The Last Gasp of the Old South
By Pastor Benjamin Glaser - Posted at Thoughts From Parson Farms:
Passing of Rosalynn, and Now Jimmy CarterI like to tell stories. I especially like to tell stories about my granddaddy, mostly because he liked to tell stories. It’s easy to talk about people who like to talk, but its the people who tell the most by what they do that often have the most to say. The world lost someone recently who was emblematic of a culture, a way of life, and a time that has long since passed. Good ole country folk aren’t being made at the rate we are losing them and going with them is an ethos that’s not replaceable. In the same way those trying to replace the floorboards in old houses can’t match the grain because the trees which provided the lumber just don’t exist. You can’t synthetically reproduce time. As Rosalynn Carter met her savior this past week she represented a failure of the generations of southern democrats who followed her similarly down-home husband.
In an essay considering the effect of this lady of perpetual grace the name Bill Clinton is not one we should spend much time on, yet it’s hard to talk about the opportunity the South had in the rise of the sun belt politician without their most infamous failure. How did we end up in this place where Mrs. Carter’s death has us thinking about a lecherous old coot?
I was in a meeting recently where it was noted that the organization I am working for and with is always on the cusp of doing something well only to have circumstances often beyond our control scuttle the advancement. There was a book written in the mid-90s called Dixie Rising by Peter Applebee which painted a bright picture of the future of the South buoyed by the optimism of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Everything was smelling roses. However, that olfactory perception proved short-lived. Here in 2023 its more pulp plant than Little Debbie.
Tying Mrs. Rosalynn’s story into this is as common as it is foundational. It’s always comforting to know that something your grandaddy told you wasn’t a matter he just kind of either made up or uniquely experienced. In describing her upbringing in 1930s rural Georgia Mrs. Rosalynn noted that she had no real understanding of what it meant to be poor. It wasn’t that she grew up in wealth or in an established family. It was that everyone else around her had as little as she had, and no one cared or realized what that meant, at least until good-meaning people came from outside and expressed the nature of their want.
Losing her father early in life led to her taking on more responsibilities in the home as the oldest of her siblings. Rather than moving young Rosalynn to abandon the expectations of culture she instead readily used the advantages of her trial to be a godly helpmeet to her mother, which enabled her to maintain that blessing as she took on her role as the wife of a Navy man, governor, president, and father. Her quiet, assured dignity Jimmy often credited as being the motivation he needed to move forward in the work they did together. When he lost the presidential race in 1980 neither of them lost who they were, as is often the case with men that do not have the Christian support which the Carters had in spades.
See also:
- Jimmy Carter, former president and author, dies at 100 (The Christian Post)
- Former President Jimmy Carter dies at 100 (Baptist Press)
- Former President Jimmy Carter dies at age 100 (Denison Forum)
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