Last Sunday I made a visit to some new neighbors down
the block. No specific in mind, just an opportunity to sit at the kitchen
table, have some tea and chat. As I did so, it occurred to me how rare the
Sunday visit has become.
When I was a kid in New Jersey of
the 1960s, Sunday visits were routine. Most stores were closed, almost nobody
worked, and the highways, as a result, were not desperate steeplechases(障碍赛跑) they have become today. My family normally traveled
eight city blocks to the home of my grandmother, where adults would sit on the
front porch and chat while we children played hide-and-seek.
The Sunday visit was something to desire strongly. It
was the repetition to church, our reward for an hour of devotion, an
opportunity to take advantage of the fact that Dad was not at work, we were not
in school, and there was no housework that couldn’t wait until Monday. Sunday
was, indeed, different from the other days of the week, because everyone seemed
to be on the same schedule, which means that there was one day when everyone
seemed to have time for everybody else.
Sunday as a day of rest is, or was, so deeply rooted
in the culture that it’s surprising to find that, in a short span of time, it
has almost entirely lost this association. In my childhood, it was assumed that
everyone would either be home or visiting someone else’s home on Sunday. But
now the question is, “What do you plan to DO this Sunday?” The answer can range
from going to the mall, to participating in a road race, to Montreal for lunch.
If one were to respond, “I’m making a Sunday visit to family,” such an answer
would feel strange, which sounds like an echo from another era.
I suppose I should be grateful to live in Maine, a
state of small towns, abundant land and tight relationships. Even though folks
work as hard here as they do anywhere else, the state’s powerfully rural
feature still keeps at least remnants(残余部分) of the
moral of yesterday’s America, where people had to depend on one another in the face
of economic vagaries(反复无常的情况) and a challenging environment.
1.The writer’s general impression of the Sunday in the
past was a day when＿＿.
A. everyone was paying a visit to some relatives far
away
B. everyone seemed to be free for others
C. Dad was not at work while Mom was busy cleaning the
house
D. nearly every adult would go to church and children
weren’t at school
2.In the fourth paragraph, the writer compares the
response “I’m making a Sunday visit to family” to an echo from another era because_____.
A. people nowadays prefer staying at home on Sunday
B. such answers are rarely heard in our modern society
C. people in the city dislike being disturbed on
Sunday
D. visiting someone on Sunday was routine in the past
3.From the last paragraph we may infer that_____.
A. people in Maine suffer more from economic
depression and the changed environment
B. people in Maine have abandoned their tradition and
lived an absolutely new life
C. land in Maine is short, thus the relationship
between people is tense
D. people in Maine tend to help each other out of
necessity
4.What’s the main idea of the passage?
A. Doing many activities on Sunday is beneficial.
B. We should often travel a long distance to visit
some friends and relatives.
C. Nowadays, Sunday has almost lost its association as
a day of rest.
D. We should abandon some old tradition.
