西班牙文化之旅

Chapter 4

第 4 章

I was born in late summer 1984, just a few months before Papaw cast his first and only vote for a Republican—Ronald Reagan. Winning large blocks of Rust Belt Democrats like Papaw, Reagan went on to the biggest electoral landslide in modern American history. “I never liked Reagan much,” Papaw later told me. “But I hated that son of a bitch Mondale.” Reagan’s Democratic opponent, a well-educated Northern liberal, stood in stark cultural contrast to my hillbilly Papaw. Mondale never had a chance, and after he departed from the political scene, Papaw never again voted against his beloved “party of the workingman.”

我出生於1984年夏末，就在帕帕投下他的第一張也是唯一一張共和黨人羅納德·雷根（Ronald Reagan）的票前幾個月。雷根贏得了像帕帕這樣的鐵鏽地帶民主黨人，繼續了現代美國歷史上最大的選舉壓倒性勝利。“我從來都不喜歡雷根，”帕帕後來告訴我。“可是我討厭那個婊子蒙代爾的兒子。雷根的民主黨對手，一個受過良好教育的北方自由主義者，與我的鄉巴佬爸爸形成了鮮明的文化對比。蒙代爾再也沒有機會，在他離開政治舞臺後，帕帕再也沒有投票反對他心愛的“工人黨”。

Jackson, Kentucky, would always have my heart, but Middletown, Ohio, had most of my time. In many ways, the town where I was born was largely the same as the one my grandparents had migrated to four decades earlier. Its population had changed little since the 1950s, when the flood of migrants on the hillbilly highway slowed to a dribble. My elementary school was built in the 1930s, before my grandparents left Jackson, and my middle school first welcomed a class shortly after World War I, well before my grandparents were born. Armco remained the town’s biggest employer, and though troubling signs were on the horizon, Middletown had avoided significant economic problems. “We saw ourselves as a really fine community, on par with Shaker Heights or Upper Arlington,” explained a decades-long veteran of the public schools, comparing the Middletown of yore to some of the most successful of Ohio’s suburbs. “Of course, none of us knew what would happen.”

肯塔基州的傑克遜永遠是我的心，但俄亥俄州的米德爾敦擁有我的大部分時間。在許多方面，我出生的小鎮與我祖父母四十年前移居的小鎮大致相同。自 1950 年代以來，它的人口變化不大，當時鄉巴佬高速公路上的移民潮放緩到滴水不漏。我的小學建於 1930 年代，在我祖父母離開傑克遜之前，我的中學在第一次世界大戰後不久首次迎來了一個班級，遠在我祖父母出生之前。阿姆科仍然是該鎮最大的僱主，儘管令人不安的跡象即將到來，但米德爾敦避免了重大的經濟問題。“我們認為自己是一個非常好的社區，與Shaker Heights或Upper Arlington相提並論，”一位在公立學校工作了幾十年的資深人士解釋說，他將昔日的米德爾敦與俄亥俄州一些最成功的郊區進行了比較。“當然，我們誰也不知道會發生什麼。

Middletown is one of the older incorporated towns in Ohio, built during the 1800s thanks to its proximity to the Miami River, which empties directly into the Ohio. As kids, we joked that our hometown was so generic that they didn’t even bother to give it a real name: It’s in the middle of Cincinnati and Dayton, and it’s a town, so here we are. (It’s not alone: A few miles from Middletown is Centerville.) Middletown is generic in other ways. It exemplified the economic expansion of the manufacturing-based Rust Belt town. Socioeconomically, it is largely working-class. Racially, there are lots of white and black people (the latter the product of an analogous great migration) but few others. And culturally, it is very conservative, although cultural conservatism and political conservatism are not always aligned in Middletown.

米德爾敦是俄亥俄州最古老的合併城鎮之一，建於 1800 年代，這要歸功於它靠近直接流入俄亥俄州的邁阿密河。小時候，我們開玩笑說我們的家鄉太普通了，以至於他們甚至懶得給它起一個真實的名字：它位於辛辛那提和代頓的中間，這是一個小鎮，所以我們在這裡。（它並不孤單：距離米德爾敦幾英里的地方是森特維爾。米德爾敦在其他方面是通用的。它體現了以製造業為基礎的鏽帶小鎮的經濟擴張。在社會經濟上，它主要是工人階級。從種族上講，有很多白人和黑人（後者是類似大遷徙的產物），但其他人很少。在文化上，它非常保守，儘管文化保守主義和政治保守主義在米德爾敦並不總是一致的。

The people I grew up around are not all that dissimilar from the people of Jackson. This is especially obvious at Armco, which employed a plurality of the town’s population. Indeed, the work environment once mirrored the Kentucky towns that many of the employees came from. One author reported that “a sign over a doorway between departments read, ‘Leave Morgan County and Enter Wolfe County.’”¹¹ Kentucky—down to its county rivalries—moved with the Appalachian migrants to town.

我長大的人與傑克遜的人並沒有什麼不同。這在阿姆科尤為明顯，它僱用了該鎮的大部分人口。事實上，工作環境曾經反映了許多員工來自肯塔基州的城鎮。一位作者報告說，「各部門之間門口的牌子上寫著『離開摩根縣，進入沃爾夫縣』。¹¹肯塔基州 - 包括其縣級競爭 - 與阿巴拉契亞移民一起搬到了鎮上。

As a kid, I sorted Middletown into three basic geographic regions. First, the area surrounding the high school, which opened in 1969, Uncle Jimmy’s senior year. (Even in 2003, Mamaw called it the “new high school.”) The “rich” kids lived here. Large homes mixed comfortably with well-kept parks and office complexes. If your dad was a doctor, he almost certainly owned a home or had an office here, if not both. I dreamed that I’d own a house in Manchester Manor, a relatively new development not a mile from the high school, where a nice home went for less than a fifth of the price of a decent house in San Francisco. Next, the poor kids (the really poor kids) lived near Armco, where even the nice homes had been converted into multi-family apartment units. I didn’t know until recently that this neighborhood was actually two neighborhoods—one inhabited by Middletown’s working-class black population, the other by its poorest white population. Middletown’s few housing projects stood there.

小時候，我把米德爾敦分為三個基本的地理區域。首先是高中周圍的區域，該高中於 1969 年開學，吉米叔叔的高年級。（即使在 2003 年，Mamaw 也稱它為“新高中”。“有錢”的孩子住在這裡。大型住宅與保存完好的公園和辦公大樓舒適地混合在一起。如果你的父親是一名醫生，他幾乎可以肯定在這裡擁有一所房子或辦公室，如果不是兩者兼而有之的話。我夢想著在曼徹斯特莊園擁有一棟房子，這是一個相對較新的開發項目，距離高中不到一英里，在那裡，一棟漂亮的房子的價格不到三藩市一棟像樣房子的五分之一。接下來，窮孩子（真正的窮孩子）住在阿姆科附近，那裡甚至連漂亮的房子都被改造成了多戶公寓。直到最近，我才知道這個社區實際上是兩個社區——一個是米德爾敦的工人階級黑人人口，另一個是最貧窮的白人人口。米德爾敦為數不多的住房專案就在那裡。

Then there was the area where we lived—mostly single-family homes, with abandoned warehouses and factories within walking distance. Looking back, I don’t know if the “really poor” areas and my block were any different, or whether these divisions were the constructs of a mind that didn’t want to believe it was really poor.

然後是我們居住的地區——大部分是單戶住宅，步行即可到達廢棄的倉庫和工廠。回想起來，我不知道“真正貧窮”的地區和我的街區是否有任何不同，或者這些劃分是否是一個不願意相信它真的很貧窮的思想的建構。

Across the street from our house was Miami Park, a single city block with a swing set, a tennis court, a baseball field, and a basketball court. As I grew up, I noticed that the tennis court lines faded with each passing month, and that the city had stopped filling in the cracks or replacing the nets on the basketball courts. I was still young when the tennis court became little more than a cement block littered with grass patches. I learned that our neighborhood had “gone downhill” after two bikes were stolen in the course of the week. For years, Mamaw said, her children had left their bikes unchained in the yard with no problems. Now her grandkids woke to find thick locks cracked in two by dead-bolt cutters. From that point forward, I walked.

我們家的街對面是邁阿密公園，這是一個單一的城市街區，有一個秋千、一個網球場、一個棒球場和一個籃球場。隨著我長大，我注意到網球場的線條隨著時間的流逝而逐漸消失，城市已經停止填補裂縫或更換籃球場上的球網。我還很年輕的時候，網球場只不過是一塊散落著草地的水泥塊。我瞭解到，在一周內有兩輛自行車被盜后，我們的社區已經“走下坡路”。媽媽說，多年來，她的孩子們一直把自行車鬆開在院子里，沒有任何問題。現在，她的孫子們醒來時發現厚厚的鎖被死線鉗劈成兩半。從那時起，我就走了。

If Middletown had changed little by the time I was born, the writing was on the wall almost immediately thereafter. It’s easy even for residents to miss it because the change has been gradual—more erosion than mudslide. But it’s obvious if you know where to look, and a common refrain for those of us who return intermittently is “Geez, Middletown is not looking good.”

如果說在我出生的時候，米德爾敦幾乎沒有什麼變化，那麼在那之後，字跡幾乎立即就掛在了牆上。即使是居民也很容易錯過它，因為這種變化是漸進的——比泥石流更多的侵蝕。但如果你知道去哪裡看，那就很明顯了，對於我們這些間歇性返回的人來說，一個常見的克制是“哎呀，米德爾敦看起來不太好。

In the 1980s, Middletown had a proud, almost idyllic downtown: a bustling shopping center, restaurants that had operated since before World War II, and a few bars where men like Papaw would gather and have a beer (or many) after a hard day at the steel mill. My favorite store was the local Kmart, which was the main attraction in a strip mall, near a branch of Dillman’s—a local grocer with three or four locations. Now the strip mall is mostly bare: Kmart stands empty, and the Dillman family closed that big store and all the rest, too. The last I checked, there was only an Arby’s, a discount grocery store, and a Chinese buffet in what was once a Middletown center of commerce. The scene at that strip mall is hardly uncommon. Few Middletown businesses are doing well, and many have ceased operating altogether. Twenty years ago, there were two local malls. Now one of those malls is a parking lot, and the other serves as a walking course for the elderly (though it still has a few stores).

在 1980 年代，米德爾敦有一個引以為豪的、幾乎是田園詩般的市中心：一個繁華的購物中心、從二戰前就開始營業的餐館，以及一些酒吧，像 Papaw 這樣的人會在鋼鐵廠辛苦了一天后聚集在一起喝啤酒（或很多）。我最喜歡的商店是當地的凱馬特（Kmart），這是一家購物中心的主要景點，靠近迪爾曼（Dillman's）的一家分店，這是一家擁有三四家分店的當地雜貨店。現在，脫衣舞購物中心幾乎光禿禿的：凱馬特空無一人，迪爾曼家族關閉了那家大商店，其他所有商店也都關閉了。我上次檢查時，在曾經是米德爾敦商業中心的地方，只有一家 Arby's、一家折扣雜貨店和一家中式自助餐。那個脫衣舞商場的場景並不少見。米德爾敦很少有企業經營良好，許多企業已經完全停止運營。二十年前，當地有兩家購物中心。現在，其中一個購物中心是停車場，另一個是老年人的步行道（儘管它仍然有幾家商店）。

Today downtown Middletown is little more than a relic of American industrial glory. Abandoned shops with broken windows line the heart of downtown, where Central Avenue and Main Street meet. Richie’s pawnshop has long since closed, though a hideous yellow and green sign still marks the site, so far as I know. Richie’s isn’t far from an old pharmacy that, in its heyday, had a soda bar and served root beer floats. Across the street is a building that looks like a theater, with one of those giant triangular signs that reads “ST___L” because the letters in the middle were shattered and never replaced. If you need a payday lender or a cash-for-gold store, downtown Middletown is the place to be.

今天，米德爾敦市中心只不過是美國工業輝煌的遺迹。窗戶破損的廢棄商店排列在市中心的中心地帶，中央大道和主街在這裡交匯。里奇的當鋪早已關門，但據我所知，這裡仍然掛著一個醜陋的黃綠相間的標誌。Richie's離一家老藥店不遠，在鼎盛時期，這家藥店有一家蘇打水吧，供應根啤酒漂浮物。街對面是一座看起來像劇院的建築，上面有一個巨大的三角形標誌，上面寫著“ST___L”，因為中間的字母被打碎了，再也沒有更換過。如果您需要發薪日貸款人或現金換金店，米德爾敦市中心就是您的不二之選。

Not far from the main drag of empty shops and boarded-up windows is the Sorg Mansion. The Sorgs, a powerful and wealthy industrial family dating back to the nineteenth century, operated a large paper mill in Middletown. They donated enough money to put their names on the local opera house and helped build Middletown into a respectable enough city to attract Armco. Their mansion, a gigantic manor home, sits near a formerly proud Middletown country club. Despite its beauty, a Maryland couple recently purchased the mansion for $225,000, or about half of what a decent multi-room apartment sets you back in Washington, D.C.

離空蕩蕩的商店和木板窗戶的主要拖曳不遠處是 Sorg Mansion。Sorgs 是一個強大而富有的工業家族，其歷史可以追溯到 19 世紀，在米德爾敦經營著一家大型造紙廠。他們捐贈了足夠的錢，將他們的名字放在當地的歌劇院上，並説明將米德爾敦建設成一個足夠受人尊敬的城市，以吸引阿姆科。他們的豪宅是一座巨大的莊園，坐落在以前引以為豪的米德爾敦鄉村俱樂部附近。儘管它很漂亮，但馬里蘭州的一對夫婦最近以 225,000 美元的價格購買了這座豪宅，大約是華盛頓特區體面的多房間公寓的一半。

Located quite literally on Main Street, the Sorg Mansion is just up the road from a number of opulent homes that housed Middletown’s wealthy in their heyday. Most have fallen into disrepair. Those that haven’t have been subdivided into small apartments for Middletown’s poorest residents. A street that was once the pride of Middletown today serves as a meeting spot for druggies and dealers. Main Street is now the place you avoid after dark.

Sorg Mansion 位於主街上，距離米德爾敦鼎盛時期的富人居住的許多豪華住宅僅一行之遙。大多數都年久失修。那些還沒有被細分為米德爾敦最貧困居民的小公寓。這條曾經是米德爾敦驕傲的街道今天成為毒品販子和毒販的聚會場所。主街現在是你天黑后避開的地方。

This change is a symptom of a new economic reality: rising residential segregation. The number of working-class whites in high-poverty neighborhoods is growing. In 1970, 25 percent of white children lived in a neighborhood with poverty rates above 10 percent. In 2000, that number was 40 percent. It’s almost certainly even higher today. As a 2011 Brookings Institution study found, “compared to 2000, residents of extreme-poverty neighborhoods in 2005–09 were more likely to be white, native-born, high school or college graduates, homeowners, and not receiving public assistance.”¹² In other words, bad neighborhoods no longer plague only urban ghettos; the bad neighborhoods have spread to the suburbs.

這種變化是新經濟現實的徵兆：住宅隔離加劇。高貧困社區的工人階級白人人數正在增長。1970年，25%的白人兒童生活在貧困率超過10%的社區。2000年，這一數位為40%。今天幾乎可以肯定，它甚至更高。布魯金斯學會2011年的一項研究發現，“與2000年相比，2005-09年極端貧困社區的居民更有可能是白人，土生土長，高中或大學畢業生，房主，並且沒有獲得公共援助。¹²換句話說，糟糕的社區不再只困擾城市貧民窟;糟糕的社區已經蔓延到郊區。

This has occurred for complicated reasons. Federal housing policy has actively encouraged homeownership, from Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act to George W. Bush’s ownership society. But in the Middletowns of the world, homeownership comes at a steep social cost: As jobs disappear in a given area, declining home values trap people in certain neighborhoods. Even if you’d like to move, you can’t, because the bottom has fallen out of the market—you now owe more than any buyer is willing to pay. The costs of moving are so high that many people stay put. Of course, the people trapped are usually those with the least money; those who can afford to leave do so.

發生這種情況的原因很複雜。聯邦住房政策積極鼓勵房屋擁有權，從吉米·卡特（Jimmy Carter）的《社區再投資法案》（Community Reinvestment Act）到喬治·W·布希（George W. Bush）的擁有權協會。但在世界的米德爾敦，擁有房屋需要付出高昂的社會成本：隨著特定地區的工作崗位消失，房屋價值的下降使人們被困在某些社區。即使你想搬家，你也不能，因為市場已經跌出谷底——你現在欠的錢比任何買家願意支付的都多。搬家的成本如此之高，以至於許多人留在原地。當然，被困的人通常是那些錢最少的人;那些有能力離開的人會這樣做。

City leaders have tried in vain to revive Middletown’s downtown. You’ll find their most infamous effort if you follow Central Avenue to its end point on the banks of the Miami River, once a lovely place. For reasons I can’t begin to fathom, the city’s brain trust decided to turn our beautiful riverfront into Lake Middletown, an infrastructural project that apparently involved shoveling tons of dirt into the river and hoping something interesting would come of it. It accomplished nothing, though the river now features a man-made dirt island about the size of a city block.

市領導試圖重振米德爾敦市中心，但徒勞無功。如果您沿著中央大道到達邁阿密河岸邊的終點，您會發現他們最臭名昭著的努力，這裡曾經是一個可愛的地方。出於我無法理解的原因，該市的智囊團決定將我們美麗的河濱變成米德爾敦湖，這是一個基礎設施項目，顯然涉及將大量泥土鏟入河中，並希望它能帶來一些有趣的東西。它什麼也沒做，儘管這條河現在有一個人造土島，大約有一個城市街區那麼大。

Efforts to reinvent downtown Middletown always struck me as futile. People didn’t leave because our downtown lacked trendy cultural amenities. The trendy cultural amenities left because there weren’t enough consumers in Middletown to support them. And why weren’t there enough well-paying consumers? Because there weren’t enough jobs to employ those consumers. Downtown Middletown’s struggles were a symptom of everything else happening to Middletown’s people, especially the collapsing importance of Armco Kawasaki Steel.

重塑米德爾敦市中心的努力總是讓我感到徒勞無功。人們沒有離開，因為我們的市中心缺乏時尚的文化設施。時髦的文化設施離開了，因為米德爾敦沒有足夠的消費者來支持他們。為什麼沒有足夠多的高薪消費者？因為沒有足夠的工作來僱用這些消費者。米德爾敦市中心的掙扎是米德爾敦人民發生的一切的徵兆，尤其是阿姆科川崎鋼鐵公司（Armco Kawasaki Steel）重要性的崩潰。

AK Steel is the result of a 1989 merger between Armco Steel and Kawasaki—the same Japanese corporation that makes those small high-powered motorcycles (“crotch rockets,” we called them as kids). Most people still call it Armco for two reasons. The first is that, as Mamaw used to say, “Armco built this fucking town.” She wasn’t lying: Many of the city’s best parks and facilities were bought with Armco dollars. Armco’s people sat on the boards of many of the important local organizations, and it helped to fund the schools. And it employed thousands of Middletonians who, like my grandfather, earned a good wage despite a lack of formal education.

AK Steel 是 1989 年 Armco Steel 和 Kawasaki 合併的結果——川崎是生產小型大功率摩托車（“胯部火箭”，我們小時候稱它們為“胯部火箭”）的同一家日本公司。大多數人仍然稱它為 Armco，原因有兩個。首先，正如Mamaw常說的那樣，“Armco建造了這個該死的小鎮。她沒有撒謊：該市許多最好的公園和設施都是用阿姆科的錢買來的。Armco的員工在許多重要的當地組織的董事會中任職，並幫助資助了學校。它僱用了成千上萬的米德爾頓人，他們像我的祖父一樣，儘管缺乏正規教育，但還是獲得了不錯的工資。

Armco earned its reputation through careful design. “Until the 1950s,” writes Chad Berry in his book Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles, “the ‘big four’ employers of the Miami Valley region—Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati, Champion Paper and Fiber in Hamilton, Armco Steel in Middletown, and National Cash Register in Dayton—had had serene labor relations, partly because they . . . [hired] family and friends of employees who were once migrants themselves. For example, Inland Container, in Middletown, had 220 Kentuckyians on its payroll, 117 of whom were from Wolfe County alone.” While labor relations no doubt had declined by the 1980s, much of the goodwill built by Armco (and similar companies) remained.

Armco通過精心設計贏得了聲譽。“直到1950年代，”查德·貝瑞（Chad Berry）在他的《南方移民，北方流亡者》一書中寫道，“邁阿密谷地區的'四大'雇主——辛辛那提的寶潔公司、漢密爾頓的冠軍紙和纖維公司、米德爾敦的阿姆科鋼鐵公司和代頓的國家收銀機公司——一直保持著平靜的勞資關係，部分原因是他們......[僱用]曾經是移民的員工的家人和朋友。例如，位於米德爾敦的內陸集裝箱公司（Inland Container）的工資單上有220名肯塔基人，其中僅沃爾夫縣就有117人。雖然勞資關係在1980年代無疑有所下降，但Armco（和類似公司）建立的大部分商譽仍然存在。

The other reason most still call it Armco is that Kawasaki was a Japanese company, and in a town full of World War II vets and their families, you’d have thought that General Tojo himself had decided to set up shop in southwest Ohio when the merger was announced. The opposition was mostly a bunch of noise. Even Papaw—who once promised he’d disown his children if they bought a Japanese car—stopped complaining a few days after they announced the merger. “The truth is,” he told me, “that the Japanese are our friends now. If we end up fighting any of those countries, it’ll be the goddamned Chinese.”

大多數人仍然稱它為Armco的另一個原因是川崎是一家日本公司，在一個充滿二戰老兵及其家人的小鎮上，你會認為東條將軍本人在宣佈合併時決定在俄亥俄州西南部開店。反對派大多是一堆噪音。就連曾經承諾過，如果孩子買日本車，他會和孩子斷絕關係的爸爸，在他們宣布合併幾天后也不再抱怨了。“事實是，”他告訴我，“日本人現在是我們的朋友。如果我們最終與這些國家中的任何一個作戰，那將是該死的中國人。

The Kawasaki merger represented an inconvenient truth: Manufacturing in America was a tough business in the post-globalization world. If companies like Armco were going to survive, they would have to retool. Kawasaki gave Armco a chance, and Middletown’s flagship company probably would not have survived without it.

川崎的合併代表了一個令人不安的事實：在後全球化世界中，美國的製造業是一項艱難的業務。如果像Armco這樣的公司要生存下去，他們就必須進行重組。川崎給了Armco一個機會，如果沒有它，米德爾敦的旗艦公司可能無法生存。

Growing up, my friends and I had no clue that the world had changed. Papaw had retired only a few years earlier, owned stock in Armco, and had a lucrative pension. Armco Park remained the nicest, most exclusive recreation spot in town, and access to the private park was a status symbol: It meant that your dad (or grandpa) was a man with a respected job. It never occurred to me that Armco wouldn’t be around forever, funding scholarships, building parks, and throwing free concerts.

在成長過程中，我和我的朋友們都不知道世界已經發生了變化。Papaw幾年前才退休，擁有Armco的股票，並擁有豐厚的養老金。阿姆科公園仍然是鎮上最好、最獨特的休閒場所，進入私人公園是一種身份的象徵：這意味著你的父親（或爺爺）是一個有一份受人尊敬的工作的人。我從來沒有想過 Armco 不會永遠存在，資助獎學金、建造公園和舉辦免費音樂會。

Still, few of my friends had ambitions to work there. As small children, we had the same dreams that other kids did; we wanted to be astronauts or football players or action heroes. I wanted to be a professional puppy-player-wither, which at the time seemed eminently reasonable. By the sixth grade, we wanted to be veterinarians or doctors or preachers or businessmen. But not steelworkers. Even at Roosevelt Elementary—where, thanks to Middletown geography, most people’s parents lacked a college education—no one wanted to have a blue-collar career and its promise of a respectable middle-class life. We never considered that we’d be lucky to land a job at Armco; we took Armco for granted.

儘管如此，我的朋友中很少有人有在那裡工作的雄心壯志。小時候，我們和其他孩子一樣有同樣的夢想;我們想成為宇航員、足球運動員或動作英雄。我想成為一名職業的小狗玩家，這在當時看來非常合理。到六年級時，我們想成為獸醫、醫生、傳教士或商人。但不是鋼鐵工人。即使在羅斯福小學（Roosevelt Elementary）——由於米德爾敦的地理位置，大多數人的父母都沒有受過大學教育——也沒有人想擁有藍領職業和體面的中產階級生活。我們從沒想過能在 Armco 找到一份工作會很幸運;我們認為Armco是理所當然的。

Many kids seem to feel that way today. A few years ago I spoke with Jennifer McGuffey, a Middletown High School teacher who works with at-risk youth. “A lot of students just don’t understand what’s out there,” she told me, shaking her head. “You have the kids who plan on being baseball players but don’t even play on the high school team because the coach is mean to them. Then you have those who aren’t doing very well in school, and when you try to talk to them about what they’re going to do, they talk about AK. ‘Oh, I can get a job at AK. My uncle works there.’ It’s like they can’t make the connection between the situation in this town and the lack of jobs at AK.” My initial reaction was: How could these kids not understand what the world was like? Didn’t they notice their town changing before their very eyes? But then I realized: We didn’t, so why would they?

今天，許多孩子似乎都有這種感覺。幾年前，我與米德爾敦高中（Middletown High School）的教師詹妮弗·麥格菲（Jennifer McGuffey）進行了交談，她與高危青少年一起工作。“很多學生只是不明白外面有什麼，”她搖著頭告訴我。“有些孩子計劃成為棒球運動員，但甚至不參加高中隊，因為教練對他們很刻薄。然後你有那些在學校表現不佳的人，當你試圖和他們談論他們將要做什麼時，他們會談論AK。“哦，我可以在AK找到一份工作。我舅舅在那裡工作。就好像他們無法將這個城鎮的情況與AK缺乏工作聯繫起來一樣。我的第一反應是：這些孩子怎麼可能不明白這個世界是什麼樣子的？難道他們沒有注意到他們的城鎮在他們眼前發生了變化嗎？但後來我意識到：我們沒有，那他們為什麼要呢？

For my grandparents, Armco was an economic savior—the engine that brought them from the hills of Kentucky into America’s middle class. My grandfather loved the company and knew every make and model of car built from Armco steel. Even after most American car companies transitioned away from steel-bodied cars, Papaw would stop at used-car dealerships whenever he saw an old Ford or Chevy. “Armco made this steel,” he’d tell me. It was one of the few times that he ever betrayed a sense of genuine pride.

對我的祖父母來說，阿姆科是經濟救星，是把他們從肯塔基州的山區帶入美國中產階級的引擎。我的祖父很喜歡這家公司，並且瞭解用Armco鋼製造的每一種品牌和型號的汽車。即使在大多數美國汽車公司從鋼制汽車轉型之後，每當看到一輛舊的福特或雪佛蘭時，Papaw都會在二手車轉銷商處停下來。“阿姆科製造了這種鋼，”他會告訴我。這是他為數不多的一次背叛了真正的自豪感。

Despite that pride, he had no interest in my working there: “Your generation will make its living with their minds, not their hands,” he once told me. The only acceptable career at Armco was as an engineer, not as a laborer in the weld shop. A lot of other Middletown parents and grandparents must have felt similarly: To them, the American Dream required forward momentum. Manual labor was honorable work, but it was their generation’s work—we had to do something different. To move up was to move on. That required going to college.

儘管有這種自豪感，但他對我在那裡的工作沒有興趣：“你們這一代人將用他們的頭腦而不是他們的雙手謀生，”他曾經告訴我。在Armco，唯一可以接受的職業是工程師，而不是焊接車間的工人。許多其他米德爾敦的父母和祖父母一定也有類似的感受：對他們來說，美國夢需要前進的動力。體力勞動是光榮的工作，但這是他們這一代人的工作——我們必須做一些不同的事情。向上移動就是繼續前進。這需要上大學。

And yet there was no sense that failing to achieve higher education would bring shame or any other consequences. The message wasn’t explicit; teachers didn’t tell us that we were too stupid or poor to make it. Nevertheless, it was all around us, like the air we breathed: No one in our families had gone to college; older friends and siblings were perfectly content to stay in Middletown, regardless of their career prospects; we knew no one at a prestigious out-of-state school; and everyone knew at least one young adult who was underemployed or didn’t have a job at all.

然而，沒有接受高等教育會帶來恥辱或任何其他後果。該消息並不明確;老師沒有告訴我們，我們太笨或太窮了，做不到。然而，它就在我們周圍，就像我們呼吸的空氣一樣：我們家裡沒有人上過大學;年長的朋友和兄弟姐妹都非常滿意留在米德爾敦，無論他們的職業前景如何;在一所著名的州外學校里，我們不認識任何人;每個人都知道至少有一個年輕人就業不足或根本沒有工作。

In Middletown, 20 percent of the public high school’s entering freshmen won’t make it to graduation. Most won’t graduate from college. Virtually no one will go to college out of state. Students don’t expect much from themselves, because the people around them don’t do very much. Many parents go along with this phenomenon. I don’t remember ever being scolded for getting a bad grade until Mamaw began to take an interest in my grades in high school. When my sister or I struggled in school, I’d overhear things like “Well, maybe she’s just not that great at fractions,” or “J.D.’s more of a numbers kid, so I wouldn’t worry about that spelling test.”

在米德爾敦，20%的公立高中新生無法畢業。大多數人不會從大學畢業。幾乎沒有人會去州外上大學。學生對自己期望不高，因為周圍的人做得不多。許多父母都同意這種現象。我不記得曾經因為成績不好而被責駡過，直到媽媽開始對我高中的成績感興趣。當我和姐姐在學校里掙扎時，我會無意中聽到諸如“好吧，也許她只是不擅長分數”或“JD更像是一個數位孩子，所以我不會擔心拼寫測試。

There was, and still is, a sense that those who make it are of two varieties. The first are lucky: They come from wealthy families with connections, and their lives were set from the moment they were born. The second are the meritocratic: They were born with brains and couldn’t fail if they tried. Because very few in Middletown fall into the former category, people assume that everyone who makes it is just really smart. To the average Middletonian, hard work doesn’t matter as much as raw talent.

過去和現在都有一種感覺，即製作它的人有兩種。第一個是幸運的：他們來自有關係的富裕家庭，他們的生活從他們出生的那一刻起就註定了。第二種是任人唯賢：他們天生就有頭腦，如果他們嘗試過，就不會失敗。因為在米德爾敦，很少有人屬於前一類，所以人們認為每個成功的人都非常聰明。對於普通的米德爾頓人來說，努力工作並不像天賦那麼重要。

It’s not like parents and teachers never mention hard work. Nor do they walk around loudly proclaiming that they expect their children to turn out poorly. These attitudes lurk below the surface, less in what people say than in how they act. One of our neighbors was a lifetime welfare recipient, but in between asking my grandmother to borrow her car or offering to trade food stamps for cash at a premium, she’d blather on about the importance of industriousness. “So many people abuse the system, it’s impossible for the hardworking people to get the help they need,” she’d say. This was the construct she’d built in her head: Most of the beneficiaries of the system were extravagant moochers, but she—despite never having worked in her life—was an obvious exception.

這並不是說父母和老師從不提及努力工作。他們也不會大聲地走來走去，宣稱他們希望自己的孩子表現不佳。這些態度潛伏在表面之下，與其說是人們所說的話，不如說是他們的行為方式。我們的一位鄰居是終身福利領取者，但在要求我祖母借她的車或提出以高價換取食品券之間，她會喋喋不休地談論勤勞的重要性。這麼多人濫用這個系統，辛勤工作的人不可能得到他們需要的説明，“她說。這是她在腦海中建立的結構：這個系統的大多數受益者都是奢侈的哄騙者，但她——儘管她一生中從未工作過——是一個明顯的例外。

People talk about hard work all the time in places like Middletown. You can walk through a town where 30 percent of the young men work fewer than twenty hours a week and find not a single person aware of his own laziness. During the 2012 election cycle, the Public Religion Institute, a left-leaning think tank, published a report on working-class whites. It found, among other things, that working-class whites worked more hours than college-educated whites. But the idea that the average working-class white works more hours is demonstrably false.¹³ The Public Religion Institute based its results on surveys—essentially, they called around and asked people what they thought.¹⁴ The only thing that report proves is that many folks talk about working more than they actually work.

在米德爾敦這樣的地方，人們一直在談論努力工作。你可以走過一個小鎮，那裡有30%的年輕人每周工作不到20小時，卻沒有一個人意識到自己的懶惰。在2012年的選舉週期中，左傾智庫公共宗教研究所（Public Religion Institute）發表了一份關於工人階級白人的報告。它發現，除其他外，工人階級白人的工作時間比受過大學教育的白人多。但是，認為普通工人階級白人工作時間更長的想法顯然是錯誤的。¹³公共宗教研究所（Public Religion Institute）的調查結果基於調查——基本上，他們四處打電話，詢問人們的想法。¹⁴該報告唯一證明的是，許多人談論的工作比實際工作多。

Of course, the reasons poor people aren’t working as much as others are complicated, and it’s too easy to blame the problem on laziness. For many, part-time work is all they have access to, because the Armcos of the world are going out of business and their skill sets don’t fit well in the modern economy. But whatever the reasons, the rhetoric of hard work conflicts with the reality on the ground. The kids in Middletown absorb that conflict and struggle with it.

當然，窮人工作不如其他人的原因很複雜，很容易將問題歸咎於懶惰。對於許多人來說，兼職工作是他們所能獲得的，因為世界上的Armcos正在倒閉，他們的技能組合不適合現代經濟。但無論出於何種原因，努力工作的言論都與實地現實相衝突。米德爾敦的孩子們吸收了這種衝突並與之鬥爭。

In this, as in so much else, the Scots-Irish migrants resemble their kin back in the holler. In an HBO documentary about eastern Kentucky hill people, the patriarch of a large Appalachian family introduces himself by drawing strict lines between work acceptable for men and work acceptable for women. While it’s obvious what he considers “women’s work,” it’s not at all clear what work, if any, is acceptable for him. Apparently not paid employment, since the man has never worked a paying job in his life. Ultimately, the verdict of his own son is damning: “Daddy says he’s worked in his life. Only thing Daddy’s worked is his goddamned ass. Why not be straight about it, Pa? Daddy was an alcoholic. He would stay drunk, he didn’t bring food home. Mommy supported her young’uns. If it hadn’t been for Mommy, we’d have been dead.”¹⁵

在這一點上，就像在其他許多方面一樣，蘇格蘭-愛爾蘭移民就像他們的親戚一樣。在一部關於肯塔基州東部山民的HBO紀錄片中，阿巴拉契亞一個大家庭的族長在男性可接受的工作和女性可接受的工作之間劃清了界限，從而自我介紹。雖然他所認為的「女性工作」是顯而易見的，但完全不清楚哪些工作（如果有的話）對他來說是可以接受的。顯然不是有償工作，因為該男子一生中從未從事過有償工作。最終，他自己兒子的判決是詛咒的：“爸爸說他一生都在工作。爸爸唯一能做的就是他那該死的屁股。為什麼不直截了當地說出來呢，爸爸？爸爸是個酒鬼。他會喝醉，他不會把食物帶回家。媽媽支援她的孩子們。如果不是媽媽，我們早就死了。¹⁵

Alongside these conflicting norms about the value of blue-collar work existed a massive ignorance about how to achieve white-collar work. We didn’t know that all across the country—and even in our hometown—other kids had already started a competition to get ahead in life. During first grade, we played a game every morning: The teacher would announce the number of the day, and we’d go person by person and announce a math equation that produced the number. So if the number of the day was four, you could announce “two plus two” and claim a prize, usually a small piece of candy. One day the number was thirty. The students in front of me went through the easy answers—“twenty-nine plus one,” “twenty-eight plus two,” “fifteen plus fifteen.” I was better than that. I was going to blow the teacher away.

除了這些關於藍領工作價值的相互衝突的規範之外，還存在著對如何實現白領工作的巨大無知。我們不知道，在全國各地，甚至在我們的家鄉，其他孩子已經開始了在生活中取得成功的競爭。在一年級時，我們每天早上都會玩一個遊戲：老師會宣佈當天的數字，我們會一個人一個接一個地宣佈一個產生數位的數學方程式。因此，如果當天的數位是四，您可以宣佈“二加二”並領取獎品，通常是一小塊糖果。有一天，這個數位是三十個。在我面前的學生們回答了簡單的問題——“二十九加一”、“二十八加二”、“十五加十五”。我比那更好。我本來想把老師吹走的。

When my turn came, I proudly announced, “Fifty minus twenty.” The teacher gushed, and I received two pieces of candy for my foray into subtraction, a skill we’d learned only days before. A few moments later, while I beamed over my brilliance, another student announced, “Ten times three.” I had no idea what that even meant. Times? Who was this guy?

輪到我時，我自豪地宣佈：“五十減去二十。老師滔滔不絕地說，我收到了兩塊糖果，用於我嘗試減法，這是我們幾天前才學會的技能。過了一會兒，當我為自己的才華而歡欣鼓舞時，另一個學生宣佈：“十乘以三。我甚至不知道這意味著什麼。次？這個人是誰？

The teacher was even more impressed, and my competitor triumphantly collected not two but three pieces of candy. The teacher spoke briefly of multiplication and asked if anyone else knew such a thing existed. None of us raised a hand. For my part, I was crushed. I returned home and burst into tears. I was certain my ignorance was rooted in some failure of character. I just felt stupid.

老師更是印象深刻，我的競爭對手得意洋洋地收集了三塊糖果，而不是兩塊。老師簡短地談到了乘法，並問是否有其他人知道這種東西的存在。我們誰也沒有舉手。就我而言，我被壓垮了。我回到家，淚流滿面。我確信我的無知源於某種性格上的失敗。我只是覺得自己很傻。

It wasn’t my fault that until that day I had never heard the word “multiplication.” It wasn’t something I’d learned in school, and my family didn’t sit around and work on math problems. But to a little kid who wanted to do well in school, it was a crushing defeat. In my immature brain, I didn’t understand the difference between intelligence and knowledge. So I assumed I was an idiot.

直到那天，我從未聽說過“乘法”這個詞，這不是我的錯。這不是我在學校學到的東西，我的家人也沒有坐下來做數學問題。但對於一個想在學校取得好成績的小孩子來說，這是一場慘敗。在我不成熟的大腦中，我不明白智力和知識之間的區別。所以我以為我是個白癡。

I may not have known multiplication that day, but when I came home and told Papaw about my heartbreak, he turned it into triumph. I learned multiplication and division before dinner. And for two years after that, my grandfather and I would practice increasingly complex math once a week, with an ice cream reward for solid performance. I would beat myself up when I didn’t understand a concept, and storm off, defeated. But after I’d pout for a few minutes, Papaw was always ready to go again. Mom was never much of a math person, but she took me to the public library before I could read, got me a library card, showed me how to use it, and always made sure I had access to kids’ books at home.

那天我可能不知道乘法，但當我回到家告訴爸爸我的心碎時，他把它變成了勝利。晚飯前我學會了乘法和除法。在那之後的兩年裡，我和祖父每周練習一次越來越複雜的數學，表現優異的人會得到霜淇淋獎勵。當我不理解一個概念時，我會毆打自己，然後暴走，失敗。但是在我撅了幾分鐘之後，爸爸總是準備再去一次。媽媽從來不是一個喜歡數學的人，但在我讀書之前，她帶我去了公共圖書館，給我一張借書證，教我如何使用它，並總是確保我在家裡能接觸到兒童讀物。

In other words, despite all of the environmental pressures from my neighborhood and community, I received a different message at home. And that just might have saved me.

換句話說，儘管我的鄰居和社區面面臨著環境壓力，但我在家中收到了不同的信息。這可能救了我。