Featuring such timeless classics as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Earth”, “Beyond Antares”, and “Music to Watch Space Girls By”. Yes, really.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…
One of the fair’s regular features is the antiques competition, chiefly displayed on the second floor of the Indiana Arts Building. No one’s ever posted the rules, criteria, rankings, or anything expository beyond signage implying, “Here are some antiques not for sale.” Contestants bring in ancient items they unearthed somewhere, a secret council convenes far from inquisitive eyes, prize ribbons are placed next to some of them, yadda yadda yadda, they’re at your Indiana State Fair.
Amid the quilts and ’50s baby dolls and blue-and-white dishware, a few items with historical value and/or pop culture cachet will catch our attention. We congratulate the winners of this year’s Antiques We Looked At for More Than Three Seconds Contest, sponsored by ConHugeCo, Inc.
The Beatles! They played our State Fair in September 1964.
The Beatles’ nonunion understudies! Did their Andy Williams gig really leave viewers begging for more?
Elvis! Henry Mancini! Doc Severinsen! Other musicians your grandparents loved!
The Sound of Music Went with the Wind.
Don’t tell anyone I’m planning an elaborate heist to nab this for my wife.
One of those creative liquor bottles that alcoholics love using to hide their sins.
This was actually in the 4-H Building and may have been handmade in 2024, but the “Year in Art” chapter 8 photo finalists are such a massive list that I’m declaring Cookie Monster an honorary antique just to cross anything off that list.
The winner of this year’s Ugly Lamp Contest. Not a joke!
Spotlight on Doc Severinsen’s old boss, who was famous in his own right. Believe it or not!
Check back for future sequels in the series such as Freckles Leaves Home Again; Freckles, Make Up Your Mind; Freckles, I Am Begging You to Seek Help; and Freckles and the Horse He Rode In On.
Longtime MCC readers may recall comic books are my primary hobby, which is hard to tell nowadays considering how very rarely I’ve been writing about them. Consider this a reminder they’re still my thing. Unlike last year’s batch that made me sad about my age, I own none of the following, not even in reprints.
Lash LaRue Western #11 (March 1950); Action Comics #254 (July 1959), cover by Curt Swan and Stan Kaye; and Buster Brown #40 (circa 1952), cover by Reed Crandall.
I began collecting Action in the early 500s, so this one was long before my day. My mom used to buy Superman comics way back when, but ditched them all before I was born. I still sigh deeply every time I remember that.
Little Iodine #29, Dell (July 1955), cover by Jimmy Hatlo; Walt Disney’s Scamp allegedly #205 (sometime late ’60s or ’70s); and The Monkees #8 (January 1968).
Gold Key’s Scamp series only lasted 45 issues, so that may be an undetermined issue of their continuation of Dell’s Four Color Comics. Or not! I hate being vexed by old comics.
Also, fun trivia: that exact same issue of Little Iodine was in last year’s display too. Did someone enter the same copy twice, or are there at least two copies left in existence in Indiana?
Showcase #61 (April 1966), cover by Murphy Anderson and Ira Schnapp; Pep #248 (December 1970), cover by Dan DeCarlo; and Spider-Woman #1 (1978), cover by Joe Sinnott.
I do have a few random issues from Spider-Woman’s very first series, including the double-sized finale #50, but I never stuck with it. The two Essential Spider-Woman collections are also among several gaps in my Marvel Essentials collection. Maybe someday…
Krazy Komics #18 (June 1945); Barry M. Goldwater Complete Life Story (September 1964); and Adventures of the Big Boy #61 (January 1957).
(I can’t help thinking someone had themselves some juxtaposing fun with that last display case.)
To be continued! Other chapters in this very special miniseries:
Part 1: Our “Taste of the Fair” Tour
Part 2: Let’s Pretend We’re Influencers
Part 3: Where the Art Museum Meets the Chainsaw
Part 4: Land of the Glowing Giants
Part 5: Food for Displaying, Not Devouring
Part 6: The Year in Lego
Part 8: [coming soon]