The Night Jimmy Carter Took My Date Home  

By Harris Dalton

I was on a 10-day leave in Americus, Ga., after returning from my first 7-month tour of duty in the Korean War on the Carrier USS Sicily. My date and I had gone to a drive-in movie and were heading to her home when she suggested we stop at Tye's Place for a couple of beers.

"You won't have to twist my arm," I said as I turned off the highway and drove up the gravel driveway to Tye's Place.

Roy Tye and his wife operated the little store on the side of the highway between Americus and Albany. They had one gas pump, and the store sold cold drinks, beer, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, loaf bread, fishing worms, etc.

Mrs. Tye kept the store during the day while Roy and two farm hands managed a small farm. Between customers, Mrs. Tye fed and watered the chickens in two chicken houses behind the store. The family home sat on a slight knoll to the south of the store and across a dirt road from the chicken houses.

When Roy came in from the field around sundown, Mrs. Tye would go home and cook supper which they ate in a little alcove in the back of the store with a table and benches that would seat five. Customers were welcome to drink their beer in the alcove after supper time, as long as they behaved. Roy Tye was a taciturn man who was strict in keeping order in his place.

We got our beers and went back to the alcove and talked about what had happened while I was away. We reminisced about my best friend, Jim MacArthur, who had been killed in a train accident and was one of the reasons I had dropped out of college and joined the navy.

We were finishing our second beer when Roy announced, "Closing time! I've got a busy day tomorrow. The chicken truck is coming to pick up the pullets tomorrow and take them to the processing plant."

We were going out the door when a car pulled up the gravel driveway and parked beside the single gas pump. Jimmy Carter, dressed in his naval officer's uniform, stepped out of the black coupe and my date yelled out, "Jimmy, when did you get home?"

"I'm on my way home now, just stopped for gas," he replied before turning to Roy and asking, "Is it too late to get some gas?"

"No sirree, Jimmy. I just have to go back inside and turn the pump on," Roy said.

Jimmy went inside with Roy and got a Coke while we discovered my car battery was dead. My date assuaged my frustration by assuring me she would get Jimmy to drive us to her house about four miles away.

"I'll get my car, drive you home, and you can come back tomorrow, jump it off, and get a new battery," she said.

Jimmy was quite willing to drive us to her house so we piled into the front seat of the coupe with me sitting beside the window. I wasn't able to determine from their conversation if they were related or just close family friends, but they had lots of family gossip to talk about. Jimmy asked about her mother's health and whether her brother planned to go on a weekend dove shoot.

Since I was left out of the conversation loop, I took out a cigarette and lit up. Immediately Jimmy barked, "You can't smoke in the car."

It was a time when nearly everybody smoked, and the order surprised me, but I sullenly rolled down the window and threw the unsmoked cigarette out the window as Jimmy added, "You shouldn't be smoking anyway. It'll shorten your life and cause health problems in the meanwhile."

I was in civilian clothes and didn't know if Jimmy realized I was in the Navy, but I answered, "Why worry about old age? I'll be going back to Korea soon, and I can get my head blown off before I get to old age."

"Well, it's not good for you anyway, anytime," he declared.

Twenty years passed before I took Jimmy's advice, and now at 79, I'll have to admit he had a good point, one of the few on which I ever agreed with him.

Yes, my date did get me home as promised, and if the next day someone would have told us we had been chauffeured around by the future President of the United States, we would have split our sides laughing and suggested the soothsayer be put in a padded cell.

And on the flip side, if Jimmy had been told that I would become a journalist and edit newspapers and magazines he would have been dubious, also. But he became president, and I became an award-winning journalist. As a matter-of-fact, while Jimmy was president I published a little magazine, Plain(s) Talk and in the first edition printed Jimmy's genealogical family history, which showed that Jimmy Carter is a 29th generation descendant of Alfred the Great. The Alfredic line is traced through to Captain Thomas Carter who was the original Carter to set foot in the New World. After descending from the thrones of England, the Carter line stayed mainly with an agrarian posture.

Jimmy's father, James Earl Carter, Sr., had 200 blacks working for him when he died, and although considered by many to be a segregationist, all 200 of the blacks attended his funeral when he died of cancer at age 59, and Jimmy left the Navy to run the family peanut business.

Jimmy Carter's relationship dating back to Alfred the Great reminds me of a conversation I had with a soil conservationist. When I told him my family immigrated to the United States from England, he said, "Then you've got royal blood running through your veins."

When I gave him a quizzical look, he explained, "All English can trace their ancestry back to one of the ruling families."

Before I could pump my chest up with the royal blood, he deflated my ego by adding, "And we are also related to the prostitute the king had hid under the bed."