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In those 1920s, near the end of the great immigration wave, my schoolmates were mostly Italian Catholic and Eastern European Jewish, the children of foreign-born in New York, as had both of my grandmothers. My schoolmates called me, semi-derisively, "the Yankee1." Once a teacher asked me to carry a note to the principal. In his outer office, an Italian woman, mother of one of the students, was waiting to see him. While waiting, she was unembarrassedly nursing a baby. I remember a blue vein in her very white breast.
在20世紀20年代里，大規模移民浪潮已接近尾聲，我的同學大多數為意大利天主教徒和東歐猶太人，他們的父母是外來移民，就像我的祖母和外祖母一樣。我的同學們半嘲笑地稱呼我“美國佬”。有一次，一位老師讓我把一張字條帶給校長。一位意大利婦女正在他辦公室的外間等著見他，她是一位學生的母親。在等待過程中，她毫不感到難為情地給嬰兒哺乳。我還記得她那白皙的乳房上有一條青筋。
Radio was still new in those days, wondrous. Many of my schoolmates came from families too poor to own a set. I became something of a school celebrity because of radio and my father. He was a dentist, and in the professional society to which he belonged, he was in charge of a series of talks on dental hygiene that the society presented on the municipal radio station WNYC—fifteen minutes at midday once a week. Usually he invited other dentists to speak, but one week he did the talk himself. My mother wrote a note to my teacher asking that I be excused a half-hour before lunchtime that day, so that I could come home and hear my father. It was granted. I heard him, and I bragged. Some of my friends, especially the foreign-born ones, could hardly believe it. They actually knew someone whose father's voice had been broadcast all around New York City. One of them, probably quoting a parent, said,"Only in America."
收音機在那時還是令人驚嘆的稀罕物。我的許多同學家里太窮，買不起收音機。 因收音機和我父親的緣故，我在學校里多少有點名氣。父親是個牙醫，在他所厲的職業協會中，他負責關于牙齒衛生的系列講座，這些講座是協會在市無線電臺——紐約公共無線電臺推出的，每周一次，在中午播出15分鐘。父親通常邀請其他牙醫做講座，不過有一個星期是他親自主講的。母親給老師寫了個假條，請他允許我在那天午餐前離開半個小時，以便我趕回家聽父親的講座。我的假被批準了，我聽到了父親的講座，便吹噓起來。一些朋友，特別是外國出生的朋友幾乎難以相信這件事。他們居然認識這樣一個人，他父親的聲音在全紐約市播出。其中一個同學大概是引用了一個家長的話說：“只有在美國才有這樣的事。”
