On Christmas Eve 1976, the year that Jimmy Carter was elected President, I unwrapped a long, flat box and found a gold necklace with a peanut charm.

I still love that gift, an indulgence from practical parents with five kids to raise and a farm to run. At age 14, I needed socks and sweaters, but I asked for and received a whimsical prize to celebrate the election of our 39th President.

So much has changed in the 25 years since Jimmy Carter's election, but my admiration has remained steady. Still, it was not until I was granted a much coveted interview with the former President that I was compelled to examine the roots of my regard for one of the heroes of my youth.

The sun breaches the horizon just as I reach the recently opened Boyhood Farm in the community of Archery, a couple miles west of Plains in southwest Georgia. The gates of this newest addition to the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site are chained and locked. I'm early, so I park at the entrance, switch off the ignition, and close my eyes.

Already tractors rumble in distant fields, and freshly furrowed soil perfumes the air. Yet the old farm where President Carter spent his formative years stands in haunting silence, except for the rhythmic clinking of a windmill. Only 17 acres remain of the original spread, but the land and the collection of buildings here tell a compelling story of hard work, hard times, and the making of a President.

"I think that every major decision I've ever made--as a state senator, as a governor, as a President, and since I left the White House--has been shaped by the events here on this farm," the former President muses as he sits in a simple white rocking chair on the porch of his childhood home. "This was the environment within which my basic moral values and my life's commitments were shaped."