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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世纪20年代里，大规模移民浪潮已接近尾声，我的同学大多数为意大利天主教徒和东欧犹太人，他们的父母是外来移民，就像我的祖母和外祖母一样。我的同学们半嘲笑地称呼我“美国佬”。有一次，一位老师让我把一张字条带给校长。一位意大利妇女正在他办公室的外间等着见他，她是一位学生的母亲。在等待过程中，她毫不感到难为情地给婴儿哺乳。我还记得她那白皙的乳房上有一条青筋。
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."
收音机在那时还是令人惊叹的稀罕物。我的许多同学家里太穷，买不起收音机。 因收音机和我父亲的缘故，我在学校里多少有点名气。父亲是个牙医，在他所厲的职业协会中，他负责关于牙齿卫生的系列讲座，这些讲座是协会在市无线电台——纽约公共无线电台推出的，每周一次，在中午播出15分钟。父亲通常邀请其他牙医做讲座，不过有一个星期是他亲自主讲的。母亲给老师写了个假条，请他允许我在那天午餐前离开半个小时，以便我赶回家听父亲的讲座。我的假被批准了，我听到了父亲的讲座，便吹嘘起来。一些朋友，特别是外国出生的朋友几乎难以相信这件事。他们居然认识这样一个人，他父亲的声音在全纽约市播出。其中一个同学大概是引用了一个家长的话说：“只有在美国才有这样的事。”
