Sid Salter
- 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.
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…
