A few miles away from where President Jimmy Carter is spending time with family, is the place where he first grew up.
The farm that Carter grew up on still stands and is just as it was when he lived there.
The farmhouse Carter grew up in has been standing for 101 years and looks just as good as new.
If you happen to come by in the 1930′s, a little boy named Jimmy was running around there.
Dorner Carmichael, a volunteer with the National Park Service, said way back in the day, a child’s life on a farm in rural Georgia wasn’t all fun and games.
“He got up in the morning and he had chores to do. He came home from school and had more chores.
You were expected to work. Physical work,” Carmichael said.
A boy named Jimmy Carter did that work.
A couple of country miles outside of downtown Plains, the farmhouse he grew up in is still there.
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His father bought it and 360 acres around it in 1928, and the family made a living off the land.
It changed hands—then changed hands again when the National Park Service purchased and restored it 30 years ago.
The president himself tells the story for folks who visit by the thousands every year.
On this day some students from nearby Georgia Southwestern State University were impressed to learn that after his siblings, most of Carter’s childhood playmates were Black children.
There may have been racism in that part of the world in those days, but not in Carter’s world.
“It’s interesting to know that he wasn’t like the other ones. He grew up and his parents raised him right,” student Tempoe Williams said.
“I think that says a lot about the evolving change that was eventually going to happen,” student Ella Devers said.
Carmichael said it’s a fascinating story and she tells it often. A story about what’s good about America.
“What we would want it to be about. And we hope it continues to be about,” Carmichael said.
It’s something to think about. The little boy who lived in that white house later lived in the White House.
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