This morning I was exploring our beautiful planet via the miracle that is Google Maps. I jaunted off to the mid-western US then onto Ontario and Greenland before popping back home for a look at the familiar. It was then that I thought to myself, “Gee, wouldn’t it be cool if you could roll this view back in time to the first images the Google car ever took of any street to see how things have changed.”

I took a harder look at the upper left hand interface and realized that lo and behold that functionality has already been added. I enthusiastically dialed the view in Downtown Albemarle all the way back to 2008. “Much has changed,” I thought to myself. The next very next thought that ran through my mind was wondering if Dad was somewhere in Albemarle on the day this car passed through way back in 2008, before the fateful day of the accident that so altered all of our paths, back to a time when Dad was, well, still Dad. I wanted a glimpse of him in one of the good ole days.

I transported my view to 40647 Stony Gap Road, the address of Dad’s house and business. I was thinking to myself how this was kind of like the film, Minority Report, only in reverse. The oldest view of the Welding shop available was in 2009. The images resed in to show that at that moment the shop was closed and Dad was apparently out with the crane as it wasn’t in it’s normal parking spot. Bummer.

I noticed that the other available was April 2014. I transported my view to see what it showed. There in full color was Dad, in two shots operating his Bobcat with trusty canine companion, Willie close at hand. He was hauling his wood splitter to the large pile behind the shop to bust up some more wood, something he apparently enjoyed doing.

In the hospital, near the end he told me to help myself to the rest of the wood, since they’d stopped burning wood as a heat source. That would will heat us for 2 or 3 winters to come. I’ll be thinking of Dad with every piece I burn.