Breaking Home Ties by Norman Rockwell

This is one of the most beloved paintings in America, and it puts its finger on something we all pass through, first as the child, and one day as the parent left behind... The painting is Breaking Home Ties<, by Norman Rockwell, on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1954. A father and his teenage son sit side by side on the running board of a battered farm truck, waiting at a railway stop. A single track runs along the bottom of the picture. A ticket pokes from the boy's pocket. His suitcase is stacked with schoolbooks and...