When I think of my hometown, I think of...

Growing up in Smalltown, USA has brought out if nothing else, the roots of who I am. In the place of my upbringing, Dry Creek revolves around country back roads, gatherings at Lake Mohawk for Fourth of July fireworks, and gossiping at the old country store. My K-12 school is exactly seven minutes away (I knew exactly what time to leave the house before I was late even though that still didn’t stop my tardiness). My dad and Papaw bought my first car right down the road from a guy who claimed beat-up vehicles and fixed them, and it's nothing to wave at anybody from your front porch.

Dry Creek is full of its rednecks and hicks as much as your regular folk and people who have been here since its beginning. At least three churches and many, many families reside on this single road that connects Hwy 30 and Hwy 4.

I know many of us go through stages in life where we want to get away and disown our background, to make a new beginning. Sometimes though, just because we want to get away from who we have become from our upbringing doesn’t mean that it ever leaves us.

I didn’t go through that stage as severely as many friends I knew who truly wanted to get away. Sometimes the bigger and better town seemed like the sure road to head towards. At least they have chain fast food restaurants and movie theaters, at least they have a Walmart or cheaper gas and at least my friends could have something to actually do.

All in all though, after coming home from two semesters away at college, I’ve learned to appreciate my home more than ever because it reminds me of much more than material things.

Dry Creek reminds me of Family.

In the middle of the place I live also lives my extended family. Across the road from my house lives a cousin with his family, an uncle with his family, and another aunt with her family. On the same side of the road as my house lives another cousin with family and another aunt with her husband. Most importantly, a fixture sits in the middle of the family... the house my dad grew up in with his parents and six other siblings. Dry Creek is family. I live on Bullock Hill which means days of carrying on conversations across the road and hollering “Huh?” over and over because you can’t understand each other. Dry Creek is family when all the family, and I do mean all, piles into the old Bullock home-place during Thanksgiving and Christmas time. It’s generations upon generations continuing to grow families on this sacred land.

Dry Creek reminds me of Mayberry.

When you think of a community called Dry Creek, varying degrees of redneck might come to mind, but this place is a mixture of different types of country leveling it out to be pure to it’s core. When I sit out on porch, it is an endless sound of crickets chirping, frogs croaking, dogs barking, and a flickering of street lights. A car, or most likely a jacked-up truck, will drive by every 5 to 15 minutes, never too loud, but just right, and I can’t forget the traditional four-wheelers coming through about a half an hour before midnight every Friday or Saturday. Sometimes it’s the sounds of the horse ride after-party echoing through the ‘holler, or a literal quite night when the stars are shining brightest that Dry Creek settles down where even the dogs take a night off.

Dry Creek reminds me of Home.

This place is home and every meaning connected to the word. My family has talked about moving closer to our church because of all the work we do near it and its town, but we never seem to dig up the deep-seeded roots. I’ve grown up here and attended the same school that my daddy did. I’ve grown up on the same land that the Bullocks did. I’ve driven the same roads and walked on the same soil. I’ve visited the same country store and worked selling cigarettes, cokes, and gas to customers who have been comin’ in for years.

I can’t promise myself that I’ll be here for the rest of my life. After admitting to my mom the other day that I didn’t even know if I would live here on the Bullock Hill, I realized that leaving doesn't exactly feel right either.

But that’s not what’s important right now. I may not stay here forever, but Dry Creek will always stay with me.