Tyler is just 14, but he sometimes seems to be a decade older. He is a football player now, he scored two touchdowns yesterday. I’m going to see him play next week. It was good to see Tyler work with his father Justin and his younger brother Matthew. I see where Tyler gets his work ethic.

Justin is a good and loving father, he said taking down a tree is good bonding time with him and his sons, they worked well together, everyone doing their part, helping out, working hard. Justin is one of those men who know how things work, he installs a good work ethic in his sons and is teaching them all the time, but in a loving, never hectoring way.

He is a good man and it was a great pleasure to watch him work, an even greater pleasure to see how a good father relates to his children, provides them with examples, joins with them in good and hard work. This is, I think, something sometimes lost in a generation that spends more time on Facebook than in nature.

We laughed about Tyler, Justin said he worked 50 hours recently milking cows, Justin says he has to remind him that he is just a kid and he needs to relax. Tyler is already saving up for a truck, he says. If you get to know Tyler, you have to respect his parents, they did a good job.

Justin assures me that Tyler knows how to have fun, he just doesn’t do it as often as he works. The family mastered the art of the tree, Justin sawing and trimming, Tyler managing a roaring fire, Matthew hauling stick and visiting with Chloe and Fate. I did have a pang watching Justin, I don’t remember ever doing a single thing with my father (except an annual trek to Fenway Park). It is important.

I saw Justin passing real values onto Tyler, I saw him listening and learning, even around a fallen pine tree.