Day #138 – Jimmy Carter NHS

Cordele GA

Today we drove over to Plains, Georgia, to visit the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site (http://www.nps.gov/jica/index.htm).  We passed fields, newly planted with the red soil so evident and orchards of pecan trees, just starting to green up.

We started at his school, which serves as the visitor center.  There were restored and furnished classrooms that looked so much like classrooms from my childhood.  There were tributes to the people who had influenced Mr. Carter during his growing up.  There was also an exhibit documenting Rosalynn Carter’s life.  The largest exhibit was devoted to educating us about the Carter Center (http://www.cartercenter.org/homepage.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Center) , located in Atlanta.

Quoting directly from the Carter Center web site, “The Carter Center, in partnership with Emory University, is guided by a fundamental commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering; it seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health.”

After touring the school and its exhibits, we drove to Mr. Carter’s boyhood home, just outside town.  We enjoyed wandering around the farm.  We found mules and ponies in a pasture, a machine used for grinding sugar cane, big pots used to boiling the cane syrup down into sugar, and grindstones.  We toured the house where his family lived and the cabin where the resident sharecroppers lived.  All these were narrated by Mr. Carter himself.  When he was growing up, his best friends were the children of the sharecroppers.  And, when his parents were out of town, it was the sharecroppers who took him in and cared for him.  He told the story of his first realization that these people were treated differently by society.  It was clear that his childhood shaped his values and his adult actions.

Did you know that Mr. Carter’s daddy was a tennis buff?  There, in the back yard, was a clay court.  When the family finally got indoor plumbing, they rigged a bucket – with holes - in a shower stall.  Everyone was so happy to be able to take a shower that they did not mind the cold water.  Well, that’s how the story goes.

Mr. Carter’s childhood ambition was to attend Annapolis and join the Navy.  After graduating high school, he attended two years at other schools before being admitted to the Naval Academy.  During his service, he worked to design nuclear submarines.  When his father died, he left the Navy to take on the family farming business.  He saw all the good his father had done for the community and thought he had a responsibility to continue that work.  He and Rosalynn were so poor during that time that they lived in subsidized housing.

Plains is a very small town.  On Sunday afternoon, there is no where to eat.  We were politely advised that folks in this town eat at their own homes, or those of friends.  We visited an antique shop and then an old general store that sold all things political – no matter your opinion, you could find it on a button, bumper sticker, mug, or shot glass.

This day was such a joy.  We realized that every park we’d been to, up to today, had been some sort of memorial to dead people.  While it’s important to learn our history, it was such a relief to celebrate the living.