A glimpse of things to come???

On November 30th, my dad will retire.  He has worked for the City of Winston-Salem for 37 years.  This seems unimaginable to me.  He began his work for the Police Department in ID.  When I was younger, I thought it was kind of cool - he fingerprinted all the "bad" guys.  What I didn't realize until much later was that he fingerprinted more than just the "bad" guys...sometimes, the people he had to fingerprint were...well, let's just say they were less than alive.  Eeek!

I do remember when I was younger, occasionally we would go visit him at work.  We never went "downtown" except to visit my Dad at work.  Until I was 9, Winston-Salem was probably the largest city I had ever been to.  I loved going downtown.  Winston-Salem used to be the site of several tobacco processing factories.  When you would go downtown, you could smell the tobacco.  Now, I have no use for cigarette smoke...but there is nothing like smelling tobacco being processed.  It's such a sweet smell.

I also loved going to visit my dad at the Police Dept because there was a lady there who would make a photocopy of my hand and draw faces on each finger.  Such a simple thing...but I loved it!

I'm not sure when Dad moved over to the Fire Department, but he's worked there for most of his career with the City of WS.  He began as an arson inspector (yes, he can look at burn patterns and tell you what started a fire...just like on TV) and now works in the inspections department.

But as of November 30th, he will no longer be a City of WS employee.

So...yesterday, Dad was off work.  He was supposed to have a procedure done on Thursday, which got delayed and he needed to be home to talk to another doctor.  I didn't realize that until later when I got a text from him.  The first text was harmless enough...just asking what size shirt Dylan wears.  I texted back with the answer and question of if he was off work.  His answer basically said, yes...but this is the part that cracked me up.  "We are at Kohl's waiting for the Power Hour to begin at 3pm".  This was at 2:45ish.  It just made me laugh because it seems like such an "old fogey" kind of thing to say.  And it made me wonder, is this a glimpse of my parent's lives after November 30th?

Doctors appointments, procedures, Kohl's power hour...ahhh...the life of the retired! :)