Before I was old enough to go to school, I remember going to work with my mother and my grandmother at the fair, and later my sister also. My grandmother ran the exhibits at the Woman’s building: canning, quilting, party decorations, en so fort. People often called her Boss Lady.

There are lots of people I remember from the fair. There was a guard at the Woman’s building. His name was Mr. McGee. My grandmother called him Mr. McGoo, prob’ly to his face, but my mother made sure I called him Mr. McGee.

I remember him because he would always tell me to check the coin return on the pay phone, because people sometimes forgot to get their change. Of ten I would find a dime, and once a quarter. I don’t remember when I realized that he was putting the coins in the return before he would tell me to check, but I remember how exciting it was to find a dime that someone else had just over looked. Later years, the fair moved from the building at the park to tents in a field. I didn’t see Mr. McGee anymore, but I will always remember him. He was a kind man.

I was older when the fair was in the tents, and I would get to go with them to work before school started. Cool, crisp mornings, flannel shirts, and the smell of wood chips on the ground. They would prepare the exhibits days before the fair opened, dress the tables with paper skirts, hang the quilts, make sure everything was displayed nicely for the judges. And make sure all the ribbon winning entries were displayed nicely after the judges had been there.

The quilting ladies were never satisfied with the display; Ethel’s was covering up too much of Agnes’s, which was hanging over the best corner of Ruth’s. My grandmother mostly ignored them. She would just say things like, “they bring the same quilts every year; I think her grandmother made that one. We’ve seen enough of it already.”

Mr. and Mrs. Lamb were in charge of the photography exhibit. They owned a camera store in town. They would tell me about the slides and photographs, and ask me which I liked. It made me feel very grown up. They were the type of adults, like my grandmother, who talk to children like they talk to adults, like they remember being kids. I think of them when I sell my photography at festivals now.

I remember the people who worked at the games at the fair too. My grandmother would take me around to play the carnival games, and we would always win. I suspect now that the carnies let the Boss Lady’s grandson win any of the games that could be rigged. And I know that she would spend enough quarters to make sure I won the ones that were just a game of odds. But at the time, I was certain we were the luckiest two people at the fair.

I think the most important memories are of how my grandmother treated people at the fair. She had to deal with everyone, from the white society garden club women that entered their prize roses in the flower show, to the poor black women that worked as the cleaning crew. I would say Granny treated everyone the same, but that’s not true; She had much more respect for the cleaning women than she did the society wives.

For some perspective, these memories are from a time not long after people sat down at the counter at Woolworth’s, and were arrested for peacefully demanding to be served, and my grandmother was born in 1900, and used words that people born in 1900 would use. Today she would sound like a bigot, or a rapper, but her words were far out weighed by her actions.

I remember one of the cleaning ladies was looking for my grandmother. The cleaning ladies did not call my grandmother Boss Lady; they called her Granny, like many family friends did. When she asked one of the Garden Club ladies if she had seen Granny, the lady said no as if it were an insult to ask. When Granny walked in, and the woman said, “oh there she is,” the society woman was quite confused as to how my grandmother could be the woman’s granny. My grandmother and the cleaning woman shared a laugh about it after the Garden Club woman left.

After the fair was over, and the tents were being cleaned out, my grandmother would save the canned foods for the cleaning crew. I did not see a white woman giving food to some black women. In a time when upper society was still blatantly fighting equality, I saw a hard working woman who had come through the great depression, making sure other poor hard working women got what help she could give them. I saw a respect between people. I don’t think the whole race difference even occurred to me then. It was not until later in life, looking back at what I had learned from my grandmother, that I realized, in a time when the problems of racial equality in our country had barely begun to be addressed, I had seen a camaraderie that transcended race, and I had been taught that people are not all equal, but it is not race or gender that separates us, it’s our actions, and how we treat those around us.