Sim Carter: Past Tense Imperfect

This is the man that stole my mother's heart. A pretty dashing example of "the greatest generation" in his prime. My mother brought a friend along on their first date because he had a reputation for being a cad - that's "player" in today's lingo - and she was trying to put him off. Rather than being put off, my dad charmed the friend as well sealing the deal. He was always a dazzling dancer and he probably rattled off some compliments in one of the four languages he was fluent in — besides English: French, Italian, Spanish and Arabic. He might even have wooed her in Swahili; self-taught, he had learned a smattering of that language, as well. In any case it worked. The next time he asked my mum out, they went solo. And the rest, as they say, is history. My family's history! My dad, Edward Good, part of the Greatest Generation, was born in Preston, Lancashire, in the north of England on July 28, 1915. He served with the British Armed Forces in Worl...

I thought he was God. Or Robert Young on Father Knows Best. Take your pick. Except that in my eyes my father was even more glamorous than Robert Young. I didn't know about God. He and my mother met at the tail end of World War II when he was home on leave in England. He wooed her in French, Italian, Spanish, and Arabic and he danced like a movie star. They fell in love and then he went away again, back to the western desert, back to the end of the war. Her family, her friends, all warned her about him. He was no good. He'd been around. She was only twenty. He was thirty. Forget him, he was too old. At thirty, her grandmother pronounced, he would have done everything already. He would be jaded, world-weary, they'd have little to share together. Forget him. She couldn't forget him. He sent stockings, Italian shoes, and letter after letter from the prisoner of war camp in North Africa where he was coaching the Italian prisoner's football team. He came home and th...

Mum (Enid Maude Hayden) was born in 1925; a teenager in World War II. This picture was taken before she started coloring her hair. At sixteen she worked as a "clippie" on the double-decker buses in London.  Running up and down the bus stairs, punching tickets. She used to tell her brothers, Robin and Peter (Don was away at the war)  "Who's got the best legs on the street and why have I?"  Running up and down those stairs all day; no wonder! These were the times when London was being bombed, and she would take the train to London to meet some Yank she'd met and have to run home in the dark because of the lights out cerfew. They had a Morrison bed in the living room and she had to dash to it more than once - a steel cage contraption with a mattress inside. Often, as this picture shows, they used the top surface for a table.