Who Was Ronald Reagan 罗纳德·威尔逊·里根 Chapter 1 A Boy Called “Dutch”

Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, on February 6, 1911. It was a snowy day, and his father left the general store where he worked and made his way home through the snowdrifts. Jack 1 Reagan ran up the stairs to his family’s apartment, a one-room flat on the second floor over a bakery. When he saw his new son, he laughed. “Why, he looks like a fat little Dutchman!”



The nickname 2 stuck. The baby was known as “Dutch” all through his childhood.



Jack Reagan was a tall, handsome man who loved to tell stories and talk about politics. He was a good salesman. But every so often, he would go out and get drunk 3.



When Jack started to drink, he often ended up losing his job. Usually that meant that the family would have to start over in a new town. The Reagans moved a lot.



Although this often made things hard on Dutch, when he was older, Ronald Reagan remembered how much he appreciated growing up in a small town.



He said, “You get to know people as individuals … The dreams of people may differ, but everybody wants their dreams to come true … And America, above all places, gives us the freedom to do that.”



Dutch and his older brother, Neil, were always the new boys in school. This didn’t seem to bother Neil. He would find a group of boys to hang around with.



Dutch was more of a loner. He liked to hike along the banks of the Rock River, pretending to be a fur trapper of long ago. In one house the Reagans rented, Dutch found an old collection of butterflies and birds’ eggs in the attic 4. He spent a lot of time studying them.



Dutch’s mother was Nelle Wilson Reagan. Nelle Reagan was a very cheerful person. She always said that God had a plan for her life, so there was no reason to worry or feel sad.



Wherever the Reagans moved, Nelle always found some needy 5 family to help. She even visited prisoners in the jails 6, bringing them apples and crackers 7. Nelle never seemed to notice that the Reagans were poor themselves.



For Sunday dinner, Nelle would feed the family liver 8, not roast beef or chicken. Instead of hamburgers, she fried 9 up patties made of oatmeal. They tasted awful!



Years went by before Dutch figured out that Nelle served these meals because she didn’t have enough money to buy anything better. As a little boy, he thought his mother was just a bad cook.



When Dutch and Neil were little, Nelle read them stories every night. She would read slowly and point to each word as she said it aloud. By the time he was five, Dutch was able to read the newspapers on his own.



Dutch read a lot of books, mainly boys’ adventure stories. He read novels about Tarzan, the king of the jungle, and novels about some characters called the Rover Boys.



Dutch also liked to draw funny pictures. He thought that when he grew up, he would like to be a cartoonist. Maybe he could draw his own comic strip 10.



Jack Reagan was an Irish American and a Catholic 11. But he was not a very religious man. Dutch later joked that his dad was the kind of Catholic who gave up going to church for Lent.



Neil usually followed what his dad did. So he became a Catholic, too. However, Dutch decided 12 to join his mother’s church. It was called the Disciples 13 of Christ 14. He was baptized when he was eleven years old.



Nelle was against drinking alcohol 15. She even wrote a play about how drunkenness caused family fights. It was performed at her church. Although Jack Reagan promised to give up drinking, he kept going back to his old ways.



Even Prohibition 16, which made buying liquor 17 illegal, didn’t change him.



One day, when Dutch was eleven, he came home in the evening and found his father passed out in the snow, on the steps leading to the front door.



Dutch woke his dad up and helped him inside. He was angry and embarrassed. What if the neighbors had seen his father drunk?



When his mother came home, she sat Dutch down for a long talk. “Don’t turn against your dad,” she told him. “He has a sickness. He just can’t help himself.”



Dutch tried to follow his mother’s advice. Anger was just a waste of energy. He would try to think positive thoughts.