McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Letters From Elizabeth Miller's Dad, Who Fights Fires While Flying a Helicopter.

In my college days, I was a ditch-digger for a gas company. There is a certain way to dig with a shovel that yields twice the ditch with half the effort. My sixty-four-year-old workmate then, Pappy, watched me dig for a few days before he finally got fed up with my inefficiency. He showed me the secret of how to use a shovel, and then I was a ditch-digging machine. Later, Pappy showed me the biggest secret of all, one of life's greatest mysteries, how to back up a trailer.