For some reason the song Tangerine came to mind. It was a song popular before I was born but I wasn't aware of it until the movie version of The Bridges of Madison County, starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep came out in 1995. Do you remember Robert Kincaid and Francesca Johnson dancing to Tangerine in the kitchen of her house?
When I moved back to WDM in '84, I lived in a two bedroom apartment with my two youngest children. It was okay, but I had almost always lived in the country and started thinking about trying to find a house to rent outside the city.
One day, on the way to Winterset, I happened across a deserted old farmhouse. There was a gate at the end of the driveway with a "No trespassing" sign on it. I hoped to find out who owned the property and if the house could be rented. A nearby neighbor told me others had asked but the owner wouldn't rent it to anyone.
The covered bridges of Madison County had intrigued me from the time I first saw them in the fall of 1960. When Robert James Waller's book came out in 1992, I was just as big a fan of the romantic story as thousands of others.
Soon the movie rights were sold. It was decided the movie should be filmed in Iowa. The search was on for the right farm house to be used as the Johnson homestead.
When 'Francesca's House' was found and I saw a picture of it, I recognized it immediately. Like so many other times and instances in my life, I wondered: "What are the odds?"
Before The Bridges of Madison County, before Francesca's House, there was this old uninhabited farmhouse. A No Trespassing sign hung on the gate barring the driveway......
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