An Hour Before Daylight by Jimmy Carter

This book was slow and not particularly exciting and still so interesting. Jimmy Carter became an influential politician, but 90 years ago he was just a normal kid growing up on a south Georgia farm in the Depression era. I loved learning about what rural life was like back then. It seems like an entirely different world.

As I reflect on Carter’s childhood, I’m struck by how much more varied, and from my perspective, interesting, his experiences were. By the time he finished high school, he had learned to grow and harvest peanuts, cotton, and other plants; to hunt and fish; to raise and slaughter pigs, cows, and chickens; to do basic blacksmithing and basket-weaving; and more. Surely he hadn’t mastered these skills yet, but he had learned so many practical skills. I compare that with my own childhood or the lives of my young children, and I can’t help but feel that our modern society’s relentless focus on academics and sports is crowding out meaningful experience in the physical world. (I recognize that the world has improved in many ways, too, but I still wonder – can we somehow get the best of both worlds?)

I’m also amazed at the level of detail with which Carter could recall his childhood so late in life; I’m not even half as old as he was when he wrote this book, and I don’t think I could fill nearly that much space with my own childhood memories. Perhaps I’d be surprised if I put some serious time into it, though.

Finally, An Hour Before Daylight makes me want to know more about my own family. What would I learn if my parents or grandparents wrote 250+ pages about their early years?