"...Mighty hard to get a boy to come to it right under his daddy's hand. I don'y know why."...
"Well," Mat says, "I do know why. By the time a boy gets big enough to work, his daddy's already been his boss for a long time, and not always an easy one. They've already pretty well-tested each other, and know each other's weaknesses and flaws. There are a lot of old irritations all ready-made. And then a man teaching his own boy gets misled by pride. What he does wrong looks like your failure as much as it is his, and so you don't correct or punish for his sake, but yours. The way around it....is to let him work with somebody older than he is....that you know he admires.'
Wendell Berry, A Place on Earth, p.177.
