希拉里有声自传Hillary Rodham Clinton04

Each summer, as children, my brother and I spent most of August at the cottage Grandpa Rodham had built in 1921 about twenty miles northwest of Scranton in the Pocono Mountains overlooking Lake Winola. The rustic 1 cabin had no heat except for the cast-iron cook stove in the kitchen, and no indoor bath or shower. To stay clean, we swam in the lake or stood below the back porch while someone poured a tub of water onto our heads. The big front porch was our favorite place to play and where our grandfather shared hands of cards with my brothers and me. He taught us pinochle, the greatest card game in the world, in his opinion. He read us stories and told us the legend of the lake, which he claimed was named after an Indian princess, Winola, who drowned herself when her father would not let her marry a handsome warrior 2 from a neighboring tribe. When I was as young as ten or eleven, I played pinochle with the men—my grandfather, my father, and assorted 3 others, including such memorable 4 characters as “Old Pete” and Hank, who were notorious sore losers. Pete lived at the end of a dirt road and showed up to play every day, invariably cursing and stomping 5 off if he started losing. Hank came only when my father was there. He would totter 6 up to the front porch with his cane 7 and climb the steep stairs yelling, “Is that black-haired bastard 8 home? I want to play cards.” He’d known my dad since he was born and had taught him to fish. He didn’t like losing any better than Pete, occasionally upended the table after a particularly irksome defeat.

After the war, my dad started a small drapery fabric 9 business, Roderick Fabrics 10, in the Merchandise Mart in Chicago’s Loop. He employed day laborers 11, as well as enlisting 12 my mother, my brothers and me when we were old enough to help with the printing. We carefully poured the paint onto the edge of the silk screen and pulled the squeegee across to print the pattern on the fabric underneath 13. Then we lifted up the screen and moved down the table, over and over again, creating beautiful patterns, some of which my father designed. My favorite was “Staircase to the Stars.”

In 1950, when I was three years old and my brother Hugh was still an infant, my father had done well enough to move the family to suburban 14 Park Ridge 15. The post-war population explosion was booming, and there were swarms 16 of children everywhere. My mother once counted forty-seven kids living on our square block.

My mother was a classic homemaker. When I think of her in those days, I see a woman in perpetual motion, making the beds, washing the dishes and putting dinner on the table precisely 17 at six o’clock. One summer, she helped me create a fantasy world in a large cardboard box. We used mirrors for lakes and twigs 18 for trees, and I made up fairy-tale stories for my dolls to act out. Another summer, she encouraged my younger brother Tony to pursue his dream of digging a hole all the way to China. She started reading to him about China and every day he spent time digging his hole next to our house. Occasionally, he found a chopstick or fortune cookie my mother had hidden there.

My brother Hugh was even more adventurous 19. As a toddler he pushed open the door to our sundeck and happily tunneled through three feet of snow until my mother rescued him. My mother loved her home and her family, but she felt limited by the narrow choices of her life. She started taking college courses when we were older. She never graduated, but she amassed 20 mountains of credits in subjects ranging from logic 21 to child development. My mother was offended by the mistreatment of any human being, especially children. She understood from personal experience that many children—through no fault of their own—were disadvantaged and discriminated 22 against from birth. As a child in California, she had watched Japanese Americans in her school endure blatant 23 discrimination and daily taunts 24 from the Anglo students.

I grew up between the push and tug 25 of my parents’ values, and my own political beliefs reflect both. My mother was basically a Democrat 26, although she kept it quiet in Republican Park Ridge. My dad was a rock-ribbed, up-by-your-bootstraps, conservative Republican and highly opinionated to put it mildly.