Nobel-Type Peace

We followed Georgia Route #40 west along the Florida-Georgia border, hoping to find sun. Instead, the road was lined with mile after mile of young pine forest and newly planted acres of seedlings and mature stands of yellow pine. And fog shrouded all of it. Misty rain, more irritation and nuisance than replenishing, hampered visibility.
A Smokey the Bear sign in Folkston said, Fire danger extreme, but knee-deep water filled some roadside gullies. Clogged drain pipes might have accounted for the water because other ditches were dry. The weather wasn't nice. We kept driving.
Signs along the highway advertised land for sale, no credit check, $15,000 an acre. Tanker trucks whizzed past on the two-lane split, hauling at least 80 m.p.h. Andy eased right to let them pass.
In Waycross Andy turned off the windshield wipers. "It seems like the sky lightened," he said.
I mumbled something about wishful thinking. He didn't need to hear it.
We drove through Willacoochee and Alapaha and Enigma on Route #82. I thought about To Kill a Mockingbird and the setting in Alabama. Any of these Georgia towns that time forgot might fit.

As we headed west and north, the sandy soil gave way to red clay, and pecan acreage interrupted the yellow pine lumber stands. Drops threatened now and then as grey billows floated by under a white stratus sky.
"I thought we'd see sun by now," said Andy. In Leesburg it rained again. A raw wind gusted in swirls at the National Park Service Information site. I walked into the cotton field and checked out the bottle tree. A sign explained that the southern black culture decorated dead twigs with colored bottles, sort of a poor man's stained glass window, that American writer Eudora Welty had noticed. There must be something special about Plains, Georgia, I thought. I'm sure former President Jimmy Carter would agree, if he returned there after a Presidency. And when we drove into town, the sun broke through.
With the help of a simple illustrated map, we toured Plains, a tiny farm town of 716 people, in the red clay country of Georgia.
A movie at the Plains High School Museum explained, "This is where a young boy grew up to become the 39th President of the United States." In the 25-minute film, Carter credited "Miss Julia" Coleman with his educational foundations in Plains. "The rural southern culture of Plains that revolves around farming, church and school had a large influence in molding Mr. Carter's character and in shaping his political policies." Both the President and former First Lady Rosalynn Smith Carter graduated from Plains High (K-12). In addition to the film shown in the school auditorium, we walked through Miss Julia's third grade classroom and read displays about Carter's life. They said, "More than any President in recent years, Jimmy Carter is closely identified with his hometown."
"That's Billy Carter's garage," said Andy, as we drove back to Main Street, "and across the railroad tracks is the train depot, the only available building in town in 1976 with a rest room that Carter could use as Presidential Campaign Headquarters," Here, an 18-car passenger train, dubbed the Peanut Express (Special) departed from the depot filled to capacity with ecstatic passengers bound for the 39th Presidential Inauguration.
I went into the store across the street and bought a bag of fried peanuts. It seemed only fitting and proper.
We circled around past the Maranatha Baptist Church and headed three miles out Old Plains Highway to the Carter Boyhood Farm and Commissary. The route took us along Church Street, past Woodland Drive, the Carter home today, gated, protected and appropriately secluded.
"That's Secret Service," I told Andy, pointing to a white ranch house on the highway corner. "At least it seems like it, according to the map." At the farm, where Carter had lived from 1928 until he departed for college in 1941, blacksmith Kevin forged a steel heart-shaped plant hangar, a Valentine gift for his mother.
"Jimmy's teaching Sunday School tomorrow," he said.
"He's talking about the President!" I whispered to Andy.
"This shop mended every broken piece of equipment on the farm when Jimmy was a boy," said Kevin, "but he prefers woodworking. Wood isn't forgiving. You can't make mistakes. I like steel better. You can just melt it down and start over again."
We had read that President Carter built furniture and the video said one of his favorite pieces was a burl oak table.
As a boy Jimmy Carter worked in the fields and managed sales at the adjoining store. One interpretive display explained that the job he hated most was "mopping the cotton," a child's job of dabbing each bud with a mixture of arsenic, molasses and water to prevent infestation by boll weevils.
But overall the farm was a place of peace, a place of respect for nature. The walks and yard, devoid of grass, were neatly raked and swept. "Did you read that that was because of the danger of poisonous snakes?" asked Andy.
"Yeah, and it was the children's job too," I answered. I read another sign. "The Carter farm reflected the background and influences that contributed to the development of President Carter's beliefs and personality." And it was the President himself who said, "The greatest legacy we can leave our children is a world of peace. Peace is my passion."