2019 fair making the old new again

Thursday, July 25, 2019
Having won a prize with her red wool dress in 1968.
Courtesy DePauw Archives

Many of us grew up with the 4-H motto “To Make the Best Better,” but to look at some of the 4-H and adult open class projects at the 2019 Putnam County Fair, it might well be “To Make the Old New.”

Consider the wool dress modeled by Thursa Evens Wednesday during the Family Fun Day fashion show.

The dress still fits the petite resident of rural Bainbridge as if she crafted it last week.

Thursa Evens models it all over again for the Family Fun Day fashion show on Wednesday.
Banner Graphic/Jared Jernagan

That’s not the case, though, as it was actually designed by Evens for the “Make it Yourself with Wool” contest at the Cloverdale Community Building in 1968.

Why anyone thought it wise to model wool outfits in August during the era when air conditioning wasn’t ubiquitous is a question for another day.

Regardless, the event was a big enough deal to garner coverage in both the Daily Banner and the Graphic, competing papers that were still about one year shy of their ultimate consolidation. Evens also still possesses the clippings from both Greencastle papers.

Old things made new abound at the Putnam County Fair this year, including Aiden Cooper turning ice tongs into a lamp.
Banner Graphic/Jared Jernagan

As a side note, she was misidentified in the Banner that day as “Mrs. Norma Evens,” proving that then, as now, reporters were human. Thursa is the widow of longtime local educator and 4-H leader Norman Evens.

Evens’ outfit won alternate honors in the adult class on that August day we can only hope was unseasonably cool.

On Wednesday, there were no formal honors, though the central air was installed and functioning. The dress did, however, generate some oohs and aahs from the crowd.

Madison Short using a tailgate to build a bench.
Banner Graphic/Jared Jernagan

Evens said she wore the dress to church for many years before it made its way to the back of the closet.

It found the light of day again as a result of some cleaning and organizing so she decided to break it out to share with her fellow Extension homemakers.

Some house cleaning from another Putnam County lifer resulted in the presentation of another old item made new again.

Even the electricity display case is repurposed, having previously protected the Dixie Chopper bike.
Banner Graphic/Jared Jernagan

Noble Fry was on hand to help present an award in honor of his late wife. Besides bestowing the Edith Fry Memorial award on Bonnie Bryan, Fry gave a few special gifts.

Among these was an Extension pin he found tucked in a coin purse. Presented to Edith during a convention in 1988, it remained in the purse, never worn and not even unwrapped.

Fry gave the pin to Kelly Robertson, whose Northern Town & Country Lights Extension Club presents the award in Edith’s honor.

Ryan Deaton collecting antique bottles and openers.
Banner Graphic/Jared Jernagan

“You have the honor of wearing it the first time,” Fry said as he pinned it on Robertson.

Nearly two years after Edith’s death, the 99-year-old Fry said he continues to find memorabilia like this tucked away.

“She had hid it,” Fry said, “but each month I find a few extra things.”

Carl Elmore turning wood from an old chicken coop into an ammo case.
Banner Graphic/Jared Jernagan

Such finds from yesteryear are common on the 4-H side of the exhibit hall as well. A number of 4-H’ers who certainly don’t remember 1968, 1988 or any year beginning with 19 for that matter, managed to recycle old items into something entirely new.

There’s Carl Elmore, who went above and beyond in constructing a wooden ammo box for his shooting sports project.

While not the only well-built box on display for the project this week, it was the only one to boast reclaimed wood from the family chicken coop.

“It was surprisingly sturdy for its age,” Elmore wrote of the wood utilized, “and with it being yellow pine, it had a very rustic but not rotten look to it.”

That “rustic but not rotten” look was good enough for Elmore to claim champion honors in his division.

Across the hall, Madison Short took the tailgate of an old Ford pickup (in midnight blue, reminiscent of a long-gone 1978 F-100 that belonged to this writer’s dad) and turned it into the back of a bench for a blue-ribbon home enviroment project that also garnered honorable mention and state fair alternate honors.

The collections project is always a prime location to find memorabilia from yesteryear and the 2019 projects don’t disappoint, from antique fishing lures collected by Griffin Goodpaster to the Elvis memorabilia of Avery Stone to antique soda bottles and openers by Ryan Deaton to old items retrieved from Big Walnut Creek by Creigh Remsburg.

While the electricity project is often about making something entirely new, Aiden Cooper and Aiden Beadles took slightly different approaches to their Division 4 lamp projects.

For Cooper, the light bulb is set in a large piece of “ice” (either glass or clear plastic) that has a pair of antique ice tongs clamped down on it. While the lamp is set on a piece of wood for tabletop display, it looks as if it might also be at home hanging from the tongs in a workshop or rec room back at the Cooper home.

For his efforts, Cooper was awarded champion in his division and reserve grand champion in the electricity project. It will represent Putnam County at the Indiana State Fair beginning next week.

In Beadles’ case, he earned a blue ribbon for taking an antique Lincoln Logs cannister and turning it into the base of his lamp.

Even the case containing the electricity projects is a bit of a reclamation project of its own.

While a plaque on the case — new to the exhibit hall this year — notes it was donated by Robert New, what it fails to say is the case formerly housed the Orange County Chopper-designed Dixie Chopper bike, featured on season two of “American Chopper” in May 2004.

While the former Putnam County-based lawnmower manufacturer sold to Jacobsen/Textron in 2014, ultimately shutting down last fall, the motorcycle did not remain the property of the company.

Earlier this year, the bike sold at auction. When the new owner had no need for the case, it was donated to the 4-H program.

Fitting that it landed at the 2019 fair, where tailgates, ice tongs, chicken coops and even half-century old dresses managed to find new life.

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  • So very interesting! Thursa Evans, you are a gem!

    -- Posted by Queen53 on Sun, Jul 28, 2019, at 3:30 PM
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