Willie Levi, turkey-handler, died of covid-19 on April 23rd, aged 73
火雞工人威利·利瓦伊于4月23日因新冠肺炎去世，享年73歲。
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·利瓦伊喜歡唱歌。在德克薩斯上梅西亞國立學(xué)校時(shí)，威利是一個(gè)叫陽光合唱團(tuán)的唱詩班的一員。他們會(huì)帶著圣歌巡回演出：《古老的十字架》，《恩友耶穌》。周日在教堂唱的更多的是：《絕對(duì)善良》，《奇異恩典》。伴著圣歌，他喜歡搖著手鼓來保持節(jié)奏。威利幾乎能用任何東西演奏音樂。
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.
如果你給他一個(gè)梳子，他也能演奏它。威利會(huì)在口袋或者襪子里放上一對(duì)勺子，就是在咖啡店里的尋常白色塑料勺子。他也能用他們演奏。他也對(duì)著火雞唱歌，或者用他們的語言交談，那是介于咕咕叫和唱歌之間的聲音。自從1974年他在德克薩斯州的戈德斯維特被亨利的火雞服務(wù)隊(duì)招募以來，他每天的工作就是服務(wù)火雞。像他這樣有精神殘疾的人，似乎最終都會(huì)從事這種工作。他試過搬運(yùn)和包裝甜甜圈，但都沒有成功。
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.
在戈德斯韋特，他的工作是給火雞授精：捕捉火雞。他要給這些40磅重的火雞擠精液，然后快速跑去給母雞授精。當(dāng)他和其他一塊工作的人-大多數(shù)是白人，有些是黑人，他們都有精神問題，他所有的兄弟-被卡車運(yùn)到一千里以外的愛荷華州去處理火雞時(shí)，事情變得更艱難了。確實(shí)很艱難，他們的經(jīng)歷對(duì)美國有精神疾病的工人來說是個(gè)里程碑。新工作一開始似乎沒問題。在自由西部的肉類加工廠，威利一天工作12小時(shí)，但是他已經(jīng)習(xí)慣了。他們會(huì)在凌晨4點(diǎn)30分到達(dá)那里，4點(diǎn)45分穿上實(shí)驗(yàn)服和膠靴，在5點(diǎn)之前給第一個(gè)出籠的火雞加上鐐銬。
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