2020年经济学人 火鸡工人威利·利瓦伊(1)（在线收听）

Willie Levi, turkey-handler, died of covid-19 on April 23rd, aged 73

火鸡工人威利·利瓦伊于4月23日因新冠肺炎去世，享年73岁。

Singing was something Willie Levi loved to do. When he was at the state school in Mexia, Texas, he belonged to a choir called the Sunshine Singers. They would tour round with a repertoire of hymns: "The Old Rugged Cross", "What a Friend We Have in Jesus". He sang more in church on Sundays: "Surely Goodness", "Amazing Grace". Along with the hymns he liked to shake his tambourine, to keep the beat. He could get music out of almost anything.

威利·利瓦伊喜欢唱歌。在德克萨斯上梅西亚国立学校时，威利是一个叫阳光合唱团的唱诗班的一员。他们会带着圣歌巡回演出：《古老的十字架》，《恩友耶稣》。周日在教堂唱的更多的是：《绝对善良》，《奇异恩典》。伴着圣歌，他喜欢摇着手鼓来保持节奏。威利几乎能用任何东西演奏音乐。

If you gave him a comb, he could play it. And somewhere, in a pocket or a sock, he would keep a pair of spoons, the regular white plastic ones you might pick up in a coffee place. He could play those, too. He also sang to the turkeys, or talked to them in their language, which was a cross between gobbling, whooping and singing. Turkeys were his work day in, day out, ever since he had been recruited by Henry's Turkey Service in 1974 in Goldthwaite, Texas. It was the sort of job people like him, with a mental disability, seemed to end up with. He had tried portering and packing doughnuts, but nothing had quite worked out.

如果你给他一个梳子，他也能演奏它。威利会在口袋或者袜子里放上一对勺子，就是在咖啡店里的寻常白色塑料勺子。他也能用他们演奏。他也对着火鸡唱歌，或者用他们的语言交谈，那是介于咕咕叫和唱歌之间的声音。自从1974年他在德克萨斯州的戈德斯维特被亨利的火鸡服务队招募以来，他每天的工作就是服务火鸡。像他这样有精神残疾的人，似乎最终都会从事这种工作。他试过搬运和包装甜甜圈，但都没有成功。

In Goldthwaite his job was turkey insemination: catching the toms, all 40 thrashing pounds of them, milking their semen and running fast to impregnate the hens. When he and the others he worked with—mostly white, some black, all with a mental disability, all his brothers—were trucked 1,000 miles up to Iowa to handle turkeys there, things got harder. So hard, indeed, that their case marked a milestone for workers with mental disabilities across the United States. The new job seemed okay at first. At the meatpacking plant in West Liberty he worked 12-hour days, but he was used to that. They would get there by 4.30 am, lab coats and rubber boots on by 4.45, first bird out of the coop and flipped onto the shackle by 5.

在戈德斯韦特，他的工作是给火鸡授精：捕捉火鸡。他要给这些40磅重的火鸡挤精液，然后快速跑去给母鸡授精。当他和其他一块工作的人-大多数是白人，有些是黑人，他们都有精神问题，他所有的兄弟-被卡车运到一千里以外的爱荷华州去处理火鸡时，事情变得更艰难了。确实很艰难，他们的经历对美国有精神疾病的工人来说是个里程碑。新工作一开始似乎没问题。在自由西部的肉类加工厂，威利一天工作12小时，但是他已经习惯了。他们会在凌晨4点30分到达那里，4点45分穿上实验服和胶靴，在5点之前给第一个出笼的火鸡加上镣铐。