In the fall of 1924, Harman got a wire from an artist friend, Sam McConnell, about an illustrating job at Artcrafts Engraving Company. He took the first train he could get to St. Joseph, home of the Pony Express. In addition to his work as a catalog illustrator for Artcrafts (for the Olathe Boot Company, among other catalogs), Harmon created promotional art, book illustrations and film costume designs commemorating the Pony Express, and bought canvas and paint to create his own paintings at home in his spare time. Artcrafts then was on the 5th floor of the Jenkins Music Building, and Fred met and married musician Lola Andrews, who worked on the first floor of the same building. The couple had a son on May 27, 1927, the day Lindbergh arrived in Paris. Harman did not have the money to pay the hospital bill for his son's birth, so his boss at Artcrafts, William Henry Guenther Sr., bought one of Harman's paintings (of a cowboy with red hair) for the exact amount needed to cover the bill. The couple later moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where Fred was a partner in an advertising agency for several years before it failed. He was employed in Iowa for a short time before moving his wife and son to Pagosa Springs, where they built a log cabin. In 1933, he moved to Los Angeles, where he edited, illustrated and published a Western magazine that collapsed after three issues. Although the Stendahl Art Gallery staged a show of his paintings, none sold.Taos and Santa Fe Painters
