Carolina senior Laegan Pittman describes Orrum, North Carolina, as a place of family ties, farms, four-wheelers, chickens and hogs. There’s a fire department and a post office, too. Pittman grew up in a house on Wire Grass Road “surrounded by corn, beans, cotton, wheat, any crop you could imagine.” Her mother, Christy, has worked at Lumberton’s Tanglewood Elementary School for 20 years. Her father, Jeffrey, is a maintenance supervisor at International Paper.
Editor’s note: Tar Heels come from communities of all sizes, some of them tiny. In the Small Town Spotlight series, Carolina students share photos of meaningful places and people back home.
A double major in biology and medical anthropology, Pittman is on the executive board for Carolina for the Kids and is a senior class marshal. Constantly meeting people and learning about them at Carolina has helped her become more outgoing.
“Orrum has the small-town feel of everybody knows everybody,” Pittman said. “That was an adjustment coming to Carolina and not knowing everybody and knowing that I’ll see this person today and I might not see them tomorrow, but I’ll meet someone new.”
Below, Pittman shares photos and thoughts about her hometown.
Orrum Grocery and Grill was the only store here before a Dollar General opened a few months ago. It’s the only place to get a meal. A lot of people traveling on Highway 74 stop and get gas there. But most people are from Orrum. It’s a local community hangout. Older gentlemen like my granddad, Elvin Freeman, go there every morning with friends and get breakfast.
Lumber River State Park is about four or five minutes from my house. It’s where a lot of people put in boats, go on the river. There are also trails that you can walk on. It’s a really good family gathering spot. I know my family has been down there a couple of times just to hang out by the river. We’ve also gone for special occasions like birthdays. We have cookouts and picnics but no swimming because it’s the entrance for the boats.
There are cornfields everywhere in Orrum. This one belongs to a close family friend. It’s at Smith & Barkley Farms. We’ve known them all of our lives. We go to cookouts at their farm. They’re just one of the many farmers that we know.
In Orrum, you’ll see a lot of old homesteads or barns that are falling down. This one’s off Barnesville Church Road. The exact owner of this, I’m not 100% sure of. When taking this picture, all I could think about was the history behind it, because some of those places have been there for hundreds of years and they’re slowly deteriorating. The owners never want to do anything with them because they want to keep the history alive.
This is where my family goes to church. My mom’s family has attended there all of their lives. My parents got married in this church. Its name is from Hog Swamp, which is actually off Wire Grass Road.
This turkey shoot is an example of life around Orrum. I’m sure there were plenty of people that I knew in the turkey shoot, I guarantee. This just shows what life in Orrum looks like.