Our drive from to Windsor Locks, CT was relatively short, but as always, we took the scenic route on two lane roads through update New York and into The Berkshires in Massachusetts. The scenery was just beautiful and we had a beautiful day as well. We were looking for something to do on the way and saw a billboard for the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. Everyone knows of Rockwell and his iconic American illustrations. I can remember seeing them in The Saturday Evening Post and Life Magazine when I was just a kid. I even have a Rockwell print hanging in my house. So we decided to go to the museum.

We arrived at the museum just before it opened at 10:00 AM . We decided to do the "award-winning" audio tour, which told the stories of the art. Most of the narration was done by Rockwell's son, but some of it was by Rockwell himself and some by some of his models. The process of doing the illustrations was itself interesting. He always used models and in the early days, they had to pose for hours. Later he had multiple photos taken of the models and he worked from the photographs. For many of his pictures, he used himself and family members or neighbors as models. A short video told us about Norman Rockwell's life. He had very early success as an illustrator for Boy's Life magazine -- he had his first job there at 17 years old. There were many of his original pieces in the museum and we really enjoyed seeing them and hearing their stories -- details we would have missed without the audio tour. A central hall in the museum features 4 paintings illustrating the Four Freedoms (taken from a. Franklin Delano Roosevelt speech about what we were fighting for in WWII): freedom from want, freedom of speech, freedom to worship God in your own way, and freedom from fear. These paintings toured the country to raise money through war bonds. Later in his career, Rockwell's art addressed social issues like the civil rights movement. We also visited Rockwell's studio which had been moved from downtown Stockbridge to the museum grounds.

After our museum stop, we stopped for lunch at a small Greek restaurant where we had great gyros and way too many French fries, and then continued on to Windsor Locks, CT, our destination for the day. We were staying there so we could visit with our boys' 93 year old grandfather, George, and Judy, who live in Enfield, CT. We had a really nice visit and took them out to dinner.