Jimmy Carter: This Is My Place

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Carter the perfectionist is evident in the woodshop. He never uses nails or screws, but painstakingly cuts and notches the joints together. He prefers hand tools to electric for more quality. He has actually made several of his own tools; among them are a hollow auger and a bow saw, and they hang neatly on the wall. He began explaining how to cut chair rungs to size and showed a little exasperation when he thought his visitor's attention was wandering. Carter puts his name on all his pieces with a branding iron. And he pointed out, in his meticulous way, that the signed objects would be worth a lot of money a hundred years from now.

By now it was mid-afternoon and Carter began looking for his wife. Rosalynn was in the kitchen, a red bandanna on her head, wearing white sneakers, a white pullover sweater and blue slacks. She looked fresh and trim, and he hugged her for a moment. The Carters eat every meal together and share the washing-up chores, do sit-ups before jogging and regularly view the evening news together. They have watched Reagan's press conferences, and Carter says he can quickly recognize what Reagan knows—and does not know. For the first six months after they returned to Plains, Rosalynn could not bear to watch the news. She had been stung badly by the defeat, and most particularly by comments that the Reagans had restored some class to the White House. Carter was so enraged he was ready to punch one disparaging writer, but he says he has since forgiven him. Rosalynn is not that easy. When a tactless old friend teased her recently about laying out a tablecloth for lunch, saying that Nancy Reagan surely would have approved, she glared at him, unamused.

Rosalynn Carter said that it had been hard at first to decide what to do with the rest of their lives. She has made the huge adjustment. Occasionally she takes shopping trips to Atlanta or Washington with a friend. Like her husband, she is immersed in writing a book, an autobiography that reaches back to her early days in Plains. At first she was terrified by the project. Now she spends a good deal of time clicking out the story of her life on a white word processor of her own.

Rosalynn Carter remains feisty in defense of her husband's record. She is especially proud of the restraint he showed for months over the hostages, noting grimly that if he had bombed Tehran, he would probably have won the election. She is personally bitter that Reagan's deep budget cuts have eliminated the federal mental health programs that she fought for.