Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Mistake By The Lake

    I am still discovering things related to world's fairs held in America! When checking for souvenirs, mostly postcards, on E-bay I eventually decided to change the key words a little. Besides 'World's Fair' I knew sometimes it helped to try 'Exposition' or 'Expo'. Since an interest of mine is to find stadium postcards, as I already have New York's Shea Stadium, I also tried 'stadium, park, and field'. This led to finding some more world's fairs like the one in Cleveland in the 1930s, the Great Lakes Exposition. Cleveland Stadium was part of some of these postcards, and one of its nicknames was 'The mistake by the lake'. I knew how baseball's Indians and football's Browns played there. No mention seemed to be made of the World's Fair. Hard to say why, though the stamps I found for this fair didn't seem to be legal-tender postage stamps. This is another interest of mine- the first day covers. I visited Cleveland in 2002, but the Indians were playing at Jacobs Field by then.
   Another one I found, due to trying 'Exposition' instead of just 'World's Fair' was the 1926 Philadelphia fair, the Sesquicentennial Expo. A stadium was found here as well, the one named for President Kennedy after he was assassinated. It has since been demolished, same as the one in Cleveland. But it appears in both cases how I did end up in the general area of the fair when I was on vacation there. It appears JFK stadium was in the sports complex where baseball's Phillies and football's Eagles play in, and I did see 2 Phillies games when I was there in 2003. Then there's the World's Fair in Dallas celebrating the centennial of independence from Mexico, around the same time as Cleveland's. I was confused a little when I saw a football game at the Cotton Bowl in 2010 and at the state fairgrounds there was some mention of President Franklin Roosevelt making a speech there. This was likely in reference to the World's Fair and not the state fair, as I know presidents often do speak at these fairs.
   I know why I didn't find this one earlier, as the Wikipedia article I had didn't specifically mention them in the article about world's fairs. For Philadelphia it was just the earlier one, 1876. Apparently it was just the ones recognized by the Bureau of International Expositions. I am also finding out how in some cases the souvenirs I found on E-bay are not necessarily vintage. Very little was found related to the 1898 fair in Omaha, aside from a reprint of the button. But of course if the fair has been a while, it may be hard to find vintage souvenirs. In the case of Omaha's fair, they would be antiques by now. Getting something from this fair would also be nice, as it is another city I have visited, for the College World Series. It likely means changing the game plan a little on what I order, wanting to get something from as many fairs as possible instead of just focusing on Chicago and New York. I counted the fairs listed in a Wikipedia article and it had 18 different cities with World's Fair articles, 20 if you count Canada. Currently I have postcards from 5 different fairs, and 4 different cities.
  It was nice to see somebody at the comedy club who happened to be from New Ulm. He said he had been attending shows for a while and just recently became a performer. I spoke for a while how I visit there annually for Oktoberfest.

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