I sat at a bright turquoise picnic table outside of the Tybean Art and Coffee Bar, waiting for Carola Stone's arrival. It was another hot and humid day; even sitting in the shade seemed to barely provide relief in the sweltering heat. Thankfully, I wouldn't have to wait too long; Carola had just finished working her shift at the Visit Tybee Information Center, and was walking from her aunt's house with her cousin, Mary-Kate, to meet me.
Carola grew up on Tybee Island when she was younger, living here for about 11 years before moving to Whitemarsh Island when her mother became pregnant with her twin brother and sister. They currently reside on Whitemarsh, where Carola normally lives with them, however, she is currently living with her aunt on Tybee for the summer, and has a job at the Visit Tybee Information Center until September.
When asked about working at Visit Tybee, she explains, "The people [who come into the center] are nice, and I get to talk to people all day."
A few interesting things about Carola...
- She attended cosmetology school, and once in a while provides her friends with haircuts, styles, coloring, etc.
- Her favorite place on Tybee is Jaycee Park, which is very close to where her aunt lives.
"I spent a lot of time there as a kid," she says, "it's cool. Stuff carved into trees...there's a lot of stuff that's not there anymore, but it's still cool to see." She also informs me that it is now a "Pokestop." (pronounced "pough-key-stop").
(For those who do not know, a "Pokestop" is a blue icon on the latest cell phone game app that can potentially provide a player with different items. As a non-Pokemon Go player, I had to search for this definition on Google).
[information provided by International Business Times]
She explains that she, her younger siblings, and her cousins will go to the park to walk around themselves, or to walk Bridgett, her aunt's dog.
"Or [we'll be] looking for the cats because they've disappeared!"
Carola goes on to describe a memory she has of growing up on Tybee Island...
"I was the only girl in this group of a bunch of boys. This was around 2005. There was a lake near where my friend lived, and there was this false dock that worked, but was more for decoration, and there was a boat there.
"So we got the idea to attach fireworks to roller blades to my friend, who is not only the most breakable person in our group, but the most clumsy. And we had this ramp, this cheap little ramp (because everyone was getting into skateboarding). We just put it there.
"And we lit the fireworks, they went off. They didn't make him go anywhere. They were just lighting off on him, but he was trying to still go. Like, he was trying to make it look like [it was working]. And he tried to go up the ramp, and the ramp just kinda moved out of the way, and he went flying, and he hit the middle of his shin on the side of the boat. And he was screaming...
"It just so happened my friend's older brother and his friends were walking by and saw us, and saw him screaming in the boat, and they came. His friends grabbed the skates off of him, and dunked them in the water because they were still going off. And they grabbed my friend that was in the boat, and...yeah, we broke his leg.
"He was piggy-backed back to my best friend's house, and we had to look at my best friend's mom and tell her, 'He probably needs to go to the hospital...because there's a dent [in his shin].' It was fractured in about three places.
"He didn't have a cast for some reason, he had this huge brace that went from his ankle all the way to his inner thigh, and these metal bars that stopped it from being able to bend. He had that for months. And then when he got that off, I think he broke his arm!
"It wasn't that big of a deal, but looking back...I think that's the epitome of being a Tybee kid to me. Nobody was watching us...How did we do all of these things?"
Carola is not only a hairstylist, but also an artist. Below are a few drawings of hers:
Finally, Carola provided a question for the next Tybee Island Profile: What's your favorite book and why?
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