Harvest View

My 6th Grade Chalk Drawing, Fall 1968
~ Thanks to Mrs. Mitchell for being the best art teacher ever! ~

"Many times we've watched the cornfields
turn from green to gold.
The pattern is familiar as the picture is unrolled,
but every time it happens,
it is strange and fresh and new.
Never does the eye grow weary of the harvest view."
This little poem dates back to those years when every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter my mother ordered the holiday issues of Ideals Magazine. How we kids loved pouring over the vintage drawings and nostalgic poetry, much of which we memorized not so much from trying but just from reading and re-reading so many times.

Year after year, we awaited the moment -- usually a few weeks before the actual Christmas decorations came out -- when Mom would take out the cardboard box in which the Ideals were stored. Even now, my siblings and I can describe to each other every vivid detail of the unforgettable shiny covers. The quaint outdoor scenes of villages and haywagons; the lush seasonal still - life photographs of golden candles and holly berries are forever linked to our memories of each festive season.

Here is one of my favorites -- the lantern and the bittersweet, with the verse above, unattributed, on the opening page:
Ideals Magazine, Thanksgiving Issue
November 1966, Volume 23, Number 5
Maryjane Hooper Tonn & John H. Hafemeister, eds.