Conner Prairie Revisited

Holla if you grew up in the Midwest and took a field trip (or two or six) to Conner Prairie Interactive History Park in Fishers, Indiana!

Then this should look familiar.

If you haven't, you can begin to get a basic idea of what it's like from the South Park episode Super Fun Time: it's a park where you walk around and look at old-timey stuff while staff members, dressed in period costumes, play characters who lived in that time so that you can feel like you're immersed in history. (If you find that annoying, like Matt Stone and Trey Parker clearly do, Conner Prairie also has staff members in polo shirts who aren't stuck in the 1800s.) My earliest memory of the park is a field trip I took with my first grade class, during which one particularly self-assured classmate kept pelting a staff member with questions about the latest episode of Full House. In retrospect, I'm surprised the staff member didn't whack her with a butter churn.

The park is, in a word, fun. For history buffs, they've done their research and made an admirable effort to keep everything period-authentic. For kids, they've added lots of hands-on experiences so there's stuff to grab - a development I've noticed in museums a lot, lately.

It also has an autism-friendly area, which is nice since ostensible time travel takes people way outta their comfort zones. 

The park's a lot about immersion in the atmosphere, so it's a great getaway, if only for a few hours. Lawless and I went there during her weekend trip up to Indiana to both relive fond childhood memories and to do the whole geeky back-in-time thing. We found that the park has blossomed nicely since we were lil', with revamps to the traditional folksy areas and new high-tech museum attractions. The best parts are still the same, though: talking to the people and chasing the animals. (Or vice versa, if the mood strikes.)

Not only does the staff demonstrate the way of life during their particular frontier period, but they are often willing to teach you how to do it as well.

Lawless, for example, got a quilting lesson.

These kids got to learn about carpentry - and they were at the front of a whole line of "I wanna do THAT!"s.

Each of the staff members' characters has a backstory, each with varying degrees of detail. Lawless and I were excited to learn that the town doctor character was supposed to have a degree from Transy - back when it still had a medical school in the building that eventually transmogrified into Old Morrison.

He had pics and everything. Quality stuff.

It's also fun to, well... screw with the people. Let me preface this by saying that we did NOT go around quizzing random staff members about the latest Jersey Shore. But it's fair game - in my opinion - when one of the trapped-in-time cast members is an old friend from undergrad days. :) In fact, I think you're actually obliged to dick with them in that case. Politely, of course.

Enter Chops.

But Chops was a sport about it. He tried to teach us how to make pegs (even though I'm sure we were a couple of decades older than most of his customers). And he never ever broke character in front of the guests who were there for reasons other than dicking with him. Despite prodding. But he plays a character with an awesome shady backstory, so he still got to have fun. Plus, I mean, he got to sit around and make pegs all day.

And in case this isn't enough evidence that you can still have an awesome time at Conner Prarie at age 25, I leave you with this:

That's right. AN ADORABLE BEBE PIGGIE WHO WANTS YOU TO COME VISIT HIM.