KUDZU, KUDZU, KUDZU

BY DAN MILLER
(originally posted May 18, 2005)

Finally, some good news about kudzu, other than the bad news that it's taking over the world.

This week, the results of a study at Harvard show kudzu pills are effective in controlling the urge to binge-drink.... and offer promise in controlling the cravings of heavy drinkers.

Wow!
As a child, growing up on the Georgia - South Carolina border, kudzu was such a part of our environment that I just assumed that's the way rural roads were supposed to look, the world over.
That is, covered in a massive green-leafed blanket.

We knew it quickly covered signs and telephone poles, even houses and barns.
Some people said if you parked your car too long in the same place, it might just devour your car.... and if you failed to close the windows of your house, it might grow inside.

But I can tell you, to my eyes, the walls and mountains of kudzu had a kind of beauty...... they still do..... the same appeal as big puffy clouds when you're flying above them.
We always thought, what fun it would be to jump into the kudzu..... what great hideouts and magical tunnels there must be under those living walls.

But the grown-ups told us the kudzu was not good.... that animals, and snakes, and insects, and poison ivy were hiding there.... so we stayed away.

Still, to me.... and to countless visitors to the south.... kudzu is an awe-inspiring thing of beauty.... creating mile after mile of scenic wonderland.

Now comes the news that kudzu might provide appropriate benefits.
After all, in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, moonshiners in the deep south hid their stills in the woods, often behind thick walls of kudzu.

They hauled their brew along kudzu-lined county backroads.
They would use souped-up cars, powerful enough to outrun local police, to get their illegal brew to people who craved it.

Who would've guessed, the vegetation that lined those very backroads, might someday help quench the same cravings that created customers for the moonshiners.

By the way, when the moonshiners weren't making their runs, they often raced each other on dirt tracks, in those souped-up cars.... and, legend has it, that was the genesis of stock car racing in the south.

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