Here are more of the pix my sister sent me in December of our dad in his younger days; I’d never seen what the guy looked like before the age of 50 until I saw these. Good fun!
So the two pictures for today include my favorite, and it’s this one, taken at Ismaalia, Egypt in 1946 (my old man is old, indeed, born 1926). He was drafted during WW II, but the war ended just as he was completing his training to be a Royal Marine Commando — he’s from England, too — so he luckily missed the whole combat thing, and served as part of the British occupying forces in Egypt and in areas that are now Lybia.
He’s the tall one.
What you’re seeing here is a guy — as far as I can figure — coming in to his own and realizing the Mediterranean and whole lot more — offered a better life than Liverpool (and England’s greyness); since there was no combat he got to be arts and crafts director for his regiment and take his fellow troops to check out “local art”, like, say, ohhh, the Pyramids of Ghiza! and a little something called, The Sphinx!
This next one is then after his return to Liverpool, where he’d promptly enrolled in art school (Liverpool College of the Arts). I imagine he saw art school as his ticket out of the drabness of Liverpool — as indeed it was.
More later!
Enjoy!
Fatherhood Poetic 