Radio is cleaning up the nation

My humor blog is nearly but not quite at the end of that Altered Destiny fan fiction! And we're much of the way through the pairwise brackets thing that's getting almost no response but that is fun to write so I'm not going to stop before April. Plus, comics. Here's what you've been missing:

• MiSTed: Altered Destiny, Part 30
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Hot Takes versus Bread
• Statistics Saturday: Some Famous Book Opening-Line Misquotes
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Harmlessly Weird Weather versus Candles
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Ideas Written Down in the Middle of the Night versus Etymology
• What's Going On In Dick Tracy? Why is Dick Tracy all about Little Orphan Annie again? December 2023 - March 2024
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Mnemonics versus Constellations
• MiSTed: Altered Destiny, Part 31

---

Now let's get back to the Jackson County Fair and look around and stuff. There's something special coming up ... are you ready to guess what it is? Bet you're wrong ...

Now we're moving into things in the exhibit halls. Here, someone's all set to win the Anthrohio cake-decorating contest with a camp site-themed cake! (I have no idea what Anthrohio's theme is this year, or what it was last year.)

---

A thing I didn't expect about the exhibit barn is that they give it a little structure by putting 'street names' on the major paths, so there's a city grid that can be ignored if the need arises but otherwise allows for some direction. Also that some of the facilities are set up with the name or loose structure of, like here, 'Ye Olde Brass and Copper Shoppe'.

---

Ye Olde Brass and Copper Shoppe was used to house things like these kitchen items, which are neither brass nor copper, and which I'd have no idea how you start judging.

---

Toasters pack the stands for the toaster competition! You remember the second- and third-place finishers from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving!

---

A prizewinning Mickey Mouse Club lunchbox. Again, I don't know how you even start to rate these categories, which for this, was ``Antiquities / Grandma's Pantry / Lunch box''.

---

In another corner of things, some beeswax to mind your own of.

---

Not sure if 1910s stove is an exhibit or is just in Stove Jail.

---

Here's a full little room labelled ``Canning Time In Grandma's Kitchen''. It doesn't look to me like it was judged as anything so I guess it was just showing off stuff that didn't rate competition?

---

Inflatable Dinosaur Attack Time in Grandma's Washroom.

---

And now ... oh, what are we seeing here? Well, the radio here --- the sign says 'Sparton' but the dial looks more to me like 'Spartan' --- was manufactured in nearby Jackson, Michigan, in the 40s.

---

And hey, that's a bunch of ham radio stuff! What's that doing in a county fair exhibition room, and --- just a second. Computor, enhance.

---

``Hints and Kinks for the Radio Amateur, Volume Two'', the book offers. I will not google that for you.

---

Didn't see the turn to ham radio coming, did you?

Trivia: In 1948 a record 27,707 Crosley cars and trucks were sold Source: Crosley: Two Brothers and a Business Empire that Transformed the Nation, Rusty McClure with David Stern and Michael A Banks. (Unfortunately, this would be a high-water mark; with gas cheap and rationing over, customers were going for bigger cars and also ones that didn't have galvanized engines which turned into lumps of metal after three years.)

Currently Reading: Retail Gangster: The Insane, Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie, Gary Weiss.