This story is excerpted from a workshop conducted in Yancey County, North Carolina in September 2026.

Millie Lewis: Well, mine, ours, I should say, when we grow up, we lived on Little Creek, and it went to a dead end, and you could start out any of us, and in the morning, and you’d always go by house. You’d smell coffee and meat- bacon, a frying. You could go to any of those houses, and it was just like going home. You was, you was safe. They watched out for one another. There was a lot of love in our community, and if somebody was sick, then the other people pitched in and did their work for them, whatever it was, cut their tobacco, and hung their tobacco, and and done things for them, took care of one another. 

RL Silvers: Yeah, 

Millie Lewis: they cared about each other, 

RL Silvers: yeah. 

Millie Lewis:And when I left from we left from down there, we didn’t even know who our neighbor was. They people come and in from different places, and they they didn’t even want nothing- they just wanted to be by themselves. And we grew up in a in a community that cared about each other, and everybody that’s- that’s why I say it’s paradise. 

RL Silvers: Yeah, yeah. 

Charles Shelton: They don’t do that no more. 

Shyanne Bellamy: No more. 

Charles Shelton: I don’t even know who my neighbors is, where I live. 

Charles Shelton: Yeah, I lived in Mars Hill for 34 years, sold and moved up before we was at, and a lot of the people passed away. But I never didn’t know who it was.