Family outing to the library

I’ve written about my dad’s love of libraries before. Usually this would either be a solo outing for my dad, or when I lived at home, we would often make it a father-daughter trip. Rarely did we go as a family. (Mom loves to talk too much to stay quiet for very long. Sorry Mom, but it’s true!)

Anyways, my dad carried on his library tradition after my parents left California and retired in Ruidoso, NM. The librarians knew him by name here too, calling him the formal, “Patrick.” It made him feel special. On one of my rare visits home as an adult (at least until my father became ill), Dad wanted to show off “his” library. So we all piled into whatever boat of a car my dad was driving at the time and ambled our way to the library, which was only a mile or two from their home.

Bear statues can be found all over Ruidoso, an homage to Smokey the Bear. There’s a large bear statue outside of the Ruidoso library, and my mom wanted us to pose around it, while we snagged a bystander to snap a photo for us. The photo sums up our family pretty well: corny, quirky but quite harmless.