Back twenty years to... Friday, July 28th, 2006. Day 111. A pilgrimage to Lourdes, hubristic propaganda at a Courthouse, a fairly full-on County Show with all manner of overheated livestock – and the so simple architectural backdrop for 'American Gothic'.

"I decided yesterday, considering the extreme heat, and to make-up some lost time, to just drive now, straight to my Iowa 'target town' of Webster City, make the stop, and then get some more serious miles covered. So I’m driving US-20 east once again, through acres of immature corn crop. Maybe three-or-four feet high – somewhat brittle-looking, and a pale shade of brown – it doesn't look so healthy. Surely the rain must come again soon. Occasionally I'll see a field planted with soybeans, with one-or-two much larger corn stalks sticking-up through. Evidence I deduce, that the crops are rotated.

Temperatures are still in the high nineties, but with the humidity too, the heat index is predicted to reach one hundred-and-five by Sunday. I leave Highway 20, and drive the few miles north to my destination. A good haul of snaps in downtown, and I now call into the Chamber of Commerce to cool down. The lady here is helpful, giving me a whole heap of really useful information about the small town. More especially though, is the fact that 'The Hamilton County Fair' is in full-swing again today. I keep the woman talking for quite some time, enjoying the nigh-on freeze of the air-conditioning, before walking out – back into the sweltering outside air.

On reaching the fairgrounds, I pay my two dollars and park on the grass. The makeshift overflow parking-lot is crammed-full with oversized pickups, most of them with the apparently obligatory bale of hay tossed randomly in the back, along with other such necessary 'farming essentials'. So a tour through the various stalls – of shiny groomed horses, blubbery pink pigs, strutting chickens and turkeys, big chunky cattle and naked-looking close-shorn sheep. The animals are mainly attended to by enthusiastic teenagers, and huge metal fans are whirring-away everywhere, keeping the prize-critters as cool as is possible – in the impossible heat.

The final enclosure I visit is surprising. It's filled with oh-so cute and fluffy 'bunny-rabbits', with brightly-coloured toys in their cages. It's quite bizarre. An early introduction for the kids about the rules of 'animal husbandry' – but more especially – of competition, I will hazard to guess."

In Search of Small-Town America: Volume 1 is a free-of-charge Pdf digital download – available from our shop. A table of contents, the introduction, the route-map – and featuring content on the first two States travelled: New Mexico and Arizona.

Jeremy Hammond I am a British writer and photographer, and have travelled through India, China, Southeast Asia and Australia, but most extensively in North America. In the late seventies and early eighties, I worked as lighting crew, and later designer, for many top-named British bands, on tours through Europe, Japan, and the USA. I’ve worked as a cruise-ship photographer, in office and store design, database design, visual arts book publishing and as a London-based freelance photographer, specialising in interiors and architecture.