Hometown Indiana

Nothing beats visiting a city with someone who lives there. I just end up doing things I might not otherwise do, which is what happened this weekend.

I had already planned to spend much of Saturday with Dean at the Indiana State Fair. I got bonus time on Sunday because a delay in availability at my next destination (Santa Claus, IN) is keeping me in Indianapolis for another day. In between, we went to a baseball game, ate at a local dive, walked the core of Indianapolis, and toured an historical interpretive place called Conner Prairie. Plus I got another of Dean’s fabulous grilled dinners and an overflowing bag of garden tomatoes as a sendoff. Aside from Conner Prairie, I would have never done any of these things if Dean hadn’t been there for company and shown me around his city.

Almost nothing tastes as good as just-picked, home-grown tomatoes.

2009 is the Year of the Tomato at the Indiana State Fair. And that means not only everything red, but everything tomato is to be found there. I’ve been to a couple of state and county fairs on the west coast, but those are mere wanna-bes compared to what a true heartland fair shows off in know-how, toys, humor, and pride of land and husbandry.

Tractors are on display everywhere: old to new, small to building-sized; some are paraded down the street, coughing smoke and chugging their little pistons out. Wood workers, blacksmiths, quilters, flintnappers, lifestyle demos, antique farming displays, a covered bridge. Butterfly walk, fish ponds, wildlife shows, cockroach races (you read that right, put on by Purdue University’s entomology department). The usual pro and amateur art galleries, home craft and hobby shows, agriculture and flower judging, baking contests, horse and goat shows, concerts and bandstands, and the sensory overload universal to all fairs: midway rides, fried-anything food booths, “your photo on a blanket” stalls, and row after row of vendors hawking the practical, the sensational, or the bewildering.

We only spent a few hours here, but could have spent days, the place is so large and full of things to see and do during the fair’s two-week life cycle.

Welcome to Oz, fair style.

This guy is coaxing the motor of an old Maytag washing machine into life to operate something else. This was common practice with the early Maytag washers; the units had an exposed, under-the-tub motor that housewives used to run meat grinders and other appliances. Today, that same motor is encased in sleek metal boxes, unusable as alternative power.

Old guys everywhere were tinkering on old equipment that still works. Sad not to see many young folks involved in these kinds of skills and trades.

Big overalls, tiny cell phone.

Typical Hoosier humor.

They don’t grow things small here. We never did find the year’s largest tomatoes, counted as five pounds or heavier, even though we circled the Ag/Hort building three times; not even the workers knew where they were stashed.

Decorated vegetable contest.

An entry in the Canstruction(R) contest, sponsored by Red Gold Brand Tomato products in honor of the fair’s theme. All foods used went to local food banks. A lot of homeless people will be eating spaghetti all year.

Roach Hill Downs is lovingly decorated with tableaus of roaches at various fair venues, from roach cowboys riding grasshopper broncos, to roaches lined up for a porta-potty. Here, mom is buying balloons for junior. Gotta love that straw hat.

Yep, cheese carving. She said the man’s name was Jack.

We refrained from eating more than a “you gotta have a corn dog at the fair” snack while there, and escaped all the noise to have dinner (or “supper,” as they say in the Midwest) by following a lead in Road Food, written by a couple who travel the U.S. and rate “the best barbecue joints, lobster shacks, ice cream parlors, highway diners and much, much more.” Many thanks to my friends at PopCap Games, who gave me the Sterns’ book as a sendoff: I have now enjoyed my first “Hoosier tenderloin” (chicken-fried pork sandwich) at the Mug and Bun drive-in, where if you don’t eat in your car, you buzz a box on your table (if it’s working) to call for the waitress.




We arrived at Victory Field in time for the last half of an Indians baseball game. I’ve never been to a minor league game, and I can really feel what baseball is about at this kind of place. The field is small and intimate. No tier upon tier of bleachers reaching to nosebleed height. No extremely long lines for food. No sushi or Chinese buffet food stalls. The outfield is surrounded by grass, where people can bring their blankets and families for picnics and Frisbee. It’s just down-home American baseball, still affordable, still mostly about the game and not the contracts. By the way, the Indians won 2-1 with a nail-biting, top of 9th finish of 3 balls, 2 strikes, 2 outs, and a high fly catch by the left fielder.

Intimate seating, industrial backdrop.

Outfielder audience.

Get a load of that post-pitch position and the speed of the ball (that vague white blur near the batter). This pitch was at the top of the 9th, 2 balls, 2 strikes, 2 outs, Indians ahead by one point, and a lot of people were on their feet in tense anticipation of the outcome.

As the state capitol, Indianapolis was placed smack in the middle of Indiana. And about smack in the middle of Indianapolis is an area called Monument Circle, an ornately carved tribute to the origins of Indianapolis (1865), to war, and to peace. We walk through this area twice, once before and again after the game, visiting Starbucks and appreciating the varied architecture of Art Deco and ziggurat roof lines, the contemporary lighting on Indiana Power & Light’s office building, which changes colors across its face at night, and the fru-fru stonework of the late 1800s. Teens and 20-somethings scatter around the base of the monument and its steps, smoking, necking, talking, hanging out.

Horse-drawn carriages move tourists at 4 miles per hour, a row of parked motorcycles lines one entire quarter of the circle, and half a dozen tricked-out cars cruise the whole thing ’round, their wheels hitched up on struts like highwater pants, their drivers jerking the suspension to make the front or rear of the cars jounce violently. One of them slides around a right-hand turn on only its left-hand tires, a slow-motion move that drips hydraulic fluid all the way around the corner. The girlfriend of another driver, bouncing in her seat as her man struts his struts, looks supremely bored.

A fountain celebrating youth...

...or maybe paganism?

Monument Circle.

Cruising entertainment.

Conner Prairie, an historical interpretive center, gives a real feel for time passage as you move from an Indian village of the 1810s to a pioneer town of the 1830s to a farm of the 1880s. I like these “living museums” on principle, but initially I feel uncomfortable around dressed-up interpreters—as if I’m intruding on their acting job by walking on stage when I should be sitting quietly in the audience. My initial impulse to avoid them is also probably one of those “don’t talk to strangers” social leftovers from childhood.

To overcome my nerves, I usually just smile and dive right into a conversation about their craft or environment, and genuine curiosity soon takes over to open up all kinds of surprises. The carpenter showed me the gunstock of a rifle he had made, I got to try my hand at using a real quill pen (trickier than it looks to do a lovely flourish without blots), and a young woman sewing in her mother-in-law’s home showed me a tape loom (at first I thought she said “tape worm”) and how she made dress seams. Dean and I also spent a good twenty minutes in one of the non-interpreter barns trying to figure out exactly how some of the horse-drawn tools worked. He lived on his family’s farm as a kid, and was able to explain a lot of the stuff that his dad still has, like corn huskers and seed planters.

On good days, the Conner Prairie tethered balloon ascends with passengers, commemorating the nation’s first cross-country airmail delivery attempt, via an 1859 balloon that took off for New York in Lafayette, Indiana...and landed 30 miles south in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Romantic as today’s flight opportunity sounds, the balloon is splattered with BP and am/pm logos, advertising the fuel stations and minimarts. No escape from merchandising, these days.

Whew, this wool costume was hot!

This kid actually hit the target.

Bark lodge of a Lenape Indian Camp.

Work in progress on a late 1800s loom at Conner Homestead. The weaver said it was the best loom she had ever used.

Dyed in the wool, all with natural stuff, much of it grown in the nearby garden or woods.

Handsome bow-tie joints in the floorboards.

This is the kind of interpreter I didn’t like talking to: slightly smarmy, right in line with his character as a traveling phrenologist. For 50 cents, he’d feel your skull to find out about your personality and maybe your future. For free, he’d talk your ear off about his travels from the east coast; his accent and speech patterns were very much like a Minnesota preacher. He had taken over the local school building for his temporary office.

This photo’s for my mom, a docent at San Diego’s first schoolhouse in Old Town. Finally found benches without backs! That sheet over the hearth is the phrenologist’s primitive PowerPoint presentation.

Part of 1836 Prairietown.

He carved and decorated the stock and other wood parts; a metalworking friend crafted the rest.

Old corn husker. We sat photographing the chickens for several minutes while they clucked and scratched all around us.

Paper wasps in a barn.

Home-grilled beef ribs, more hickory smoked fish for me to take home, and another long evening of talk with Dean finished off a really great weekend (and week). Hey, if we’re going to see each other only every 15 years, it pays to make the most of it, and we certainly did. Thanks for everything, Dean!