The 137th Neshoba County Fair is the latest example of a Mississippi institution that has stood the test of time, technology, and trends to remain a unique experience anywhere in the world.
The Fair is being held a month earlier this year to coincide with changing school schedules, for what is a campground fair without children? Given the institution’s history, moving the event by a month seems inconsequential.
World wars, economic cataclysms, global pandemics, and social and political upheavals have, on occasion, interrupted the Fair over its 137-year history. Still, none of those events signaled an end to the festivities. Families, friends, and descendants of the Fair’s organizers have continued to be drawn back to the roughly 150-acre fairgrounds in the Coldwater community southwest of Philadelphia.
Despite astounding advances in technology, the Fair has remained quaintly attached to the agenda of the nine men who, in 1891, formally incorporated the “Neshoba County Stock and Agricultural Fair Association” after the success of the one-day “Coldwater Fair” events in 1889 and 1890. What did those pioneers do to amuse themselves and their families?
There were exhibitions of crops and livestock, public speaking, simple games and contests, and the sharing of food and fellowship. In the early years, families traveled in wagons and brought makeshift tents. They made open fires and relied on spring water.
One of the few photographs of my Salter family from the generation before my grandparents shows my great-grandfather, John Henry (Dick) Salter; his wife, Frances Adeline Salter; and their children, including my grandfather, John Claude Salter, then aged 7. The photo was taken in 1889 by a commercial photographer who had set up shop at the first Fair.
The primitive conditions of the early Fairs gave way to what is now a modern city that sleeps for around 11 months each year before awakening to ten days of animated life. The Fair Association provides or oversees electrical systems, water and sewer systems, road and bridge maintenance, security, life safety, and Internet access for the 600 permanent cabins and almost 700 RV hookups.
Add to those duties parking for crowds that fluctuate between a population of 10,000 and can grow to over 30,000 depending on the attractions. The safe operation of the state’s only licensed horse and harness racing track, and the management of exhibited livestock, and the true scope of what it takes to bring the Fairgrounds to life each year becomes clearer.
Some folks find the empty fairgrounds depressing, void of life and motion. I do not share that view. I get the same feelings sitting on our cabin porch in winter that I experience when I visit my great-grandfather’s grave at Old Pearl Valley Baptist Church Cemetery on a hot July afternoon.
Just as I study the markers in the cemetery, curious about the individuals who rest beneath those stones, I wonder what Dick Salter would think of the modern iteration of the event he took his family to in a wagon 137 years ago. Not just the changes in transportation and accommodation, but the exponential growth of the event and the technological advances. A casino a few miles away?
The Fairgrounds are somewhat haunted, but in a good and reassuring way. I believe that the memories of our ancestors who built the Fair, the long-past joys of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, echo in the winds that drift through the hills and hollows.
The less ethereal echoes of my own grandchildren’s laughter – old Dick’s three-times-great-grandchildren! – are now intertwined with those winds. The politics, the porches, the pies remain, as does the thunder of the horse’s hooves on the track. The prayers and songs of the faithful worshipping on Sunday mornings mingle with the twang of Conway Twitty’s and Loretta Lynn’s cheating songs, reverberating from Saturday nights.
Families sharing time with friends is the key to understanding why the last campground fair in America still thrives in the middle of rural Mississippi. Is it perfect? No. Families are sometimes loud, argumentative, and disagreeable – but they are always family, aren’t they?
See you at the Fair. Don’t forget to bring the pie...
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
13 comments:
In a perfect world, Sid and Andy Gipson would be sent back in time to 1963.
I’ve been to the Neshoba County Fair a few times. I don’t get it. It’s like the Grove but hotter and dirtier. Sweaty and / or drunk was always my experience.
8:14 in a perfect world we would all live in 1963. 1963 was practically a perfect world, or as good as it could get in the USA.
Before all the miserable critics get up in arms about the fair being muddy and hot, it was never intended to please people like you. It is a niche Neshoba County thing for families to come together and spend a week enjoying. It’s about socializing and enjoying good food, music, races, etc.. They are not going to pour concrete so you can walk around in your high heels safely. If you don’t like it, STFU and go somewhere else.
8:14 you should have just said in a perfect world we would all live in an all white society. Or better yet a perfect world the south would have won the civil war and slavery would still exist. Or we have yet to be in a perfect world maybe AI will re create faux slaves. Or maybe AI will rewrite history in which slavery never existed.
The Neshoba county fair is one of those places you have to drink to like! If you don’t have family there you are just an outside agitator. If you own a cabin it’s a status symbol and the owners like to show off to the outsiders.
"8:14 in a perfect world we would all live in 1963. 1963 was practically a perfect world, or as good as it could get in the USA."
Say you are a white man without saying you are a white man.
Wonder if the Moonshine still pours or if it is BYOB now?
If you have 3 or 4 hundred thousand dollars your not using, you can buy one of those little fair cabins and sit on the porch and get shit faced like the majority of those stuck up peckerwoods from Philadelphia do all the while talking about how the peasants are making you richer and richer.
Sorry 4:37, most of us that have or share in one of those 600 cabins don't get shit faced while sitting on our porches. Many do share a totty - or two - but the cabins aren't full of shit-faced individuals. Now maybe some of the younguns that come in to the entertainment at night and hang around the Pavillon until late hours get shit-faced, but that's true anytime you put a bunch of younguns together with nighttime, entertainment, and opportunity.
And for what its worth, most of us aren't getting richer and richer while sitting on our porches; granted, something we 'invested in' a few decades ago that has now become much more valuable gives us a structure that you may be able to purchase for somewhere in the range you suggest - a little less for some, a lot more for others - but that doesn't make us richer cause most of us ain't selling.
As to 8:14, there is a hell of a lot of reliving a slower and calmer life in the style Sid describes here - maybe you ought to give it a try sometime. The Fair as he spells out wonderfully does give one a chance to slow down from the normal fast-pace world that we live in, if only for a couple of weeks out of every year. Some folks do that with their annual trips to the mountains in the summer; others may do it on a trip to the beach, or sending a few days on a quiet lake fishing. I imagine you, whoever you are, probably engage in something similar but you don't recognize it because you can't write it poetically as Sid does here, If not, I'm sorry you don't get a chance to slow down and have that time with family, and friends, or just sometimes by yourself.
Thanks, Sid for a well stated review of the wonderful life breaks we get during our annual treks. My only disagreement with your comments is that it does make a lot of difference in it being moved to June rather than its traditional end-of-summer position; for lots of reasons including the kids who now got screwed out of their normal summer
Same here. I guess if you grew up going there the tradition is meaningful. In no way did it impress me.
You either love it or hate it. There is no in-between. Those who love it have some sort of connection to it, and likely a local family history whose traditions included this fair. Otherwise, it's just a hot, dusty, "is-this-all-there-is-to-it" kind of experience.
Don't go digging around in the ground too much; you might find the bones of a northern liberal.
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