Local high school student Ben McCarthy made the discovery on Tuesday after reading a chapter on the 1976 presidential election in his history textbook. “I saw the name Jimmy Carter, and I couldn’t believe it. I reckoned that a lot of people have that name, so I just figured it was a coincidence,” McCarthy said. “I kept reading though, and then it said he was from Plains. There aren’t two Jimmy Carters from Plains, so I guess the Jimmy Carter I know is the president one."

The news that Old Farmer Carter had been the leader of the free world for four years during the late 1970’s has come as a surprise to many residents of Plains. “Carter? President?” asked Carter’s next door neighbor, John Richardson, upon learning that the man he occasionally accuses of stealing his newspaper once negotiated the Camp David Accords. “Well, I’ll be. Hope he was a better president than he was a farmer. Everything that man touches dies."