April 12, 2015 Woodruff Greenway , Wild Pink Dogwood and Poke Salat

I am driving 221 (Church St. in Spartanburg, Main St in Woodruff) listening to Jose Feliciano playing and singing "You Were Always on My Mind" from his new album, "The King".

Past dogwoods and violet wisteria, 221 joins 146 when you bear to the left after the old downtown.   All is quiet as the good people of Woodruff are all at their places of worship in the early dawn. Turn left at the Baptist Church. On the right is the high school, then on the left is the Junior High.  There is no sign, no indication of the trail, so drive into the far end of the parking lot and walk down to the Theo Atheletic field.
Behind the bleachers the trail goes downhill to a series of two bridges over a clear stream.
Violets and ferns grow on the banks.

River birches stand tall. Out in the hardwood forest, stands a wild pink dogwood, the first wild pink one I have ever seen.  My mother said  long ago, my grandfather had found one out in the woods down home and tagged it with a red strip of cloth to dig it up in the Fall, but someone else got it first.

The tender green shoots of Poke Salat are spouting up near fallen logs.

The trail is an out and back just under a mile long. It ends (or begins) at the Woodruff Leisure Center where I meet a Dad and his two boys who tell me that this lovely walk is nearly always deserted. There is a plan to extend this trail.

If you follow 146 West, you will eventually leave the old small town and in about 20 minutes, find yourself in the cosmopolitan crash of the big shopping venue of Greenville.  Out of the past and into the future.

Poke Salat Annie by Tony Joe White:

"If some of yall.......
Down in Louisanna where the alligators grow so mean
There lived a girl that I swear to the world
Made the alligators look tame
Poke salat Annie, Poke salat Annie
Everybody said it was a shame
Cause her mama was working on the chain gang
(a mean, vicious woman)
Everyday 'fore supppertime she'd go down by the truck patch
And pick her a mess of Poke salat
And carry it home in a tote sack.
Poke salat Annie, 'Gators got you Granny
Everybody said it was a shame..
Cause her mama was working on the chain gang.
Lord have mercy, pick a mess of it...
Her daddy was lazy and no count,
Claimed he had a bad back.
All her brothers were fit for was stealin
Watermelons out of my truck patch
Sock a little Poke salat to me, you know I need it.
Poke salat Annie.