A Basket of Chips: An Autobiography

Basket of Chips, page 136

A Bmket of Chips uninhabited locality will appreciate the joke.* But at the end of the destination we found cones available and the children (*Almost anything can be bought there now, were happy. 1932.)' Every mile of the way had great interest to me as I had travelled that road as a child with my father. I could tell my own family of all the interesting places: "There is where the Indian grave was"; "At the foot of the hill is where my father killed the rattle snake with his lash whip"; "There is the place where a man was stalled and his horses could not budge. My father hitched his mules to the end of the wagon tongue and pulled load, team and all out." It was about a two mile ascent before reaching the point where the ice cream cones were to be looked for and to make it a little easier for the horse, we all walked the distance. There was much joy in that, flowers for Ruth to look for, geology specimens for mamma, and the two small ones on the look out for anything or everything of interest. I kept with the surrey to turn out if other parties came along, and also to urge the horse as he was the one that interpreted any sound from us to mean stop. It was a joyous drive from the point into the Lehi Valley, and to the old home to be given a happy welcome by the family." later after some small business had estab- t. Today this is a major highway (I-15) and in the immediate area. This same highway a small town compared to several neighboring 0 By 1908-1909 the artist's two older children had developed individual traits as subjects for their father's brush, although his interest in the figure was generally on the decline in favor of landscape subjects. Ruth posed for Wonder- hzd (1908) and Mother's Little Helper (1909). These works effectively capture two distinct aspects of his daughter's personality during this period. The first "catches Ruth . . . in wonderland," and it does suggest that haze of day dream via technique and expression. The other is a sharply defined and patterned view of the girl canning preserves in an interior near a window that exposes a lightly and tonally treated landscape beyond (wholly in contrast to the previous picture's firm definition within the room). In 1909 Harwood returned to Europe, and an 136