英语美文背诵 酿酒也疯狂(中)（在线收听）

Otherwise we're going to be making other people's choices, not our own.

否则，我们就将按别人的、而不是自己的意愿行事了。

After three and a half years with Outward Bound, I was ready to go hack to school. I finished Harvard and got a highly paid job at the Boston Consulting Group. a think tank and business-consulting firm. Still, after working there five years, I was haunted by doubt. Is this what I want to be doing when I'm 50?

野外训练工作干了三年半后，我准备重返学校。哈佛毕业后，在波士顿顾问咨询集团——一家智囊团兼商业咨询的公司，我找到了一份薪水丰厚的工作。然而，在那里工作了五年之后，我头脑中又萦绕起一丝疑虑：难道这就是我想一直做到50岁的工作吗？

I remembered that some time before, my dad had been cleaning out the attic and came across some old beer recipes on scraps of yellow paper. "Today's beer is basically water that can hold a head," he'd told me.

记得不久前，父亲在整理阁楼时，偶然找到了一些写在发了黄的小纸片上的古老的啤酒配方。他告诉我：“现在的啤酒基本上都是水，只是面上有一些泡沫。”

I agreed. If you didn't like the mass-produced American stuff, the other choices were imports that were often stale. Americans pay good money for inferior beer, I thought. Why not make good beer for Americans right here in America?

他说的对。如果人们不喜欢喝那种大批量生产出的美国啤酒，那他们就只能喝进口的啤酒，但那常常是不新鲜、走味儿的。我想，美国人是在花大价钱买劣等酒。为什么不就在美国本地为美国人自己酿造好啤酒呢？

I decided to quit my job to become a brewer. When I told Dad, I was hoping he'd put his arm around me and get misty about reviving tradition. Instead he said, "Jim, that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard!"

我决定辞职，做一名酿酒人。当我把这个想法告诉父亲时，我希望他会拥抱我，并为传统的复苏而心情激动。结果恰恰相反，他说：“吉姆，这是我所听到过的最愚蠢的话!”

As much as Dad objected, in the end he supported me: he became my new company's first investor, coughing up $40,000 when I opened the Boston Beer Company in 1984. I plunked down $ 100,000 of my savings and raised another $ 100,000 from friends and relatives. Going from my fancy office to being a brewer was like mountain climbing: exhilarating, liberating and frightening. All my safety nets were gone.

虽然父亲尽全力反对我，但最终还是支持我了。1984年当我开办波士顿啤酒公司时，他成了我新公司的第一个投资者，勉强投入了4万美元。我拿出了10万美元的积蓄，又从朋友和亲戚那里募集了10万美元。从条件舒适的办公室出来，去做一名酿酒人，就像爬山一样：令人振奋，感到自由，但又觉法有些害怕。因为我所有的安全保护网都撤掉了。