DALTON, Ga. — Winston Chambers spent about a year working in a carpet mill.

“It wasn’t a bad job,” he recalled. “It wasn’t a hard job. But I just couldn’t see spending the next 40 or 50 years of my life doing that. Every time I’d look out the window, that’s where I’d want to be. I just knew that job wasn’t for me.”

So he left and took and job with Dalton Public Schools in the maintenance and operations department. Since then, he said he never found himself looking out the window wishing he was somewhere else.

“It was 1973, and I was 19 years old, and I quickly found there was never a dull moment,” he said.

“I’m the carpenter, the locksmith, the roofer. I mowed grass for 10 years. I’ve done electrical,” he said. “I’ve done at least a little of everything that we do.”

But after 44 and a half years, Chambers will retire at the end of the month.

“We sure are going to miss having him,” said Rusty Lount, director of operations for Dalton Public Schools. “I’m happy for him. But he takes with him a lot of knowledge and experience. He has always worked hard to make sure things run smoothly. We average 400 work orders a month, sometimes close to 1,000 with 14 guys, so we’ve kept him pretty busy.”

Chambers plans to keep busy even in retirement.

“I’ve got a fishing boat that’s paid for. I live over at Carters Lake, and I’ve got a wood shop, so I’m going to do some woodwork and fish,” he said.

Asked about memorable events in his career, Chambers says one stands out.

“I got one work order at Park Creek School that said there was an animal that was acting strange and scaring the kids,” he recalled. “I got up there and there was a possum that had Skittles all over the place. One of the neighbors had thrown away some Skittles and that possum had got in the trash and ate so many Skittles it had made him sick.”