Can anyone remember motoring before the MOT? I can and the Test came none too soon. In 1953 I went by train to stay with an aunt in Lancashire for the summer. My cousins, George and Norman, ran a typical British 'banger' of the period, a two-tone [ that is, two colors of rust! ] pre-war Ford E93A. You could buy one just like it for a fiver. All 5 tyres were totally bald, [ which was legal ], but three of them were down to the cords flapping through the casings, and were not. Never mind! They did a DIY re-mold and painted them with tar my uncle borrowed from Preston gasworks. The transverse rear spring had snapped in two. George came up with the 'engineering solution' and they roped a scaffold plank across the rear axle instead! I know, because I bloody sat on it with the road going past in a blur under my bottom! "Just keep tha' feet up our Alan, thee'll be reet!" Off we went one Saturday to Morecombe Bay to do a bit of plaice fishing. The old side-valve bravely labored on, blowing oily smoke into the car through the rotten and ventilated floor and bulkhead, from a thousand holes in the exhaust and what remained of the muffler. Not to worry! We kept the windows open, and it all blew out again! The gearbox was full of sawdust, of course, and the diff. stuffed with a pair of nylon stockings. George did the driving - he worked for t' Ribble Bus Corporation and it took real skill to manoever a car with no brakes and 8" of play in the steering. At one point we were attempting a curve when we came upon a queue of cars and bikes halted at a ford, [ the tide was coming in]. George had no option; he couldn't stop anyway, so we roared into the foot deep water and out the other side, our giant bow-wave saturating half a dozen plebs by the wayside, our gesticulating fingers insultingly waving a cheery farewell. We caught a couple of galvanised buckets full of plaice then motored home that evening singing "Roll out the Barrel" and "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen", to the accompanyment of the big-ends as they attempted to saw the crank in half. There were no freezers or fridges in Kingfisher Street then, so my Aunty Lil kept the fattest fish for us and gave the rest to the neighbors.
Alan
