Colored Ladies

Our current house is directly in front of the Jones County Fairgrounds. We haven't had a county fair since @ 1977 or thereabout. I have the fondest memories of going with my family to the county fair when I was young and then going with friends when I was in Junior High and High School. Cotton candy, bright lights, loud motors, mocking calls of the carnies, diesel fumes, exotic hoochie coochie dancers, bicycle drawings, snaggle tooth contests, beauty queens and champion livestock....all kinds of delights. Gosh, If I had know that the county fair was destined to disappear from my neighborhood forever I think I would have looked at it differently.

The old door pictured here was about 50 paces from the back door of where we now live. It is one of the doors of the public restrooms which stood near the entrance of the fairgrounds. I remember very well the separate water fountains and restrooms labeled Colored Ladies, White Ladies, Colored Men, White Men. In 2006 these old facilities were demolished, but as you see, not before I was able to get a picture of the door labeled, "Colored Ladies". The letters were bleeding through layers of paint that had been applied over the years in an attempt to erase evidence of a past that evoked shock to some, anger to others, shame to a few and pain to many. In my childhood I saw these things but didn't understand what I was seeing. Society was changing at a quickening pace so that by the time I began to understand my world it would transform itself again and I still find myself trying to catch up with it.

Daddy lifted me to the stage one evening to enter me in the snaggle tooth contest. I was reluctant to be thrust into the lights, but I also expected to win because my daddy couldn't be wrong. I had to be the most snaggle toothed child in the county. But I wasn't. I think the consolation prize was a piece of gum. Some years later I did win the yellow banana bike and I have considered myself a lucky person ever since that day.

We were a farm family and we only had one night a year to enjoy the sights and sounds of the fair. The very best part though was after all the fun and excitement, on the way home, daddy would stop the station wagon at the millpond across the water from the fairgrounds and we would sit for a moment and watch the lights of the rides....the ferris wheel, the zipper, the bullet, the scrambler, the tilt a whirl, the merry go round.... reflected off the water of the pond. It was magical.

I have seen the lights of Las Vegas, New York City, the aurora borealis and the fireworks on the fourth of July, but the feelings evoked by these do not compare with the feeling of being safe and tired with my mom and my dad and my brothers all together in the station wagon sitting quietly looking across the water of the millpond at the lights of the county fair. The knowledge that it was the biggest event of the year and that it would be a long time before it would be back again made it a very special night. And now it is gone.