G.M.C. Massey
The first time I posted an excerpt from my grandfather’s memoir manuscripts, I referred to him as a “Guest Blogger.” By now, years later, I’ve posted over 70 entries from his writings. I still find these stories of his fascinating enough to share.
The pieces are fragments for the most part, floating free from each other. I posted about the box of scraps Mom passed down to me. I certainly salute the heroic effort she put forth editing portions of the manuscript into a coherent opening section she titled, “Pappa’s Childhood.” I have to admit that I gave up long ago any thought of trying similar editing to merge the various memoir manuscript pieces into a coherent whole.
It’s not that it can’t be done. It’s how difficult and involved even attempting to do so would be. Granddad had a habit of typing out multiple versions of some of his anecdotes — sometimes with details at odds with each other. He openly acknowledged he wrote of things as they came to his mind, so some of the pages seem to loop back to an earlier portion.
I’ve been using my own typewritten capture of the scraps of memoirs, a project I did years ago on a long break between contract jobs. There is still more material from that set of notes, but it has been picked over quite a bit.
To allow easier access to all of the posted pieces from Granddad’s memoirs, I’ve tried to organize them into groupings by topic on an index page accessible from the top menu of the blog itself.
- Overview
- Youth, including Characters and Farming/Horse trading
- School Days — Student, Teacher, Disciplinarian
- Asherton Tales — School superintendent, hunting/fishing
- Progress, 1880-1960
- Love & Marriage(s) & Family
- San Angelo
- Miscellaneous
Moving forward, there is certainly more to come from Granddad’s writings. I still have somewhat of a “treasure trove” of intact manuscript pages. However, there are still significant problems problems working with these, as Granddad used one than one set of page numbering schemes as well as using carbon paper to make copies.
This year, I will dive into those intact pages to see what can be retrieved that has not already been shared on this blog. Stay tuned!
Buller's back porch 