大学英语快速阅读教程(第一册第九单元)

Book One

Unit Nine

Passage One

Directions: You will have 10 minutes to read this passage quickly and answer the following questions from A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.

It’s something to Live in

Kids have always loved to build tree houses and playhouse. Why should it be a surprise, then, that some grown-ups like to do the same kind of thing? All over America there are many kinds of houses that people built.

Many of the people who built their houses knew nothing about building when they started. Maude Meager and Carolyn Smiley were such people. They moved to California when they were in their 50s and decided to build a house. They had never built anything, but they figured they could learn.

Of course, they made mistakes along the way. But by trying, they learned how to do everything that had to be done. They made bricks by testing different mixtures of mud until they found a good, strong one. They cut 3,000 windowpanes (窗玻璃) from old car windshields (挡风玻璃). They fashioned nine fireplaces, all different. What they ended up with was a home about the size of eight average houses.

In Fresno, California, lives a man named Baldasare Forestiere. When he came to America from Sicily, he got a job digging subway tunnels in Boston. So when he built himself a house, he built it underground. Each of the ninety rooms he built had a hole in its ceiling open to the sky above. And beneath each hole he planted a fruit tree.

There is a stone castle in Arizona that was built by one man. There are used auto parts, refrigerator plates, and broken tiles (碎瓦片) in the walls among the stones. The builder’s name was Boyce Gulley. He had promised his daughter that someday she would have a castle. When he died in 1945, she saw it for the first time. Today it is her home.

Fred Burns built his house on the water in Belfast, Maine. He used driftwood (浮木), rusty nails, and leftover paint. He built it a little at a time until became a drifting, colorful house. He lives in his work of art with his ten dogs.

David Brown built a house of bottles in British Columbia, Canada. He collected bottles from all his friends and cemented them together into thick walls. He figured half a million bottles went into his house. When he died, his son went right on building. Now there is even a bridge built of bottles in the yard.

In the mountains of New York, Clarence Schmidt set out to build himself a log cabin（小木屋）. When it was fit to live in, Schmidt found that he couldn’t stop buildi ng. He kept adding to his house. Finally he had a seven-storey house with many rooms. All around the grounds Schmidt placed useless or old things that were interesting to him. Some of this he wrapped in tin foil (锡纸) so it would reflect the light. He painted some of his windows to look like stained glass. Schmidt’s neighbors weren’t happy with his house and his useless things. A fire burned that house down, the work of someone who didn’t understand him.