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Pat's day is almost as full as her husband's. She does most of the laundry and housework, half the cooking and all the marketing. The live-in maid's job is mostly baby-tending. With Nixon seldom home, Pat has learned to repair squeaky stairs, sticky doors, faucets, light fixtures. She even tried to install one of her husband's Christmas presents, a new shower head, but her pliers failed her. In an average week, she answers 200 letters, many of them requests for recipes (her favorites: tamale pie. walnut clusters). Pat's afternoons are crowded with lunches, charity benefits, bazaars.
For both the Nixons, most evenings involve formal dinners. A Nixon New Year's resolution is to try to hold such engagements down to four a week. Nixon would like to spend the time thus saved with . his family and his friends—but that is not how he will spend it. He has more homework to do. more preparations for the Cabinet and NSC meetings, and for the quiet, persuasive two, three-and four-man conferences held in his office under the Jefferson chandelier. If it tinkles, as it did in Teddy Roosevelt's day, Dick Nixon will probably not notice. He is too busy understanding the complex problems well enough to state them in simple language, too busy concentrating on how the thousands of details fit the big picture in Ike's mind, too busy being the first incumbent in the vice presidency to upgrade it into a man-size job.
Charles G. Dawes on one occasion failed to stay awake. He was napping in his hotel when a critical tie vote came up in the Senate, and did not reach the chamber in time to break the tie.
A younger brother, Arthur, aged 7, died in 1925. "
Regardless of what they say," Nixon told listening millions, he would keep cocker spaniel Checkers, a gift from a Texan. Last week Checkers gave birth to five mongrel pups.