Description
Black and white 9 1/2″ x 13 1/2″ ad for the New York Life Insurance Company. This ad has a drawing of Harry Mason standing outside of an old building with a sign saying that it is “The Cider Mill”. The text says that “Everything looked the same and yet everything might have been so different… Sometimes, on crisp fall days, you can notice the sweet, rich smell of russet apples a good hundred yards before you come to Bailey’s Cider Mill down on the Old Country Road. It drifts out of the presses and hangs low over the ground and reminds you of Halloween and Thanksgiving and all of the good things of autumn rolled into one. It reminded Harry Mason, driving back from a business trip to a neighboring town, of all those things and something more – that it would be a wonderful idea to take home some apples and a jug of Bailey’s famous cider. A few moments later he eased his car off the road and pulled to a stop at the side of the mill. It was the first time he had been there for some years, and after he got out of his car he stood and looked around him for a moment, refreshing his memory and trying to see if there were any signs of change. Everything looked the same. The mill was as he had always remembered it. The apple orchards looked full and orderly, as they always had. And the old Bailey homestead still sat on top of the knoll tranquil among the giant elms that surrounded it. Harry Mason nodded thoughtfully. The whole place had an air of peace and permanence – and that was good. It was good because that was what Tom Bailey had worked for and planned for right up to the time of his death. Peace and permanence. Security for his wife Nora and his son Roger. Tom Bailey had had a taste of insecurity in his own younger days, Harry remembered. His father had left the orchards and the mill to him so burdened with debts and mortgages and taxes that for several years it was touch and go whether Tom could keep the place at all. It took a lot of work – with a little luck thrown in – for him to get ‘out from under’ and put the orchards on a paying basis. Harry glanced up again at the old house on the hill, recalling how he and Tom Bailey had sat there evenings making plans so the Baileys’ security wound not be jeopardized again. Enough life insurance to pay for help to keep the place running without digging into Nora’s income from it. A separate New York Life policy for Roger’s schooling. Some extra life insurance to take care of estate taxes and other obligations that might otherwise cause some of the land to be sold… Yes, Harry thought, the old mill had an air of peace and permanence – and that was good. It was the thing Tom Bailey had sought for his family…and the thing Harry as a New York Life agent, had helped others build for theirs. Harry smiled a little to himself as he turned and walked around to the broad doorway at the front of the mill”.
Source: September 22, 1952 Life magazine.
