虽然如此，乔布斯还是很为父亲感到骄傲，因为他从来没有学会那种卑躬屈膝的态度和圆滑诡诈的作风，尽管这些特质能让他成为一个业绩更好的经纪人。

　　“You had to suck up to people to sell real estate, and he wasn’t good at that and it wasn’t in his nature. I admired him for that.”

　　“想卖出房子，你就必须巴结别人，爸爸不擅长这个，他本性也不是这样的人。这一点我很钦佩他。”

　　Paul Jobs went back to being a mechanic.

　　保罗·乔布斯做回了老本行——机械师。

　　His father was calm and gentle, traits that his son later praised more than emulated. He was also resolute.

　　他的父亲宁静又温和，这些特质后来得到了乔布斯的赞扬而不是仿效。他还是一个坚决果断的人。

　　Jobs described one example: Nearby was an engineer who was working at Westinghouse. He was a single guy, beatnik type. He had a girlfriend.

　　乔布斯举了个例子来描述：住在我们隔壁的是一个在西屋电气公司研究光伏电池的工程师。他还没有结婚，属于掉的一代”那种类型的人。他有一个女朋友，

　　She would babysit me sometimes. Both my parents worked, so I would come here right after school for a couple of hours.

　　她有时候会给我做保姆。我的父母都要工作，所以放学后我就去他们家待几个小时。

　　He would get drunk and hit her a couple of times.

　　他会喝醉酒，然后还会打她。

　　She came over one night, scared out of her wits, and he came over drunk, and my dad stood him down—saying “She’s here, but you’re not coming in.”

　　有天晚上她吓得魂不附体地跑到我们家来，那男人也醉醺醺地跟过来了，我爸爸拦住他说：“她是在这儿，但你不准进来。”

　　He stood right there. We like to think everything was idyllic in the 1950s, but this guy was one of those engineers who had messed-up lives.

　　他就站在那儿。上世纪50年代的时候，我们以为万事都是平静祥和的，但这个家伙就属于那种生活一团糟的工程师。

　　What made the neighborhood different from the thousands of other spindly-tree subdivisions across America was that even the ne’er-do-wells tended to be engineers.

　　这个地区与遍布美国的千千万万个绿树浓荫的地区不同的一点是，即便是个一无所长的人也想成为工程师。

　　“When we moved here, there were apricot and plum orchards on all of these corners,” Jobs recalled. “But it was beginning to boom because of military investment.”

　　“我们搬到这里时，每个角落都能看到杏子和李子果园。乔布斯回忆说，“但因为军事投资的关系，整个地区开始急速发展起来。”

　　He soaked up the history of the valley and developed a yearning to play his own role.

　　乔布斯受到眭谷历史的浸淫，渴望自己也能施展拳脚。

　　Edwin Land of Polaroid later told him about being asked by Eisenhower to help build the U-2 spy plane cameras to see how real the Soviet threat was.

　　宝丽来的埃德温·兰德后来告诉他，艾森豪威尔曾要求自己帮助制造U-2侦察机上的照相机，来监视苏联的威胁。

　　The film was dropped in canisters and returned to the NASA Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, not far from where Jobs lived.

　　胶卷被装在小罐子里，然后送到森尼韦尔的美国国家航空航天局埃姆斯研究中心（NASAAmes Research Center),这里离乔布斯家不远。

　　“The first computer terminal I ever saw was when my dad brought me to the Ames Center,” he said. “I fell totally in love with it.”

　　“我第一次见到计算机终端，就是我爸爸带我去埃姆斯中心的时候他说，“我觉得自己彻底爰上它了。”

　　Other defense contractors sprouted nearby during the 1950s.

　　其他的国防项目承包商也于20世纪50年代陆续在周边地区落地生根。

　　The Lockheed Missiles and Space Division, which built submarine-launched ballistic missiles, was founded in 1956 next to the NASA Center;

　　1956年，生产潜射弹道导弹的洛克希德公司导弹与空间部门（The Lockheed Missilesand Space Division)在NASA中心隔壁成立；

　　by the time Jobs moved to the area four years later, it employed twenty thousand people.

　　4年后乔布斯一家搬到这里时，该部门已经雇用了20000名员工。

　　A few hundred yards away, Westinghouse built facilities that produced tubes and electrical transformers for the missile systems.

　　几百米之外就是西屋电气公司，其生产的设备是用来为导弹系统制造电子管和变压器的。

　　“You had all these military companies on the cutting edge,” he recalled.

　　“拥有尖端科技的军事公司云集于此，”他回忆道，

　　“It was mysterious and high-tech and made living here very exciting.”

　　“这太不可思议、太髙科技了，生活在这里真让人觉得兴奋。”

　　In the wake of the defense industries there arose a booming economy based on technology.

　　国防工业的复苏，引发了一场依托科技的经济急速发展。

　　Its roots stretched back to 1938, when David Packard and his new wife moved into a house in Palo Alto that had a shed where his friend Bill Hewlett was soon ensconced.

　　这场发展的根基还要回溯到1938年，当时戴维·帕卡德和他的新婚妻子搬进了帕洛奥图的一座公寓，很快他的朋友比尔·休利特也在这座公寓的一个小屋里安顿了下来。

　　The house had a garage— an appendage that would prove both useful and iconic in the valley—in which they tinkered around until they had their first product, an audio oscillator.

　　房子有一间车库——这间车库后来成为了硅谷的标志之一——在这里，他们敲敲打打，制造出了自己的第一件产品：一台音频振荡器。