Sykesville Stories -- Volume One
Teddy Barnes at the Sykesville Train Station
This is Teddy Barnes, probably some time in the 1930s. Teddy lived in an apartment above his father's pool hall on Main Street. The apartment was destroyed in the great Sykesville fire of 1937.
Teddy went off to war, as did his brother. You can read a bit more about him in the book, and about his sister, too, and how his mother crossed the bridge into town, heading home from work the day of the fire, and saw the front of the apartment and all her furniture crash down into the street.
This is a colorized version of a black and white photo, and that's why it might look off just a bit, but that's sort of what this book does, it takes old stories about the old town and colorizes them a bit to give them some character and charm. At least that's the intention. Among other intentions.
There are stories by several writers, including Bob Allen, David Sorflaten, Jack White, Warren Dorsey, Jonathan Herman, and Kirk Peiffer.
This is volume one. We hope you like it.
Sykesville Stories -- the website
There's a whole website that goes with the book. You can head there right now if you like.
Visit the Sykesville Stories Website.
Wee, Sis, and Tom
The second picture shows us Wee, Sis, and Tom, also known as Emerson, Mae, and Warren Dorsey, posing in front of their old schoolhouse, probably somewhere around 1927. Sadly, they're all gone now. Warren passed away in July of 2022, not from old age, but from the results of a car crash. He was 101 and would surely have made it to November and 102, but a truck pulled out in front of him in the rain. He was on the way home from a funeral with his son.
Sis is holding a doll. Once, in her nineties, nearing the end of her life, at a time when she didn't talk much, she said, "That doll was everything."
Their clothes are handmade by their mother, Carrie, and their underpants are made from feed sacks. That's just the way things were back then. White kids wore feed sacks, too.
You can read more about the Dorseys and all their neighbors in the book.