Summers with Hillary

By Josh Drobnyk
Of The Morning Call

LAKE WINOLA - This is where Hillary Rodham first shot a gun. Where she learned to ride horses, to fish and swim. Where she saw shorefront movies projected onto a sheet.

On the big front porch of her family's two-story cabin overlooking the calm water below, she would listen to folk tales about an Indian princess named Winola, play boardgames with her brothers and watch her father, uncle and grandfather play pinochle. Here young Hillary hit golf balls in the surrounding pastures and would pal around with friends in nearby Scranton.

Long before she ever dreamed of being president, this is where Hillary Rodham Clinton learned how to be a kid.

``Getting ... in the car every summer and many Christmases and going to Scranton or Lake Winola was what my family did,'' Clinton said in an interview with The Morning Call. ``We didn't go anywhere else for vacation.''

Every holiday in the 1950s and `60s, the Rodhams -- Hillary, Hugh, Tony and parents, Hugh Sr. and Dorothy -- would make the 700-mile road trip from Chicago, where they lived, to Hugh Sr.'s hometown in northeast Pennsylvania. During Easter and Christmas, they would often stop at their grandparents' duplex on Diamond Avenue in Scranton, and cram around the dining room table for holiday feasts.

In August, their trip would take them 20 miles further to Lake Winola, where Clinton's dad and grandfather, Hugh Rodham Sr., a factory worker, built a summer home in 1921.

``We just had a great childhood experience being able to run free all day long,'' Clinton said. ``The summers were just idyllic.''

more:

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/09/the_place_where_hillary_learne.html

Gone with "globalization". On the other hand I am sure that lakefront property is now worth mucho $$$ because the hedge fund folks have bought up the land to build 15,000 sq ft. mansions. Which they will vist 1-2 weeks a year, at most.

The article was an interesting rendering of the personal life of HRC well done by the author. Hillary and Bill have strong characteristics related to their upbringing in America. Family and friends representing the American way of life as the perpetual American dream that has been lost but not forgotten.... A sweet time in America.

Sounds like she has more firearms experience than Mitt Romney!