Chapter 255 The Covered Bridge’s Lost Dream
“That’s it?”
Emily looked at the wooden bridge.
The vermilion bridge looks a bit old, perhaps because it has just rained and the river water is a bit turbulent and turbid.
"Minghua, is this bridge special? There are many in Iowa." Emily talked about history.
Iowa is a famous granary in American history, with more than 90% of its arable area.
In the fertile fields of Madison, there are rivers crisscrossing the rivers. To facilitate transportation, early people built wooden bridges on large and small rivers. Wood is prone to decay. In order to protect the wooden bridge body from rain and wind, people added roofs and side walls to the wooden bridges to form covered bridges.
"What's the name of this bridge? I'll go and have a look." The girl ran to the bridge and looked carefully at the words engraved on it.
"It's called Rossman Covered Bridge, Minghua." The girl said loudly to him.
That’s it.
This is the covered bridge in the famous American movie "The Covered Bridge".
"Covered Bridges" is adapted from the novel of the same name by American writer Robert James Waller. It tells the story of Francesca, a housewife, who meets a photographer from National Geographic magazine during a four-day trip with her family. After a brief romance, Francesca broke up with Robert Kincaid painfully because she was unwilling to abandon her family. But her love for Kincaid haunted Francesca for the rest of her life.
The movie became a hit, and actress Meryl Streep was nominated for Best Actress at the 68th Academy Awards.
Both this novel and this movie have caused a huge response in China. Although the movie has never been released in China, pirated copies have always been seen.
"Minghua?" The girl looked at Fang Minghua driving on the bridge in a daze, and couldn't help shouting.
"No, it's nothing." Fang Minghua woke up from his memories.
The bridge is not long, only 200 meters. The two walked back and forth on the bridge several times and took a few photos, but it lost its original freshness.
"Minghua, shall we go to dinner?" the girl said.
Fang Minghua nodded. It was almost twelve o'clock and he was hungry.
As soon as the two got off the covered bridge, Fang Minghua saw a funeral procession. They were holding wreaths and scattering paper money. They were wearing black suits and had a small white flower on their chest, but they didn't look at it. to the coffin.
The two of them stood on the side of the road and watched curiously. They saw the group of people walking to the bridge. The leader of the group, a young man, was holding an urn in his hand. When he opened the box, the ashes were scattered on the bridge. He looked sad and had something in his mouth. Talking about something.
But Fang Minghua couldn’t understand him because the other party’s accent was too strong.
“The young man’s mother passed away, and he was paying homage.” Emily next to her whispered: “According to our Christian custom, father and mother died one after another, and the tomb should be buried together. I don’t know why he wanted to Where are the mother's ashes scattered by the bridge?"
"Perhaps there is someone whose mother's soul is bound to her by the bridge, so she is willing to be with him after death?" Fang Minghua said lightly.
Emily glanced at Fang Minghua in surprise, but said nothing.
The two of them drove into the town of Winterset without staying here longer.
The town was very small, with only one street. The two of them drove to a stop in front of a small restaurant on the east side of the town, got out of the car and walked in.
The restaurant is also very small, with only three tables against the wall. An old man with a beard is sitting at the bar, bored. When he sees Fang Minghua and Emily coming in, he immediately greets them warmly.
Speaking English with a strong local accent, Fang Minghua couldn't understand it, but with Emily here, everything was no problem.
Emily looked at the menu and ordered. Not long after, the old man came over with two plates full of food.
The staple food of American cuisine is just these few things, several combinations of meat, cheese, bread, and two glasses of cold beer to take away.
But in this small restaurant, Emily also ordered two barbecue corn on the cob - this is a specialty of Iowa.
Fang Minghua picked up one and tasted it. It tasted pretty good. It was probably baked in the oven, and it doesn't have the aroma that comes from being directly thrown into the fire back home.
Perhaps Fang Minghua's yellow face made the old man curious, so he chatted with Fang Minghua and the others with his huge beer belly.
"Are you Japanese?" The old man tried to use authentic American pronunciation.
“NO.”
“Korean? Taiwanese? Xiangjiang people?”
“NO, I am from mainland China.”
“Chinese ? ” The old man exclaimed, looking at Fang Minghua in disbelief, but the next words made Fang Minghua dumbfounded.
"I heard that you Chinese all wear the same blue clothes?"
"No, no, that was in the past. Now the clothes we wear are very bright, just like what I wear." Fang Minghua explained.
The old man has no ill intentions. In the eyes of ordinary American people, this is how China is.
It can be said that the Chinese understand the United States much more deeply than the United States understands China.
Fang Minghua didn’t want to talk about this issue anymore, so he changed the topic and said, “Just now we saw a funeral procession at the Rossman Covered Bridge, scattering urns beside the bridge. What happened?”
"Oh poor Widow Karen, her death is so pitiful!" The old man sighed and immediately started talking.
It turns out that Karen’s husband died of illness twenty years ago. She took her two children with her and never remarried until the children were brought up.
“Not long ago, Karen suddenly suffered from a sudden illness and passed away. Before she died, she asked her son that she would not be buried with her husband after her death, but that her ashes would be scattered by the Rossman Bridge. We don’t understand this.”
“Yes, why wasn’t she buried with her husband?” Emily interjected.
"Karen is a devout Christian." The old man replied, suddenly lowering his voice and looking mysterious.
"I heard that Karen had a lover after her husband died. They were seen dating by the Roseman Covered Bridge. But the man was a tourist from afar. After staying for a few days, he left quickly."
"Karen missed him, so after his death, he asked his family to scatter his ashes on the Roseman Covered Bridge as a mark of remembrance."
Emily was silent after hearing this.
After hearing this, Fang Minghua felt a storm in his heart.
Isn't this the story of "The Bridge of Lost Dreams"?
It’s just that the heroine Frances in the novel had an affair during marriage, while the protagonist of this story is a widow.
Of course, from a novel perspective, marital infidelity is more story-telling.
Could it be that the author of "The Lost Dream on the Covered Bridge" also wrote this story after hearing it?
Fang Minghua doesn’t know.
Before he came to this era, he had seen some reports on the Internet, saying that Waller, the author of "Covered Bridges", passed through Madison County for work. On his way home, he drove his car through sparsely populated areas. The road was lined with tall cornfields on both sides. After crossing several distinctive bridges, Waller, who was driving alone, suddenly had an inspiration. During the rest of the journey, he made this idea in his heart. The draft of a novel.
It only took half a month to write this novel, which became popular throughout the United States, and the bridge became famous as well.
However, it is somewhat ironic that Waller went from an unknown writer to a millionaire. He left Iowa, where he grew up, and moved to a house in Texas. farm. Soon after, he divorced his wife of many years.
I am here today to write this novel.
(End of this chapter)