[00:00.00] Alex Haley served in the Coast Guard during World WarII。On an especially lonely day to be at sea
[00:08.65]—Thanksgiving Day-he began to give serious thought to a holiday that has become,
[00:15.52]for many Americans,a day of overeating and watching endless games of football.
[00:22.96]Haley decided to celebrate the true meaning of Thanksgiving by writing three very special letters.
[00:31.45]WRITING THREE THANK-YOU LETTERS By Alex Haley
[00:39.94]It was 1943,during Wrold WarII,and I was a young U.S.coastguardsman.
[00:47.44]My ship,the USS Murzim,had been under way for several days.
[00:54.05]Most of her holds contained thousands of cartons of canned or dried foods.
[00:59.72]The other holds were loaded with five-hundred-pound bombs packed delicately in padded racks.
[01:07.81]Our destination was a big base on the island of Tulagi in the South Pacific.
[01:14.79]2 I was one of the Murzim's several cooks and,quite the same as for folk ashore,
[01:21.37]this Thanksgiving morning had seen us busily preparing a traditional dinner featuring roast turkey.
[01:28.61]3 Well,as any cook knows,it’s a lot of hard work to cook and serve a big meal,
[01:35.01]and clean up and put everything away.But finally,around sundown,we finished at last.
[01:42.35]4 I decided first to go out on the Murzim's afterdeck for a breath of open air.I made my way out there,
[01:50.73]breathing in great,deep draughts while walking slowly about,still wearing my white cook’s hat.
[01:57.86]5 I got to thinking about Thanksgiving,
[02:01.50]of the Pilgrims,Indians,wild turkeys,pumpkins,corn on the cob, and the rest.
[02:09.44]6 Yet my mind seemed to be in quest of something else—
[02:14.14]some way that I could personally apply to the close of Thanksgiving.It must have taken me a half hour
[02:21.87]to sense that maybe some key to an answer could result from reversing the word “Thanksgiving”
[02:28.92]—at least that suggested a verbal direction, “Giving thanks.”
[02:34.25]7 Giving thanks-as in praying,thanking God,I thought.Yes,of course.Certainly.
[02:41.36]8 Yet my mind continued turning the idea over.
[02:45.62]9 After a while,like a dawn's brightening,a further answer did come-that there were people to thank,
[02:53.27]people who had done so much for me that I could never possibly repay them.
[02:58.96]The embarrassing truth was I'd always just accepted what they'd done,taken all of it for granted.
[03:06.33]Not one time had I ever bothered to express to any of them so much as a simple,sincere “Thank you.”
[03:14.01]10 At least seven people had been particularly and lastingly helpful to me.I realized,swallowing hard,
[03:22.29]that about half of them had since died—
[03:26.13]so they were forever beyond any possible expression of gratitude from me.
[03:31.67]The more I thought about it,the more ashamed I became.
[03:36.03]Then I pictured the three who were still alive and,within minutes,I was down in my cabin.
[03:42.72]11 Sitting at a table with writing paper and memories of things each had done,
[03:48.28]I tried composing genuine statements of heartfelt appreciation and gratitude to my dad,Simon A.
[03:56.59]Haley,a professor at the old Agricultural Mechanical Normal College in Pine Bluff,Arkansas;to my grandma,
[04:06.62]Cynthia Palmer,back in our little hometown of Henning,Tennessee;and to the Rev.
[04:13.65]Lonual Nelson,my grammar school principal,retired and living in Ripley,six miles north of Henning.
[04:22.43]12 The texts of my letters began something like,"Here,this Thanksgiving at sea,I find my thoughts upon
[04:31.05]how much you have done for me,but I have never stopped and said to you how much I feel the need
[04:37.92]to thank you--''And briefly I recalled for each of them specific acts performed on my behalf.
[04:46.01]13 For instance,something uppermost about my father was how he had impressed upon me
[04:52.96]from boyhood to love books and reading.In fact,this graduated into a family habit of after-dinner quizzes
[05:01.79]at the table about books read most recently and new words learned.My love of books never diminished
[05:10.57]and later led me toward writing books myself.So many times I have felt a sadness
[05:17.15]when exposed to modern children so immersed in the electronic media
[05:22.74]that they have little or no awareness of the marvelous world to be discovered in books.
[05:29.20]14 I reminded the Reverend Nelson how each morning he would open our little country town's grammar school
[05:35.99]with a prayer over his assembled students.I told him that whatever positive things
[05:43.14]I had done since had been influenced at least in part by his morning school prayers.
[05:50.48]15 In the letter to my grandmother,I reminded her of a dozen ways she used to teach me
[05:57.46]how to tell the truth,to share,and to be forgiving and considerate of others.
[06:04.30]I thanked her for the years of eating her good cooking,the equal of which I had not found since.
[06:11.59]Finally,I thanked her simply for having sprinkled my life with stardust.
[06:17.84]16 Before I slept,my three letters went into our ship's office mail sack.They got mailed
[06:24.94]when we reached Tulagi Island.
[06:28.60]17 We unloaded cargo,reloaded with something else,then again we put to sea in the routine familiar to us,
[06:36.96]and as the days became weeks,my little personal experience receded.Sometimes,when we were at sea,
[06:45.26]a mail ship would rendezvous and bring us mail from home,which,of course,we accorded topmost priority.
[06:53.39]18 Every time the ship's loudspeaker rasped,"Attention!Mail call!?"
[06:59.16]two hundred-odd shipmates came pounding up on deck and clustered about the two seamen,
[07:05.80]standing by those precious bulging gray sacks.They were alternately pulling out fistfuls of letters
[07:13.50]and barking successive names of sailors who were,in turn,shouting back "Here ! Here! "amid the pushing.
[07:21.36]19 One "mail call" brought me responsed from Grandma,Dad,and the Reverend Nelson—and my reading of their letters
[07:30.01]left me not only astonished but more humbled than before.
[07:35.39]20 Rather than saying they would forgive that I hadn't previously thanked them,instead,for Pete's sake,
[07:42.55]they were thanking me--for having remembered,for having considered they had done anything so exceptional.
[07:50.20]21 Always the college professor,my dad had carefully avoided anything he considered too sentimental,
[07:57.20]so I knew how moved he was to write me that,after having helped educate many young people,
[08:04.70]he now felt that his best results included his own son.
[08:10.03]22 The Reverend Nelson wrote that his decades as a "simple,old-fashioned principal"
[08:16.74]had ended with schools undergoing such swift changes that he had retired in self-doubt.
[08:23.20]“I heard more of what I had done wrong than what I did right,"he said,
[08:28.73]adding that my letter had brought him welcome reassurance that his career had been appreciated.
[08:35.34]23 A glance at Grandma's familiar handwriting brought back in a flash memories of standing
[08:43.44]alongside her white rocking chair,watching her"settin' down" some letter to relatives.
[08:50.94]Character by character,Grandma would slowly accomplish one word,then the next,
[08:57.78]so that a finished page would consume hours.I wept over the page representing my Grandma's recent hours
[09:06.09]invested in expressing her loving gratefulness to me--whom she used to diaper!
[09:12.91]24 Much later,retired from the Coast Guard and trying to make a living as a writer,
[09:19.23]I never forgot how those three"thank you"letters gave me an insight into how most human beings
[09:27.20]go about longing in secret for more of their fellows to express appreciation for their efforts.
[09:34.77]25 Now,approaching another Thanksgiving,I have asked myself what will I wish for all who are reading this,
[09:44.05]for our nation,indeed for our whole world?asince,quoting a good and wise friend of mine,
[09:51.54]“In the end we are mightly and merely people,each with similar needs." First,I wish for us,of course,
[10:01.44]the simple common sense to achieve world peace,that being paramount for the very survival of our kind.
[10:09.49]26 And there is something else I wish?aso strongly that I have had this line printed
[10:16.31]across the bottom of all my stationery: “Find the good—and praise it.”
[10:23.46]coastguardsman under way carton bomb
[10:28.60]海岸警卫队队员 航行中 硬纸盒 炸弹
[10:33.73]pad rack ashore traditional
[10:38.30]用软的材料衬托 炮弹架 在岸上 传统的
[10:42.87]turkey put away sundown afterdeck
[10:50.72]火鸡 收好 日落时分 后甲板
[10:58.57]draught get to sth./doing sth cob and the rest
[11:07.47]气流 开始认真思考 玉米穗轴 等等
[11:16.36]quest reverse verbal turn over
[11:23.27]寻求 反转 口头的 考虑
[11:30.18]brighten repay sincere lastingly
[11:37.20]变亮 偿还 诚挚的 长久地
[11:44.21]gratitude statement heartfelt appreciation
[11:52.65]感激 陈述 衷心的 感谢
[12:01.08]agricultural mechanical hometown Reverend
[12:09.85]农业的 机械的 故乡 尊敬的
[12:18.61]at sea specific behalf instance
[12:26.08]在海上航行 明确的 利益 例子
[12:33.55]uppermost impress boyhood quiz
[12:41.39]最高的 使重视 少年时代 测验
[12:49.23]diminish expose immerse awareness
[12:56.11]使变小 使暴露 使沉浸 察觉
[13:02.99]marvelous prayer assemble considerate
[13:09.85]不可思议的 祈祷 集合 体贴的
[13:16.71]sprinkle stardust unload cargo
[13:20.84]将…洒在…上 梦幻 卸货 货物
[13:24.96]reload recede rendezvous accord
[13:32.68]再装 变得模糊 会合 使符合
[13:40.40]topmost loudspeaker rasp hundred-odd
[13:48.68]最高的 扩音器 发出 一百多个
[13:56.96]shipmate deck cluster seaman
[14:00.92]同船水手 甲板 群 海员
[14:04.88]bulge fistful bark successive
[14:11.19]鼓胀 一把 厉声叫出 接连不断的
[14:17.50]in turn amid humble undergo
[14:24.55]轮流地 在…当中 使谦卑 经过
[14:31.60]swift reassurance appreciate bring back
[14:39.96]迅疾的 放心 赏识 回想起
[14:48.32]in a flash weep diaper being
[14:52.46]一瞬间 流泪 尿布 生命
[14:56.60]go about in secret quote mightily
[15:03.54]表现 秘密地 引用 非常
[15:11.91]最主要的 信纸信封
