Neshoba County Fair cabin porch won't ever be the same

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September 2, 2008

Anonymous The Meridian Star Tue Sep 02, 2008, 11:10 PM CDT

There are only two permanent chairs on the front porch of the cabin that Gale Denley's family and my family have shared at the Neshoba County Fair for the last 20 years.

To be sure, there is plenty of seating for company on benches and a rather massive porch swing that Gale and I "load tested" together each year with growing trepidation as our waistlines expanded. But the two chairs belonged to us - one for him and one for me.

Our wives and children called them "the thrones" or worse. In the early years, we kept two heavy blue wooden chairs that were homemade by the cabin's original owners, the Trapp family. They weren't very comfortable, but they had a history and we liked them.

But in later years, Gale's daughters bought us two rather sporty wrought-iron rockers with cushions - easier on the arthritic pelvis he crushed in a 1989 head-on car accident and easier on the spinal fusion I had done in 2001.

In those chairs, we solved the world's problems in talks that lasted late into the night. In those chairs, we talked politics with our friends and sometimes with folks who because of our writings didn't feel so friendly toward us.

We made and executed plans for the business in which we were partners and then went back to the drawing board if they failed and congratulated ourselves if we succeeded.

In those chairs, we listened to tall tales, bad jokes, anecdotes, conspiracy theories and political pitches from politicians, their handlers, political junkies, political gadflys and folks who just wanted to stop by and gossip.

Those chairs were our anchors during cherished annual visits with our "fair friends" and with each other's relatives and friends. And in those chairs, we shared each other's secrets, private failings, public mistakes, hopes, dreams, fears and aspirations.

And more than anything else, we laughed in those chairs. Late at night, we'd sneak a cigar or a glass of cheap Scotch. Once, we bet on which of two meandering armadillos would cross the Square first at 3 a.m. I won $20 that night.

Sometimes, we just sat there quietly rocking - the peace and quiet broken only by laughter or "remember whens?".

In those chairs, we listened to most of the important political speeches given in Mississippi over two decades - and cheered and jeered them in whispers that only the two of us could hear.

Gale was a "yellow dog" Democrat, a philosophical moderate and a man who remembered working on a dairy farm during the Great Depression.

My views are to the right of his and my early memories were of the state's civil rights struggles.

But one thing we never shared in those chairs was a cross word or an argument.

Gale was able to come to this year's fair, but was so weak he could barely walk and too weak even to rise from his chair. I spent a lot of this year's fair helping him get around and get dressed.

But he reveled in being there - and the energy from the people visiting the cabin and the buzz from the politicians seemed to rejuvenate his spirits if not his body.

When he left the fairgrounds at the end of the fair, I walked him to the car. Our eyes locked and we both knew that we had shared our last fair. But we didn't speak of it.

We said our goodbyes. About ten days after the fair, Gale's condition worsened and he went into the hospital in Oxford. Three weeks later, on Aug. 29, Gale died of complications from kidney disease.

I loved Gale Denley. Other than my parents, he was the person I respected most in this world.

Most of all, I loved the days we shared together on that porch holding those chairs to the floor as brothers by choice if not by blood.

Contact Sid Salter at (601) 961-7084 or e-mail ssalter@clarionledger.com. Visit his blog at

http://www.clarionledger.com.

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