Community is a unique combination of time and place and people. So much more than a pinpoint on a map or a post office address, a community is that place, that family group, that collection of experiences that shapes and shelters those who choose to be there. It doesn’t necessarily have geographic boundaries and it doesn’t even have to have a name, but those who are part of it know that it exists and know where to find it. And they call it home.
The community of Carolina is little more than a wide spot in the road in rural Itawamba County in the state of Mississippi. That’s really all you need to know. Too small to require a post office and too lost to be found, Carolina is simply out of the way for anyone who doesn’t live there. The place is as easily forgotten as it is remembered, and even if you happen to travel through it, you’ll be hard pressed to retrace your steps and try it again. Its history, though, is as rich as the dark soil upon which the community was built by homesick settlers from South Carolina in the 1840s. Located in Northeast Mississippi, a few miles off Highway 78 as the road winds along between Fulton and Tupelo, Carolina is not located on anyone’s map or GPS. But much like Wonderland must have appeared to Alice after she catapulted down the rabbit hole, the Carolina community springs from the dusty earth just when you think you’ve gone as far as possible into the heart of Mississippi before coming out on the other side.
The only street in Carolina is the road that has wound like a coiled spring through family farms for generations. In lieu of street lights, a million technicolor stars twinkle in the night sky like so many pinpricks of light. And you never feel God’s presence more than when you just look up. Taxis are not available or necessary, but four-wheelers and tractors are in abundant supply. And the fishing is superb.
A long-abandoned storefront, behind which most assuredly lurks the fragile, skeletal remains of a once vibrant social center, stands watch amid strangling privet hedge, thick honeysuckle vines and wasp nests. Dangling to the side of the old storefront, like a child clinging to his mother’s skirt, is the dilapidated remnant of the old barber shop—a one-room men’s club that was undoubtedly privy to countless tall tales and Carolina Road gossip. Unless you pay close attention, you’ll miss the few remaining clapboard farmhouses still anchored by wide front porches but flanked by thick undergrowth and saplings that are ever threatening to consume the houses whole. The sad remains of the once spic and span homeplaces scarcely suggest the family life and community spirit that permeated every stop along Carolina Road in the early part of the 20th century. But newer families, and more than a few descendants of those first founders, continue to call Carolina home, albeit in tidy brick homes or double‑wides.
A new red brick church occupies the original location of the log church that was preceded by the brush arbor back in the early 1800s. Just recently the church stepped it up and installed an electronic sign that rotates the meeting time and a scripture verse of the week. The attached sandy cemetery is kept brushed clean and once each year the church hosts a Memorial Day to help with the cemetery upkeep. Many of the first parishioners are buried beside the church, and so the cycle continues.
What was once the four-room schoolhouse is now the Carolina Community Center, a hopping place on the Saturday nights set aside for such events as the RCDC Hoedown or the UMC Chili Cookoff. That same school began my dad’s education more than a few decades ago. One of the most valuable lessons he learned during his tenure there was not to stuff the new Roy Rogers gloves that Santa brought you in the back pocket of your britches when you visit the outhouse. He still doesn’t like to think about that day. And one of the most valuable lessons his little brother learned was not to agitate the much larger kid with only one name. Street’s parents never gave him a legal name or birth certificate, figuring if there was no record of his birth he wouldn’t be drafted later in life. While that might have helped in the military service avoidance department, it probably didn’t do much for his future employment or Social Security disbursements. As it turns out, giving a child no name may be a bit short-sighted. And it might help make a kid meaner than he needs to be. A lot of lessons learned in that school didn’t come from a book.
It’s probably safe to say that Carolina will never outgrow its roots or its current geographical boundaries. In fact, its geography has scarcely changed at all since 1840 except that new brick homes now occupy original homesteads where family cabins once stood. Four-wheelers stir up dust along ruts once traveled by horses and wagons, and the silence of old unoccupied homeplaces is deafening. Everybody knows everybody, or at least they know the family. When someone joins the community or marries into it, others need to know who they are. But they don’t really want to know who THEY are; they want to know who their mama is.
For those of us who call the South home, we can name scads of communities just like Carolina, populated for the most part by the remnants of families who never traveled more than a few miles in any direction from the family front porch. They are a proud lot, with a heritage documented by a progression of headstones in family and community cemeteries. When the world was less mobile, and communication was carried out in person or not at all, those little wide spaces in the road seemed a lot larger. It took a bit more time to travel from one end to the other, and there was reason to stop along the way.
