| It is state fair time across the Midwest. No matter if this is your first fair or your 50th, you will come away with special memories. This is the 150th birthday of the Indiana State Fair and the celebration is all about memories. Fair officials, self-important dignitaries, and ordinary folks who have been coming to the fair longer than I have been alive have all been sharing their favorite memories in speeches and press accounts. So, since this is my column, let me join the fun and share a few of my fair memories.
I have attended every Indiana State Fair since 1985. Yet this year will stand out as one of the most unusual. That is because for the first time in 21 years I will not be broadcasting from the fair. No mad dashes down the main street to get to the microphone in time for a report. No 14 hours days or 12 day work weeks. For the first time I am actually enjoying the fair.
All this reminiscing has caused me to reflect on a few of my outstanding moments of the past 20 Indiana State Fairs such as the time someone on the State Fair board decided that the 4-H Sale of Champions should include a celebrity showmanship competition and that it should be a black tie event. So there we were in tuxes, in the August heat, chasing uncooperative livestock around a ring for the amusement of several thousand fair visitors.
Then there was the time I was doing a live radio broadcast on a stage in the Pioneer Village exhibit area when Exhibit Manager Maury Williamson let some chickens loose to add a little atmosphere. One bird strutted up on stage and deposited an egg in the middle of our show. It was the first, and hopefully last time, I was upstaged by a chicken.
On the subject of being upstaged, for a period of about 10 years I broadcasted a variety show with the late Captain Stubby. While the show was scripted and planned out in advance, Stubby always decided to change things. Of course he never told me about the change and the result always produced a good laugh, usually at my expense.
Lots of strange things happen when you are doing live radio on location at a fair. One of the strangest was when Lew Middleton, now with Indiana Farm Bureau, was also hosting the program. We had some jugglers on the show as entertainment for the audience during commercial breaks. After a break, Lew started reading the markets but the jugglers kept juggling. They were using bowling pins and were positioned one on either side of Lew. As he read the markets, the wooden bowling pins whizzed past his face. The tension in his voice increased as the pins came closer and closer. The audience loved it; Lew had a different opinion.
During my first few years of broadcasting from the fair, I experimented with different locations from which to do my programs. One experiment that did not go as planned was the year I decided to broadcast from the swine barn - no, not the office in the swine barn, right out in the middle of the swine barn. It sounded like a good idea in May when I planned the event, but by August, Indiana was in the middle of a heat wave with day after day of triple digit temperatures. That year we lost several 4-H hogs and almost lost a few broadcasters. That was the year I invited Evan Bayh to be on my show. It was quite obvious he was not happy to be in a hog barn with temperatures over 100 degrees. Funny, he has never come back to be on my show again.
Then there was the year my fellow broadcaster Darrin Johnston decided we should broadcast the Sale of Champions live. Everything was going fine until the Pepsi Coliseum had a power failure. There we all were - the 4-Hers, the animals and several thousand people in the dark.
The problem for us was we were battery-powered, so our equipment stayed on and we were on the air. Filling airtime in total darkness, with no idea how long the outage would last, was quite an experience.
If it has been a while since you visited your state fair, then it is time for you to go and make some memories of your own. |
