Steven Cornelius was born and raised in Northeast Mississippi and is married to a beautiful, auburn haired second generation Irish woman with deep roots in Galway and Sligo. His love of books began at a very early age. When night fell on the farm and chores for the day were complete, he and his family sat around the fire and read until bedtime. Many of his childhood adventures are featured in his writing. He attended the University of Mississippi, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees while participating in Air Force ROTC. Steve completed more than thirty years Air Force service in the US and overseas. For the Distant Traveler Trilogy, he drew upon experiences and memories collected during assignments around the world. After retiring in 2015, Steve decided to get serious about a lifelong passion for writing. His most recent work has been published in Mississippi magazine (October 2022) and Louisiana Living (November 2022). He just finished a multicultural novel set in Cuba and Houston Texas featuring Hispanics as the main characters. Steve has written one hundred and five short stories collected in two volumes and posted stories on the Mississippi Folklore and True Appalachia webpages and has a following of more than 3,000 regular followers on each page.

County Fair

By Steven Cornelius

For ninety percent of rural schoolkids growing up across Mississippi…including me, there was no traditional summer vacation from school. Our academic year was interrupted by two six week breaks, one in spring and one in the fall. This approach freed up schoolkids as labor on hundreds of family farms sprinkled across the midsouth. For several years, my siblings and I worked for my brother-in-law during each six week break, chopping cotton (using a hoe to remove weeds and thin out clumps of plants) in the spring and when fall rolled around, we rocked along like a Weeble on our knees or hunched over, duckwalking up and down five hundred foot long rows…dragging a ten foot long cotton sack, fingers flying…stuffing as much cotton as we could into those heavy canvas sacks before sunset and encroaching darkness forced us to stop work. This was very hard work and by the end of each day, we were soaked with sweat, covered with field dust and very tired. No one I ever spoke with, who was honest, admitted to enjoying any part of a day spent picking cotton…other than when we first arrived at the field in the dewy cool of the morning and at days end, when all of us pickers eagerly jumped into a wood sided trailer hitched to an old Farmall tractor, filled to the brim with our day’s efforts. It was a relief to be riding out of the field, headed home for supper and a few hours rest before the cycle started anew the next morning.

All us pickers inched down long shallow furrows crowded on either side with leafy emerald green cotton stalks, measuring our forward progress a couple of stalks at a time. Working as we’d been taught, finding and picking the “down low” cotton first…by feel as much by sight…we teased and pulled snowy white fibers away from spikey bolls that were reluctant to surrender their prize. When our hands could hold no more a quick swimming motion with our right arm thrust a big handful of “white gold” into the mouth of our sacks. About every fifteen minutes, it was time to stand and vigorously shake the cotton sack…moving all the recently picked cotton back…making room for more. We were taught to use a “bottoms up” approach, picking from the lowest part of the stalk and working our way up, which meant our eyes were always looking down. A row hadn’t been picked until every speck of cotton had been removed and was in our bag. There was a constant tradeoff between speed and protecting our fingers; thoroughly picking a stalk meant reaching inside/work around the stiff and pointy ends of the open boll to remove the fiber.

When each teardrop shaped boll, slightly smaller than a billiard ball opens, exposing the cotton inside, four needle like, triangular segments… stuck straight out. Each pointy end was sharp enough to draw blood…and if the picker was the least bit careless they wound up with bloody and sore fingertips. After a few painful lessons, we developed a singular focus on protecting our tender fingers. Always looking down led to another occasional bit of excitement when one or another of us surprised a snake…sometimes a water moccasin, other times a rat or chicken snake…our eyes close enough to look those mottled brown or black reptiles’ eye to eye as they sprawled across the very top of a cotton stalk. All snakes seemed to enjoy sunning on a springy bunch of leafy cotton stalks, warming up tight muscles under a blisteringly hot Mississippi sun, maybe preparing to catch a frog for dinner a bit later in the day. Every cotton picker I knew dreaded snake encounters.

It was easy to tell who in our group of pickers had knee-walked up on a snake; poisonous or not…the reaction was always the same. Everyone would hear a shriek as the surprised picker left their knees, jumped straight up…and vigorously thrust arms into the air as if signaling a touchdown before quickly retreating, usually tripping over and falling back across their cotton sack. While they thrashed around stirring up a cloud of red clay dust, the snake dropped to the ground and quietly slithered away. Still the field work was great experience for us kids. We got a chance to spend lots of quality time in the great outdoors with our siblings and neighbors while being paid twenty five cents per hour to chop up the dirt, aerating the soil, and ten cents per pound for cotton picked in the fall. In return, our brother-in-law got almost free labor. This unbelievable adventure lasted ten or twelve hours per day, six days each week under an early autumn sky the color of polished silver, while a bright and yellow sun punished us as it moved from horizon to horizon, cutting a high arc through the heavens.

Each Saturday night as the air cooled and dew settled on the ground, we lined up to be paid. This highly anticipated event occurred just as twilight fell, turning the sky gray blue and pink. My oldest sister kept a record of payment while momma kept track of our money, using what we earned to buy clothes, shoes and other necessities to see us through fall and winter. August and September days in the fields crawled by like molasses flowing on a winter morning, but as our hours of labor piled up, so did our modest earnings. Momma kept our money, wads of singles and silver coins in an envelope and as the picking season drew to a close, she grudgingly allowed us to “blow” some of it at the county fair, which we enthusiastically did. I recall earning between thirty-five and forty dollars for six weeks of very hard work.

The one great and exciting event we all looked forward to during each long slog of hard work was a Saturday afternoon spent at the county fair, no matter how impossibly far away that day might seem to be. Our break from the fields usually came in late September as the cotton picking season wound down. I did my best to keep track of all carnivals traveling through the midsouth and which of these fairs was possibly coming to Corinth and when. Everyone got very excited when the carnival rolled in to town and set up their tents and rides at the Alcorn County fairgrounds. I’m sure the carnies were amused as yet another wave of “rubes” walked through the main gate…mouths gaping open…wide eyed at the sight of flashing lights, bright colors and blaring music.

Fair managers and concession operators ensured there was a wide variety of temptations for us to waste money on: rides, food booths and opportunities to win stuffed giraffes, pandas or other equally worthless junk in rigged games. Though no signs advertised them, there were always one or two “hoochie coochie” tents toward the back of the fairgrounds that offered adult only shows. These tents were absolutely off limits to nosy little turds like me looking to get an eyeful of strippers, bumping and grinding, standing on three foot high runways, thousand yard stares in their vacant eyes, as they looked over the heads of overall clad, sweaty farmers crowded around, red faced and open mouthed, raptly watching an endless string of fifteen minute shows.

How did I know the shows lasted fifteen minutes? Well, I was the curious kid who couldn’t stay out of mischief and immediately gravitated toward the heavily tattooed barkers and scantily dressed young women trying to lure paying customers into the hoochie coochie tents. The hoochie coochie tents were closed up tight…and filled to overflowing with gawking customers packed in so tightly they could hardly breathe. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get past the huge guy taking tickets at the open tent flap of a door. After walking around the tent, studying the layout, I discovered that if careful and quiet, I could sneak in by crawling under the side of the tent opposite the entry door that had been propped up with a milk crate to let a little air inside. I wormed under that small opening and slowly crept to the front. Everyone else was focused on the same thing I was…getting a glorious eyeful of naked, tattooed flesh before being thrown out five minutes later. I managed to do this three times…the last time, quietly working my way through a forest of blue denim overalls until I was up front and stood taking in a glorious, unobstructed view of a completely naked and heavily tattooed young woman. I stood there for maybe ten minutes and was only caught when the big old bouncer saw the stripper look down at me and wink.

The oversized bouncer, complete with lurid mermaid tattoos running up and down both beefy arms, grabbed me by the shirt and britches, marched me over to the front entrance, yelled, “Get outta here you little shit” and sent me sailing ten feet over the sawdust covered ground. I landed on my stomach, bouncing and rolling to a stop next to an old man’s feet, giving him a good scare. Unfazed, I stood up, brushed myself off and without a word to the old man, went to get a candy apple and then enjoy a few rides…the Ferris Wheel, Scrambler and Tilt-a-Whirl. I was very jealous of how and where I spent what little money I had…trying to make it stretch as far as possible. I always set aside enough for a corndog, small coke and either a candy apple or cotton candy. Once the corndog and coke were in my belly, I walked around the fairgrounds eating a candy apple and taking everything in, including the back areas where the “carnies” had a cluster of travel trailers. I stood looking past the bright lights at the dim outline of white and blue trailers, thinking that such a lifestyle wouldn’t be too bad. Lots of travel, seeing new places and no cows to milk, cotton to pick or firewood to split.

As best as I can recall, I was eleven or twelve, standing near one of the barkers working a “test your skill” booth that awarded a stuffed animal if you could do the impossible and make a row of milk bottles that couldn’t be knocked down, fall over. The guy running the booth was a real piece of work…probably not more than twenty years old but looked much older to my twelve year old eyes. His arms, neck and hands were covered with tattoos. He also smoked like a chimney and had a long knotted pony tail hanging down the back of his dingy white t-shirt. Still, he was easy to talk to and when I pointed and asked, “Do you live in one of those trailers back there?” as I gestured toward the cluster of ten or twelve RVs barely visible in the dark. He grinned and nodded, “Sure do. Home is never more than a couple hundred steps away. “

Carney’s may look rough, but most are damned smart and very good at quickly reading other people. He again flashed a toothy grin, “Why, you thinking of running away and joining the circus?” I shrugged and looked up at him, “Maybe.” He laughed softly and shook his head, “How old are you?” I added a year to my age…”Thirteen.” He shook his head, “You are too young…have to be sixteen to sign on with the show. What can you do?” I paused a minute before answering, “I’m a hard worker and quick learner. What could you do when you signed on?” The carney laughed, “You have a point…not much.” The smile left his face and he studied me for a minute, “What about your family? Don’t you want to stay with them? Do you have a girlfriend?” I laughed out loud, “At thirteen…not hardly.” He persisted, “Your family wouldn’t miss you?” I shrugged, “Maybe a little bit…I’m not sure.”

After a few seconds, a knot of strangers began to gather and the carney turned his attention to the new marks and got busy hustling the crowd. With no skin in that game, I wandered off, headed back to the main gate. If I wanted to join the carnival circuit, there would always be next year. When momma dropped us off at the main entrance, she told us to meet back there in three hours or else. I didn’t have a wristwatch, but it felt close to three hours, so I wandered out and found my sisters. We stood off to one side of the gate and watched people come and go for about twenty minutes until we saw momma roll to a stop in our familiar old gray Chevy Fleetmaster. Less than a year later, I had a blue, Bridgestone 90 motorcycle, was work at the Frosty Mug restaurant as a carhop and all thoughts of running away with the circus evaporated. I earned a weekly check plus tips and began looking to bigger things, like college and what would happen when I really did leave home.

One final thought about carnies…looking back on their lifestyle, those folks work really hard and put in brutal hours. They are very secretive about how much they are paid, but whatever it is, they earn every penny of it.