When he could talk again, he said, “You never said. All these years. You said you were ‘doing all right.'”

“I was doing all right.”

He laughed through his tears.

“Sixty million dollars,” he said. “In my truck.”

“In your truck, Dad. I delivered the first table in it. I still drive it every day.”

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Why here, son? You could have built a factory anywhere.”

“Because the best woodworkers in America used to work in this building,” I said. “And most of them still live within ten miles of it. They just haven't had anywhere to go.”

I sat down on the floor in front of him.

“Dad. I'm going to hire two hundred and fifty people in the first year. A lot of them will be young. They've never touched a lathe. They don't know maple from oak. I need somebody to teach them.”

I put my hand on his bench.

“I need a head of training,” I said. “Somebody who can look at a plank of wood and see the chair inside it.”

Dad looked at me.

“Me?” he said. “I'm sixty-four.”

“You're the best woodworker I ever met,” I said. “And this is your bench.”

For the first time in five years, my father smiled. A real smile. The big one I remembered.