Picking Pumpkins

The present work was initially illustrated on the cover of the November 14, 1959 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, accompanied by the following explanation: "John Clymer's coverscape takes you to Massachusetts' tidelands, where the frost is on the pumpkin and the red and gold are on the trees. Gloucester harbor and the inlets roundabout—for three centuries this haven has been the home port of renowned and valiant fishermen. They were the Captains Courageous of Rudyard Kipling, the heroes of Longfellow's The Wreck of Hesperus and of James B. Connolly's tales of the sea. Today Gloucester's captains roam from Greenland to Virginia, providing countless landsmen with delectable fillets of cod, haddock, halibut, mackerel and, ah, those ocean perch! That chap in the garden could be a nonancient mariner, a belated summer colonist or a weekday commuter to Boston, singing on a weekend, 'Yo-ho-ho and a yardful o' punkins!'" (The Saturday Evening Post, November 14, 1959, p. 3).