While Reagan loved the outdoors, he didn’t like the things that people usually associate with it—hunting and fishing. He liked target shooting, but I don’t recall him ever talking about hunting. I asked him about it once, and he just said, “No.” It just didn’t interest him.
He felt the same way about fishing. I only saw him fish one time from a private boat during a trip to Alaska. He caught a halibut. Catching a halibut in Alaska is like pulling up a rock. They feed off the bottom. The one the President hooked weighed twenty pounds, but they can go all the way up to sixty pounds and above. Once hooked, you crank and crank the line because they don’t fight. It tasted wonderful, but to him it didn’t mean that much. While he liked boats, he never was around one except for that trip.
Besides riding horses, the President relaxed chopping wood and clearing brush. He loved to take out the chain saw, and there’d be wood chips flying everywhere. Dennis LeBlanc and Barney Barnett, a California Highway Patrol Officer who was also Reagan’s driver when he was governor, would help the President at the ranch. In fact, every time the President went to the ranch, Barney and Dennis would stay there with him, and they would chop wood together. They had their own quarters in a small trailer. Barney always called the President “Governor,” because of his earlier days with him as his driver. For sentimental reasons, Barney still called him “Governor” after Reagan was elected president. Only Barney could do that. Dennis, always level-headed, later went to work at the White House for the military office in the East Wing. After he left Washington, D.C., he still kept going to the ranch whenever the President wanted him to.
Barney and Dennis would be working with him, and it sounded like the attack of the killer bees, because two or three chain saws would be going at one time. The toughest thing Reagan did was use his pole saw to cut tree limbs high up. The pole saw is for reaching up and cutting maybe one- or two-inch limbs, but he’d take down a six-inch limb, which is physically demanding. You’re basically cutting wood while holding your hands over your head. Unless you’re in great condition, you won’t be able to raise your arms the next day, but he didn’t even break a sweat. It was strange. Barney and Dennis, who were working with him, would have their shirts soaked through with sweat, but not the President.
Occasionally, I would catch him trying to tackle something I just didn’t think he should be doing. I’d rush over to Dennis and talk it over with him. Dennis would say, “That’s way too big, Mr. President. Maybe I should try that.” Dennis always had the chain saw, and before the President could answer, Dennis would have the limb cut down. If we didn’t handle it that way, the President would have worked on it for too long.
The work really helped him relax, and often he didn’t want to take a break. I would ask, “Mr. President, do you want some water?”
“No,” he would answer still cutting away.
I would then walk over to Dennis and say, “You know, it’s ninety-five degrees out. Do me a favor, go over and tell him you’re taking a break. If you tell him you need a break, then he’ll stop too.”
“Sir, why don’t we take a break?” Dennis would ask him.
“Well, I’m okay.”
Well, I’m not,” Dennis would tell him. “I need a break. I need some water.”
“Okay.” The President would carefully put the pole saw down and walk over to the Jeep where he’d drink some water and usually tell a story. There wouldn’t be any sweat on his face. The only time he’d stop working would be when someone else wanted to take a break. He was too polite to say no.
The ranch house didn’t have air-conditioning or heating, but it had two fireplaces. In the wintertime, if it fell below eighty degrees, Mrs. Reagan would be cold. She needed a sweater. Since the President had cut enough wood to heat New York City, both of those fireplaces would be literally raging all the time.
The President would split the wood to fit into the fireplace and then stack it. Although he liked using an axe, he used the automatic splitter because cutting it with the axe took forever. Dennis came up with the idea of the splitter. You put the log in the holder, you press a button, and it rips the piece of wood in two. It is a very dangerous machine. One time Dennis had an accident and lost the tip of his finger. The chipper, however, is the most dangerous machine of all. If you throw brush and wood in there and a piece of branch catches on your jeans, it will pull you right in and there will be nothing left of you. That used to scare the hell out of me. Sometimes the President would be attempting to throw brush and wood in there, and I would say, “Dennis, please don’t let him do that. It’s too dangerous. I can’t stand this anymore. I can’t stand watching it.”
“Mr. President,” Dennis would ask him diplomatically, “why don’t you drag the brush to this point, and then I’ll put it into the chipper?”
“Well, all right,” he would agree. He just wouldn’t say no, and we counted on that. It was a relief.
* * *
THE RANCH was really just the President and First Lady’s place. Their family rarely came there. I think their daughter Patti rode just once at the ranch. The rest of the family came up for Mrs. Reagan’s birthday, but that was it. Aides and advisors rarely came. Even visits by the chief of staff and members of the cabinet were few. The only time the President’s staff was present was for his Saturday half-hour radio broadcast.
Nobody but the Reagans actually slept at the ranch. The agents had three shifts and stayed down in hotels in Santa Barbara, and the staff stayed in hotels too. Everyone loved it, including the press. They would go to the beach sometimes and play volleyball, having a great time while the President was working on the ranch. The White House press office would give the media a rundown of what Reagan had done that day: well, he rode his horse and chopped wood and that was the end of it. The normal routine seldom changed. Sam Donaldson would be on the beach, and he would put his jacket, shirt, and tie on but still be in his shorts. They would film him from the waist up. He would say, “President Reagan did this today. This is Sam Donaldson with the President in Santa Barbara.”
“You aren’t with the President,” I would tell him. “You aren’t even near the President.” Everybody from the area loved the President’s staff and treated them like gold.
Each president can designate one other place other than the White House as a residence. That’s what justifies that residence being secured by Secret Service. In contrast to President George H. W. Bush’s compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, or President Clinton’s vacation wanderings, the Reagans’ ranch really was a place of solitude. The President chose the ranch, not their other home, as their residence. He said, “That’s it, no question.” He sold the Pacific Palisades house. The ranch was everything to him.
Most people called the ranch the Western White House. The Reagans, however, never called it that. Yet, wherever the president goes, the White House moves with him. The presidency always goes with the president. There is a special military unit called the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) that always travels with him. The members of this unit wear civilian attire, and WHCA is the focal point for all the incoming and outgoing calls.
Much of what the president does at the White House can be done wherever he is—even on the back of a horse. If there is a major problem, a president likes to have his cabinet around, but rarely is the cabinet all in Washington, D.C., at the same time anyway. I just think most people feel more comfortable when they see a president at the White House—they think that he needs to be there to be in control. Just think of what the reaction would have been if Russia had been in turmoil and the President had been out riding his horse. While it may have appeared bad, it really would not have meant that he did not have things under control. He could have just picked up the satellite phone, which he often did.
Occasionally, the rhythm at the ranch would be disrupted by world events. In September 1983, the President received a call from his national security advisor,