The Bicentennial Landscape

A Mirror Held Up to the past

Bibliographic Data

ID4915152
AuthorsDavid Lowenthal (corresponding author)
Year1977
Volume67
Issue3
Pages253
Publication date1977-07-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeographical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-7428 • E-ISSN: 1931-0846
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/213721
OpenAlexW2320644160
LanguageEN
Citations received8

EARLIER this year the United States inaugurated a small-town President. Indeed, that origin helps to account for the choice. The Carters are from Plains, Georgia, with a population of 680, one analyst wrote. The constant repetition of the number gives an idea of the awe in which it is held. This outstanding smallness is a fact of considerable symbolism, a good deal of it from movie sets which the clapboard storefronts of the Main Street in Plains helplessly, ruthlessly recall. ' Even if Carter had won the election, or were to vacate the office, the president would still be a small-town boy-or a country boy, as they prefer to be known. Jimmy Carter of Plains, Georgia; Walter Mondale of Afton, Minnesota; Robert Dole of Russell, Kansas; even Gerald Ford-for if Grand Rapids is not exactly Possum's Crossroad's, [it] is quite Detroit either. Nowadays large numbers of people attribute special salvationary spiritual power to rural living, Russell Baker points out. In the I960's the younger generation was chucking it all to find salvation in the woods, . . . [drinking] goat's milk and trimming the kerosene wick and hoeing the radish patch, and reading Thoreau, Hermann Hesse, and the Whole Earth Catalog by firelight. Their elders hung back; many of them had lived the rustic life when there was no alternative and did consider slopping the hogs ... a spiritual experience. But now they too follow in Rousseau's footsteps and yearn for the sticks.2

Geography · American Environmental and Regional History · History

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