Lessons from the Armchair The author shares words of wisdom from Dad. Delaware Today, June 2004 In commemoration of Father's Day, I'm setting to paper the collected wisdom of my old man. I became gainfully employed at an early age — 6 years old, to be exact — when my father added the words "and Sons" to his business name. He was a landscaper, and, in accordance with our newly eponymic status, my 5-year-old brother and I yearned to earn our keeps. During the summer, we couldn't do much, but when fall creeped in, Dad would get out his leaf-blower and we'd get out our rakes and tackle some of his clients' yards together. We did, I'll admit, spend more time playing in the leaves than raking them. One day, after a particularly long raking session, I complained to Dad that he was violating child labor laws. Dad scoffed: "Hard work never hurt nobody," he declared. "When I was your age, I was holding down two jobs." And walking two miles to school. Uphill. Both ways. A few years later, on a morning a few weeks before Christmas, my father became not only my employer but also my hero. As I was dressing for school that morning, I watched my father bundle up at the doorway. He put on his winter coat, his work boots and a furry hat, the kind with earflaps. He stepped out the door and marched to our mailbox. After several minutes, the garbage truck rattled down our street. When it stopped in front of my father, he jogged over to the two men doing the heave-hoing and presented them each with a bottle of whiskey. The men wished him a merry Christmas and patted him on his back. Satisfied he had done a good deed, he came skipping back up the driveway and into the house. I stood beside him with reverence, looking up at my tall, generous father as he took off his furry hat and his boots and his coat. With the earnest confidence of an 8-year-old who doesn't quite realize that his compliments are laughably unauthoritative but priceless all the same, I gave him my evaluation: "Wow, Dad. That was really nice of you. That's what Christmas is all about." He looked straight at me with equal seriousness and passed on some fatherly words: "If you don't give 'em whiskey at Christmas," he grumbled, "they'll tip your trash cans over." Years later, when I got my driver's license, I asked my father if he had any more words of wisdom, particularly about parallel parking, the most feared automotive procedure known to man. "Sure," he said, as he channeled the collective fatherly wisdom of such notable dads as Ward Cleaver, Cliff Huxtable and Archie Bunker. "Back up till you hear the thump." Shaun Gallagher is Delaware Today's managing editor.