新视野大学英语读写教程听力 第四册 课文 4t02c

[by:和谐英语学习网|http://www.hxen.net|和谐英语||和谐英语学习网]
[00:00.00]喜欢hxen.net，就把hxen.net复制到QQ个人资料中！A Family of Firsts
[00:-1.00]In my family,success is weighed by a single standard:
[00:-2.00]the ability to be first.
[00:-3.00]It does not matter what you are first at as long as you are first at something.
[00:-4.00]My relatives came from Europe at the height of the Machine Age (机器时代).
[00:-5.00]Every day,something else in America was new and first.
[00:-6.00]The first flush toilet (抽水马桶), the first radio,
[00:-7.00]the first hat with a fan.My family got first fever.
[00:-8.00]Foods and other good ideas all counted.
[00:-9.00]Styles,inventions,phrases,too.
[00:10.00]The sole standard for being first at something
[00:11.00]was simply not having heard that somebody else had done it.
[00:12.00]Then you earned the right to say the wonderful words:"I did it first!"
[00:13.00]My great-grandfather on my mother's mother's side invented the toodle.
[00:14.00]The toodle is a little square of paper
[00:15.00]with a bit of mustard (芥末) rolled up into it.
[00:16.00]You could take a toodle to work in the morning
[00:17.00]with a piece of cold meat and squeeze some fresh mustard on it at lunch.
[00:18.00]This great-grandfather,the toodle inventor,
[00:19.00]had three daughters:Ruthie (露茜),
[00:20.00]the first girl who ever made a curtain into a jacket; Gertie (格尔蒂),
[00:21.00]the first girl who ever made a jacket into a curtain; and Polly (波莉),
[00:22.00]my grandmother,who perfected a brush to clean the inside of a water tap.
[00:23.00]"Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't dirty,"
[00:24.00]she was fond of saying.
[00:25.00]Polly was proud of the fact that every inch of her apartment
[00:26.00]was touched by human hand at least twice a year.
[00:27.00]She even dusted the tops of doors,
[00:28.00]using a top-of-the-door duster made of old stockings,
[00:29.00]stuffed with more old stockings.
[00:30.00]Old stockings have always been perceived as a challenge by my family.
[00:31.00]My mother uses hers as an onion bag,an idea she says she invented.
[00:32.00]She also takes credit for being the first person
[00:33.00]to use both legs of a pair of stockings at the same time,
[00:34.00]one leg for onions,one leg for potatoes or garlic.
[00:35.00]But I am getting ahead of myself.
[00:36.00]Perhaps my most famous relative of all,
[00:37.00]the one who really left his mark on America,
[00:38.00]was Reb Sussel (莱伯·萨塞尔),
[00:39.00]my great-grandfather on my father's father's side.
[00:40.00]According to family stories,
[00:41.00]he introduced the pastrami (五香烟熏牛肉) sandwich to the world.
[00:42.00]In 1879,Reb Sussel left his native country
[00:43.00]to find fame and fortune on the streets of New York.
[00:44.00]He had worked at a mill in the old country,
[00:45.00]but,finding the wheat business too much of a grind,
[00:46.00]began selling pots and pans off his back.
[00:47.00]He had no home and would sleep in the basements
[00:48.00]or stables of the people he sold pots to.
[00:49.00]While praying one morning he was kicked by a horse.
[00:50.00]Reb Sussel knew how to butcher meat,
[00:51.00]so he decided to change his job and opened a small butcher shop.
[00:52.00]The first week,a friend stopped by
[00:53.00]and asked if he could store a trunk in the back of the shop.
[00:54.00]"I'm just going back to the old country for a few years," he said.
[00:55.00]"If you store my trunk,I'll tell you how to make pastrami."
[00:56.00]As the story goes,Great-Grandpa took the trunk,
[00:57.00]learned how to make pastrami,
[00:58.00]and began selling big pieces of pastrami over the counter.
[00:59.00]Soon he was selling it by the slice.Then,between two pieces of bread.
[-1:00.00]He met up with my great-grandfather on my mother's side,
[-1:-1.00]who introduced him to the toodle,and before long,
[-1:-2.00]people were coming to his shop for sandwiches more than they were coming for meat.
[-1:-3.00]My father's father,Jacob Volk (雅各布·沃尔克),
[-1:-4.00]took credit for the wrecking ball.
[-1:-5.00]Jake took his wrecking ball all over lower Manhattan Island in New York.