AMERICAN SCENE: Say Goodbye to Poor Plains

It was only two months ago that Jimmy Carter left Plains to move into the White House, but the elation his neighbors felt then has vanished. Plains has lost its innocence. The once picturesque and placid farm town of 683 people in southwest Georgia is being buried beneath the detritus of the commercialized American presidency. Worse, jealousy and avarice are turning the townspeople against one another as they attempt to capitalize on—or somehow endure—the 5,000 tourists a day who descend upon them. Jimmy Carter's brother Billy summed it up for TIME Correspondent...