As I drive the back road to Saluda on Highway 176, I’ve become as overwhelmed as so many fellow citizens of Tryon and Polk County, at the staggering amount of kudzu that has overtaken both sides of the road.

The amount of kudzu is so enormous, no one should be surprised at being paralyzed at the thought of being able to kill the kudzu, thereby freeing the forest and Pacolet River suffocating
beneath it.

No one has to spray the entire vine, thereby poisoning the surrounding environments. Simply use an industrial-level string trimmer and/or chain saw and cut the vines at the ground level.  When the vine reemerges in the spring, zap the baby vine after the second or third set of leaves emerge.  

As a transplanted Connecticut Yankee of nearly 30 years, one lesson I have learned about the South, especially with the southern Baptist church, is that in an emergency, the southern mindset remains “I am my brother’s keeper.”

Few Americans fully realize that it was the southern churches that took in the victims of Hurricane Katrina. President Bush knew that he could count on all the born-again Christians to rise up and meet the occasion, because he was one of them.

There is no law that prevents the Tryon/Saluda region from mobilizing into a “kudzu militia.”  We are capable of dividing up the “various patches” of kudzu and killing the wayward vines ourselves. 

There may have been a time when we could sit back and let the government solve the problem.  But not any longer. 

The government/our government has neither the time, the inclination, nor the money and/or resources to save us.  If there is one truth we all can agree upon it’s that the kudzu will continue to spread and that we are the only people who can stop it.

Shirra Meiklejohn Wilson,

Tryon