Albany, Georgia

Jimmy Carter’s hometown of Plains has evaded me on several other trips to Georgia, so I was delighted to be able to include it on this one, as it was on my way to the first Carnegie on my Georgia agenda in Americus.  If I’d been a few weeks earlier, I might have crossed paths with President Biden when he paid a visit to the 96-year old Carter, who lives in the same house on the fringe of town that has been his residence since 1960 other than during his White House years.

Though his compound, including housing for the Secret Service, is visible from the road, it’s not open to the public.  One can visit the nearby farm he grew up on, as well as his high school, which is now the Visitor Center for the various National Historic Sites in the area relating to Carter.  Another is the old train depot, which was the headquarters for his first presidential campaign. The oddest of the historic sites is the gas station of his wayward brother Billy, which is now a tiny museum.  

Among the items on display, along with numerous magazine cover stories on Billy, was a  stack of Billy Beer.  

The museum was unattended, just as was the train depot.  I was the only visitor to either in this quiet town of seven hundred people, three times what it was when Carter was president.  Befitting the modest size of the town, was the less than gargantuan peanut emblem in the small park.

The National Park Visitor Center in the high school was closed, but the state-operated Welcome Center on the outskirts of town was back in operation.  I stopped to fill my water bottles. On the counter was a basket filled one-ounce bags of peanuts for the taking. The woman on duty said she knew Carter since before he was governor and that he’d always been a very humble man.  He could often be seen doing yard work at the Baptist Church where he’d taught Sunday School up until a year ago. 

I asked her if there was a bike shop in Americus, ten miles up the road, as I’d had my first flat the day before and discovered I ought to replace my rear tire.  She didn’t know, so called it’s Visitor Center to find out.  Word was the nearest bike shop was thirty miles south in Albany.  I’d be heading back that way the next day after rounding up the Carnegies in Americus, Montezuma and Cordele.

She said to be sure to stop at the Andersonville Historic Site between Americus and Montezuma.  “We may be the only county in the country with two National Park Historic Sites,” she said, and added, “You’ll see lots of American flags, as they’re getting ready for a big gathering for Memorial Day weekend.”  Andersonville was a prison camp established towards the end of the Civil War for Union solider.  It is now a vast cemetery containing the graves of over 13,000 Union soldiers who died there.  As a National Cemetery, it is still used as a burial grounds for veterans.

With 15,000 people Americus is a thriving metropolis compared to Plains. It had outgrown its statuesque Carnegie over forty years ago.  It had had quite a few tenants since.  The latest is a catering company that holds wedding receptions and other events there.  Besides the bold “Carnegie Library” above its entry along with “1908,” the date of its origin, a later-day bronze sign identifies the building as “The Carnegie.”

A couple miles north of the city I passed the Jimmy Carter airport and a plaque stating Charles Lindbergh made his first flight at the site.  The airport isn’t big enough for Air Force One, so Biden flew into Fort Benning, fifty miles west in Columbus, then took a helicopter to the Americus airport.  I’d actually suffered my flat passing through Fort Benning, which I knew well, having bicycled there twice from Chiczgo to attend rallies protesting the School of the Americas.  As I repaired my flat on the four-lane Highway that bisects the fort, a couple soldiers on patrol stopped and offered me cold bottles of Gatorade and water, almost making me happy for the  flat.

The less grandiose, quietly noble, Carnegie in Montezuma was now the Chamber of Commerce.  

I camped ten miles south of town in a forest behind a cemetery.  Ants found some of the smaller holes in my tent floor thanks to the ants of Brazil and filled my garbage bag containing my empty can of baked beans and spent the night exploring the tent searching for whatever crumbs they could find.  Some other insects gained entry and left me with bites on my ankles and feet below my tan lines and also feasted on the tender white skin below my belt line.  It was the worst I’d been bitten since Senegal when the zipper went on my tent and it was impossible to keep the mosquitoes out.  It forced me into a motel to thoroughly wash up in Albany while I waited for the bike shop to open the next morning.

It was further to Albany than I thought.  I had hoped to arrive before the bike shop closed.  It would have been close to dark if the Carnegie in Ordele, which still served as a library,  had been open.  I had planned on an hour break out of the heat there, but just kept riding.  It was the first Carnegie of these travels that advertised itself as being “Free” when it was built back in the days when they weren’t necessarily.

 It was another fine example of a library that was a town’s most prominent building, granting it the utmost of esteem.  Carrying its image helped blunt the effort of being out in the ovenish heat.