#and I'm mega liberal while she denies the insurrection happened WHEN WE WATCHED IT HAPPEN TOGETHER

[snarkyassasexual]

I was watching football with my mom tonight and Jimmy Carter came up as he occasionally does because he's from Georgia and so are we. She's had a lot of interaction with what I call the First Family of Georgia since she lived an hour from Plains in Unadilla and later lived/worked in Warner Robins near the Air Force base President Carter went through when coming to Georgia.

The highlights:

She was was fresh out of high school and had a job as a carer at a nursing home. One of her assigned people: President Carter's cousin Linton Slappey. She said he was Out There and they shared a lot of cigarettes. If she didn't keep a sharp eye on him, he'd go tearing down the street to a convenience store to buy more cigarettes. When she caught up with him and lectured him, he was always very bashful. He died in 1982 after she quit working there.

She partied with his sister Gloria Spann. She was dating a guy at the time that knew her and her husband, so he took Mom out there and they had a damn good time. This was 100% when Carter was president, so Mom was a little starstruck.

Side note about Gloria: Literally how do you not have a good time with a woman who got arrested DURING HER BROTHER'S PRESIDENCY for refusing to stop playing a harmonica in a McWaffle restaurant? Impossible. Mom had a great time.

By the time my mom moved to Warner Robins and found a job there as a waitress, President Carter was out of office. Even so, he flew privately since there was the whole "someone tried to kill Reagan for Jodie Foster" thing. She waited on one of President Carter's pilots once and he left her a $100 tip.

She forgot one that she finally remembered tonight:

SHE MET JIMMY GODAMN CARTER WHEN HE WAS GOVERNOR.

She can't recall how, but she would have been 14 or younger at the time since she was born in 1962 and he became president in 1976. She has a signed photo of him somewhere from when she wrote to him on behalf of herself and her maternal cousins.

AND ON TOP OF THAT, she joined a tractor convoy that went to Plains in November 1977 to protest. It got cold as shit during the ride there. Her parents would have stopped her had they been home, but they were partying at a "secret" nightclub.

If you look it up, that November 1977 convoy was written about in the Washington Post and New York Times. It mentioned a Unadilla farmer named Tommy Kersey, one of the organizers. Mom knew him and said he was an asshole.

If you do the math with her being born in 1962, she was 15 about to turn 16 when she jumped on that tractor convoy. 18 or so when caring for Linton. 14-18 when partying with Gloria.

What the fuck, Mom.

#georgia #history #jimmy carter #the 70s were a wild time to be a white girl growing up in South Georgia #jimmy carter was the best human being to ever be US President #Mom and I agree on that much #and I'm mega liberal while she denies the insurrection happened WHEN WE WATCHED IT HAPPEN TOGETHER #we were literally eating my birthday dinner together since January 6th is my birthday #mom better write her memoir or I'm writing a YA novel about her