Memories of a pony, the 'hoochie-coochie' and the Burke County Fair

After a six-year absence, the Burke County Fair returns next week, running Wednesday through Saturday at the county fairgrounds off Bost Road.

My first memory of the Burke County Fair goes back more than six decades.

My Old Man was something of a wheel in the Burke County Democratic Party as the 1960 election approached. If memory serves, he, I, and my mother were in the party’s booth at the fair promoting the candidacies of local office seekers as well those of Terry Sanford and John Kennedy.

Either the party or the fair, I can’t remember which, was holding a “half and half” raffle that Saturday night and an amazingly cute little 5-year-old boy with dark brown hair and sparkling eyes was chosen to pull the winning ticket.

As I prepared to reach into the basket and extract the winner, one crony of the Old Man shouted out that he’d give me half the winnings if I drew his ticket. More intriguing, though, was the fella who piped up and pledged that a pony would be mine if I drew his number.

Imagine the thoughts and fantasies which raced through my 5-year-old brain at the thought of having my own pony.

I’d be starting first grade soon at Drexel Elementary. I could ride my pony to school each morning and watch it out the window all day as it grazed in the grass.

I could help out my older brothers with their newspaper delivery routes, galloping on my small steed from lawn to lawn as I flung papers from the hip.

And, if local law enforcement needed a hand chasing killers, desperados, or horse thieves, I could saddle up and be part of the pursuing posse.

Those fantasies never came to fruition. I pulled the number. It was called out to the crowd and the pony man did not win. 

Nor did I.

Fast forward 12 years to the early autumn of 1972.

The cute 5-year-old who missed out on a pony has morphed into a slumped over teenage lout of 17. I’m at the fair with a friend and co-worker from the Village Inn Pizza Parlor who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty.

Why we’re at the fair, I don’t remember, other than, to quote Bob Seger, we were “young and restless and bored” and the fair was the only game in town.

I can honestly say that it was not our intention to end up in front of the big tent that housed the “hoochie-coochie” show at the fairground’s edge, but end up there we did.

“Let’s go in.”

“I don’t wanna go in.”

“You’re just chicken.”

“No more chicken than you.”

“Well, prove it. Let’s go in.”

“I’ll go if you’ll go.”

Teenage bravado thus won out.

Don’t remember the price.

I do remember that the ticket seller did not ask for an ID. I do remember also that we both expected whatever young ladies were involved in the “show” to be dressed in Vegas style costumes of beads and feathers and such.

Oh, the naivetee of youth. 

There were no beads.

There were no feathers.

There were totally naked women who were no longer young and certainly no longer pretty “dancing” to the Rolling Stones’ “Tumbling Dice.”

Within 90 seconds we had both seen more than enough.

It was then that it dawned on us that we were trapped.

Before entering the tent we had carefully scanned the midway to make sure no one who knew us  or might recognize us was anywhere in sight. If we exited the same way, however, we’d have no idea of who might be out front.

“What if my preacher’s out there,” I said to my companion. “There will be hell to pay if he is.”

Don’t know which of us had the bright idea of crawling under the back of the tent while the crowd – and there were at least 50 howling, screaming, men packed in front of the stage – had its attentions turned elsewhere.

Soon we were belly down and crawling to our escape under the tent. We emerged on the other side smack dab at the feet of a seven-foot tall, heavily muscled Black man whose voice was deeper and more commanding than that of James Earl Jones.

“What the hell you boys doing back here?” he thundered.

Scared witless, we could only babble incoherently in reply.

“You boys get your sorry asses out from back here and don’t come back,” he pronounced with the wisdom of Solomon.

He did not have to ask twice.

Our feet barely touched the ground from the back of the tent to my friend’s car.

If only I had gotten that pony, my getaway could have been a whole lot quicker.

Bill Poteat, who despite his checkered past, is editor of The Paper, may be reached at 828-445-8595 or via email at bill@thepaper.media.