You Don't Have to Be Nuts, But It Helps

With NOT calling Atlanta his home, he realized that he needs to get out into the countryside a bit more and see what is there. After all, this is a state that is rich in heritage and helped produce a US President. 

So with J.J.'s brother living in Americus Georgia it was a time to visit and see that part of the state. 

 Now in the area of Americus is one of the largest peanuts in existence.

Just imagine the Thai Chicken that could be made with that.  

But why does a peanut smile you ask? That's because he's there in honor of the peanut farmer that made good - Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, who happens to hail from nearby Plains, Georgia.

Now Jimmy, being a humble man from a small town (blink and you miss Plains, trust me), found his campaign headquarters being run from an old Train Depot in Plains that was chosen because it was the only available building with its own bathroom. 

Guess he did all right though. He got elected. 

Ironically, the home of the man who just was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is only a short hop from the site of one of the most infamous prisons of the Civil War - Andersonville. 

Now Andersonville is the site of the national POW museum, showing visitors, and ducks, the meaning of being a Prisoner of War.

The prison itself was simply a large open wooden stockade, ringed with guard towers. Markers now show where the stockade walls used to be, and where the deadline inside the stockade was. The deadline was so called because it marked the line which prisoners could not cross approaching the wall. Those that did would be shot dead. 

This was one deadline you did not want to miss.

What is left now is simply an open plain ringed with line markers and memorials from the Union States. It looks so open and peaceful, but at one point held 45,000 Union prisoners in a small confined space, and of this 13,000 died of disease, malnutrition, overcrowding, exposure and poor sanitation.  

As NOT often feels, he was overwhelmed by what people can do to other people. 

Photos by J.J. Kwashnak

Last Updated February 2003