I sometimes chafed under my various apprenticeships. A standing family story was that when I was about 16, with a solid four or five years' experience in doing the daily barn chores, my father decided to improve on my stall-cleaning form. Perched comfortably on the manger, Dad watched me pitching manure out the door for a while and then suggested, "Put your left foot about six inches forward and slide your right hand farther back on the pitchfork handle." I flared up: "I can't even shovel [rude Anglo-Saxon noun (oh boy, was I daring)] to suit you!"

Later, during my years as a corporate migrant worker — following the oilfield and construction companies' crops — I learned a whole new definition for the old word "journeyman" as I pulled up stakes and moved to yet another place every few years. But there was still an element of apprenticeship to my work as I studied the wily ways of the business world.

Now that I've gone full circle and am back to living in the country, I've renewed my apprenticeship to the land and animals, and to the basic maintenance and repair skills required to keep up old country places. I'm once again using the skills of wood, paint and glass that Dad taught me.

Pardner understands the apprenticeships that bind me to this place. He also tolerates my need to return again and again to admire my meager repair work on the house, although I have promised to review my work on the windows only by daylight. I've kept that vow ever since the time, sleepless, I took the flashlight out at midnight to see if that day's glazing compound was dry, bringing Pardner out of a sound sleep to investigate, dressed in his undershorts and a twelve-gauge.

We make a pretty good team around the place. "From each according to his disabilities" describes our division of labor. Pardner's body shows his years of apprenticeship to the wild cows, green colts and bad weather. His X-rays bear mute testimony that he rode for the brand. He does the jobs that require strength, and I do the ones that require bending or kneeling. He hacks at the hard-packed ground with a pick; I squat and scrape the dirt from the posthole with an old soup can. He sets the posts and stretches the fence. I hunker down with my fence pliers to twist and cut the tie wire.

Life's apprenticeships never end. Just as Dad taught by his example how to take quiet pride in a simple job well done, he taught me — when the work was all done last fall — that death need not be feared, that it is just another job to be done well.

Thanks, Dad, until you're better paid.