Whenever I meet somebody new, I always tell them that I am from Knoxville, Tennessee. I can't help but cringe every time I do so because of how generic and "un-Longmire" it is to say that I live in Knoxville rather than my true place of raising, the small town of Corryton, Tennessee.

I have lived on Corryton Road my entire life, went to Corryton Elementary School, and will most likely live the rest of my life in Corryton, only to be buried in-you guessed it- Corryton.

This town is old and it is small and it is all it will ever be. Downtown Corryton is a stretch of road that can be walked in 30 seconds. Back in the day, there was my Great Grandparent's grocery store, Longmire Grocery. Above it was an apartment where my they, along with my Grandfather and his two siblings, lived. Eventually, Longmire Grocery moved to what is now a Smart Serv at the corner of Washington Pike and Roberts Road. When I was little, my father, who had not followed his father into the family grocery business, would take my sister and I to get hotdogs at that store. It was no bigger than the gas station that inhabits it now. I would sit in the back office and type out numbers and hit the equal sign so that they would print onto the receipt paper, and then I would peak into the giant walk-in freezer at my Uncle Dale, the other Longmire brother who helped carry on the family business. My Aunt Lisa, the only girl, would laugh as I listened in awe at how she could come up with a sassy remark for every person who walked in the door.

Then, there is the house that doubled as an ice cream shop across from the old Longmire Grocery. During the summer, my mom would walk with my sister and I to that little shop and get a vanilla cone. We could walk there in five minutes. The railroad tracks ran just a few feet away, with the old Caboose sitting alongside it. Now, that house is just a house. They quit serving ice cream at some point in time that I seemed to not realize. Patrons of The Tire Store would always sit on the bench outside and watch the people come and go. That's the store that moved into Longmire Grocery before I was born and it's where my family does all their tire business, as well as many of the good people of Corryton. My father, my Grandfather, my Grandmother, and my Uncle all lived in a trailer behind that store. They made enough money at the new grocery store to build a big house on a large plot of land just three minutes from that spot. There is a large storage trailer that still sits behind The Tire Store with "LONGMIRE" painted across it. I like to believe it is Corryton's only monument.

I go to church right across the tracks from the ice cream house and The Tire Store at Rutherford Memorial United Methodist Church. Longtime citizens of Corryton go to the small church with me and have helped me to appreciate the history of the little town more than I already do. I was taught how to be a Longmire in that church knowing that people knew my family and expected me to have an ounce of cooth. Over the years I made my own connections with the original Corrytonites and showed them the new wave of Longmire, kind of how Princess Kate showed the world the new "Royal Family."

Next to the ice cream house, there is a tiny post office that is only open about four hours a day, with an hour break for lunch. There are two rooms: the room you walk in to when you open the door with all the little mailboxes, and the room with the one counter where you can buy stamps and weigh packages. My Grandmother would always make me go in to buy her a book of stamps so that I wouldn't be socially inept. She always told me to pick out something colorful and to bring her the change.

Just across the edge of a field and a hop over the street is my house. The only house on that particular stretch of Corryton Road up until a small, spread out subdivision moved in at the end of the street under the control of my Grandfather. I have a large front yard, a field on the left and right side of my house, and a field on the back side. My house is 130 years old and was bought at auction when my mom was pregnant with my sister and I. The only things left of the house when it was bought was the outer shell, the basic skeleton, and the barns. My mother and father fixed it up to its original glory and the rest was history. During the summer, I will walk out and see an old man cutting our hay, and then a few days later, he'll be back to bale it. It doesn't even phase me to see this person in my yard because I grew up knowing that at some point in the summer, a man will be there to get the hay. Nobody questions when it will happen because it doesn't matter. It's Corryton. Our trash man comes every Saturday in his pickup truck to get our trash up at the shed. Sometimes I talk to him if he's not in a rush.

Of course there is so much more to Corryton than these few buildings, yet at the same time, there isn't. Narrow backroads branch off of Corryton Road and follow the train tracks or run past the farms located around the community, and each of these roads have places with stories to tell that could make up an entire series of books. Corryton could fill up one in itself, even if it does look like nothing but a cinderblock building or two as you drive by to get somewhere more important. There is nothing like living in Corryton, and there is nothing like being a Longmire living in Corryton. My family is so deeply rooted here that if I were to break free from this place, a part of me would wither away and die.

There's something special about a small town with big character than can only be seen by the people who invest their lives in it, and I'm glad I have. I belong in Corryton, and Corryton belongs in me.