童年：被遗弃和被选择(1）The Adoption

The Adoption

When Paul Jobs was mustered out of the Coast Guard after World War II, he made a wager with his crewmates.

They had arrived in San Francisco, where their ship was decommissioned, and Paul bet that he would find himself a wife within two weeks.

He was a taut, tattooed engine mechanic, six feet tall, with a passing resemblance to James Dean.

But it wasn't his looks that got him a date with Clara Hagopian, a sweet-humored daughter of Armenian immigrants.

It was the fact that he and his friends had a car, unlike the group she had originally planned to go out with that evening.

Ten days later, in March 1946, Paul got engaged to Clara and won his wager.

It would turn out to be a happy marriage, one that lasted until death parted them more than forty years later.

Paul Reinhold Jobs had been raised on a dairy farm in Germantown, Wisconsin.

Even though his father was an alcoholic and sometimes abusive, Paul ended up with a gentle and calm disposition under his leathery exterior.