Widower Harry Keach is a construction worker in Southern Florida who was raised to appreciate the importance of working for a living. He takes a dim view of his sensitive son Howard's lackadaisical and sometimes hedonistic lifestyle, in his early twenties and devoted to a dead-end part-time job, surfing, chasing girls, and hot-tubbing while he dreams of becoming the next Ernest Hemingway. Harry also has a strained relationship with his daughter Nina because he dislikes her husband, an insurance salesman, and he thinks Nina has become Snob now that she has married a more affluent man.