大学英语综合教程 第三册 5textA

[00:00.00]Alex Haley served in the Coast Guard during World WarII。On an especially lonely day to be at sea
[00:08.65]—Thanksgiving Day-he began to give serious thought to a holiday that has become,
[00:15.52]for many Americans,a day of overeating and watching endless games of football.
[00:22.96]Haley decided to celebrate the true meaning of Thanksgiving by writing three very special letters.
[00:31.45]WRITING THREE THANK-YOU LETTERS   By  Alex Haley
[00:39.94]It was 1943,during Wrold WarII,and I was a young U.S.coastguardsman.
[00:47.44]My ship,the USS Murzim,had been under way for several days.
[00:54.05]Most of her holds contained thousands of cartons of canned or dried foods.
[00:59.72]The other holds were loaded with five-hundred-pound bombs packed delicately in padded racks.
[01:07.81]Our destination was a big base on the island of Tulagi in the South Pacific.
[01:14.79]2 I was one of the Murzim's several cooks and,quite the same as for folk ashore,
[01:21.37]this Thanksgiving morning had seen us busily preparing a traditional dinner featuring roast turkey.
[01:28.61]3 Well,as any cook knows,it’s a lot of hard work to cook and serve a big meal,
[01:35.01]and clean up and put everything away.But finally,around sundown,we finished at last.
[01:42.35]4 I decided first to go out on the Murzim's afterdeck for a breath of open air.I made my way out there,
[01:50.73]breathing in great,deep draughts while walking slowly about,still wearing my white cook’s hat.
[01:57.86]5 I got to thinking about Thanksgiving,
[02:01.50]of the Pilgrims,Indians,wild turkeys,pumpkins,corn on the cob, and the rest.
[02:09.44]6 Yet my mind seemed to be in quest of something else—
[02:14.14]some way that I could personally apply to the close of Thanksgiving.It must have taken me a half hour
[02:21.87]to sense that maybe some key to an answer could result from reversing the word “Thanksgiving”
[02:28.92]—at least that suggested a verbal direction, “Giving thanks.”
[02:34.25]7 Giving thanks-as in praying,thanking God,I thought.Yes,of course.Certainly.
[02:41.36]8 Yet my mind continued turning the idea over.
[02:45.62]9 After a while,like a dawn's brightening,a further answer did come-that there were people to thank,
[02:53.27]people who had done so much for me that I could never possibly repay them.
[02:58.96]The embarrassing truth was I'd always just accepted what they'd done,taken all of it for granted.
[03:06.33]Not one time had I ever bothered to express to any of them so much as a simple,sincere “Thank you.”
[03:14.01]10 At least seven people had been particularly and lastingly helpful to me.I realized,swallowing hard,
[03:22.29]that about half of them had since died—
[03:26.13]so they were forever beyond any possible expression of gratitude from me.
[03:31.67]The more I thought about it,the more ashamed I became.
[03:36.03]Then I pictured the three who were still alive and,within minutes,I was down in my cabin.
[03:42.72]11 Sitting at a table with writing paper and memories of things each had done,
[03:48.28]I tried composing genuine statements of heartfelt appreciation and gratitude to my dad,Simon A.
[03:56.59]Haley,a professor at the old Agricultural Mechanical Normal College in Pine Bluff,Arkansas;to my grandma,
[04:06.62]Cynthia Palmer,back in our little hometown of Henning,Tennessee;and to the Rev.
[04:13.65]Lonual Nelson,my grammar school principal,retired and living in Ripley,six miles north of Henning.
[04:22.43]12 The texts of my letters began something like,"Here,this Thanksgiving at sea,I find my thoughts upon
[04:31.05]how much you have done for me,but I have never stopped and said to you how much I feel the need
[04:37.92]to thank you--''And briefly I recalled for each of them specific acts performed on my behalf.
[04:46.01]13 For instance,something uppermost about my father was how he had impressed upon me
[04:52.96]from boyhood to love books and reading.In fact,this graduated into a family habit of after-dinner quizzes