Drove out to the PD pistol range to renew my weapons permits and have my [-]Get Out of Jail Card[/-] identification updated. Pack of retired guys/gals there as well, so we chatted about how wonderful retirement was.
One topic of conversation was about a man who has to be the oldest serving police officer in the U.S. He is 92 years old and refuses to retire. He swears that work is the only thing keeping him alive, because everyone he went to the police academy with died after retiring. He has no wife or kids so his pension and lump sum payment will just revert to the pension when he dies. That, or his cat will be the richest feline in town.
I first met the man 25 years ago, and he had hash marks on his sleeve up to his elbow (each one = 5 years of service). Darn things probably go to his shoulder today. Even then they had removed him from "real" police duties, and his job was to do the mail runs between his station and headquarters. His duties also apparently involved flirting with all the young female clerks in whatever division he wandered into.
We don't have a mandatory retirement age, but that's never been much of a problem because everybody eventually retired or died before they got to such an advanced age. We've had a few that tried their darndest, but nobody has come within anything less than 20 years of this man. The guy is still hanging in there, and has a near perfect attendance record (he told his bosses years ago what funeral home he prefers, "in case I don't come in to work one morning.").
He doesn't hang around for the money - back before direct deposit they had to order him to go deposit his paychecks because he was screwing up the books in payroll by hanging on to them for more than a year. He really believes he will live forever as long as he goes to work every day.
The most recent chief (an outsider from another state) tried to fire him because he thought he was a liability. Apparently his driving skills were deteriorating and he really didn't think it necessary to stay and explain himself after backing into somebody's parked car. After it got to be a bit too regular the chief decided he had enough. But he quickly learned that the man is something of an institution, if not a legend, in the black community. He worked one of the city's oldest historically black neighborhoods since WWII, and there's not a black elected representative/senator or council member that's served in the last 40-50 years, who he doesn't know on a first name basis. Probably knows their parents and grandparents as well. The chief got enough calls from powerful folks that he made some arrangements for the old man, and he no longer drives a police car. They have him assigned downtown doing something that gives him plenty of time to flirt with clerks.
A man who most definitely does not get the concept of retirement.
...but I don't think I'll get severance pay. 
