Back To Boston

One of the vary interesting parts of this trip has been to visit many small towns in this area of the USA. We feel that we have had a interesting insight into ‘Small Town America’.We have come to find that they are all very quaint towns – carefully maintained and very picturesque. This seems especially true of those with any historical significance. At this time of year, with the Autumn colours, they are full of people.

We found this again yesterday in the little town of Stockbridge. This was the home of Norman Rockwell, the famous illustrator. The main street of Stockbridge was featured in one of his famous paintings. Along the street are the Red Lion Inn, a country store, general store and a number of other impressive buildings.

Nearby is a museum showing Norman Rockwell’s work. He was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator whose works were very popular in the United States for their reflection of American culture. He is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine for more than forty years. He is also noted for his work for the Boy Scouts of America; producing covers for their publication Boys’ Life, calendars, other illustrations  His characteurs of children are very lifelike in the way that they represent scenes of everyday life. You can look at them and the think “I can identify with that!”

Along one valley, we visited an apple store and orchard. This one sold real apples and related products. It is the only apple store that I have visited recently that has no iPads or iPhones. It did however sell Macintosh apples – the variety of apple that Apple has named its computers after, because they are the most commonly eaten apple in America, They are nice and sweet, juicy, but not as crisp as the apples that we are used to.

Down in this valley, and looking across the orchard, the autumn colours were right at their peak. It was a spectacular view across the orchards and along the hillside.

We stayed overnight at Springfield, MS and returned to Boston today after visiting the same historic sites at Lexington and Concord that we visited a week or so ago. I noticed one woman dressed in the period costume of a revolutionary marching a bunch of school kids down to one of the monuments. She could have easily made a a good army sergeant.

We are having dinner tonight with my long time friend Ron Hilbink. Ron was VP International of Personnel when I worked at Control Data in the 1980’s. I am looking forward to seeing him again.

Tomorrow afternoon we start the long journey home. We leave here at 4.50 pm with a 6 hour flight from Boston to Los Angeles and then a 15 hour flight to Melbourne.