Review: Sharing Good Times

Sharing Good Times by Jimmy Carter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

candor on Sexism, racism

I was startled and angry, considering her dismissive response a personal insult. But having no alternative, I was forced to accept the result of this exchange, and during the following days I was able to consider our relationship more objectively. It was obvious that my wife also considered this a seminal change, and from then on we carved out an unprecedented concept of equality and mutual respect.

Our family teamwork in the campaign paid surprisingly rich dividends. By election day, we had shaken hands with several hundred thousand people, and I was elected governor. Since then, there has been no facet of our business, personal, or political lives that we haven't shared on a relatively equal basis. I have to admit, though, that on occasion, I long for the earlier days.

Late '50s jazz clubs

One of our most memorable visits was to New Orleans, where I remember that our total bankroll was six hundred dol- lars. We found inexpensive hotel accommodations and spent most of our nights in the Bourbon Street and Royal Street nightclubs that had the best jazz performers. In one of them, we formed a special friendship with Billy Eckstine, and we later invited him to visit us in the White House. We had coffee and sweet rolls in the French Market early every morning before

going to bed to sleep until early afternoon. During two of our days, we obtained permission from the New Orleans Symphony manager to sit in the theater during their practice sessions, and on the other days we went to horse races and toured the cemeteries, waterfront, and other tourist attractions. We decided that we would splurge one night and have supper at Antoine's Restaurant, where we enjoyed pompano cooked in a paper bag (seven dollars) with potato slices that swelled up like small balloons. We then went to dance in the Blue Room above the Fairmont Hotel, and subsequently we would call long-distance from Plains to make special requests for our favorite songs.

In 1958 we drove to Miami, where Louis Armstrong was performing in the Fontainebleau Hotel, and we remember our astonishment when the stage rose from below the dance floor with him and his orchestra playing their initial song. While on the beach the next day, we made a spontaneous decision to go to Cuba and were soon on the way. We stayed in Havana for two days, casually noticing that the palace of the dictator, Fulgencio Batista, was surrounded by soldiers and stacked sand- bags and that many people were talking about a revolutionary lawyer named Fidel Castro, who was hiding in the hills. Since we had hotel rooms for only the first night, we spent the next one carousing in Havana and then flew without sleep to Miami the following day and drove back home.

The next year we went to Baltimore, primarily to hear performances by Sarah Vaughan. One evening happened to be especially memorable because the nightclub's sound system failed, and the audience sat in almost absolute silence for two hours, except for sustained applause each time she finished a song.

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