Page "John Clymer" Paragraph 6

: Just before the War II had done my first Post cover, an Alaska inland passage subject with a totem pole in the foreground, U. S. Navy destroyers and aircraft in the background.

On a visit back home, out at Ellensburg, I noticed my young son, David, peering into a hole in an old poplar stump, looking for flickers nests.

It immediately struck me as a good possibility for a Post cover.

So I painted it, sent it in to them, and they bought it, saying they'd like to see a sketch for another idea.

So I began to do a long series of Post covers -- approximately 80 of them over the next dozen years.

My approach was to look for human interest subjects and then try to place them in a proper setting to fit the idea.

Sometimes it would take a long time to bring the two elements together.

One early idea involved a young boy playing in an abandoned auto chassis, but I couldn't figure out how to present it.

Two years later, while driving through Jackson Hole in Wyoming, I noticed some old, rusty farm machinery in the corner of a field.

It then struck me that this was a perfect spot for the old car.

A Western boy would be brought up on horseback riding, but when he spotted the old auto body, he ceased to be a cowboy and was transformed into a hot rod driver.

There was only one drawback about doing covers for the Post.

They went everywhere in the country, and because I picked and painted actual places, there would be several hundred people who lived nearby who'd scrutinize every detail to try to find something wrong.

I had to be sure I knew all about everything included in a picture, and why it was there.

There would always be someone like a telephone lineman who'd write in and say, " I don't think that was the kind of insulator they used in that area.

" The Post was good about those things.

The only time I had to make a correction on a cover was when I sent in a picture that had an automobile in the foreground.

I had completed everything, lights, chrome, trim, spokes, but forgot to paint in the door handle.