Jimmy Carter's Clay

I'm interested in the parallels between Jimmy Carter's rural childhood in Plains, Georgia and Lawton Chiles' rural boyhood in Lakeland, Florida. Some of Carter's memoirs of growing up on the farm, An Hour Before Daylight, could probably fit well in the Chiles Walkin' Notes. I guess the red clay of North Florida more than anything is a sign you're getting close to Georgia, geographically and politically. You're on land good enough to grow cotton that can make the clothes on your back. You're in the Deep South. The boiled peanut stands are signs of Carter Country, too.

Chiles didn't grow up in red clay country, but he saw an awful lot of it on the Walk and on return visits to the Panhandle. And of course got lots of it on his clothes, just like Carter. He must have known the phosphate-and-limestone bedrock of Polk County best. They grow oranges in Polk County like Southern Georgia grows peanuts.

Jimmy Carter knew that red clay from birth. I think the connection was simple. The land fed him, fed his family; he loved the land.