I am from Tyrrell County, which is the least-populated county in North Carolina. Our population sits around 4,000 people and the county seat of Columbia is home to only 500. Technically, I come from a smaller community called Gum Neck, but anyone who ventures out of the county always lays claim to the town. It's just easier to explain, though most of the time I still have to correct people and emphasize that it's North Carolina, not South Carolina. Mail has been re-routed more times than I can count because of that mistake. It's also easy to spot someone who is not from or familiar with the area because they inevitably mispronounce Tyrrell. It's not Ty-Rel, but instead Turl. The Southern accent comes through loud and clear.
And with a population as small as Tyrrell County, not only did I know everyone growing up, most of the county population was a member of my extended family. Cousins were my classmates, an uncle was my principal, and the same teachers that my parents had were teaching me as well. I returned during my college summers to teach summer enrichment classes at the elementary school and all my students from first and second grade were cousins. When it was hard to figure out just where the other person fit on the family tree, they'd be deemed a cousin, an uncle, or an aunt depending on their age. I never met a person who wasn't in the murky family tree somewhere. With that commonality, I always knew that there was someone looking out for me no matter where I went. It didn't matter whose house I ended up at, when it was mealtime I was always welcome. And if I wanted to spend the night, it was no problem. School trips were more like family vacations, with any number of adults ready to discipline me or protect me just like my parents would.
As you can imagine, with such a small population, school was an interesting situation. When I talk about my school to those outside the immediate area, their first reaction is to ask if I went to a private school. No, the Tyrrell County school system was just that tiny. We had one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school. And my graduating class had only 15 students. Of these students, 8 were in the academically-gifted program, which meant we were even more condensed into a smaller classroom environment for honors classes. I've heard college friends complain that when they were growing up, the smart kids were looked down upon as nerds, but that wasn't my experience. It wasn't a stigma to be smart in our class, it was an expectation. Being smart meant you had a chance to seize opportunities outside the county. With little to no money in the community, being smart was a way to ensure that financial support for college was coming. Without that guarantee, people were regulated to carry on the family tradition of staying close to home in labor-intensive jobs. Those who have managed to go to college, like me, are celebrated for their achievements no matter what career paths we've pursued.
I'm often asked how I lived in such seclusion, and when I return home for visits I often wonder it myself, but growing up none of us in the community knew any differently. I didn't know what I was missing because I didn't feel like I was lacking anything. I didn't have internet, so I couldn't surf the information superhighway, but I had the library and that opened up the world to me. There was no cable television, but instead the three main channels of PBS, NBC, and CBS. The ABC station would come in when the antenna was turned just right, but that was seldom. Entertainment didn't come from a screen, but instead from my imagination. Wintertime was spent inside making up elaborate stories with my cousins. Summertime was spent outside, the house deemed off-limits once breakfast was over and I was allowed back in when suppertime rolled around. The heat and humidity didn't feel so bad when my cousins and I were busy traipsing through the woods or out on the ditch bank seeing how many fish we could catch. We didn't lack for anything.
I took for granted that everyone's living situation mirrored mine. No one was deemed poor in my town because none of us had money. No one was a stranger because the term didn't exist in my mind. And no one was alone because there was always someone around to give a friendly wave or a comforting hand on the shoulder. So, when I went to college at UNC, it was a culture shock, but one I was ready for. I often joke about my entry into UNC because my Freshman dorm had more people in it than my hometown. Yes, it was a big change for me, but I had been given the emotional and intellectual support in my community to want to push out into the unknown and discover the world outside the boundaries of Tyrrell County. It never meant I fully left that existence behind, but simply that the foundation my upbringing afforded me has made my life that much richer and grounded. I don't know how drastically different my life would be had I not grown up in such a small community, but thankfully I'll never have to know.
