Our Daily Bread

Writing in Texas Co-Op Power magazine, Donna Chapman described the excitement generated on her family’s farm in the 1940s by the arrival of the Montgomery Ward catalog. Often called “the wish book,” its pages were filled with images of items ranging from clothing and cookstoves to furniture and tools. The catalog’s warm, friendly tone seemed to invite people to picture themselves as they lived, worked, and dressed at the time, and as they hoped to become.