The gate silently swung open as our vehicle approached. We had been granted rare permission to drive through the Carter Compound in Plains, Georgia. We knew former President Jimmy Carter and no one else from his family was there that day, but we welcomed the opportunity to glimpse the ordinary brick ranch house that they have called home for more than 40 years. We saw not a soul, but we knew the Secret Service was watching our every move, as mounted cameras turned to follow our progress. We had been asked to drive at a certain speed, not to stop, and not to make any sudden moves. As we neared the far end of the drive, another gate opened, sending us back into the real world.
The semi-rural community of Plains, located in southwest Georgia, was relatively unknown outside the state before native son Jimmy Carter was elected 39th president of the United States in 1976. Today, tourists and history buffs come to see the place that helped shape him, and they find an unspoiled southern town.
We lined up with the locals at Mom’s Kitchen to have a cafeteria style lunch before heading to Plains High School Museum and Visitor Center. The alma mater of the President and his wife Rosalynn now is filled with exhibits about Carter’s life and career. It includes recognition of teacher and principal Julia Coleman, who encouraged Jimmy to learn about music, art and literature. The center provides good orientation for a visit of Carter related sites.
From there, a driving tour of the town took us by: the Lillian G. Carter Nursing Center, which was a hospital when the President’s mother Lillian worked there and was where Jimmy was born on October 1, 1924; Plains Baptist Church, where Jimmy was baptized and attended services before becoming President; Plains United Methodist Church, Rosalynn’s family church, where she and Jimmy were married on July 7, 1946; Public Housing Unit 9-A, where Jimmy and Rosalynn lived after he was discharged from the Navy in 1953; and the Maranatha Baptist Church, where the former President now teaches Sunday school.
But it was the Carter Boyhood Home that most charmed us. Located in an agricultural setting about two and a half miles west of town, the modest house once was the heart of a 360-acre farm, where Jimmy’s father Earl grew cotton, corn and peanuts to sell and raised vegetables and livestock to feed his family. It was a simple way of life, but not a poor one. However, Jimmy was expected to help in the fields as well as in his father’s farm supply store. When his father died in 1953, Jimmy resigned from the Navy and returned to Plains to run the family business.
Carter’s Warehouse complex, which Jimmy developed from Earl’s small store, is still a cornerstone of the Plains business district, although it no longer belongs to the Carter family. But the main block of the business district is a row of colorfully painted brick buildings dating from the 1890s. We started at one end, first exploring the Plains Historic Inn, which offers accommodations on the second floor of an antiques mall. The inn has seven guest rooms, each decorated in the style of a different decade, from 1920 to 1980. We shopped our way down the block to a store called Plain Peanuts, which makes and sells a variety of peanut treats, where we chose cones of peanut butter ice cream to see us on our way.
We spent that night at the historic Windsor Hotel, built in 1892, in the city of Americus, 10 miles east of Plains. As a boy, Jimmy Carter would take the train to Americus with his family to shop for school clothes or to see a movie. Today, visitors can get a feeling for what that trip was like by riding in 1949 vintage rail cars aboard the SAM Shortline Excursion Train.
Americus is headquarters of Habitat for Humanity, a Christian ministry dedicated to providing decent affordable housing for people in need around the world. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter helped raise the profile of the organization when they began working with it in 1984. To educate people about housing issues and showcase its work, Habitat has constructed a Global Village and Discovery Center, and that was our destination the next morning.
We found it an emotional experience to walk through the center’s examples of substandard housing, viewing sanitized versions of the slum conditions in which 20 per cent of the world’s population exists. But we delighted in the international village of life-size replicas of houses built by Habitat and its volunteers. The structures demonstrate how sturdy and attractive buildings well suited to their individual environments can be built with limited funds, using materials and techniques common to their areas.
It gave us plenty to think about as we headed to Atlanta and return flights to our own comfortable homes.