FENNER PARHAM GIVES ME MY FIRST REAL CHESS LESSON

By Jerry Krouse

Started May 4, 1993

Last night I visited Fenner Parham, Jr. He was a pitiful sight, there in his bed, attended by one of his three round-the-clock nurses. Fenner's head seemed to have swollen and his body appeared to be shrunken; it gave him the eerie appearance of some odd, alien-being from outer space. Under his atrophied body was a pee-pad. It was larger, but similar to the ones we used to put out for our little Pekingese puppy.

Fenner's breath was labored while just lying in the bed. He said it was better since his pacemaker had been installed several weeks ago. Fenner had minor complaints about aches and pains and seemed to take his fate stoically.

As I visited with Fenner, I remembered the first time I met him. But, first the road leading to that meeting has to be retold - as I retold it to Fenner last night

At the age of twenty-six, I frequently visited my long-time friend and adversary Richard Moroney and his wife Pat. Richard excelled at everything: he was the first kid in the first grade able to tie his shoe laces, he was darn near the fastest kid in the fourth grade, about the only one who could draw better than I, shot marbles like a pool-shark, was voted most likely to succeed, graduated college with honors, and could bend a swizzle stick in the middle with one hand every time - regardless of how many drinks he had consumed!

On one visit, I noticed something new: a worn, hand-made, wooden, chess set. I had always been curious about chess, and Richard's wife set about teaching us.

This set off an intense competition between Richard and me, as I, now approachingmiddle age, resolved to best him at something. We fought intensely for a couple of months, both having secretly bought beginner's books on chess. Having no one else to play, we began to think we were both pretty good. In fact, in our naiveté, we thought we were virtually as good as you could get.

It was at this stage of our chess careers that I found out about a chess club in Natchez that met at the house of Jeff Schneider. I was gleeful when I heard this, and couldn't wait to see Richard again. When I did, I ran up to him and recounted all that I had learned. I suggested that we go to the next meeting of the chess club, walk through the door like a couple of old western gun slingers, and say, "Does anybody in here play chess?”

Richard couldn't make that next meeting with me, but I was determined to go alone.

Without Richard my bravado was mercifully diminished; alone in a strange place among strange people it is very difficult to put up a big front.

Jeff Schneider's house, even in those days, was beginning to fall in. There were sections in which no one could live, and others that were semi-habitable. The room in which the chess club met was spacious but had a run down, musty, antique air about it. There was furious, gypsy, violin music blaring from the record player, and I noticed that several players were sipping cool beers. This wasn't going to be half bad I thought.

After introductions all around, someone asked if I would like to play a game. I was thinking, "You idiot, that's what I came here for."

When I said yes, I was directed to a board with Fenner Parham sitting on the other side.

Little did I know that a newcomer is usually thrown to the fiercest wolf in the den to see what he is made of. And what a wolf! Fenner, at that time fifty-four years of age, worked a little, drank a lot of beer, worked out religiously with weights and weighed a muscular two hundred pounds, and played chess like an axe-murderer.

I would learn, later, that Fenner had won the state championship four times. In 1964, at a simultaneous exhibition in New Orleans, in which the future world champion Bobby Fisher played seventy-five players at one time, Fenner would be one of the two people able to win against the prodigy.

The game against Fenner wasn't short and sweet. It was short and ugly. So ugly, in fact, that I was then passed down the ladder to the weakest player in the club (Fenner's father!) who proceeded to whack me again. I sure was glad I hadn't used my "Does anybody in here play chess?" line!

It was a full year before I worked my way up the ladder and earned the right to face the formidable Fenner again. And it took a great deal more time before I could expect a reasonable chance of an even game with him.

Richard didn't like to attend the chess club meetings. Maybe he was expected to stay at home because he was married. It wasn't very long that the increased competition I faced at Jeff Schneider's had a deleterious effect on Richard's ability to withstand my increasingly vicious

attacks. The more he lost the less he liked it. Pretty soon chess drifted out of our relationship, and I had, for once, become better than Richard at something.

Addendum after Fenner's death:

Fenner is gone now. Natchez, chess, and his friends, are the worse for his passing. Fenner was a strange man. He was ferocious at chess where he gave no quarter and never played for a draw, but was one of the most kind and gentle human beings I have ever met. He was shy and introverted to a degree hardly ever seen. Unfortunately, Fenner literally blossomed under the influence of alcohol, and I guess that is why it played a part in his demise.

Once Fenner told me he always left home to go to a bar with thirteen beer bottle caps in his left pocket. Why? I wondered. "It's simple you see," Fenn replied with an impish grin on his face, "every time I drink a beer, I transfer a bottle cap to the right pocket. When all are transferred I know it's time to go home!"

Fenner had had trouble in high school, but he was well read and extremely intelligent. He read and studied books on varied subjects such as mathematics, history, warfare, the stock market, marshal arts and poetry. Liberated by a few beers, Fenner could, and did, expound on many subjects in great detail. He could just as easily quote many lines of various poems - especially those of his favorite Edgar Allen Poe.

Fenner never refused my requests for games - and in the early days they were numerous. Unlike me, Fenner was always a gracious loser and always willing to share his knowledge with anyone.

Fenner's friendship wasn't fickle; he was always there if I needed him, even after years of inattention on my part. He always allowed our friendship to resume as if it had only been a few days since we last contested a game.

I'll miss Fenner as a friend and a chess foe. I hope that wherever Fenn is now, he is seated at a chessboard, sipping a bottle of hisfavorite beer, contemplating a winning piece sacrifice, and quoting Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven."

Goodbye old friend.