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…

…and it all comes down to this: everything else we saw around the fairgrounds that didn’t need their own chapters. The Thursday we attended was also BMV Day, for which our Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles offered discount passes at nearly half-off admission price. Couple that with an advance parking pass that also lopped a few bucks off, and our total entrance bill was nicely reduced so we could blow more cash on food instead.

Security measures remained in place at the entrances to mitigate gun violence, but they’d installed vastly upgraded electronics that drastically sped up the process. With local schools already back in session, and with the previous years’ foodie-friendly “$3 Thursdays” canceled in favor of reviving the pre-pandemic “$2 Tuesdays” tradition, crowds were light all day long, giving us plenty of elbow room to go with the uninterrupted sunniness.

On the northwest end of the fairgrounds, preparations were in progress at the Hoosier Lottery Free Stage for that evening’s special musical guests: Dogstar! We didn’t stick around that late, partly because we knew our physical limitations wouldn’t extend that far and partly because I’ve heard their music. Fans of their celebrity bassist Keanu Reeves were eager to see him live, in person, and for free, possibly forgetting that not everything he touches is gold and he wasn’t there to sign autographs or do jazz-hands photo ops, not that we’re bitter. They came, they apparently rocked to a limited extent, and they collected a modest hundred grand — a smaller paycheck than Bell Biv Devoe or Gladys Knight, but more than twice what the Christian-rockin’ Newsboys made.

We rarely go out of our way to see the animal barns and buildings, but we peeked inside two of those this time. Once again Expo Hall housed 4-H competitions for tiny animals rather than merchandising booths and hard-pitching salespeople that were its longtime tenants prior to the fair’s post-pandemic rearrangements.

On the farming-dominated northeast side of the fairgrounds, a barn labeled Momma Town on this year’s map held a selection of animals who were conditioned to assume every human looky-loo would offer them handfuls of feed.

Over at the 4-H Building, beyond the Lego sculptures and other arts, I also like to peruse the science-poster competitions. Those works can sometimes be dry and humorless in accordance with the strict rules for their specific areas of interest, but I’ve made an annual game of looking for glimmers of creativity and inspiration that stick out like diamonds in the rough, whether their titles be pop-culture references or Dad-jokes. I’ll take what I can get.

We ended the day with some light shopping, chiefly at The Mercantile, formerly known as the Agricultural/Horticultural Building. Interior highlights include the annual cheese sculpture, cool Hoosier-geek merch at the United State of Indiana booth, vending refugees who were kicked out of Expo Hall, and some produce competitions, though the annual gigantic-gourd contest was conspicuously absent. I’m not sure whether they moved it to another day or another building, but we regret missing out on those. We also dig the shop full of foodstuffs manufactured entirely by Hoosier companies and farms.

…and with that, we left the fair ’round 4:00, just in time to get caught in rush hour traffic. Eventually we got home, collapsed and died. That gave us one year to resurrect and prepare to repeat the cycle.

The End. Thanks for reading! Lord willing, we’ll see you again at next year’s Indiana State Fair.

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 7: The Year in Antiques
Part 8: The Year in Art