Beneath the basement stairs, in a little white house on Park Street in Wharton, N.J., there once was a workshop. A small table supported the pieces of several unfinished projects. Tools hung on a pegboard above them. A single bulb lit the workspace, and among scattered wooden blocks, there was a tool belt.

This workshop was a miniature version of a larger one, built for me by my dad. His was only a few yards away. When he worked, I worked.

My Y-chromosome could have been forged from steel. Machinery runs in the blood of my father, his father and his father's father. My great-grandfather sold the machines that baled newspapers. My grandfather owned and operated a packaging machinery company. And my dad is a supervisor at a steel distribution plant. He has a college degree, but the button-down shirts he wears to work are grease-stained. He wears safety glasses and steel-toed shoes. And, on his desk, there sits a hardhat.

I, the son of this man, am a writer.

I string together words, airy and intangible things. They cannot be grabbed with the hand and picked up. They cannot be cut, shaped or fastened together. Papers, pens and books are scattered on my desk. Words cannot fall on your head and crack it open.

My dad and I do very different jobs. He works in a steel plant, and I work in a newsroom. When conversation shifts to his work, as it so often does, we stutter. It seems we lack the vocabulary to talk about such things.

But we've always been close. When I was young, Dad involved himself in every aspect of my life. He taught me how to throw a Frisbee, to do arithmetic and to build things. And in that building, I think, there lies some similarity, some parallel, between the work Dad does, and the work I've chosen for myself.

I was 6 years old when Dad decided to build a deck behind our house in Pennsylvania. My stairwell workshop stayed behind in New Jersey when we moved the year before. But I brought along the tool belt.

Dad built the deck from scratch. The design was simple - 12 feet wide by 12 feet deep - an assemblage of one, two and four by fours, intended to hold a gas grill and an inexpensive set of white, plastic patio furniture. Dad, a neighbor, a friend and a neighborhood kid did the building. And there, at my Dad's side, was me.

It was fall and I wore a sweatshirt, leather gloves and sneakers. Around my waist I had strapped my tool belt. I smiled as I followed Dad around the worksite, watching him through a pair of his man-sized safety goggles. When Dad drilled holes into the side of the brick house, I poured water onto the metal bit to keep it from overheating. I helped dig post holes, mix cement and pour it. But mostly, I held tools and watched.

After that, Dad and I built a lot of things together. When he thought it was time for me to start riding a bike, he didn't put it together and leave it under the Christmas tree for me in the morning, as most fathers might have done. We built it together. When I was a Cub Scout we built Pinewood Derby cars. He taught me to sand, to paint, to split wood and to mow the lawn.

He set out to teach me how to build and repair the world around me.

Dad's brain works spatially. He can solve complex math problems quickly. He can find his way without a map. He can pack a suitcase airtight on the first try. I can do none of these things. These disabilities, I hastily concluded, must indicate the presence of certain abilities. And so I associated my brain with that of my mother � a right brain artist, an articulate writer and a political liberal. Dad voted for Bush.

That was the assumption, however, of an immature mind. No child is a creation of a single parent. I'm finding that, as a writer, I'm as much a product of my mechanical dad as I am of my artsy mom � and that as much as my writing is art, it is the result of deliberate construction.

A teacher of mine once compared writing to carpentry. He wrote about it in a book, a list of techniques that he likened to a toolbox. Its pages are filled with implements that, not unlike files, knives or pieces of sandpaper, can be used to shape a piece of writing into a workable form. If properly constructed, that form will function, and story will flow smoothly, silently and effortlessly to the soul of the reader.

Dad never could write very well, and he still can't. He misspells simple words. He writes complex sentences, some so winding they are incomprehensible. When he lost his job five years ago, he wrote a pile of cover letters. Mom rewrote them.

Dad had trouble passing freshman English in college. Mostly he received C's and D's. On the verbal section of the SAT, he scored a 378. That's 47 percent.

But with each short paper he submitted, his teacher told him that his organization was solid. He knew a story has a beginning, a middle and an end. His thoughts were generally well-organized. When it came to structure, she said, he was right on.

I heard nearly the same thing in my college English classes. Teachers said they were impressed with my ability to organize my thoughts and structure my writing. Fortunately, I could also write clear sentences and spell. I got A's.

When I turned to journalism, I was drawn to the work of John McPhee, a writer made famous for his carefully structured stories.

Before I write, I build an outline. It provides a guide for construction. Recently I wrote a story about a lab in St. Petersburg that dissects dead manatees. On a yellow legal pad, I charted its trajectory. I made a blueprint. Along a vertical line on the page, I drew boxes, inside of which I made notes of scenes and explanations. These moments acted as beams which would support the sensory details, statistics and commentary I would collect in my reporting.

The story followed the death, dissection and analysis of a single manatee. It was designed and constructed to carry the reader effortlessly in and out of scenes and explanations.

But where I succeed on the page, I often fail at the workbench. I'm not handy. I can cut a two by four with a saw, but the cut will almost always be crooked. I can bang nails into a board, but many will be bent. I can drive a screw into a post, but half the time it will strip.

I cannot dismantle and reassemble a clothes dryer, as my dad did some months ago. I can barely remember to empty the lint trap.

But, in my own way, I can build.

Someday I'll have a house of my own. Maybe I'll have a son. And maybe I'll like for my house to have a deck. On that day, I will call my dad.

I'll stand behind him, taller than I once was, but no less in awe. I'll wear safety goggles and gloves. I'll hold his tools. He will consider materials, form and dimensions. He will think of a deck.

And I will think of a story.

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