Bob Came to Town

In January of 2007 my dad came to visit us. It had been a couple of years since he was last down here. He had some vacation time he needed to get rid of, since I could not take time off of work, and we had spent our vacation money getting rid of a dead pine tree (that's another story) he came down here. One of the first things we did was visit his sister Betty, and her husband Russ at their home in Mesa.
Betty is Bob's oldest Sister, his other Sister Helen passed away in January of 1976. Betty and Russ have a son named Mark. On the morning of the 25th As luck would have it Mike's Son Sean was born, and Bob was (if I remember correctly) the first Grandparent to hold him. Before we went down to see his spawn and since both mother and child were still recovering we stopped by Historic Station 8 to speak with the firemen who worked them, as Bob had recently donated the last of his fire pictures to them (through me).

Historic Station 8 is located on 7th ave. and Encanto, it is open to the public and is often used by the fire department to have going away parties for retiree's. It does have some interesting equipment like this resuscitation kit and the breathing apparatus in the picture below, The breathing apparatus is exactly like one I used to own (which was thrown away by a certain unnamed aunt).
We also stopped by a couple of fire stations and former fire chief Brunacini's house (just took pictures). Here are a couple of pictures of Sean with Dad, Sean with Grandad, and Sean with Kathi.

A couple of days later we all went to Poncho's in south Phoenix. We requested the Presidential room, so named because a certain Mr. Clinton ate there on one of his visits to Phoenix. After he left the owners painted his picture on one wall (including what he ate), and a picture of one of the Secret Service agents on the other. We couldn't pass up a chance like this...

A couple of days later we went to the Arizona railway museum as shown in "A Very Good Day", and stopped by Mike's apartment where one of his cats took great interest in Bob's shoes.

As his trip coincided with his Birthday we had a small party at his sisters house where she served us enormous portions of a very sweet cake.
The day before he left we took more pictures of fire trucks, visited a customer of his who has a standard gauge layout in his garage, and who raises Abyssinian Cats.