My dad is quite a character if there ever was one. He’s a big, tough, intimidating guy, over six feet tall, and is a northern California sort of redneck. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of him is the stories he tells from when he was a young working as a logger in California. He tells one about being way out in the woods working when he slashed his leg up with a chainsaw. He says he had hike an hour out of the woods before he could take the two hours drive to the nearest hospital, which he says was no problem. After this heroic effort, as the story goes, he gets to the hospital after stopping for a bite to eat, and then faints as soon as the doctors try to stick a needle in, which is one of his biggest fears. To me that story shows how he can be the toughest person I know at the same time as being a gentle giant. He’s probably the only person I know that works more than myself, pushing 80 hours at a night job while still doing tons of work at home, even building our current house while keeping the same amount of hours at work. When he gets home from work he always stays up for at least an extra hour to cook breakfast for my little sister, and always finds time in his already packed schedule to do things like drive out to my grandmothers to mow her lawn, always helping whoever he can no matter how tired he might be.
A piece like this lives or dies depending on the story it has to tell--and this story is a keeper for sure, a good one, and it very nicely sets up the last third of the paragraph about how hard he works. If I had a criticism, it would be over a slow start--that first sentence could be cut without losing anything.
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