Ken wrote:
>
> John's description of working with his father is really fine. My
experience of
> working with my stepfather, an electrician, was something else
altogether. >

OK, my father was a dentist, and I spent the better part of all the
Saturday mornings of my childhood in the little lab in his office having a
ball playing with mercury. Which probably explains why my wife keeps
telling me that I'm only half as smart as I think I am.

His childhood dream was to be a surgeon and, having botched the chance, he
had no other dream for me. To move me toward that goal, when I was seven he
set up a complete lab in a room in the basement of our building, and next
to it a woodworking shop to help me develop manual dexterity. Poor guy!
From the first cut into the first board I knew what I wanted to be. It was
a regular ritual for us to spend a couple of evenings a week together in
the lab, where I soon discovered that he did not have the knack of working
through the baggage to pass on his knowledge to me (A trait I inherited
from him, my children tell me.), even while he was a successful teacher of
dental surgery (as I am of woodworking). By the time I was ten he noticed
that I preferred spending all my time in the workshop and, to his credit,
threw in the towel.


Bruce