land use

The thought of what Spartanburg County will look like decades in the future disturbs my sleep. On my worst nights I see a vision of unregulated surreal sprawl as we cling to outmoded ideas of prosperity and growth.

When I was a kid growing up on the north side of Spartanburg one of the AM radio stations I listened to claimed to broadcast "from the banks of the mighty Chinquapin." It made Chinquapin Creek, the largest of Lawson's Fork's tributaries, sound like the Mississippi River.

The last few weeks I've been reading way too much Southern history. No, I'm not talking about Stonewall Jackson, Rhett Butler, Miss Pittypat, or the moon on the magnolias. My interest has been in what the historians can tell me about this South, our present day South, and what they can teach about where we've been, where we are, and where we might be going in the future.

One night soon after I first returned to Spartanburg in 1988 I was sitting in a bar out near the Westgate Mall and there was a guy next to me who wore his hair in a mullet and had boots made out of reptile skin. He still had that Marshall Tucker Band "Long Hard Ride" look going ten years after the album, and it was even topped off with a cowboy hat. His accent was deep and distinctive Piedmont South Carolina, a high-pitched drawl, a slow wash of regional inflection unaffected by TV or changing "upstate" demographics.

I'm a Wofford College English professor, and most of my classes are traditional, me in the front of the room, or at the head of a seminar table, writing on a blackboard, with students in rows of desks taking notes. The discussion is about books, and the issues rise from reading sentences, paragraphs, pages.