-
(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
美国有线电视新闻网7月3日报道，风光无限的总统们也有落魄时，苦哈哈地工作，领着惨兮兮的薪水。但铺就成功之路的，往往就是这些看似不如意的“沉默时光”。
奥巴马：冰激凌店小工
President Obama recently said in a magazine interview that he was paid minimum wage or close to it in his first four jobs.
He scooped2 ice cream at Baskin-Robbins, worked as a painter and waited tables at an assisted living facility.
Obama spent one summer clearing construction sites on the Upper West Side when attending Columbia University.
While some Presidents (think Roosevelts, Bushes, JFK) are pretty well-off compared to the majority of people they're elected to represent, Obama is not alone. There are plenty of former commanders-in-chief who knew what it was like to work hard for low wages.
近日，奥巴马在接受一本杂志采访时透露，自己年轻时也曾是打工仔，最初四份工作的工资比最低标准高不到哪儿去。他曾在一家名为“芭斯罗缤”的冰激凌店舀过冰激凌、做过油漆工、也在养老院当过勤杂工。在哥大学习期间，奥巴马还做过建筑工地的清理工。
相比出身显赫的罗斯福、布什和肯尼迪，奥巴马显得有些辛酸，不过还有许多总统和他一样，清楚地知道拿着微薄薪水拼命工作的滋味。
美总统首份工作五花八门：奥巴马当过杂工
Ronald Reagan: Lifeguard, dish washer
里根：救生员、洗碗工
Reagan lifeguarded for several summers at Rock River in his hometown of Dixon, Ill., while in high school. He reportedly saved 77 lives.
He attended Eureka College in Illinois on a partial football scholarship and covered the remaining cost by washing dishes at his fraternity house.
After graduating in 1932, Reagan got a job as a radio sportscaster at WOC in Davenport, Iowa. The radio station paid him $10 per game ($174 in today's dollars).
Reagan, of course, eventually went on to Hollywood.
高中时代的里根曾在家乡狄克逊的罗克河做了好几年的救生员，救起过77个溺水的人。
随后他进入尤里卡学院学习，靠踢足球踢来的奖学金和洗碗工的工资付学费，没让家里掏一分钱。1932年，毕业后的里根在爱荷华州的一家广播电台当起了播报员，当时每播一场比赛，电台只给他10美元。不过后来，他去好莱坞混了。
福特：烤汉堡员
Ford helped out at his stepfather's paint store and grilled5 burgers at a local restaurant while in high school.
He also played a lot of football, eventually playing center for the University of Michigan. Both the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions offered him contracts, but Ford turned them down because he wanted to attend law school.
Ford didn't gain admission immediately, so he got an assistant football coaching job at Yale, making $2,400 for the year in 1935. That would be $42,676 in 2014 dollars. He also coached boxing, helping6 him to pay down his debts and get a foot in the door at Yale Law School, where he was admitted in 1938.
同样也是在高中时代，福特在继父的印刷店里帮忙，除此之外，还在当地的一家快餐店里烤汉堡。福特的橄榄球打得很好，在密歇根大学校队打中锋时，由于球技精湛，被底特律狮队和绿湾包装工队同时相中，不过福特都没答应，因为他心心念念的是耶鲁法学院。
申请学校的一段时间里，他也没闲着，一边在耶鲁做橄榄球助教、一边还教人打拳击。凭着这两份薪水，他在还清贷款之余，还挣了不少，仅橄榄球助教就让他在1935年挣了2400美元（相当于如今的42676美元）。1938年，福特如愿以偿，拿着自己挣的学费进了法学院。
Herbert Hoover: Miner
胡佛：矿工
While still a teenager, Hoover and a friend started a company that sold and repaired sewing machines. The business failed, but it was not the future president's only brush with entrepreneurship.
He enrolled7 at Stanford in 1891, in the university's first class. Although tuition was free at the time, students still had to pay for room, board and books. To cover the costs Hoover ran a laundry service, a concert series and a campus paper route. He made a profit selling the laundry service to another student, allowing him to graduate with no debts and $40 in his pocket, according to a biography written by Amy Ruth.
After graduating, Hoover took a job pushing carts underground in mine shafts8 in California. He earned $2 a day, working 70 hours a week, according to presidential historian Richard Norton Smith. That daily wage is equal to $56 today.
胡佛十几岁的时候就和朋友开了个小公司，出售和维修缝纫机。不幸小公司没撑多久，可他创业的脚步没有就此停下。1891年，胡佛进入斯坦福大学，成为了斯坦福的第一届学生。当时的斯坦福是不收学费的，不过食宿和书本要学生自己负担。为了挣到这笔钱，他又开始为同学们提供洗衣服务。毕业后，胡佛找了一份工作，在地下的矿井里推矿车。一周工作70个小时，可每天只能挣2美元。
Richard Nixon: Produce buyer
尼克松：采购员
Nixon did not come from money.
"You could literally9 say they were dirt poor," said Barbara Perry, a co-chair of the Miller10 Center Oral History Program at the University of Virginia.
Nixon's financial troubles stemmed from the failed lemon ranch11 his parents owned until 1922. His father then opened a combined grocery store and gas station in Whittier, Calif., where the entire family worked.
Nixon would get up every morning before school to go into Los Angeles and check out the available produce selection, said historian Richard Norton Smith.
In 1930, Nixon enrolled in Whittier College, and later won a scholarship to Duke University's law school.
尼克松家条件不好，甚至可以说是困苦。1922年，尼克松家的牧场破产。随后，父亲用仅剩的家底开了杂货铺和加油站，全家人都在店里帮忙。凌晨4点，尼克松就必须起床，开着家里的卡车去进货，然后才去上学。
Lyndon Johnson: Road crew
林登·约翰逊：道路工人
After finishing high school in 1924, LBJ had what some historians have called a "lost period" in his life. With five friends, he bought a car to drive from Texas to California, where he worked some odd jobs for about a year. He hitchhiked back to Texas, where he did some manual labor12 on a road crew.
In 1927, Johnson enrolled in Southwest Texas State Teachers College. He was a student-teacher at a small Hispanic school in an impoverished13 area.
When Johnson graduated in 1930, his first teaching job paid $1,530 ($21,796 when adjusting for inflation) for the year. He worked briefly14 as a teacher before getting a job as a Congressional aide.
1924年高中毕业后，约翰逊进入了所谓的“迷茫期”。他和几个朋友借了一辆车，从德州开到了加州，想要闯荡社会，自立门户。随后的一年里，他干了一堆稀奇古怪的工作，却没什么收获，于是只好落魄潦倒地流浪回家，在德州做了一段时间的道路工人。
Jimmy Carter: Peanut farmer
卡特：农民
Carter worked on his parents' Georgia peanut farm as a boy. By the time he was 10 years old, Carter was hauling produce into town to sell.
He left Georgia to attend the U.S. Naval15 Academy. After serving in the Navy for several years, Carter moved his family back to the farm when his father died. A terrible drought devastated16 the farm in 1954, leaving him a profit of just $187 ($1,654 in 2014 dollars) that year.
Carter successfully turned the farm around before entering politics.
卡特从小在自家的花生农场里干活儿，10岁时就能一个人拖着车子到镇上卖花生。后来，卡特进入了海军军官学校。几年后，父亲去世，他又举家迁回了农场。1954年，一场大旱让农场几乎颗粒无收，一整年的收入仅有187美元。
Bill Clinton: Congressional clerk
克林顿：国会职员
Clinton attended Georgetown University as an undergrad, but was worried about how to foot the bill. He received some scholarships and help from his parents. His stepfather owned a Buick dealership17 and his mother was a nurse.
Clinton writes in his autobiography18 that he was relieved when offered a part-time job as a clerk for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee that paid him $3,500 ($25,699 in inflation-adjusted dollars) for the year.
"Though I never told anyone at the time, I was afraid I'd have to leave Georgetown and come home, where college was much less expensive," he writes.
克林顿的继父是汽车经销商，母亲是护士，按说他应该没有什么经济上的负担，但乔治城大学还是让他发了愁，除了奖学金和父母的资助外，他还得找一份工作，才能支付高昂的学费。他甚至想过转校，所幸后来美国参议院外交关系委员会给了他一份年薪3500美元的兼职。
George H.W. Bush: Clerk
老布什：石油公司职员
Let's face it, Bush 41 didn't have to pinch pennies.
"He is completely of the New England gentry19 class, but he wanted to try and make it on his own," said presidency20 expert Barbara Perry.
After serving in World War II and then finishing Yale, Bush moved his family to Texas with hopes of making it in the oil business. He first took a job as clerk for an oil-drilling company owned by a friend's father, earning $375 monthly ($3,748 in today's dollars).
"He did want to get away from the family establishment, and not to take that away from him, but he could have always gone back to Greenwich," Perry said.
But the clerk job didn't last for long. In 1950, he and a friend started their own oil company. It later merged21 with Zapata Petroleum22, and Bush became president of one of its subsidiaries
以其优厚的家庭条件，布什其实根本不用精打细，但他想要自食其力，证明自己。从耶鲁毕业后，为了了解石油业，布什移居德州，起初在朋友父亲的一家石油公司里做职员，一个月的工资只有375美元。在熟悉了石油公司的运作和程序后，1950年，布什很快与朋友合资成立了自己的石油公司。
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
scooper
|
|
| 斗式升运机；勺子 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
scooped
|
|
| v.抢先报道( scoop的过去式和过去分词 )；（敏捷地）抱起；抢先获得；用铲[勺]等挖（洞等） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
Ford
|
|
| n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
flipper
|
|
| n. 鳍状肢，潜水用橡皮制鳍状肢 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
grilled
|
|
| adj. 烤的, 炙过的, 有格子的 动词grill的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
helping
|
|
| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
enrolled
|
|
| adj.入学登记了的v.[亦作enrol]( enroll的过去式和过去分词 )；登记，招收，使入伍（或入会、入学等），参加，成为成员；记入名册；卷起，包起 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
shafts
|
|
| n.轴( shaft的名词复数 )；（箭、高尔夫球棒等的）杆；通风井；一阵（疼痛、害怕等） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
literally
|
|
| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
miller
|
|
| n.磨坊主 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
ranch
|
|
| n.大牧场，大农场 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
labor
|
|
| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
impoverished
|
|
| adj.穷困的，无力的，用尽了的v.使（某人）贫穷( impoverish的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某物）贫瘠或恶化 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
briefly
|
|
| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
naval
|
|
| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
devastated
|
|
| v.彻底破坏( devastate的过去式和过去分词)；摧毁；毁灭；在感情上（精神上、财务上等）压垮adj.毁坏的；极为震惊的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
dealership
|
|
| n.商品特许经销处 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
autobiography
|
|
| n.自传 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
gentry
|
|
| n.绅士阶级，上层阶级 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
presidency
|
|
| n.总统(校长，总经理)的职位(任期) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
merged
|
|
| （使）混合( merge的过去式和过去分词 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
petroleum
|
|
| n.原油，石油 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
购买
在百度中搜索