Well yesterday I was sitting and bored so I decided to go for a bike ride. Couldn't think of where to go and it was lookin like storms possible so that made me nervous to go too far. Then it popped into my head, my buddy Rusty and I had always talked of going to the American Gothic House. Then he passed away 3 weeks before the plan to go was to be put into action. So I decided to go there, rain or shine, for him. When I got outside to start getting ready I felt a few sprinkles and was like well, this will be fun.
Here I am listening to my ipod waiting to see if the rain will pick up or not.
Said screw it and took off
Well, I was having a blast riding down, I had a spot of sunshine all around me the entire trip down, everything else cloud and looks for rain... Crazy eh...
Well here is the house when I got down there!
Now just to the south west of the house is a welcome center so I went in and got a warm welcome from an older gal. She told me a lot about the painting the people and the house. Here's what I remember. The artist, Grant Wood, was visiting the area and saw the gothic window on the house. He actually sketched it onto a napkin before heading back to wherever he had come from and then mulled over it for a while and then decided to do a painting. The older gentlemen is actually his dentist, he reassured him that the painting would look nothing like him and no one would even recognize him. They had a picture of the painting on the west wall, and one of the two people on the south wall...they looked identical, so the dentist told Grant he would have his revenge in the chair... Now the younger lady in the painting was his niece, the picture was mis-interpreted and everyone thought it was a husband wife, and its supposed to be a father daughter relationship on the farm. The reason they look grim, in that time the exposure time for camera's took so long smiles were not allowed as it would blur the image. There were a few other tricks he did that made the people less grumpy, I remember one of them being the hair behind her right ear on the left side of the painting, it was meant for a certain meaning but its slipping my mind. They had a display of other things in there so thats the following pictures.
This is the closest portrait they have of the original. Oak frame and all. The original is at the Chicago Art Museum.. So thats my next goal, to see it.
Now they had a walk way up to the house that you can take your picture at, but no motor vehicles allowed so I was bummed, couldn't get my bike close enough for a pic. Also found out during my second convo that they are actively trying to rent the house out, that they believe it is better maintained with someone living there then empty where the critters can then invade and ruin the house. I never got a quote for /month rent. During this decided to say, it was his dream to have his bike's picture taken by the house and wanted to see if I could, they said only stipulation is you couldn't ride could only push the bike there. I was game!!!
Another crazy moment..just as i was starting to push the bike to the oval spot, the clouds seperated and really let the sun shine, so as you can see in the pic, it got really bright. They offered to take a picture with there own camera also and print it for $2 so I jumped on that and took that copy to work.
Riding to this point was a great ride.
From here I decided not to back track but instead rode up thru Oskaloosa into Pella, stopped and got some dutch letters, then rode home. I was on such a high that I forgot to take any more pictures.
