Middle Georgia Tour

This weekend (Sept. 8,9) we toured the excitement packed roads of middle Georgia; the home town of Jimmy Carter, the site Lindberg's first solo flight, and the Southside Baptist Church Freedom Fest concert featuring Starfield and Chris Tomlin. The first stop on our tour was the boyhood farmstead of Jimmy Carter. I recently read President Carter's book "An hour before daylight" which describes his life in the rural south during the great depression so this was a bit a treat for me to see the places described. The site has been restored to the way it was in 1928 when the Carter's arrived. The windmill works and pumps water into a wooden reservoir about 35 feet above the ground. You can turn on the faucet to get splash if you like. We saw the grounds keeper cutting collards from the family garden which is back in its' original spot. He was only cutting these for a school group talk, but said that the Carter's do know when things are coming into season and have first dibs on the produce. The house was smaller by todays standards but quite nice for its' day.

Our next stop was the town of Plains. The Carter compound is on the left just before the town. The title would lead one to believe that it is a grand and imposing place, with lots of grounds to put space in between the house and the outside world but that is far from the case. The house is a very modest dwelling for an ex-President, built with a stone exterior with probably no more that 2500 sq ft. maybe 100 ft. from the main hwy through town. The only thing to let you know it's special is the fence and guard shack at the end of the drive way. The town of plains itself seems to exist for the grain elevator (peanut elevators?) and Jimmy Carter/politically themed trinket and book shops. The peanut butter ice cream is good eats! There is also a shortline railroad that runs from Cordele to Archery (the abandoned town where the Carter farmstead was located).

After wiping the ice cream from our faces and prying our selves from the rather talkative cashier at the most westerly tourist trap in Plains we traveled on the Andersonville trail stopping at the prison site and new POW memorial and museum. I had a full day outing to Andersonville during Warrant Officer Candidate School where I learned all the details that Becky so eagerly heard on our visit. Leaving Andersonville we headed to our most easterly destination, the concert. It was way cool and I got to play dad to four and six year old boys who had come to the concert with their mother while their dad was deployed to Egypt with the Air Force.

We headed west after the concert and stopped for the night in a hotel in Perry. Breakfast was a cultural event. We seemed to be the only folks in the breakfast room who were not speaking Spanish and for most of the time Becky was the only woman.

Our Saab REO Speedwagon arrive at Maranatha Baptist Church at 0810. Doors opened at 0830 for the 1000 sunday school lesson with Jimmy Carter. We were about 12thish in line. By the time it started there were about 50 visitors in attendance. The secret service rummaged through purses and such as we walked in never ceasing to adjust their earpieces, an obvious attempt to look cool which I'm sure worked with some folks just not Becky, as we walked in. We had good conversation with folks around us while we waited. The pastor of the church explained the rules; no getting up and approaching the president or the SS will eat you!, no autographs, how the picture line after the service works, this is church and we are here to worship God... not the President... or Jimmy will direct the SS to eat you! Mr. Carter walked in at the conclusion of an opening prayer by the pastor and asked his standard comical question about which the pastor had warned us to laugh at,"Do we have any visitors to day?" He went around and asked folks where they were from and then asked if there were any ministers or missionaries. He then asked a pastors wife to open us in prayer making the point that a pastors wife was an active partner in ministry. He then spoke for a moment about his week, opening new construction on the Panama Canal and teaching Sunday school at the request of one of the prime ministers relatives. Also a conference at the Carter Center in Atlanta on human rights. That was the point at which he made his only pointed political statement that Americas leaders have abandoned our country's leadership in the world on the issue of human rights citing torture and the prisoners held at Guantanamo without accusation or trial.

The lesson was on the latter portion of Genesis 1 starting with verse 26. This was a treat for me because Mr. Carter has always been an environmentalist and put forth a strong case for Christian stewardship of the earth. He also addressed the use of plural pronouns referencing God and tied it to the John 1 also using the subject to segway into a brief explanation of the gospel message of slavation. He also put forth his belief as a Christian and as a scientist that religion and science need not contradict but be understood as what they are respectively and that no scientific discovery should shake our faith but merely add to the mystery and intrigue of the creator. When he went on about our expanding understanding about the dimensions of our huge rapidly expanding universe Mrs. Carter piped in from her left side pew "But God still made it all!" He then asked her if she would like to teach. Everyone laughed, she declined, and he went on. The service was very traditional. It included a children's sermon where all the kids came to the front and the preacher told them a story and asked questions to which he got some rather adorable answers. Mr. Carter did a lot of smiling and laughing. After the service we exited out the back and lined up for pictures with the Carters. Everyone had been told ahead of time that this was not chat it up about politics time so exchanges were mostly limited to hello, how are you. We got our picture and took off. We stopped at Mom's Restaurant down the street where most of the visitors ate and the Carters occasionally visit. It was packed and there was no sign of the Carters. We went west, stopped at another soul food buffet, headed to Enterprise and grabbed our dogs, came to the house, took a nap, I studied for a couple of hours, Becky napped more, returned emails, then I started writing this blog at her request.

My impression of Mr. Carter is based on what I feel to be fair open minded grounds. Mr. Carter did not take lightly his Sunday school lesson and did not come unprepared. He did speak with recall of vocabulary that only hope to one day possess. His political remarks could make him be perceived as an old man who is using his small bully pulpit to spout off at the mouth to a few willing listeners every week. This is not at all the impression that I got. I am sure that the right sensationalist writer could make most people sound as evil as they wish. For some reason Americans love to tune in to hyper-partisan news anchors and talk show host on both sides of our two party culture. These people make a living by not letting the full story or the full council of reason be heard. In my opinion Mr. Carter respects the people who come to see him speak and gives them a real, studied, quality interpretation of scripture and application. He does not encourage or tolerate fan fare but gives of himself by speaking to every audience as though they were worth his time and full intellectual efforts.

~K