The third surviving issue of Kudzu Magazine is now in the archive. Vol. 2, No. 1 from February 1976 is the first issue of Del Crenshaw's second year in business, and it reads like a man who has figured out he might actually survive. The print run is over six thousand copies for the first time, the Roy Hennessey distribution deal is pushing Kudzu into twelve new counties in the Carolinas, and Del's publisher's letter is slightly less panicked than the ones before it. Slightly.
It's a February issue in South Carolina, which means everything is cold and muddy and the kudzu is brown and waiting. Del addresses this head-on by test-driving pickup trucks in the freezing rain and going bass fishing with Purvis Bowen on Lake Hartwell at five-thirty in the morning when the temperature is twenty-nine degrees.
The lead feature is 'Three Trucks for a Cold February,' in which Del and Tommy Reeves borrow three pickups from three different men and spend a Saturday driving them down the back roads of Abbeville County. The trucks are a 1976 Ford F-100 Custom (borrowed from Tommy's cousin Ray in Honea Path, who bought it new in November), a 1975 Chevrolet C10 Scottsdale (owned by Harley McCoy, who sells firewood and does not care what happens to his truck), and a 1974 Dodge Power Wagon (borrowed from a man named Biscuit Williams in Donalds, whose real name is apparently Gerald but who has been called Biscuit since 1954 and will not explain why). The verdict: the Ford rides like a Buick, the Chevy sounds like controlled thunder, and the Dodge went through a creek crossing that would have drowned the other two. Del would buy the Chevy. Tommy would buy the Dodge. Neither of them can afford either one.
The second feature is 'Bass Fishing on Lake Hartwell,' which is the piece that reveals Purvis Bowen as more than just the best pitmaster in the upstate. Purvis has been fishing Hartwell since 1961, keeps a logbook stained with barbecue sauce and fish slime, and agreed to show Del three of his secret spots on the condition that Del not reveal the exact locations. Del then reveals the locations in detail. Purvis is going to be upset. The fishing advice is real: jig-and-pig on the submerged ledges, crawdad crankbait off the flooded timber, Texas-rigged worm in pumpkinseed when nothing else is working.
The cover girl is Tammy Leigh Holt from Belton -- 28, receptionist at the Belton Veterinary Clinic, part-time bookkeeper for her daddy's timber business. Del met her when he drove out to the clinic to pick up heartworm pills for his neighbor Purvis's dog. Tammy Leigh was behind the desk in a blue cotton dress with a pencil behind her ear and recognized him from the magazine. They shot on a red clay road that runs behind her daddy's timber property south of Belton, where the clay is the color of rust and the light was the color of copper.
Wanda Faye Crouch is the second girl. She is thirty-eight years old and she works at the Piggly Wiggly in Ninety Six, and she agreed to be in the magazine on the condition that Del write her real age and not pretend she is twenty-five. Her bio is one of the best things Del has written: she talks about stretch marks and laugh lines and not apologizing for either one. She is the oldest girl Kudzu has featured so far, and her daughter called after seeing the magazine and told her she looked beautiful.
Connie Riddle is the third girl. 24, from Due West, junior secretary at Erskine College, takes night classes in English lit, has read 'To Kill a Mockingbird' seven times. She is the quietest person Del has met since he started the magazine. She wanted to do 'one thing in my life that is not safe' and this was it. The shoot was on the screen porch of her parents' house on a December evening when the fireflies were just starting to come out.
Five letters this time. The standout is from Carl Jessup in Gastonia, North Carolina -- the first reader from the new Charlotte distribution territory, who discovered Kudzu at a Sinclair station on Highway 74 and immediately subscribed for two years. There's also a letter from Gail Mae Tatum, the peach orchard girl from issue 6, reporting that the conveyor money came through and that three of her friends want to be in the next issue but two of them are scared of their mamas. Earl Boggs, the quail-hunting retired journalist from Greenwood, writes again. He still does not have a telephone.
Year two brings two new advertisers: Greenwood Ford-Mercury (whose ad ties directly into the truck article -- 'Del drove the '76 F-100 in this issue. Come drive it yourself') and McCormick Hardware and Supply ('If we don't have it, you don't need it'). RC Cola keeps the inside front cover, PBR keeps the back cover. The classifieds include an updated entry for Del's Massey Ferguson tractor, which still does not run and is now being overtaken by kudzu.
This copy is in comparable condition to issue 6 -- the newsprint has yellowed as expected, some foxing on the interior pages, ink rub-off on the classifieds. The cover is clean with no tears. One of the inside pages has a faint coffee ring that may have come from the storage unit or from a reader at a Sinclair station in 1976.
Scanned on a consumer flatbed at approximately 150 DPI equivalent. Yellowing preserved.