G.M.C. Massey
My grandfather, G.M.C. Massey, left a stack of typewritten manuscript pages that he wrote at age 80 about his life. I have been occasionally posting portions of those memoirs over the last 5 years. As I explained early on, that effort has not always been easy. My mom, trained in journalism in the time of physical cutting and pasting, edited a segment into “Pappa’s Childhood,” but left me a box of memoir scraps, ranging from sentence fragments to multiple-page chunks. My first attempt at organizing what I had entailed simply re-typing the fragmented pieces for a full manuscript, albeit completely out-of-sequence.
Thus, it is no surprise that now, 5 years and 72 memoir blog posts later, I’m finally posting a preface he wrote. Ironically, it ends the re-typed manuscript pages.
When I started out to write these MEMORIES of the past part of my life: I made it plain that I was going to write as the memories came to me, and on that account it has come to pass that my MS is broken here and there with a report that really fits in with a report that is written somewhere else; So as you proceed with the reading of the MEMOIRS you will be able to pick up the connections with a preceding report.
As you might gather from the report of my family history; I have always been quite a FAMILY man. And I always looked for a convenient living quarters as well as a good paying proposition; So as to be able to take care of my family responsibilities.
So taking these things under consideration, A great part of my school teaching was in the one teacher schools of that day in which I was teaching from the year 1900 to the year of 1922.
And too, in a convenient radius of my farm that I lived on and operated as a stock farm; From which I received a great part of my revenue for my Family consumption.
Of course my Notoriety as an outstanding Disciplinarian brought me many opportunities to get a big raise on my salary: But as time passed that got the place that the responsibilities over weighed the benefits that I received, And hence it lost its Enchantment for me.
But as a reward for the better things of life, and, and the higher and nobler things that we always enjoy; I am yet made to enjoy the meeting of my old pupils, and have them to tell me of the things that I did and the talks that I gave them that changed the course of their lives.
You will find them scattered along in the course of your perusals of my MEMOIRS.
Buller's back porch 