This is a family album that is based on photos taken between 1939 and 1964 when Mom died.  These are all snapshots made with cheap cameras, badly framed, poorly focused, faded over time and informally stored.  They are interesting to a very limited audience and bring up powerful memories if you were there or knew these people.

 

It is about ordinary life in a small town in a rural area where many people had been raised on farms and had parents or grandparents living on a farm.  Ocean City with a winter population of about 2,000 was eight miles away and Salisbury, a city of 20,000, was twenty miles away. Many nearby burgs like Timmonstown or Parsonsburg that were just a post office or a country store and a few houses. 

 

Mostly it is about three people, my mother Hilda, my brother Sam and me, Nick.  My Father, Charlie Massey died in 1951 and had a brief appearance in our lives.

 

Sam and I had Grandparents nearby and Aunts and Uncles.  My Grandfathers died early in my life and I have no pictures of Grandfather William Massey, and only a few of my Grandfather Benjamin Jackson.

 

Grandmothers were a bigger influence.  My Grandmother, Aleafy Jackson, lived to her ninety's and was a big presence in my life. I spent many summer weeks at her farm with her and my Uncle Franklin Jackson.  Although he was briefly married he lived with his mother for most of his life and worked the farm. 

 

My Uncle Wilbur Jackson was a career Officer in the Air force.  Although he wrote his mother regularly, he was rarely present.  On my father's side, my Aunt Mary and Uncle Mit played a big role after Mom died in 1968 when they became Guardians for Sam and I.

 

All of these pictures are cropped and digitally enhanced using Gimp, a public domain image edit tool.  Given the variety of pictures I had to select only a few to tell a story.  The comments are all mine and I hope they help.

 

Nick Massey, May 2003