John Y’s Musings from the Middle: A Fancy Story About Fancy Farm

A  fancy story. About Kentucky politics.

In Kentucky we still have the medieval practice of Trial by Ordeal  for our politicians. And it’s a great amount of fun for spectators. If you want to take your place among Kentucky’s statewide and congressional officeholders you must first survive Fancy Farm. Part stump speaking; part right of passage.

To borrow from Frank Sinatra, “If you can make it there (Fancy Farm), you can make it anywhere.”

It is the Southern political equivalent of an actor making it through his or her first Broadway show. You have been initiated and are now part of an elite club. You have what it takes…and the courage to put it all that on the line. And you survived. This time.  And for a while you have the respect of others.

I remember preparing for my second Fancy Farm speech. I was in deep West KY outside our Super 8 hotel. I was sitting alone on the curb scanning the local newspapers for local tidbits to pepper my speech with while others ate breakfast inside. I overheard two people talking about me admiringly. Two people I had come to know well.

“Look at him. He’s something isn’t he? He’s reading those papers and putting his speech together in his head right now. I don’t know how he does it.”

And yet just a few days earlier I heard these same two people talking about me in a very different way. “You know you can’t rely on him. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. If you want something done, don’t expect him to do it.”

It was my wife and mother-in-law talking about me.

But Fancy Farm changed all that. Suddenly I went from failure on the home front  to being a hero—one of only a few who would take the Fancy Farm platform later that day. And they were related to me. It made them proud. It made me feel  special.

And grateful, for this one day each year, I wouldn’t be expected to run any errands or be judged on the same scale as ordinary mortals. Which was never my strong suit anyway.