100 年前被认为是完全正常的最令人震惊的事情是什么？
What's the most shocking thing that was considered completely normal 100 years ago
译文简介
100年前，应该童婚合法，美国海军天天铲梅，美国中部的农民会在劳作时被雷劈~
正文翻译
What's the most shocking thing that was considered completely normal 100 years ago
100 年前被认为是完全正常的最令人震惊的事情是什么？
Alex Calet BA Hons in History, University of Sheffield (Graduated 1998)
亚历克斯·卡莱特 谢菲尔德大学历史学荣誉学士学位（1998年毕业）
In the UK, for me it is that a girl could legally be married at the age of 12, a boy at 14. Although the age of sexual consent was raised to 16 in 1885, this was only for what was defined as “unlawful intercourse”. Sex within marriage was defined as lawful and therefore allowed at those earlier ages.
在英国，对我来说最令人震惊的是女孩12岁、男孩14岁就可以合法地结婚。尽管1885年性行为同意年龄已提高到16岁，但这仅适用于被定义为“非法性交”的情况。婚内的性行为被认为是合法的，因此在上述更低的年龄（只要两人已经结婚）也是被允许的。
Such marriages were not common but they did happen, and many people defended them as firstly legitimising children when the girl was pregnant, and secondly tending to prevent boys from seeking prostitutes or committing sexual offences
. I even know of one case where a girl of 11 was married to a man of 22 in 1894. Such a marriage was not automatically legally void, as an under age marriage would have been after 1929. It was voidable, meaning that it could not be consummated until the girl reached 12, and could be voided up to that point if she wished, but if they lived together after she was 12 the marriage was valid. The age of marriage was not raised to 16 till 1929, and at this point any marriage where one party was under that age was automatically void.
这类婚姻并不常见，但确实存在。许多人对此表示支持，理由有二：一是若女方已怀孕，婚姻能让孩子获得合法身份；二是这类婚姻往往有助于防止男方嫖娼或犯下性侵等性犯罪行为。我甚至知道这样一个案例：1894 年，一名 11 岁的女孩嫁给了一位 22 岁的男子，这类婚姻不会被法律视为无效婚姻。1929 年之后，未成年婚姻才会被自动判定为可撤销的无效婚姻，具体来说，主要指女孩年满 12 岁前，（即便有）婚姻关系也不得圆房；且在此之前，若女孩愿意，可申请撤销该婚姻。但只要女孩年满 12 岁后双方仍共同生活，这段婚姻就具备法律效力。直到 1929 年，法定结婚年龄才提高到 16 岁，自此，任何一方未满 16 岁的婚姻均被自动视为无效婚姻。
Rich Carriero Freelance writer and journalist. Upvoted by Kuan Yu, studied Warfare & World War II at History (1990) and John Keller, M.A. Education & History, University of Missouri-Columbia (2016)
里奇·卡里ero 自由撰稿人兼记者。获冠宇（1990年主修战争史与二战史）及约翰·凯勒（密苏里大学哥伦比亚分校教育与历史学硕士，2016年毕业）点赞
100 years ago my great-grandfather was a 21 year old marine corps PFC serving on the USS Seattle, administrative flagship of the United States Fleet. He couldn’t have picked a safer time to enlist—there was no prospect of a war then on the horizon, the dollar was strong, and Americans were popular around much of the world. Oceangoing vessels were as safe as they would ever be and naval warships were practically impervious to rough seas on the open ocean. For three years he got to see the world, meet lots of girls, and party his ass off.
100年前，我的曾祖父21岁，是美国海军陆战队一等兵，服役于美国舰队的行政旗舰“西雅图号”。他入伍的时机再安全不过了——当时看不到任何战争即将爆发的迹象，美元坚挺，而且美国人在世界大部分地区都很受欢迎。远洋船只处于有史以来最安全的状态，海军战舰在公海上几乎能抵御狂风巨浪。三年里，他得以环游世界、结识许多女孩，还尽情参加派对。
My great grandfather, Edward R. Cuthbert (USMC 1924–28), as a new recruit
我的曾祖父爱德华·R·卡斯伯特（美国海军陆战队，1924-1928年服役），刚入伍时的样子
So what were the downsides? Well, the biggest complaint he shared in the journals he left behind was his teeth hurting. Born in 1903, he was one of a generation that was the first to encounter heavy-duty refined sugar in his diet and last not to be ingrained with modern habits of dental hygiene like brushing and flossing. Growing up on a farm in Utah in a large, working-class family probably delayed the onset of tooth decay somewhat as his family would not have eaten as much meat or processed food but the meat-heavy, rich diet he was fed daily once he joined the marines (coupled with the complimentary donuts and other sweets he and fellow soldiers were offered as hospitality everywhere they went) quickly changed that. And mind you, this was in a time before fluoridation when many Americans still drank well water, which, if untreated, can actually leach minerals from your teeth and other bones.
那么当时有什么不好的地方呢？他在留下的日记中提到的最大不满就是牙疼。他出生于1903年，这一代人是最早在饮食中接触到大量精制糖的，同时也是最后一批没有养成刷牙、使用牙线等现代口腔卫生习惯的人。他成长于犹他州的一个工人阶级大家庭，家里以务农为生，这种成长环境或许在一定程度上延缓了蛀牙的出现，因为他家平时不会吃太多肉或加工食品。但自从加入海军陆战队后，他每天都要吃大量肉类和油腻食物，再加上无论走到哪里，人们都会热情地招待他和他的战友们免费甜甜圈及其他甜食，这很快就改变了他牙齿的健康状况。要知道，那时候还没有水氟化处理技术，很多美国人仍饮用井水，而未经处理的井水实际上会从牙齿和其他骨骼中滤出矿物质。
Within a year of enlistment my great-grandfather had a mouth full of rotten teeth. Fortunately by that point each ship had its own dentist office, so he had access to free dental care to address the problem. Address it they did, installing at least six fillings in his mouth over the course of six months. Each filling—a mixture of silver and mercury—was molded and tapped into shape over the compromised enamel while the patient was awake. To treat the pain from gum inflammation and exposed nerves, naval dentists in 1925 were armed with a cheap, trusty anesthetic—cocaine.
入伍不到一年，曾祖父就满口蛀牙了。幸运的是，当时每艘船都有自己的牙科诊室，所以他能享受免费牙科治疗来解决这个问题。治疗确实起到了作用，六个月里，医生至少给曾祖父补了六处牙齿，每一处填充物都是银汞的混合物，而且患者全程清醒，医生会在受损的牙釉质上把填充物塑形并敲实。1925年，海军牙医们会使用一种廉价且可靠的麻醉剂——可卡因，来缓解牙龈发炎和神经暴露带来的疼痛。
USS Seattle’s dentist office during WWI
第一次世界大战期间“西雅图号”上的牙科诊室
There’s no evidence my GGF suffered any ill-effects from these coke-fueled torture sessions or from spending the rest of his life with mercury in his mouth. He also seems to have fared reasonably well from bouts of influenza that sent him to the infirmary in 1924 and the ship’s sick bay in 1925. That was fortunate because the disease still killed millions back then and antibiotics weren’t a thing yet. He also joined up a few years too late to be experience the smallpox outbreak that put his ship in quarantine just after WWI.
没有证据表明，曾祖父因这些用可卡因麻醉的“痛苦治疗”，或是余生口中含着汞填充物而受到任何不良影响。1924年和1925年，他曾两次因流感分别住进医务室和船上病房，但似乎都恢复得不错。这很幸运，因为当时流感仍会导致数百万人死亡，而且那时还没有抗生素。他入伍也晚了几年，没赶上第一次世界大战刚结束时的天花疫情——那场疫情让他所在的船被隔离了。
Great grandpa sporting leis from Maui and his brand new forearm tat.
曾祖父戴着来自毛伊岛的花环，手臂上还有崭新的纹身
Like other uniformed men of his age, he ignored official guidance on alcohol, sex, and tattoos. He got himself a globe-and-anchor tattoo in Honolulu, got drunk in Panama, and hooked up with girls in Australia, New Zealand, Vancouver, San Francisco, and lastly Brooklyn—where he met my great grandmother. In all that time he managed to avoid VD, never picked up smoking, and never lost the outward habits and speech of a gentleman. By my mother’s own account, he rarely raised his voice and never cursed. It was not until WWII that Americans really picked up cursing as the high art form it remains today.
和同龄的军人一样，他无视关于饮酒、性行为和纹身的官方规定。他在檀香山纹了一个地球与船锚图案的纹身，在巴拿马喝醉过，还在澳大利亚、新西兰、温哥华、旧金山等地结识女孩，最后在布鲁克林遇到了我的曾祖母。那段时间里，他成功避开了性病，从没染上烟瘾，而且始终保持着绅士的言行举止。据我母亲回忆，他很少提高嗓门，也从不骂人。直到第二次世界大战，美国人才真正开始把说脏话当成一种“高雅艺术”，这种风气一直延续到今天。
Sailors making the best of coaling
水手们充分利用加煤的间隙（放松休息）
There was, however, other hazards to which he was exposed back then that may, indeed, have killed him in the end. The Seattle, like most warships of the day, was laced with asbestos fireproofing and coated with lead paint. It was also one of the last coal burners in service. In addition to the constant taint of soot and smoke it left on the ship, coal was a notorious pain in the ass to load when the ship had to be refueled. Everyone save the the ship’s senior officers and the brass band had to participate in shoveling, bagging, hoisting, and loading the hundreds of tons of coal the ship regularly took on, loading it from barges onto the deck down the chutes and into the bunkers. Men ate it, breathed it, and were coated with it.
然而，当时他还暴露在其他危险之中，这些危险或许最终导致了他的死亡。和当时大多数战舰一样，“西雅图号”内部大量使用石棉作为防火材料，船体还涂有含铅油漆。此外，它也是最后一批使用煤炭作为燃料的现役船只之一。除了煤炭会不断给船带来煤烟污染外，给船补充燃料时装煤的过程也极其麻烦，这是出了名的。除了船上的高级军官和军乐队，所有人都必须参与铲煤、装袋、吊运和装载工作——船每次都要补充数百吨煤，人们要把煤从驳船上运到甲板，再通过溜槽送进煤舱。当时的人们吃的饭里有煤渣，呼吸的空气里有煤尘，身上也沾满了煤灰。
Great grandpa with coal all around him and soot on his face. A regular sight in 1925.
曾祖父周围满是煤炭，脸上也沾着煤灰。这种场景在1925年很常见
Thus it’s hardly a surprise to me that my great-grandfather, though never a smoker, died of lung cancer in July 1979 at the age of 75. I was a few months old at the time and the last descendent he got to meet. For this reason I feel very fortunate to have inherited his photo-journals from his Seattle days. I have been restoring, transcribing, and researching for the past few years in hopes of publishing a biographical history.
因此，尽管曾祖父从不吸烟，却在1979年7月因肺癌去世，享年75岁，这对我来说并不奇怪。当时我才几个月大，是他见到的最后一个后代。正因如此，能继承他在“西雅图号”服役期间的图文日记，我感到非常幸运。过去几年里，我一直在对这些日记进行修复、转录和研究，希望能出版一本传记。
Paul Riggs Semi-retired (2018–present)
保罗·里格斯 半退休状态（2018年至今）
I’m going to answer extremely literally.
Into the mid 1920s my grandfather and great uncle still used a team for a lot of field work, partially because they still had the tools and the animals and hadn’t replaced and refitted everything to the first tractors the had, and partially because the team learned the task and could be set to pulling down a row and all hands could do the work. The literally shocking thing that was far more common then was to be caught in the middle of an open field when a thunderstorm rolled in, at least in their part of the America Midwest. Between them they had two teams killed by lightning and one young hired hand, with another knocked unconscious by lightning strikes.
我会从非常直观的角度来回答这个问题。
直到20世纪20年代中期，我的祖父和叔祖父在很多田间农活中仍会使用一组牲口（拉农具），一部分原因是他们还保有适用的工具和牲口，没把所有设备都换成刚拥有的第一批拖拉机；另一部分原因是牲口熟悉农活，能被安排去拉一行（农具），这样所有人都能各司其职干活。当时一种非常直观且远比现在常见的“令人震惊的事”是：遇到雷暴天气时，人正好在开阔的田野中央，至少在美国中西部他们生活的地区是这样。他们身边曾发生过两起牲口被闪电劈死的事故，还有一名年轻雇工死于雷击，另外一人被闪电击中后昏迷。
The man knocked out survived but left farm work to become a “section man” for the B&O Railroad. That meant he walked a stretch of railroad with a bag of spikes and a spike bawl (a hammer to others) replacing any loose spikes. He spent the night in a line shack and walked the same section back to home the next day. The third and fourth days he did the same in the opposite direction. He was struck by lightning two more times in that job which left his hearing badly damaged. After retiring from railroad work he took a part-time job with my Dad watching and cleaning the farrowing barn where our baby pigs were born and raised to weaning age. It was indoors but he still knew when thunder was approaching before anyone else despite his hearing loss.
那个被劈晕的人活了下来，但他离开了农场，去巴尔的摩-俄亥俄铁路公司当了一名“路段工人”。这份工作要求他背着一袋道钉和一把道钉锤（别人也叫它锤子），沿着一段铁路巡查，更换所有松动的道钉。他会在铁路旁的小屋里过夜，第二天沿着同一段铁路走回家。第三天和第四天，他会反向沿着同一路段做同样的工作。做这份工作时，他又两次被闪电击中，导致听力严重受损。从铁路公司退休后，他在我父亲手下找了份兼职，负责看管和打扫产仔棚——我们家的小猪就在那里出生并被养到断奶。产仔棚是室内场所，但尽管听力受损，他总能比其他人先察觉到雷声即将来临。
100 年前被认为是完全正常的最令人震惊的事情是什么？
Alex Calet BA Hons in History, University of Sheffield (Graduated 1998)
亚历克斯·卡莱特 谢菲尔德大学历史学荣誉学士学位（1998年毕业）
In the UK, for me it is that a girl could legally be married at the age of 12, a boy at 14. Although the age of sexual consent was raised to 16 in 1885, this was only for what was defined as “unlawful intercourse”. Sex within marriage was defined as lawful and therefore allowed at those earlier ages.
在英国，对我来说最令人震惊的是女孩12岁、男孩14岁就可以合法地结婚。尽管1885年性行为同意年龄已提高到16岁，但这仅适用于被定义为“非法性交”的情况。婚内的性行为被认为是合法的，因此在上述更低的年龄（只要两人已经结婚）也是被允许的。
Such marriages were not common but they did happen, and many people defended them as firstly legitimising children when the girl was pregnant, and secondly tending to prevent boys from seeking prostitutes or committing sexual offences
. I even know of one case where a girl of 11 was married to a man of 22 in 1894. Such a marriage was not automatically legally void, as an under age marriage would have been after 1929. It was voidable, meaning that it could not be consummated until the girl reached 12, and could be voided up to that point if she wished, but if they lived together after she was 12 the marriage was valid. The age of marriage was not raised to 16 till 1929, and at this point any marriage where one party was under that age was automatically void.
这类婚姻并不常见，但确实存在。许多人对此表示支持，理由有二：一是若女方已怀孕，婚姻能让孩子获得合法身份；二是这类婚姻往往有助于防止男方嫖娼或犯下性侵等性犯罪行为。我甚至知道这样一个案例：1894 年，一名 11 岁的女孩嫁给了一位 22 岁的男子，这类婚姻不会被法律视为无效婚姻。1929 年之后，未成年婚姻才会被自动判定为可撤销的无效婚姻，具体来说，主要指女孩年满 12 岁前，（即便有）婚姻关系也不得圆房；且在此之前，若女孩愿意，可申请撤销该婚姻。但只要女孩年满 12 岁后双方仍共同生活，这段婚姻就具备法律效力。直到 1929 年，法定结婚年龄才提高到 16 岁，自此，任何一方未满 16 岁的婚姻均被自动视为无效婚姻。
Rich Carriero Freelance writer and journalist. Upvoted by Kuan Yu, studied Warfare & World War II at History (1990) and John Keller, M.A. Education & History, University of Missouri-Columbia (2016)
里奇·卡里ero 自由撰稿人兼记者。获冠宇（1990年主修战争史与二战史）及约翰·凯勒（密苏里大学哥伦比亚分校教育与历史学硕士，2016年毕业）点赞
100 years ago my great-grandfather was a 21 year old marine corps PFC serving on the USS Seattle, administrative flagship of the United States Fleet. He couldn’t have picked a safer time to enlist—there was no prospect of a war then on the horizon, the dollar was strong, and Americans were popular around much of the world. Oceangoing vessels were as safe as they would ever be and naval warships were practically impervious to rough seas on the open ocean. For three years he got to see the world, meet lots of girls, and party his ass off.
100年前，我的曾祖父21岁，是美国海军陆战队一等兵，服役于美国舰队的行政旗舰“西雅图号”。他入伍的时机再安全不过了——当时看不到任何战争即将爆发的迹象，美元坚挺，而且美国人在世界大部分地区都很受欢迎。远洋船只处于有史以来最安全的状态，海军战舰在公海上几乎能抵御狂风巨浪。三年里，他得以环游世界、结识许多女孩，还尽情参加派对。
My great grandfather, Edward R. Cuthbert (USMC 1924–28), as a new recruit
我的曾祖父爱德华·R·卡斯伯特（美国海军陆战队，1924-1928年服役），刚入伍时的样子
So what were the downsides? Well, the biggest complaint he shared in the journals he left behind was his teeth hurting. Born in 1903, he was one of a generation that was the first to encounter heavy-duty refined sugar in his diet and last not to be ingrained with modern habits of dental hygiene like brushing and flossing. Growing up on a farm in Utah in a large, working-class family probably delayed the onset of tooth decay somewhat as his family would not have eaten as much meat or processed food but the meat-heavy, rich diet he was fed daily once he joined the marines (coupled with the complimentary donuts and other sweets he and fellow soldiers were offered as hospitality everywhere they went) quickly changed that. And mind you, this was in a time before fluoridation when many Americans still drank well water, which, if untreated, can actually leach minerals from your teeth and other bones.
那么当时有什么不好的地方呢？他在留下的日记中提到的最大不满就是牙疼。他出生于1903年，这一代人是最早在饮食中接触到大量精制糖的，同时也是最后一批没有养成刷牙、使用牙线等现代口腔卫生习惯的人。他成长于犹他州的一个工人阶级大家庭，家里以务农为生，这种成长环境或许在一定程度上延缓了蛀牙的出现，因为他家平时不会吃太多肉或加工食品。但自从加入海军陆战队后，他每天都要吃大量肉类和油腻食物，再加上无论走到哪里，人们都会热情地招待他和他的战友们免费甜甜圈及其他甜食，这很快就改变了他牙齿的健康状况。要知道，那时候还没有水氟化处理技术，很多美国人仍饮用井水，而未经处理的井水实际上会从牙齿和其他骨骼中滤出矿物质。
Within a year of enlistment my great-grandfather had a mouth full of rotten teeth. Fortunately by that point each ship had its own dentist office, so he had access to free dental care to address the problem. Address it they did, installing at least six fillings in his mouth over the course of six months. Each filling—a mixture of silver and mercury—was molded and tapped into shape over the compromised enamel while the patient was awake. To treat the pain from gum inflammation and exposed nerves, naval dentists in 1925 were armed with a cheap, trusty anesthetic—cocaine.
入伍不到一年，曾祖父就满口蛀牙了。幸运的是，当时每艘船都有自己的牙科诊室，所以他能享受免费牙科治疗来解决这个问题。治疗确实起到了作用，六个月里，医生至少给曾祖父补了六处牙齿，每一处填充物都是银汞的混合物，而且患者全程清醒，医生会在受损的牙釉质上把填充物塑形并敲实。1925年，海军牙医们会使用一种廉价且可靠的麻醉剂——可卡因，来缓解牙龈发炎和神经暴露带来的疼痛。
USS Seattle’s dentist office during WWI
第一次世界大战期间“西雅图号”上的牙科诊室
There’s no evidence my GGF suffered any ill-effects from these coke-fueled torture sessions or from spending the rest of his life with mercury in his mouth. He also seems to have fared reasonably well from bouts of influenza that sent him to the infirmary in 1924 and the ship’s sick bay in 1925. That was fortunate because the disease still killed millions back then and antibiotics weren’t a thing yet. He also joined up a few years too late to be experience the smallpox outbreak that put his ship in quarantine just after WWI.
没有证据表明，曾祖父因这些用可卡因麻醉的“痛苦治疗”，或是余生口中含着汞填充物而受到任何不良影响。1924年和1925年，他曾两次因流感分别住进医务室和船上病房，但似乎都恢复得不错。这很幸运，因为当时流感仍会导致数百万人死亡，而且那时还没有抗生素。他入伍也晚了几年，没赶上第一次世界大战刚结束时的天花疫情——那场疫情让他所在的船被隔离了。
Great grandpa sporting leis from Maui and his brand new forearm tat.
曾祖父戴着来自毛伊岛的花环，手臂上还有崭新的纹身
Like other uniformed men of his age, he ignored official guidance on alcohol, sex, and tattoos. He got himself a globe-and-anchor tattoo in Honolulu, got drunk in Panama, and hooked up with girls in Australia, New Zealand, Vancouver, San Francisco, and lastly Brooklyn—where he met my great grandmother. In all that time he managed to avoid VD, never picked up smoking, and never lost the outward habits and speech of a gentleman. By my mother’s own account, he rarely raised his voice and never cursed. It was not until WWII that Americans really picked up cursing as the high art form it remains today.
和同龄的军人一样，他无视关于饮酒、性行为和纹身的官方规定。他在檀香山纹了一个地球与船锚图案的纹身，在巴拿马喝醉过，还在澳大利亚、新西兰、温哥华、旧金山等地结识女孩，最后在布鲁克林遇到了我的曾祖母。那段时间里，他成功避开了性病，从没染上烟瘾，而且始终保持着绅士的言行举止。据我母亲回忆，他很少提高嗓门，也从不骂人。直到第二次世界大战，美国人才真正开始把说脏话当成一种“高雅艺术”，这种风气一直延续到今天。
Sailors making the best of coaling
水手们充分利用加煤的间隙（放松休息）
There was, however, other hazards to which he was exposed back then that may, indeed, have killed him in the end. The Seattle, like most warships of the day, was laced with asbestos fireproofing and coated with lead paint. It was also one of the last coal burners in service. In addition to the constant taint of soot and smoke it left on the ship, coal was a notorious pain in the ass to load when the ship had to be refueled. Everyone save the the ship’s senior officers and the brass band had to participate in shoveling, bagging, hoisting, and loading the hundreds of tons of coal the ship regularly took on, loading it from barges onto the deck down the chutes and into the bunkers. Men ate it, breathed it, and were coated with it.
然而，当时他还暴露在其他危险之中，这些危险或许最终导致了他的死亡。和当时大多数战舰一样，“西雅图号”内部大量使用石棉作为防火材料，船体还涂有含铅油漆。此外，它也是最后一批使用煤炭作为燃料的现役船只之一。除了煤炭会不断给船带来煤烟污染外，给船补充燃料时装煤的过程也极其麻烦，这是出了名的。除了船上的高级军官和军乐队，所有人都必须参与铲煤、装袋、吊运和装载工作——船每次都要补充数百吨煤，人们要把煤从驳船上运到甲板，再通过溜槽送进煤舱。当时的人们吃的饭里有煤渣，呼吸的空气里有煤尘，身上也沾满了煤灰。
Great grandpa with coal all around him and soot on his face. A regular sight in 1925.
曾祖父周围满是煤炭，脸上也沾着煤灰。这种场景在1925年很常见
Thus it’s hardly a surprise to me that my great-grandfather, though never a smoker, died of lung cancer in July 1979 at the age of 75. I was a few months old at the time and the last descendent he got to meet. For this reason I feel very fortunate to have inherited his photo-journals from his Seattle days. I have been restoring, transcribing, and researching for the past few years in hopes of publishing a biographical history.
因此，尽管曾祖父从不吸烟，却在1979年7月因肺癌去世，享年75岁，这对我来说并不奇怪。当时我才几个月大，是他见到的最后一个后代。正因如此，能继承他在“西雅图号”服役期间的图文日记，我感到非常幸运。过去几年里，我一直在对这些日记进行修复、转录和研究，希望能出版一本传记。
Paul Riggs Semi-retired (2018–present)
保罗·里格斯 半退休状态（2018年至今）
I’m going to answer extremely literally.
Into the mid 1920s my grandfather and great uncle still used a team for a lot of field work, partially because they still had the tools and the animals and hadn’t replaced and refitted everything to the first tractors the had, and partially because the team learned the task and could be set to pulling down a row and all hands could do the work. The literally shocking thing that was far more common then was to be caught in the middle of an open field when a thunderstorm rolled in, at least in their part of the America Midwest. Between them they had two teams killed by lightning and one young hired hand, with another knocked unconscious by lightning strikes.
我会从非常直观的角度来回答这个问题。
直到20世纪20年代中期，我的祖父和叔祖父在很多田间农活中仍会使用一组牲口（拉农具），一部分原因是他们还保有适用的工具和牲口，没把所有设备都换成刚拥有的第一批拖拉机；另一部分原因是牲口熟悉农活，能被安排去拉一行（农具），这样所有人都能各司其职干活。当时一种非常直观且远比现在常见的“令人震惊的事”是：遇到雷暴天气时，人正好在开阔的田野中央，至少在美国中西部他们生活的地区是这样。他们身边曾发生过两起牲口被闪电劈死的事故，还有一名年轻雇工死于雷击，另外一人被闪电击中后昏迷。
The man knocked out survived but left farm work to become a “section man” for the B&O Railroad. That meant he walked a stretch of railroad with a bag of spikes and a spike bawl (a hammer to others) replacing any loose spikes. He spent the night in a line shack and walked the same section back to home the next day. The third and fourth days he did the same in the opposite direction. He was struck by lightning two more times in that job which left his hearing badly damaged. After retiring from railroad work he took a part-time job with my Dad watching and cleaning the farrowing barn where our baby pigs were born and raised to weaning age. It was indoors but he still knew when thunder was approaching before anyone else despite his hearing loss.
那个被劈晕的人活了下来，但他离开了农场，去巴尔的摩-俄亥俄铁路公司当了一名“路段工人”。这份工作要求他背着一袋道钉和一把道钉锤（别人也叫它锤子），沿着一段铁路巡查，更换所有松动的道钉。他会在铁路旁的小屋里过夜，第二天沿着同一段铁路走回家。第三天和第四天，他会反向沿着同一路段做同样的工作。做这份工作时，他又两次被闪电击中，导致听力严重受损。从铁路公司退休后，他在我父亲手下找了份兼职，负责看管和打扫产仔棚——我们家的小猪就在那里出生并被养到断奶。产仔棚是室内场所，但尽管听力受损，他总能比其他人先察觉到雷声即将来临。
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