as close as possible to being a town that still feels like the idealized American home place. I will long remember that one enchanted evening.