Abandoned and Chosen

The Adoption

When Paul Jobs was mustered out of the Coast Guard after World War II, he made a wager with his crewmates . They had arrived in San Francisco, where their ship was decommissioned, and Paul bet that he would find himself a wife within two weeks. He was a taut, tattooed engine mechanic, six feet tall, with a passing resemblance to James Dean. But it wasn’t his looks that got him a date with Clara Hagopian, a sweet-humored daughter of Armenian immigrants. It was the fact that he and his friends had a car, unlike the group she had originally planned to go out with that evening. Ten days later, in March 1946, Paul got engaged to Clara and won his wager. It would turn out to be a happy marriage, one that lasted until death parted them more than forty years later.

Paul Reinhold Jobs had been raised on a dairy farm in Germantown, Wisconsin. Even though his father was an alcoholic and sometimes abusive, Paul ended up with a gentle and calm disposition under his leathery exterior. After dropping out of high school, he wandered through the Midwest picking up work as a mechanic until, at age nineteen, he joined the Coast Guard, even though he didn’t know how to swim. He was deployed on the USS General M. C. Meigs and spent much of the war ferrying troops to Italy for General Patton. His talent as a machinist and fireman earned him commendations, but he occasionally found himself in minor trouble and never rose above the rank of seaman.

Clara was born in New Jersey, where her parents had landed after fleeing the Turks in Armenia, and they moved to the Mission District of San Francisco when she was a child. She had a secret that she rarely mentioned to anyone: She had been married before, but her husband had been killed in the war. So when she met Paul Jobs on that first date, she was primed to start a new life.

Like many who lived through the war, they had experienced enough excitement that, when it was over, they desired simply to settle down, raise a family, and lead a less eventful life. They had little money, so they moved to Wisconsin and lived with Paul’s parents for a few years, then headed for Indiana, where he got a job as a machinist for International Harvester. His passion was tinkering with old cars, and he made money in his spare time buying, restoring, and selling them. Eventually he quit his day job to become a full-time used car salesman.

Like many who lived through the war, they had experienced enough excitement that, when it was over, they desired simply to settle down, raise a family, and lead a less eventful life. They had little money, so they moved to Wisconsin and lived with Paul’s parents for a few years, then headed for Indiana, where he got a job as a machinist for International Harvester. His passion was tinkering with old cars, and he made money in his spare time buying, restoring, and selling them. Eventually he quit his day job to become a full-time used car salesman.

Clara, however, loved San Francisco, and in 1952 she convinced her husband to move back there. They got an apartment in the Sunset District facing the Pacific, just south of Golden Gate Park, and he took a job working for a finance company as a “repo man,” picking the locks of cars whose owners hadn’t paid their loans and repossessing them. He also bought, repaired, and sold some of the cars, making a decent enough living in the process.

There was, however, something missing in their lives. They wanted children, but Clara had suffered an ectopic pregnancy, in which the fertilized egg was implanted in a fallopian tube rather than the uterus, and she had been unable to have any. So by 1955, after nine years of marriage, they were looking to adopt a child.

Like Paul Jobs, Joanne Schieble was from a rural Wisconsin family of German heritage. Her father, Arthur Schieble, had immigrated to the outskirts of Green Bay, where he and his wife owned a mink farm and dabbled successfully in various other businesses, including real estate and photoengraving. He was very strict, especially regarding his daughter’s relationships, and he had strongly disapproved of her first love, an artist who was not a Catholic. Thus it was no surprise that he threatened to cut Joanne off completely when, as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, she fell in love with Abdulfattah “John” Jandali, a Muslim teaching assistant from Syria.

Jandali was the youngest of nine children in a prominent Syrian family. His father owned oil refineries and multiple other businesses, with large holdings in Damascus and Homs, and at one point pretty much controlled the price of wheat in the region. His mother, he later said, was a “traditional Muslim woman” who was a “conservative, obedient housewife.” Like the Schieble family, the Jandalis put a premium on education. Abdulfattah was sent to a Jesuit boarding school, even though he was Muslim, and he got an undergraduate degree at the American University in Beirut before entering the University of Wisconsin to pursue a doctoral degree in political science.

In the summer of 1954, Joanne went with Abdulfattah to Syria. They spent two months in Homs, where she learned from his family to cook Syrian dishes. When they returned to Wisconsin she discovered that she was pregnant. They were both twenty-three, but they decided not to get married. Her father was dying at the time, and he had threatened to disown her if she wed Abdulfattah. Nor was abortion an easy option in a small Catholic community. So in early 1955, Joanne traveled to San Francisco, where she was taken into the care of a kindly doctor who sheltered unwed mothers, delivered their babies, and quietly arranged closed adoptions.

Joanne had one requirement: Her child must be adopted by college graduates. So the doctor arranged for the baby to be placed with a lawyer and his wife. But when a boy was born—on February 24, 1955—the designated couple decided that they wanted a girl and backed out. Thus it was that the boy became the son not of a lawyer but of a high school dropout with a passion for mechanics and his salt-of-the-earth wife who was working as a bookkeeper. Paul and Clara named their new baby Steven Paul Jobs.

When Joanne found out that her baby had been placed with a couple who had not even graduated from high school, she refused to sign the adoption papers. The standoff lasted weeks, even after the baby had settled into the Jobs household. Eventually Joanne relented, with the stipulation that the couple promise—indeed sign a pledge—to fund a savings account to pay for the boy’s college education.

There was another reason that Joanne was balky about signing the adoption papers. Her father was about to die, and she planned to marry Jandali soon after. She held out hope, she would later tell family members, sometimes tearing up at the memory, that once they were married, she could get their baby boy back.

Arthur Schieble died in August 1955, after the adoption was finalized. Just after Christmas that year, Joanne and Abdulfattah were married in St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Church in Green Bay. He got his PhD in international politics the next year, and then they had another child, a girl named Mona. After she and Jandali divorced in 1962, Joanne embarked on a dreamy and peripatetic life that her daughter, who grew up to become the acclaimed novelist Mona Simpson, would capture in her book Anywhere but Here. Because Steve’s adoption had been closed, it would be twenty years before they would all find each other.

Steve Jobs knew from an early age that he was adopted. “My parents were very open with me about that,” he recalled. He had a vivid memory of sitting on the lawn of his house, when he was six or seven years old, telling the girl who lived across the street. “So does that mean your real parents didn’t want you?” the girl asked. “Lightning bolts went off in my head,” according to Jobs. “I remember running into the house, crying. And my parents said, ‘No, you have to understand.’ They were very serious and looked me straight in the eye. They said, ‘We specifically picked you out.’ Both of my parents said that and repeated it slowly for me. And they put an emphasis on every word in that sentence.”

Abandoned. Chosen. Special. Those concepts became part of who Jobs was and how he regarded himself. His closest friends think that the knowledge that he was given up at birth left some scars. “I think his desire for complete control of whatever he makes derives directly from his personality and the fact that he was abandoned at birth,” said one longtime colleague, Del Yocam. “He wants to control his environment, and he sees the product as an extension of himself.” Greg Calhoun, who became close to Jobs right after college, saw another effect. “Steve talked to me a lot about being abandoned and the pain that caused,” he said. “It made him independent. He followed the beat of a different drummer, and that came from being in a different world than he was born into.”

Later in life, when he was the same age his biological father had been when he abandoned him, Jobs would father and abandon a child of his own. (He eventually took responsibility for her.) Chrisann Brennan, the mother of that child, said that being put up for adoption left Jobs “full of broken glass,” and it helps to explain some of his behavior. “He who is abandoned is an abandoner,” she said. Andy Hertzfeld, who worked with Jobs at Apple in the early 1980s, is among the few who remained close to both Brennan and Jobs. “The key question about Steve is why he can’t control himself at times from being so reflexively cruel and harmful to some people,” he said. “That goes back to being abandoned at birth. The real underlying problem was the theme of abandonment in Steve’s life.”

Jobs dismissed this. “There’s some notion that because I was abandoned, I worked very hard so I could do well and make my parents wish they had me back, or some such nonsense, but that’s ridiculous,” he insisted. “Knowing I was adopted may have made me feel more independent, but I have never felt abandoned. I’ve always felt special. My parents made me feel special.” He would later bristle whenever anyone referred to Paul and Clara Jobs as his “adoptive” parents or implied that they were not his “real” parents. “They were my parents 1,000%,” he said. When speaking about his biological parents, on the other hand, he was curt: “They were my sperm and egg bank. That’s not harsh, it’s just the way it was, a sperm bank thing, nothing more.”

Translation

第二次世界大战后，保罗·莱因霍尔德·乔布斯（Paul Reinhold Jobs）从海岸警卫队退役时，与他的队员们打了一个赌。他们已经到达旧金山，在这里，他们的舰船退役了，保罗打赌说他会在两周之内给自己找到一个妻子。他是一个肌肉结实、有着文身的引擎机械师，身高6英尺，长相有几分像詹姆斯·迪恩。他约到了克拉拉·哈戈皮安（Clara Hagopian)，一个来自亚美尼亚移民家庭的甜美风趣的女孩子。女孩看上的并不是他的容貌，而是他和他的朋友们可以使用一辆轿车，这是她当晚原定与之出行的对象们做不到的。10天以后，1946年3月，保罗与克拉拉订婚，同时也赢了那场赌局。事实证明，这是一段幸福的婚姻，两人厮守了40多年，直至死亡将他们分开。

保罗·莱因霍尔德·乔布斯在威斯康星州日耳曼敦的一家奶牛场长大。尽管父亲是个酒鬼，有时候还会虐待他，但在保罗粗犷的外表下却有着一颗温柔宁静的心。高中退学后，他穿梭于中西部地区，做机械师的工作，直到19岁那年加入海岸警卫队——虽然他并不会游泳。他被安排在美国海军的梅格斯号运兵船（USS M.C. Meigs）上，“二战”中的大多数时间都在为巴顿将军向意大利运输部队。他作为一名机械师和锅炉工，表现不俗，并为他赢得了不少奖励，但他偶尔也会惹上一点儿小麻烦，所以军衔从来没有高过一等兵。

克拉拉出生在新泽西州，她的父母逃离土耳其控制下的亚美尼亚之后，落脚在这里。在她童年时，全家搬到了旧金山的米申区。她有一个很少对外提及的秘密：她曾经结过婚，但她的丈夫在战争中身亡了。所以当她第一次和保罗约会时，心中已经准备好迎接崭新的生活了。

和许多从战争中走过的人一样，他们已经经历了太多的刺激，所以当战争结束之后，他们渴望安定下来，生儿育女，过平静的生活。他们没有多少钱，所以搬到威斯康星州与保罗的父母一起居住了几年，然后又去了印第安纳州，在那里，保罗找到了一份工作——在国际收割机公司（International Harvester）做机械师。他喜欢修理汽车，业余时间靠买下旧车修好后再卖出去赚钱。最后，他辞去了工作，成了一名全职的二手车商人。

然而，克拉拉深爱着旧金山。1952年，她终于说服丈夫，全家搬回了旧金山。他们在日落区买下了一套公寓，地处金门公园南端，面朝太平洋。保罗在一家信贷公司找到了一份“回收人”的工作——撬开不能偿还贷款的车主的车锁，将车拖回并重新处置。有时候他也会买下这样的车，修好后出售，就这样靠赚到的钱过着小康生活。

但他们的生活中却始终缺少一样东西。他们想要一个孩子，但克拉拉经历过一次宫外孕而丧失了生育能力。1955年，也就是结婚9年后，他们开始寻求领养一个孩子。

与保罗·乔布斯一样，乔安妮·席贝尔（Joanne Schieble）也来自威斯康星乡村的一个德裔家庭。她的父亲名叫亚瑟·席贝尔（Arthur Schieble），他移民美国后辗转来到了格林贝（Green Bay）的郊区。他和妻子在这里拥有一家水貂饲养场，还成功涉足了其他一些生意，其中包括房地产和照相凸版印刷。他很严厉，尤其是在对待女儿的恋爱问题上，他坚决反对女儿和初恋对象的交往，因为此人不是天主教徒。所以，当在威斯康星大学读研究生的乔安妮爱上了一个来自叙利亚的穆斯林助教“约翰”阿卜杜勒法塔赫·钱德里（Abdulfattah“John”Jandali）时，他威胁要与之断绝父女关系，就一点儿也不让人惊讶了。

钱德里来自一个显赫的叙利亚家庭，是家里9个孩子中年纪最小的一个。他的父亲拥有多家炼油厂和其他多种产业，在大马士革和霍姆斯也有大量财产，还一度控制了那一地区的小麦价格。钱德里后来提到，他的母亲是一位“传统的穆斯林女性”，她就是“保守、顺从的家庭主妇”。和席贝尔家一样，钱德里家族也十分重视教育，好几代以来，家庭成员都被送到伊斯坦布尔或者巴黎索邦大学就读。阿卜杜勒法塔赫·钱德里就曾被送到一所耶稣会寄宿学校，尽管他是个穆斯林。他在贝鲁特美国大学（American University in Beirut）拿到了学士学位，然后来到了威斯康星大学，在政治学系攻读博士学位。

1954年的夏天，乔安妮和阿卜杜勒法塔赫一起去了叙利亚。他们在霍姆斯待了两个月，乔安妮从男友的家人那里学会了做叙利亚菜。他们回到威斯康星后，乔安妮发现自己怀孕了。当年他们都是23岁，但决定先不结婚。乔安妮的父亲当时已经气息奄奄，他威胁说，如果她跟阿卜杜勒法塔赫结婚，就跟她断绝父女关系。在他们那个小小的天主教社区，堕胎也绝不是一件容易的事情。1955年初，乔安妮来到旧金山，被一名好心的医生收留，这位医生为未婚的准妈妈们提供庇护，帮她们接生，然后安排秘密的收养。

乔安妮提出了一个要求：领养她孩子的人必须要大学毕业。所以医生将这个孩子安排给了一位律师和他的妻子。1955年2月24日，乔安妮生下了一个男孩。而安排好的那对夫妇希望领养个女孩，所以他们退出了。因此，这个男孩没能成为律师的儿子，而是成为了一个高中退学生的儿子，这个人对机械有着极高的热情，他的妻子谦逊温和，是一名记账员。保罗和克拉拉给孩子取名为史蒂文·保罗·乔布斯（Steven Paul Jobs）。

但是，乔安妮关于孩子的养父母必须要大学毕业的要求并没有改变。当乔安妮发现这对夫妇甚至连高中都没有念完时，她拒绝在领养文件上签字。即使史蒂夫已经在乔布斯家安定下来了，僵局仍持续了数周。最终，乔安妮放宽了要求：乔布斯夫妇必须承诺设立专款，送这个孩子上大学，并需要在保证书上签字。

乔安妮迟迟不愿在领养文件上签字还有一个原因。她的父亲快去世了，而她计划在父亲离去后与钱德里结婚。她还怀有一丝希望——一旦他们结婚，她就可以把儿子要回来。因为有时候想到儿子的事还是会很伤心，她准备日后向家人和盘托出。

亚瑟·席贝尔1955年8月离世，即领养程序结束后的几个星期。那年的圣诞节刚过，乔安妮和阿卜杜勒法塔赫·钱德里就在格林贝的使徒圣菲利普天主教堂（St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Church）完婚了。第二年，钱德里拿到了国际政治学的博士学位，他们又要了一个孩子，是个女孩，名叫莫娜。乔安妮1962年和钱德里离婚后，过上了梦一般游荡的生活，这些都被她女儿——后来成为杰出小说家的莫娜·辛普森——描绘在她的凄美小说《在别处》（Anywhere But Here）中。因为史蒂夫的领养程序非常私密，所以直到20年后，史蒂夫和他妹妹才得以相认。

史蒂夫·乔布斯很早就知道了自己是被领养的。“我的父母在这件事情上对我很坦率。”他回忆道。他记得很清楚，六七岁的时候，他坐在自家屋前的草地上，向住在街对面的女孩讲述这件事情。“这是不是说明你的亲生父母不要你了？”女孩问。“天哪，我当时就像被闪电击中了一样。”乔布斯这么说，“我跑回家，大声哭喊。我父母说，‘不是这样的，你要理解这件事情。’他们当时很严肃，直盯着我的眼睛。他们说，‘我们是专门挑的你。’他们两人都这么说，并且放慢语速向我重复这句话。他们一字一顿地说出了每一个字。”

被遗弃，被选择，很特别，这些概念成为了乔布斯的一部分，也影响了他对自己的看法。他最亲密的朋友们认为，一出生就被遗弃这个事实给他留下了几道伤疤。“我认为，他想完全掌控自己制造的每一样东西的那种强烈欲望，就来源于他的性格以及刚出生就被抛弃这件事。”跟乔布斯共事了很多年的德尔·约克姆（Del Yocam）这么说。格雷格·卡尔霍恩（Greg Calhoun）看到了另一种影响——“他想控制外界环境，而且他把产品看作自己的一种延伸。”格雷格在大学毕业后就与乔布斯关系密切。“史蒂夫经常向我讲起他被亲生父母遗弃的事，他因此深受其害，”他说，“这件事造就了他独立的性格。他遵循着另外一套行为方式，这是因为他生活在自己的小世界里——与他的生长环境截然不同的世界。”

后来，乔布斯23岁时（这正是他的生父抛弃他时的年纪）乔布斯有了自己的孩子并抛弃了她。（最后他还是担负了作为一个父亲的责任。）孩子的母亲克里斯安·布伦南（Chrisann Brennan）说，被领养一事让乔布斯“满身伤痕”，这也解释了他后来的行为。“他曾经被遗弃过，但后来他也遗弃了别人。”克里斯安如是说。20世纪80年代早期与乔布斯一起在苹果公司共事的安迪·赫茨菲尔德（Andy Hertzfeld），是少数几个与乔布斯和布伦南都保持紧密联系的人。“史蒂夫身上的关键问题是，为什么他有时候会失控般变得残酷并伤害别人，”他说，“那还要追溯到他一出生便被遗弃这件事上。真正的潜在问题是，史蒂夫的生活中，永远有‘被遗弃’这样一个主题。”

乔布斯否认了这点。“有些人认为，因为我被亲生父母抛弃过，所以我非常努力地工作以求出人头地，这样我父母就会后悔当初的决定，还有一些类似的言论，都太荒谬了。”他坚称，“知道自己是被领养的也许让我感觉更加独立，但我从未感觉自己被抛弃过。我一直都觉得自己很特别。我的父母让我觉得自己很特别。”之后，每当有人称保罗和克拉拉为乔布斯的“养父母”或者暗示他俩不是他的“亲生父母”时，乔布斯就会异常愤怒。“他们百分之一千是我的父母。”他说。另一方面，当谈及他的亲生父母时，他显得很草率：“他们就是我的精子库和卵子库，这话并不过分，因为这就是事实，他们扮演的就是精子库的角色，仅此而已。”

Words

Words
mustet	v. 寻求，聚集，召集；
muster out	退伍
wager	赌注
It would turn out to be	事实证明
crewmates	船员；队员
decommission	v. 关闭，拆除（核武器等）；使（船）退役，报废
taut	adj. 拉紧的；紧张的；整洁的
tattoo	n. 文身
resemblance	n. 相似，相像
a passing resemblance	些许的相似
humor	幽默，诙谐
immigrant	移民
engage to	订婚
dairy	乳制的；奶牛场
alcoholic	醉酒的
abusive	辱骂；虐待
ended up with	以...结束
disposition	性格；性情
leathery	类似皮革的；粗犷的
exterior	外部的；表面的；外观
wander	游荡；漫步
ferry	渡运；摆渡
troop	部队；军队
general	指挥官；首席的
commendation	赞扬；推荐
occasionally	偶尔；偶然
minor	较小的；轻微的
seaman	水手；海员
flee	逃离；逃跑
turk	土耳其人
land	陆地，地面；着陆；落脚
San Francisco	洛杉矶
prime	主要的；首先的；准备好
primed	准备好；待发的
settle	定居；居住
eventful	充满事故的
harvest	收获；收割
harvester	收获者；收割机
tinker	修补，修理
Pacific	太平洋
decent	像样的；得体的
ectopic	异位的；异常的
pregnancy	怀孕的
rural	农村的；乡村的
heritage	遗产；传统；后代
outskirts	市郊；郊区
mink	水貂
dabble	涉猎；涉足
various	各种各样的
real estate	不动产
Catholic	天主教
Muslim	穆斯林，伊斯兰教信仰者的通称
prominent	著名的；显赫的
Syrian	叙利亚
refineries	炼油厂
holdings	占有财产；所持股份
obedient	顺从的；服从的
at one point	一度；在某刻
premium	保险费；高价的
undergraduate degree	学士学位
pursue	追求；致力于；继续
doctoral degree	博士学位
disown	否认
abortion	堕胎；流产
dropout	退学
the salt of the earth	社会中坚；高尚的人
bookkeeper	会计员；记账员
standoff	僵局；和局
relent	变宽容；终于同意；不再反对
stipulation	条款；约定
balky	倔强的；不情愿的
hold out hope	（在不利情况下仍）对……抱希望
peripatetic	漫游的
novelist	小说家
capture	记录；描绘；体现
closed	私密的
sentence	句子
scar	伤疤
personality	个性
colleague	同事
reflexively	条件反射的
cruel	残酷的；残忍的
nonsense	荒谬的想法；胡说的话
ridiculous	可笑的；荒谬的
bristle	愤怒；发怒
curt	草率的；简短失礼的
harsh	难听的；严厉的；过分的

Phrases

• He followed the beat of a different drummer

  他遵循着另外一套行为方式.

Silicon Valley

The childhood that Paul and Clara Jobs created for their new son was, in many ways, a stereotype of the late 1950s. When Steve was two they adopted a girl they named Patty, and three years later they moved to a tract house in the suburbs. The finance company where Paul worked as a repo man, CIT, had transferred him down to its Palo Alto office, but he could not afford to live there, so they landed in a subdivision in Mountain View, a less expensive town just to the south.

There Paul tried to pass along his love of mechanics and cars. “Steve, this is your workbench now,” he said as he marked off a section of the table in their garage. Jobs remembered being impressed by his father’s focus on craftsmanship. “I thought my dad’s sense of design was pretty good,” he said, “because he knew how to build anything. If we needed a cabinet, he would build it. When he built our fence, he gave me a hammer so I could work with him.”

Fifty years later the fence still surrounds the back and side yards of the house in Mountain View. As Jobs showed it off to me, he caressed the stockade panels and recalled a lesson that his father implanted deeply in him. It was important, his father said, to craft the backs of cabinets and fences properly, even though they were hidden. “He loved doing things right. He even cared about the look of the parts you couldn’t see.”

His father continued to refurbish and resell used cars, and he festooned the garage with pictures of his favorites. He would point out the detailing of the design to his son: the lines, the vents, the chrome, the trim of the seats. After work each day, he would change into his dungarees and retreat to the garage, often with Steve tagging along. “I figured I could get him nailed down with a little mechanical ability, but he really wasn’t interested in getting his hands dirty,” Paul later recalled. “He never really cared too much about mechanical things.”

“I wasn’t that into fixing cars,” Jobs admitted. “But I was eager to hang out with my dad.” Even as he was growing more aware that he had been adopted, he was becoming more attached to his father. One day when he was about eight, he discovered a photograph of his father from his time in the Coast Guard. “He’s in the engine room, and he’s got his shirt off and looks like James Dean. It was one of those Oh wow moments for a kid. Wow, oooh, my parents were actually once very young and really good-looking.”

Through cars, his father gave Steve his first exposure to electronics. “My dad did not have a deep understanding of electronics, but he’d encountered it a lot in automobiles and other things he would fix. He showed me the rudiments of electronics, and I got very interested in that.” Even more interesting were the trips to scavenge for parts. “Every weekend, there’d be a junkyard trip. We’d be looking for a generator, a carburetor, all sorts of components.” He remembered watching his father negotiate at the counter. “He was a good bargainer, because he knew better than the guys at the counter what the parts should cost.” This helped fulfill the pledge his parents made when he was adopted. “My college fund came from my dad paying $50 for a Ford Falcon or some other beat-up car that didn’t run, working on it for a few weeks, and selling it for $250—and not telling the IRS.”

The Jobses’ house and the others in their neighborhood were built by the real estate developer Joseph Eichler, whose company spawned more than eleven thousand homes in various California subdivisions between 1950 and 1974. Inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision of simple modern homes for the American “everyman,” Eichler built inexpensive houses that featured floor-to-ceiling glass walls, open floor plans, exposed post-and-beam construction, concrete slab floors, and lots of sliding glass doors. “Eichler did a great thing,” Jobs said on one of our walks around the neighborhood. “His houses were smart and cheap and good. They brought clean design and simple taste to lower-income people. They had awesome little features, like radiant heating in the floors. You put carpet on them, and we had nice toasty floors when we were kids.”

Jobs said that his appreciation for Eichler homes instilled in him a passion for making nicely designed products for the mass market. “I love it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn’t cost much,” he said as he pointed out the clean elegance of the houses. “It was the original vision for Apple. That’s what we tried to do with the first Mac. That’s what we did with the iPod.”

Translation

从很多方面来说，保罗和克拉拉夫妇为他们的儿子创造的童年，都是20世纪50年代后期的典型模式。乔布斯两岁那年，他们领养了一个女儿，取名叫帕蒂，三年后他们搬到了郊区的一栋房子里。保罗担任“回收人”的CIT信贷公司将他调到了帕洛奥图的办事处，但他承受不起那里高昂的生活费用，所以他们选择了位于南边的山景城落脚，那里的生活开销相对低廉。

保罗·乔布斯想把自己对机械和汽车的热爱传递给儿子。“史蒂夫，从现在开始，这就是你的工作台了。”他边说边在车库里的桌子上划出一块。乔布斯还记得父亲对手工技艺的专注曾让自己印象深刻。“我觉得爸爸的设计感很好，”他说，“因为他什么都会做。要是家里缺个柜子，他就会做一个。给家里搭栅栏的时候，他给我一把锤子，这样我就能跟他一起干活儿了。”

50年后，当年的栅栏依然包围着山景城那处房子与院落。乔布斯向我展示的时候，轻抚着栅栏的木板，回想起了父亲深深植入他脑中的一课。老乔布斯说，把柜子和栅栏的背面制作好也十分重要，尽管这些地方人们看不到。“他喜欢追求完美，即使别人看不到的地方他也会很关心。”

父亲继续着翻新、出售二手车的事业，并在车库里贴满了他喜爱的汽车的图片。他会向儿子介绍车辆设计的细节——线条、排气孔、铬合金以及座椅的装饰。每天下班后，他就换上工作服，窝在车库里，史蒂夫也常常跟着他。“我原本想让他掌握一点儿机械方面的技能，但他不愿意把手弄脏。”保罗后来回忆说，“他从没有真正喜欢过机械方面的东西。”

在引擎盖下修修补补根本吸引不了乔布斯。乔布斯承认：“我对修汽车没什么兴趣，但我特别喜欢跟爸爸待在一起。”即使随着年龄的增长，他越来越意识到自己是被领养的，他还是越来越喜欢跟爸爸黏在一起。乔布斯差不多8岁的时候，有一天他发现了一张父亲在海岸警卫队时的照片。“他在轮机舱里，上身赤裸，看上去很像詹姆斯·迪恩。对一个孩子来说，那一刻只能用‘哇，天哪’来形容了。哇，天哪！我的父母也曾经年轻过，而且长相也很不错。”

通过汽车，父亲让史蒂夫第一次接触到了电子设备。“他对电子设备并没有很深的了解，但他在修理汽车和其他物件时，就在跟电子设备打交道。他为我展示了电子设备的基本原理，我觉得很有趣。”更有趣的是去废品堆里寻找零部件的过程。“每个周末，我们都有一次废品站之旅。我们会寻找发电机，或者化油器，还有各种各样的元件。”他还记得看着父亲在柜台前谈价格。“他很擅长讨价还价，因为他比卖家更清楚零件的合理价格。”这也帮助实现他父母当初领养他时许下的承诺。“我上大学的钱是这么来的：我父亲会花50美元买下一辆已经开不动的福特猎鹰（Ford Falcon）或者其他什么破车，花几个星期修好它，然后以250美元的价格卖出去——而且他不会去报税。”

乔布斯家的房子位于迪亚布洛大道286号，和他们周围的房子一样，都是由房地产开发商约瑟夫·埃奇勒（Joseph Eichler）建造的。埃奇勒的公司于1950~1974年在加州的各个地区兴建了超过11 000幢房屋。受到弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特（Frank Lloyd Wright）“适合美国普通百姓的简单现代之家”这一设想的启发，埃奇勒建造了廉价房屋，这些房屋的特点是：落地的玻璃墙、开放式的平面设计、无遮蔽的梁柱构造、水泥地面以及大量的滑动玻璃门。“埃奇勒做得很好，”乔布斯有一次和我在附近散步时说，“他造的房子整洁漂亮，价格低廉，质量上乘。他们把干净的设计和简洁的品位带给了低收入人群。房子本身有很棒的小特色，比如地板下安装了热辐射供暖设施。我们小的时候，铺上地毯，躺在上面，温暖舒适。”

乔布斯说，他对埃奇勒建造的房屋的欣赏，激发了他为大众制造设计精良的产品的热情。“我喜欢把很棒的设计和简便的功能融入产品中，而且不会太贵。”他一边向我指出这些房屋的干净典雅之处，一边说道，“这是苹果公司最初的设想，我们在设计第一台Mac电脑时就尝试这么做，并在iPod上实现了这一设想。”

Words

Words
stereotype	刻板的；典型的
suburbs	郊外
transfer	转移；搬迁
subdivision	细分的土地
mark off	划分出
craftsmanship	手艺；技艺
cabinet	储藏柜
fence	栅栏
hammer	锤子；榔头