01-09-2022, 03:23 PM
Super picture. 1946, the year that the husbands and dads came home, or the lucky ones did. Before the war my dad was driving a delivery van, a 1925 Bullnose Morris. Then he married in 1938 and was a voluntary driver, driving a Merryweather Fire Engine dealing with incendiary bombs all around West Hartlepool. Aged 30 he thought he was too old to be called up, but no he had to go to war. He'd only been married a couple of years but was away for maybe five years. 1946 he came home to his wife and three small children, but no job. The family left Hartlepool and he found a job sixty miles south. With little money and no car he bought a house two miles from work and travelled to work on a push bike six days a week. It was another twelve years of cycling to work before he bought a motorbike, and then the luxury of an old Austin A30.