Some Old Scanned Pictures

Today while going through my Pictures file, I came across some scanned pictures of my dad, George Reely and my grandma, Elva Shaffer..After I left home in December 1975, 6 months after graduating High School, I had a lot of angry feelings toward my dad…A lot of people do not know how I was treated by him when he was with other women…When he was by himself and it was just us and him, the times we had were great…But after my son was born in 1977 and we moved back to the Baltimore area, I felt that I needed to get over my anger towards him and let him see his grandson…There weren’t to many times that we saw him…Most of the time he wasn’t home…But as I look back now, I wish that he was still alive so he could enjoy seeing his great grandchildren and grandchildren…I know that Brandi and him would have gotten along great cause they both like to play pool…A lot of summers I spent time with my grandma up in the Heights on Boston Street…I had a lot of good times there..Family was always nearby…I could play with my cousins when we all were out of school…I also found some old pictures of my dad…He looks like a gangster…Wanted Dead or Alive…The pictures aren’t all that great and not straight when I had scanned them…I believe I must have been in a hurry to just get them scanned…

The top row of pictures are his gangster looking photos…I came across these in some old photos that he had…The one to the left in the second row is my dad and his brother, Uncle Ted…He was my favorite uncle out of my dad’s 8 brothers and sisters…The one to the right on the second row is my dad, Grandpa George, and my son, Josh…This was taken approximately in the summer of 1978…The bottom row was taken at the Inner Harbor, Baltimore and I have no idea what year it could have been and the bottom right is before my dad died in Sept. 1989..

These photos I have no idea of when these were taken…As you can see the second row on the left, that was taken back in the late 1950’s about the time of when I was born or early 1960’s…The one to the right, second row, is a Thanksgiving dinner sometime around 1972 with my dad’s girlfriend, Ms. Em…She was a very nice lady from time to time…My dad loved decorating up the yard for Halloween…It was always spooky when he would dig a hole in the ground for a vampire box and come out of it to scare people…He would always dress up as a vampire to give the awesome effect…The beatnik to the bottom right is my dad…I found another picture of me as a baby and him dressed the same way, so this picture had to be taken summer 1958..As you can see, my dad was skinny as a rail and who should I take after, my mother…Drats!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These pictures to the right are of my grandma…She lived in a not so good part of Baltimore City…She was on food stamps and we walked every day down to the grocery store or to the corner drug store to get a fountain soda…Then we would walk back up the hill to her place and rest along the wall so she could catch her breath…We, my brother and I, would spend the whole summer with her from the time that I was 9 years old until about 13 or 14 years old…She would curl my hair with a curling iron that had to be heated up on the stove…We would play cards all the time and watch tv…but when I was bad, I had to go to a bush and pick out a switch that was going to be used on my butt…Of course, like all kids, a small switch would be picked out…Needless to say, that didn’t work…but it was rare that she would use one on us…I don’t know what happened to the relationship we had but all I remember is that she had to go live with my aunt…and then I remember being told that she died…I’m fortunate to have a few pictures of her…This grandma is my dad’s mother…I don’t have any pictures of my mother’s family except for a few pictures of my Uncle Rick…As for grandparents or another uncle, there are no pictures that I have…I have memories of a grandfather on his death bed and he would not pass until he saw my brother and I…We talked to him and then he passed…I remember crying…

This is my house on 1919 Tyler Road…I do not know the year of this picture but I know that it changed a lot after I was born and was growing up..My dad worked with drywall and he knew how to build walls and tear them down…I never knew what my house would look like when I got home from school…but I do believe that this house was in the late 1950’s, after I was born, or around the early 1960’s…Tyler Road was one of the President streets not far from Dundalk High School..Up the street was Minnicks Bar and Lounge and a little corner store where lots of goodies could be bought cheap…The house was next to the railroad tracks…The train would come through every night but I would sleep right on through the night…The garage in the background in the second photo was turned in to a recreation building with a bar, pool table, bumper pool table, ping pong and darts…I had a lot of fun playing pool and other games back there…My dad built a cement above ground swimming pool when I was about 10 or 11 years old…That was very interesting..I hope to one day find some more pictures of my house and how he changed it…The upstairs wall didn’t have a window but he put one in and that was where my bedroom was while my brother’s room was on the other side of the house upstairs…Unfortunately, I have  a lot of good memories with a lot of bad memories within this home…

My dad had a slew of brothers and sisters..I think about 9 or 11 in all…so I had lots of cousins…It’s a shame that I never really was able to stay in touch with them…Someday on Facebook, if I can remember their last names, I may be able to get in touch with them…or I can just ask my brother, Philip…There was one uncle that was my favorite…but he went to war over to Vietnam and when he came back, he was never the same…It was such a shame and I missed him terribly and how he was before the war…

I’m very lucky to be posting these pictures…To all of you who keep in touch with relatives, keep it up…I now wonder if I should try a little harder to speak to my brother…It’s been years…