It is easy for me to imagine life without harmonicas, but for my parents’ generation, harmonicas were as common as rain. They were small and easy to fit in a shirt pocket or kit bag, and, whenever an idle moment presented itself, out came the harmonica to render a slightly reedy version of a well-known song. Instead of harmonicas, my generation had guitars. Almost everyone played one, or thought they could, and all our counter-culture heroes, from Peter, Paul, and Mary to Bob Dylan, backed their protest songs with guitar as the instrument of choice. Today, harmonicas and guitars have been replaced by smart phones. Idle moments are spent looking at the phone and doing whatever one does while looking at its screen. The time of harmonicas, even guitars, has largely passed, and gone with them are some of the values that we were forced to learn at the time. As Yogi Berra may or may not have said, "Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be."

中文翻译：

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 口琴


我很容易想象没有口琴的生活，但对于我父母那一代来说，口琴就像下雨一样常见。它们体积小，很容易放入衬衫口袋或工具包中，每当有空闲的时候，口琴就会出来演奏一首著名歌曲的略带芦苇的版本。我们这一代人没有口琴，而是吉他。几乎每个人都演奏过一首，或者认为他们可以演奏过一首，而我们所有的反文化英雄，从彼得、保罗、玛丽到鲍勃·迪伦，都以吉他作为首选乐器来支持他们的抗议歌曲。如今，口琴和吉他已被智能手机取代。闲暇时，人们会看着手机，一边看着屏幕一边做任何事情。口琴甚至吉他的时代已经过去了，我们当时被迫学习的一些价值观也随之消失了。正如尤吉·贝拉（Yogi Berra）可能说过也可能没有说过的那样，“怀旧不再是过去的样子了。”