自考英语综合二下册课文 lesson 12

　　[00:00.00]Lesson Twelve

[00:03.68]Text  Selling the Post

[00:08.83](II) Russell Baker 1

[00:13.58]We lived in Belleville New Jersey 2,

[00:17.84]a commuter 3 town at the northern fringe of Newark.

[00:22.70]It was 1932,the bleakest 4 year of the Depression.

[00:29.65]My father had died two years before,

[00:34.12]leaving us with a few pieces of Sears,Roebuck furniture and not much more,

[00:41.87]and my mother had taken my sister, Doris,

[00:46.52]and me to live with one of her younger brothers.

[00:51.20]This was my Uncle Allen.

[00:55.04]Uncle Allen had made something of himself by 1932.

[01:01.10]As salesman for a soft-drink bottler,

[01:06.38]he had an income of $30 a week;

[01:10.92]wore pearl-gray spats,detachable collars,

[01:16.25]and a three-piece suit was happily married;

[01:21.11]and took in threadbare relatives.

[01:26.18]With my toad 5 of magazines I headed toward Belleville Avenue.

[01:31.82]That's where the people were.

[01:35.97]There were two filling stations at the intersection 6 with Union Avenue,

[01:42.82]as well as an A&P,a street fruit stall,a bakery,

[01:49.37]a barber shop,a drugstore,and a diner shaped like a railroad car.

[01:56.53]For several hours I made myself highly visible,

[02:02.10]shifting position now and then from corner to corner,

[02:07.27]from shop window to shop window,

[02:11.21]to make sure everyone could see the heavy black lettering on the bag

[02:17.38]that said the Saturday Evening Post.

[02:21.92]When the angle of the light indicated it was suppertime,

[02:27.07]I walked back to the house.

[02:30.60]"How many did you sell. Buddy 7?" my mother asked.

[02:35.56]"None.""Where did you go?"

[02:40.10]"The corner of Belleville and Union Avenues. "

[02:45.15]"What did you do?"

[02:48.41]"Stood on the corner waiting for somebody to buy a Saturday Evening Post."

[02:56.07]"You just stood there?"

[02:59.91]"Didn't sell a single one. "

[03:04.66]"For God's sake,Russell!"Uncle Allen intervened.

[03:10.51]"I've been thinking about it for some time," he said,

[03:16.39]"and I've about decided 8 to take the Post regularly.

[03:21.74]Put me down as a regular customer.

[03:25.79]"I handed him a magazine and he paid me a nickel.

[03:30.94]It was the first nickel I earned.

[03:35.01]Afterwards my mother instructed me in salesmanship.

[03:40.66]I would have to ring doorbells,address adults with charming self-confidence,

[03:47.92]and break down resistance with a sales talk pointing out that no one,

[03:54.40]no matter how poor,

[03:57.95]could afford to be without the Saturday Evening Post in the home.

[04:04.30]I told my mother I'd changed my mind

[04:08.66]about wanting to succeed in the magazine business.

[04:13.94]"If you think I'm going to raise a good-for-nothing," she replied,

[04:20.10]"you've got another think coming."

[04:24.18]She told me to hit the streets with the canvas bag and start ringing doorbells

[04:30.94]the instant school was out the next day.

[04:35.62]When I objected that I didn't feel any aptitude 9 for salesman-ship,

[04:42.28]she asked how I'd like to lend her my leather belt

[04:47.84]so she could whack 10 some sense into me.

[04:52.28]I bowed to superior will and entered journalism 11 with a heavy heart.

[04:58.84]My mother and I had fought this battle almost as long as I could remember.

[05:07.02]It probably started even before memory began,

[05:12.06]when I was a country child in northern Virginia

[05:17.41]and my mother,dissatisfied with my father's plain workman's life,

[05:24.08]determined that I would not grow up like him and his people,

[05:30.14]with calluses on their hands, overalls 12 on their backs,

[05:36.01]and fourth-grade educations in their heads.

[05:40.77]She had fancier ideas of life's possibilities.

[05:46.41]Introducing me to the Saturday Evening Post,

[05:51.16]she was trying to wean me as early as possible from my father's world

[05:57.83]where men left with their lunch pails at sunup,

[06:03.18]worked with their hands all their lives,

[06:07.44]and died with a few sticks of mail-order furniture as their legacy 13.

　　[06:14.49]In my mother's vision of the better life

[06:19.48]there were desks and white collars,well-pressed suits,

[06:25.83]evenings of reading and lively talk,and perhaps

[06:31.18] — if a man were very,very lucky and hit the jackpot,

[06:37.35]really made something important of himself

[06:42.02]—perhaps there might be a fantastic salary of $5,000 a year

[06:49.39] to support a big house  and a Buick with a rumble 14 seat

[06:55.87]and vacation in Atlantic City.

[07:00.02]And so I set forth 15 with my sack of magazines.

[07:06.08]I was afraid of the dogs that snarled 16 behind the doors of potential buyers,

[07:12.85]I was timid about ringing the doorbells of strangers,

[07:18.20]relieved when no one came to the door, and scared when someone did.

[07:24.87]Despite my mother's instructions,

[07:29.31]I could not deliver an engaging sales pitch.

[07:34.58]When a door opened I simply asked,"Want to buy a Saturday Evening Post?"

[07:42.03]In Belleville few persons did.

[07:46.39]It was a town of 30,000 people,

[07:50.65]and most weeks I rang a fair majority of its doorbells.

[07:56.21]But I rarely sold my thirty copies.

[08:01.25]Some weeks I canvassed 17 the entire town for six days

[08:08.10]and still had four or five unsold magazines on Monday evening;

[08:14.16]then I dreaded 18 the coming of Tuesday morning

[08:19.72]when a batch 19 of thirty fresh Saturday Evening Post was due at the front door.

[08:26.70]One rainy night when car windows were sealed against me.

[08:32.86]I came back soaked and with not a single sale to report.

[08:39.03]My mother beckoned 20 to Doris.

[08:43.28]"Go back with Buddy and show him how to sell these magazines,"she said.

[08:49.66]Brimming with zest,Doris,then seven years old,returned with me to the corner.

[08:57.03]She took a magazine from the bag,

[09:01.10]and when the light turned red she strode to the nearest car

[09:06.74]and banged her small fist against the closed window.

[09:12.02]The driver, probably startled to see such a little girl assaulting his car,

[09:19.39]lowered the window to stare,

[09:23.15]and Doris thrust a Saturday Evening Post at him.

[09:28.50]"You need this magazine," she piped,

[09:33.05]"and it only costs a nickel."Her salesmanship was irresistible 21.

[09:40.41]Before the light changed half a dozen times she disposed of the entire batch.

[09:47.68]I didn't feel humiliated 22.

[09:52.54] I was so happy I decided to give her a treat.

[09:57.50]Leading her to the vegetable store on Belleville Avenue,

[10:02.46]I bought three apples,which cost a nickel,and gave her one.

[10:09.31]"You shouldn't waste money," she said.

[10:13.67]"Eat your apple." I bit into mine."

[10:18.92]You shouldn't eat before supper," she said.

[10:24.38]"It'll spoil your appetite."

[10:28.24]Back at the house that evening,

[10:32.79]she dutifully reported me for wasting a nickel.

[10:38.35]Instead of a scolding,I was rewarded with a pat on the back

[10:43.92]for having the good sense to buy fruit instead of candy.

[10:49.85]My mother reached into her bottomless supply of maxims 23 and told Doris,

[10:56.90]"An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

[11:03.67]"By the time I was ten I had learned all my mother's maxims by heart.

[11:10.04]Asking to stay up past normal bedtime,

[11:14.90]I knew that a refusal would be explained with

[11:19.86]"Early to bed and early to rise,makes a man healthy,wealthy,and wise."

[11:27.23]If I whimpered about having to get up early in the morning,

[11:32.58]I could depend on her to say, "The early bird gets the worm."

[11:39.14]The one I most despised was,

[11:44.00]"If at first you don't succeed,try,try,try again."

[11:51.08]This was the battle cry

[11:55.13]with which she constantly sent me back into the hopeless struggle

[12:01.37]whenever I moaned that I had rung every doorbell in town

[12:07.54]and knew there wasn't a single potential buyer left in Belleville that week.

[12:15.19]After listening to my explanation,

[12:19.74]she handed me the canvas bag and said,

[12:24.18]"If at first you don't succeed... "

[12:28.54]Three years in that job,

[12:33.58]which I would gladly have quit alter the first day except for her insistence 24,

　　[12:41.02]produced at least one valuable result.

[12:46.07]My mother finally concluded

[12:50.32]that I would never make something of myself by pursuing a life in business

[12:57.27]and started considering careers that demanded less competitive zeal 25.

[13:03.65]One evening when I was eleven I brought home a short "composition"

[13:09.99]on my summer vacation which the teacher had graded with an A.

[13:16.47]Reading it with her own schoolteacher's eye,my mother agreed

[13:22.53]that it was top-drawer seventh grade prose and complimented me.

[13:29.38]Nothing more was said about it immediately,

[13:33.74]but a new idea had taken life in her mind.

[13:39.38]Halfway through supper she suddenly interrupted the conversation.

[13:45.02]"Buddy," she said,

[13:48.39]"maybe you could be a writer."I clasped the idea to my heart.

[13:55.24]I had never met a writer,and shown no previous urge to write,

[14:02.32]and hadn't a notion how to become a writer,

[14:07.18]but I loved stories and thought that making up stories must surely be almost as much fun as reading them.

[14:15.33]Best of all,though,and what really gladdened my heart,

[14:20.97]was the ease of the writer's life.

[14:24.91]Writers did not have to trudge 26 through the town peddling 27 from canvas bags,

[14:31.78]defending themselves against angry dogs,being rejected by surly strangers.

[14:39.83]Writers did not have to ring doorbells.

[14:44.27]So far as I could make out,

[14:48.03]what writers did couldn't even be classified as work.

[14:53.88]I was enchanted 28.

[14:57.44]Writers didn't have to have any gumption 29 at all.

[15:02.19]I did not dare tell anybody for fear of being laughed at in the schoolyard,

[15:09.27]but secretly I decided that what I'd like to be when I grew up was a writer.