Category Archives: Indiana

Indiana State Fair 2024 Photos, Part 7: The Year in Antiques

August 14, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Mr. Spock's Music from Outer Space: the album.

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.

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Indiana State Fair 2024 Photos, Part 6: The Year in Lego

August 12, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Lego Pokemon!

Lego Pokemon! Lego Pikachu, Lego Geodude, and Lego Snorlax.**

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…

Lego is a frequent sight at our State Fair. 4-H kids and competitors in other art contests routinely turn in works of Lego as their favorite sculpting medium. There’s nothing emphatically Hoosier about them. To my knowledge we have no Lego factory and no Legoland theme park. Indiana was not a beachhead for Danish explorers. The Lego Indiana Jones sets have nothing to do with Indiana per se, much as we might wish to contrive otherwise. But at our state fair there’s always room for Lego.

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Indiana State Fair 2024 Photos, Part 5: Food for Displaying, Not Devouring

August 11, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Bluey made of cans, next to the letters NDY also made of cans.

Canned Bluey! Standing next to an Indianapolis “N-D-Y” photo-op setup.

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…

Our favorite part is the new food, but some of their most ingenious uses of food are available neither for purchase nor consumption. Exhibit A: the annual Canstruction contest! The charitable organization holds eponymous events nationwide in which engineers and other clever planners compete against each other to build the best sculpture made entirely from canned goods, preferably in recognizable shapes and not ordinary stacks with boring titles like “We Bought an Aldi”. After the judging and the public displaying are over, all those meticulously planned figures are torn down and the components are donated to local hunger relief charities, who in turn forward them to needy families. Thus these temporary installations live on only if everyone takes pictures of them.

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Indiana State Fair 2024 Photos, Part 4: Land of the Glowing Giants

August 11, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Side view of a T-Rex lying down with its mouth open and its tail sticking straight out horizontally.

Flee from the mighty T-Rex that gapes to all comers with its muscular jaws! Or relax at the table and chairs under its butt.

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…

As if Artscape and the chainsaw sculptures weren’t enough art: on the north end of the fairgrounds, the relatively new space known as The Backyard — which in 2023 was covered in basketball courts and dubbed Hoopfest — hosted an exhibit called Illuminate, comprising a collection of giant-sized organisms that look impressive in daylight but are actually huge lanterns activated at night. Online sources allege this is its second annual occurrence, except the previous works were Asian-themed and those same sources swear they were stationed in Expo Hall. Considering our 2023 visit to Expo Hall turned up only caged critters, I’d be curious to know the building’s exhibition timeline. It sucks to discover just now that we missed something cool.

Not this year, though. Behold: Illuminate! In daylight! I haven’t been to the State Fair at night in 23 years, and there’s no way we’d’ve had enough energy to stay awake and mobile from opening to closing time, so please enjoy some giant unlit lanterns in sunshine! With neon paint that’s, like, a kind of glowing!

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Indiana State Fair 2024 Photos, Part 3: Where the Art Museum Meets the Chainsaw

August 11, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Blue cube suspended in midair with a light in the middle of it. Each metallic cube side is intricately patterned to project shadows on the surfaces surrounding it.

What if the Cosmic Cube were bigger so it’s harder to steal, prettier than a 6-sided die, and held a more enlightening kind of power?

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…

Every MCC miniseries devoted to the fair has at least one chapter devoted to the works of art we encounter in the various exhibit halls. Art took center stage this year courtesy of Newfields (f/k/a the Indianapolis Museum of Art), who stepped into the role of “presenting sponsor” and brought new flourishes to old spaces.

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Indiana State Fair 2024 Photos, Part 2: Let’s Pretend We’re Influencers

August 10, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Anne and I doing jazz hands on a fake Olympics pedestal. The wall behind us is an ad for WTHR's local Olympics coverage with a photo of the Eiffel Tower filling the empty space where a bronze medalist should be standing.

Thanks to Indianapolis’ NBC affiliate WTHR, we can pretend we’re Olympians! Everyone loves the Olympics, we’re told!

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…

Our photo galleries typically showcase the places we’ve been, the things we’ve seen, or the events we experienced — i.e., the memories I want to retain that are also hopefully interesting and/or useful to anyone else in the universe besides just Anne. Sometimes we forget to take pics of each other, or I simply skip posting them because I already know what we look like. That’s the exact opposite of 99% of the entire internet; hence our perennially low traffic stats, apparently. I don’t get the whole “me me me” thing that constitutes a viable career for some folks, but I’m told that’s totally a thing and that an entire Insta-feed of selfies is in fact a form of psychologically responsible behavior and they have the tax forms to prove it.

For once, let’s give in to peer pressure from internetters half our age and compile an entire gallery of us and only us. As it happens, during our fairground day-date we wound up taking more photos of each other than usual (or having strangers snap the two of us), so here’s what it looks like when we’re enjoying each other’s company without worrying what anyone else thinks of us. Please enjoy! Smash those buttons! Share with your 50,000 nearest friends! If you don’t, you’re a judgmental, ageist hypocrite who enables body-shaming and you’re on the same side as the shallow, dump-worthy exes in every rom-com ever! It’d sure be a real shame if your S.O. ever found out! Cheers!

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Indiana State Fair 2024 Photos, Part 1: Our “Taste of the Fair” Tour

August 8, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Pulled pork marinated with rich barbecue sauce, served on a sugary biscuit.

All four State Fair food groups in one sandwich: meat, sugar, dough, and fruit.

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.

Most years, we’re all about the food. Each time our favorite part is the “Taste of the Fair” competition, in which vendors showcase ostensibly new dishes in hopes of enticing foodies and/or impressing attendees who seek more to fair-life than eating the same corn dog again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) The TotF lineup is announced weeks in advance so everyone can plan their meals and experiments accordingly.

This year’s Taste of the Fair dishes and drinks number a staggering 46 in all, a 50+% jump over last year’s assortment. We tried 10 of them across our 7½-hour stayand walked off several of those cumulative calories around the fairgrounds and the exhibit halls, whose contents we’ll cover in subsequent chapters. I was tempted to rank these in a gratuitous listicle, but I’m not in the mood to pit vendors against each other and right now cannot think hard about any of this because I am so exhausted. To keep things simple, everything’s presented in our purchasing order from 9:40 a.m. to 4:45 EDT.

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On the Unthinkable Occasion of Our 20th Wedding Anniversary

July 18, 2024 By in Indiana, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Us doing jazz hands in front of an enlarged photo of George Washington's mansion.

Fun times at George Washington’s Mount Vernon on our 2024 road trip.

It’s that time again! Another year of blessed bliss married to the amazing Anne, another “Happy Anniversary to Us!” entry, another dinner to celebrate, and another nearly unrelated lead image. This year’s milestone is also a multiple of 5, so society says it’s worth extra skill points!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: two geeks met in 1987 in high school German class, somewhat out of sync with the ordinary folks around us. Divine timing would keep our unplanned parallel paths intertwining over the years. Everything led up to our determinedly simple wedding in 2004, by which time we best friends had already started traveling together after growing up in families and lifestyles that didn’t lend themselves to much of it. All these years later, our story continues together through ups and downs, highs and lows, chuckles and tears, aches and pains, and mountains and valleys both figurative and literal.

We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

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The Blue 52

May 21, 2024 By in Indiana, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Chocolate dessert! Refer to caption.

Our Friday night dessert, one for each of us: Chocolate Terrine on graham cracker crust with ganache, blackberry cheesecake ice cream, blackberry sauce, and a real blackberry on top.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: last Friday was my birthday, which I usually note here with gratitude for another year of survival. For years I assumed when I turned 52 I’d celebrate with some geektastic solipsism involving that very number’s use as a recurring DC Comics motif. I had at least one whole anecdote lined up and everything. So far the closest we’ve come to living out any DC homage is the cosmic irony of having the entire lead-up week disrupted by, to put it horridly, a major character death.

The week was instead overshadowed by the unexpected passing of my cousin Shawn on Mother’s Day at age 50, two years younger than me. I never throw parties anyway, but I begged off some of our traditions with hopes of resuming them next year — no evening spent entirely on Facebook (the only social media system remotely nice about birthdays), no one-day road trip with my wife Anne away from Indianapolis, and no ice cream cake. I never post about the ice cream cake, but it’s usually my thing.

Nevertheless we tried to find and/or create some bright spots where we could throughout the week. Mostly I mean food.

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Happy Free Comic Book Day and May the Fourth 2024!

May 4, 2024 By in Comics/Lit, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments
11 different free comic books, including two Star Wars titles.

The second half of my haul, alphabetized — i.e., the half with the Star Wars comics in it. Happy May the Fourth for those who observe!

It’s that time of year again! Today marked the 23rd Free Comic Book Day, that annual celebration when comic shops nationwide offer no-strings-attached goodies as a form of community outreach in honor of that time-honored medium where words and pictures dance in unison on the printed page, whether in the form of super-heroes, monsters, cartoon all-stars, licensed merchandise, or entertaining ordinary folk. It’s one of the best holidays ever for hobbyists like me who’ve been comics readers since the days when drugstores sold them for thirty-five cents each and superhero movies were a rarity and an embarrassment to the genre.

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Our Modest View of the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse from Indianapolis

April 8, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments
Me doing jazz hands on our sidewalk while the eclipse looks like an ordinary sun overhead. Skies are bluish gray.

3:09 p.m. EDT: Darkened skies during the window of totality here in Indy.

First things first: no, we didn’t catch any super awesome photos of the total eclipse itself looking like a cosmic coffee ring or the old Armageddon teaser poster. 600 million Instagram users got you covered. You did check with them first, right?

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Merry Christmas from MCC!

December 24, 2023 By in Indiana, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
White Christmas tree with colorful ornaments, standing in a window. The noontime sun just so happens to be shining through the window behind it at the position where a tree topper would go.

One of many outtakes from my recent visit to the annual Festival of Trees exhibit at the Indiana Historical Society. This one was brought to them by Circle Centre Mall.

Hey, kids! It’s that beloved holiday tradition where we just post a few recent Christmas-themed photos with some short yet sincere seasons’ greetings, and we give readers a break from my usual self-indulgent verbosity. It’s the most wonderful time of the MCC year! Click, scroll, ooh, ahh, and keep on frolicking down the internet superhighway!

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Our Saturday Matinee at “A Christmas Carol” Live

December 24, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
My wife Anne wearing a blue Christmas sweatshirt and a red afghan scarf, smiling and standing in front of a theater stage covered in fake snow. It's mostly dark but with select house on, including a few replica London street lights.

My wife Anne amid the reimagined snowscape of Victorian London.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we don’t patronize live theater nearly often enough. Sure, we’ve visited New York City twice and strolled among those bright Broadway lights to catch popular favorites like The Lion King and Wicked. As for local theater here in Indianapolis…we’ve been shamefully negligent. My high school English classes took the occasional field trip to the Indiana Repertory Theatre — our most celebrated performance venue, but hardly our only stage — where my poor teenage self (whose family otherwise could never afford such extravagances) had the permission-slipped privilege to see productions of Macbeth (in minimalist postmodern with translucent walls), Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals (original source of “malapropism”, a useful word to fans of The Office), and Julius Caesar (starring no less an American celebrity than Family Ties‘ Michael Gross). My last engagement was thirty-three years ago.

Fast-forward to today: Anne and I had been discussing our omissions of local cultural experiences when an opportunity came up this holiday season: free tickets to the IRT’s annual performance of A Christmas Carol, courtesy of my employer (one of their nonprofit organization’s longtime sponsors). We kept our calendar clear, took advantage of the offer, and enjoyed a Christmas activity that for once had nothing to do with crowded family gatherings or big-screen movies with snow in them.

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Return to the Christmas Tree Forest: Indy’s Festival of Trees 2023

December 17, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Christmas tree with stuffed polar bears climbing up one side on a tiny ladder, then suspended on wires to look as if they're taking turns diving off the other side into a "pool" made of blue ribbon.

Diving polar bears represent for the Special Olympics “Polar Plunge” charity challenge.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: every year the Indiana Historical Society in downtown Indianapolis hosts a special Christmas exhibit called the Festival of Trees, for which dozens of local businesses and charities festoon a tree or tree-shaped object with decorations befitting their interests and colors. Last year I checked out the festival for my first time along with my coworkers as we sauntered over on our lunch break. We had so much fun that my boss decided our team should make it an annual tradition.

Last time I created not one, but two separate MCC galleries for the occasion. My wife Anne still doesn’t work downtown or at my company and was therefore once again sadly not included in our field trip, but I took photos to share with her and with You, The Viewers at Home. Trees are identified by their trimmers and/or donors. Enjoy!

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Basil Fawlty Begs No Pardon: A Night in Indianapolis with John Cleese

November 6, 2023 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Neon-lit marquee at the Old National Centre welcoming

6:30 p.m. Sunday night, total darkness thanks to Daylight Savings ending that very day.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: in October my wife Anne and I traveled from Indianapolis to Cincinnati for a live Q&A with TV’s Admiral Picard himself, Sir Patrick Stewart. The 83-year-old Shakespearean thespian and erstwhile starship captain had a new book to sell and thousands of fans to enthrall.

Speaking of American stage appearances by octogenarian Englishmen who costarred in a few landmark TV shows and some notable films, whose tours forbid the taking of photos or video, who’ve been married a few times and whose current wives are over thirty years younger than they are…now for something completely different!

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Halloween Stats 2023: Extra Helpings for the Brave and the Bold

October 31, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Our kitchen table covered with over 300 pieces of candy in ten different piles. Possibly as many as 400. I lost count.

Yes, we overprepared. Fortunately candy never lasts long enough for us to worry about expiration dates. Assuming candy even has those.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: each year since 2008 I’ve kept statistics on the number of trick-or-treaters brave enough to approach our suburban Indianapolis doorstep during the Halloween celebration of neighborhood unity and no-strings-attached strangers with candy. I began tracking our numbers partly for future candy inventory purposes and partly out of curiosity, so now it’s a tradition for me. Like many bloggers I’m a stats fiend who thrives on taking head counts, even when we’re expecting discouraging results.

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The October 2023 Birthday Trip, Part 4 of 6: Antiquing Practice

October 26, 2023 By in Indiana, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A framed old Star Wars poster by Drew Struzan and Charlie White III (possibly a reprint) stands on a shelf along with a couple dozen loose Star Wars figures and some unrelated Hot Wheels.

Star Wars, age 46, is now a kind of antique. Sigh.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our birthdays together, usually traveling to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. That’s every May for me and every October for her. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

Anne knew what she wanted to do for this year’s birthday outing way back in July: see Patrick Stewart live on stage in Cincinnati. As previously recounted, we landed fourth-row seats and had a wonderful time. But Admiral Shakespeare’s grand tour wasn’t the only thing we did that weekend. Friday on our way from Indianapolis to Cincy we spent the afternoon in the Hoosier town of Oldenburg, where German roots run deep and our curiosity abounded…

Other than the Brau Haus, the Oldenburg business that held our attention the longest was Carriage House Antiques. We don’t officially collect antiques per se just yet, but I can feel the urge coming as we age. I’ve bought the occasional objet d’art here and there, like that one time in Paducah when I picked up a stack of random issues of Marvel’s Quasar from an antique shop, not in the 3-for-$1 clearance boxes at the comic shop down the block. I could feel that same tug as we wandered this year’s Indiana State Fair, though their antique assortment was a competition, not a bazaar. Will we ever give in to the full antiquing urge and begin hoarding stuff we find that’s older than us, or are we okay with merely window-shopping and pointing at random items while telling each other, “Hey, I remember when this was a thing”?

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The October 2023 Birthday Trip, Part 3 of 6: The Hydrants of Oldenburg

October 23, 2023 By in Indiana, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Fire hydrant painted like a nun. The convent is across the street in the background.

Franciscan nun hydrant across the street from the Convent and Academy of the Immaculate Conception,

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our birthdays together, usually traveling to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. That’s every May for me and every October for her. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

Anne knew what she wanted to do for this year’s birthday outing way back in July: see Patrick Stewart live on stage in Cincinnati. As previously recounted, we landed fourth-row seats and had a wonderful time. But Admiral Shakespeare’s grand tour wasn’t the only thing we did that weekend. Friday on our way from Indianapolis to Cincy we spent the afternoon in the Hoosier town of Oldenburg, where German roots run deep and our curiosity abounded…

Throughout our road trips one of our favorite art categories is Municipal Objects That Aren’t Normally Painted Unless Someone Realizes They Totally Can. During our Oldenburg walkabout it took us a few minutes to notice each of their fire hydrants benefited from an artist’s touch. It’s been eight years since the last time we saw such a collection, which dotted the landscape of Chicago’s Navy Pier. Oldenburg’s hydrants are smaller, yet nonetheless decorative and presumably practical. We’re pretty sure we spotted merely a fraction of their total hydrants, but those we saw were cute.

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The October 2023 Birthday Trip, Part 2 of 6: Welcome to Oldenburg

October 22, 2023 By in Indiana, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A large convent that looks like two 19th-century churches in a row.

The Convent and Academy of the Immaculate Conception, built in the 1890s. Tours available only by appointment, which we didn’t have.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our birthdays together, usually traveling to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. That’s every May for me and every October for her. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

Anne knew what she wanted to do for this year’s birthday outing way back in July: see Patrick Stewart live on stage in Cincinnati. As previously recounted, we landed fourth-row seats and had a wonderful time. But Admiral Shakespeare’s grand tour wasn’t the only thing we did that weekend. Friday on our way from Indianapolis to Cincy we spent the afternoon in the Hoosier town of Oldenburg, where German roots run deep and our curiosity abounded. The two of us met in 1987 in high school German class. We can get sentimental sometimes when we’re reminded of that…

The town’s origins date back to 1837, when two speculators from the original Oldenburg in Germany bought land from a Virginia farmer who’d gotten there first. The duo drew up plans for a small community; other German immigrants joined them and founded its earliest establishments — its first church, a post office, a monastery, a convent, et al. Over time this new Oldenburg would amass a higher-than-average number of spires compared to the average Hoosier town, as expressed in their official three-spired crest that popped up here and there throughout our walk. The map that the Brat Haus waitress gave us was an unexpected and rather detailed surprise in annotating the various features and flourishes hither and yon. We’re not quite architecture geeks, but the brochure was a useful guide for our stroll around this pleasant autumn day.

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The October 2023 Birthday Trip, Part 1 of 6: Two Lunches at Brau Haus

October 21, 2023 By in Indiana, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Anne smiling at me across the table inside a restaurant with green and brown decor. Sunlight pours in a window at left.

The lovely birthday gal who refuses to age.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: in addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our birthdays together, usually traveling to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. That’s every May for me and every October for her. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

Anne knew what she wanted to do for this year’s birthday outing way back in July: see Patrick Stewart live on stage in Cincinnati. As previously recounted, we landed fourth-row seats and had a wonderful time. But Admiral Shakespeare’s grand tour wasn’t the only thing we did that weekend. Friday on our way from Indianapolis to Cincy we spent the afternoon in the Hoosier town of Oldenburg, where German roots run deep and our curiosity abounded. The two of us met in 1987 in high school German class. We can get sentimental sometimes when we’re reminded of that.

The Oldenburg prelude to the Stewart event wasn’t part of our original travel plan. Two weeks earlier, we’d stopped for lunch on the way to Cincinnati Comic Expo at a German diner my boss had strongly recommended. The Brau Haus is housed in the Stuerwald Building, which was built in 1860 as a general store and is one of eighty 19th-century places still standing to this day in their historic district. We loved the food and hospitality so much that we decided a Brau Haus encore would go great with our Cincinnati encore. That gave us two lunches’ worth of highlights to share, taken two weeks apart.

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