>> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by Columbus Visitors Center, celebrating everywhere art and unexpected architecture in Columbus, Indiana.

Tickets for guided tours and trip planning information at Columbus.in.us.

And by WTIU members.

Thank you!

>> ASHLEY: Coming up, check out the world's largest pinball arcade in Fort Wayne.

>> BRANDON: Take a listen to some vintage microphones in Monroe County.

>> ASHLEY: Travel to the Antique Fan Museum in Zionsville.

>> BRANDON: And learn all about an Indiana icon with a trip to the Hoosier Cabinet Museum in Nappanee.

That's all on this episode of... >> TOGETHER: "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> BRANDON: Welcome to "Journey Indiana."

I'm Brandon Wentz.

>> ASHLEY: And I'm Ashley Chilla, and we're coming to you once again from the WTIU Studio in Bloomington.

>> BRANDON: That's right.

And this week, we'll be taking a trip around the Hoosier state to take a look at some impressive collections.

>> ASHLEY: And first up, we're headed to Allen County to experience a plethora of pinball at Wizards World.

Producer Jason Pear has the story.

♪ >> I grew up in North Manchester, Indiana, a small town back in the '70s and '80s.

Since I was knee-high, I have been playing pinball.

We had probably four arcades, and a bunch of other places to go play pinball and video games.

♪ I'm not sure what attracted me to it, but I always had a lot of fun.

♪ 1986, I bought my first machine.

It was a little cocktail table pinball, and it could fit in my apartment, you know, when I was going to college, and I still have it.

It's an Allied Leisure 1920s theme.

♪ It's come back strong, pinball has.

It was nearly dead back in 2000, and, you know, I spent 30 years raising kids.

So from the '80s, '90s and 2000s, early on, I was raising kids and didn't get to play a lot.

There's a lot of things I think that's bringing on the popularity.

You've got the old fellas like me that the kids are now out of the house, and we can go back and do these fun things we did when we were kids.

>> There's always a theme that can resonate with you, like sports themes or like old TV shows.

My personal favorite is Batman '66.

I was always a big fan of the TV show.

>> Right now, they're really hard to find.

It's a supply and demand issue.

Right now, the demand is greatly outnumbering the supply.

If there weren't supply chain issues because of the pandemic, Stern and all the other pinball manufacturers would be flying machines out the door right and left.

Right now, used machines are incredibly expensive compared to when I was buying them back in the 2010s and early 2020s.

But that's what you get, you know, when the supply goes down, demand goes up.

♪ We are the largest all pinball arcade in the world.

That means I don't have any video games on the floor for the public to play or any other type.

It's strictly pinball.

We'll fluctuate between 136 and 144 in the arcade, depending on what event we have going on.

We've got over 300 pinball machines.

>> And so many machines that you have to really hunt down, you would think in different locations, are all under this one roof.

>> And hopefully by the 1st of May we'll expand and double our size again.

♪ We have people that travel for business, and they will look up, okay, where do I want to play pinball?

Lots of people from out of state, and I like inviting people from out of town.

I like it when they show up, because it's -- a lot of us locals wouldn't have the chance normally to play against them.

And when they show up, it's just awesome.

What I really like about doing the arcade is all the young kids that are coming in, these little knee-high kids that are just playing the daylights out of pinball.

And once they figure out they're really good and they can beat us old guys, they'll be getting involved in the tournaments.

We have a tournament every Monday night.

It starts at 7:00.

We average 24, 28 people.

It's been as high as 40.

We always play a four-strike, four player group on Monday nights.

And rarely on a Monday night will you play the same machine twice.

It keeps things different.

It keeps things hopping.

You never know who you will play.

So it's pretty good.

♪ >> It's more of a competition where we cheer each other on, and hey, I learned something new on a table.

I think when you are open to that and just feeding off each other's energy a little bit, it's really nice to have that family atmosphere.

>> I think the thing that I love most is all the memories that it brings back, growing up with pinball machines and arcades.

You think back to your childhood, and there's certain things that stick out.

>> This place is a hidden gem here in town, right here in Fort Wayne that really not a whole lot of people know about.

I didn't -- I lived here my whole life, and I had no idea this place even existed.

And I don't know if the regulars want to kind of keep it that way, but it's definitely something that we'll keep coming back to.

It's awesome.

>> ASHLEY: You know, Brandon, there are all of these pop culture references in those games.

If there were a pop culture reference to represent you in a game, what do you think it would be?

>> BRANDON: Oh, gosh.

It would probably have to be, like -- it sounds odd to have this inside of a pinball machine, but I do love the vintage arcade games.

I'm not so great at the pinball, but I do love the vintage arcade games.

>> ASHLEY: And congrats to Mike, Matt, and Lucas, who finished first, second, and third in the tournament we just watched.

You can get more info about upcoming tournaments and more at fortwaynepinball.com.

Up next, we're staying right here in Bloomington to meet a man with a magnificent collection of microphones.

Producer Adam Carroll has the story.

♪ >> We have at Russian Recording what pretty sure -- and a lot seem to confirm -- is one of the most complete and thorough Soviet microphone collections in the world.

♪ In the '90s, there was a brand called Oktava that was, like, the first affordable, but really great sounding microphone, and that's when I was in high school.

And I bought a couple, oh, that's cool.

I'm Russian.

These are Russian mics.

They sound great.

And then I kind of went down the rabbit hole.

It was like the early years of eBay.

And I started finding, like, these old vintage Soviet mics, some ribbon mics and I bought a couple.

They were so cheap back then.

I discovered, wow, these sound great.

And then I did my internship at Electrical Audio, and they have this -- a bunch of really cool vintage Soviet mics that I wasn't aware of, and I fell in love with them.

And it was just sort of a coincidence or serendipitous that I was also Russian, but these mics, regardless of my nationality or upbringing or my family, were just really -- like, they look like no other mic you've ever seen.

This really cool art deco style.

They are built really well, and the most important thing is they sounded just stunning.

>> The Soviet era Russian microphones were made for certain purposes in different factories manufactured by the government.

One factory made only microphones used for film or cinema and classical music.

Made to be the best, and all the money went into the product.

And as he learned about their history, he became obsessed with this microphone and he began seeking them out.

Soon he had collected 80 different Russian microphones from this era.

But his collection doesn't just feature classic Russian microphones or German microphones, but an American classic microphone that stretches back 100 years.

>> So RCA developed -- there are only 50 of these microphones, and they were commissioned and developed specifically for New York's Radio City Music Hall.

And those 50 mics lived in there until the '80s.

And then when they replaced the system, some of the mics got thrown away, and then some of them made it out.

And so we actually have one of them.

I think only 12 are known to exist.

And we have one RCA PB-31, which is almost 100 years old now.

And what is phenomenal about it is it sounds absolutely beautiful.

And it's just amazing that, you know, so many years later, the first ribbon microphone sounds better than, you know, most of the ribbon mics in our collection.

♪ >> The microphone collection is a very small piece of Mike's growing one-of-a-kind collection.

One of his prized possessions, one of the rarest items to be featured in the recording studio is the mixing console.

While most modern studios rely on computers and software to mix audio and effects, Russian Recording uses an analog mixing board that has been a Bloomington staple for many years before Mike got his hands on it.

Based in Bloomington's Echo Park Studios, owned by John Mellencamp's guitar player, the console has been used for many classic albums in the '80s, '90s and 2000s.

♪ >> When I was a student my first year, we did a tour of that studio, and I saw that console, the Sphere Eclipse, and thought, I don't know anything about this thing, but I want that console!

I didn't know how rare it was or the history behind it, but it looked just like -- like a weird combination of -- like, it was made out of Legos or something.

I don't know.

It just looked so cool.

And sure enough, in about 2010, I found out that Echo Park was selling their Sphere Eclipse console.

I, again, somehow convinced the bank to loan me money to buy this console.

I finally got it in my studio, and then I started learning a lot more about it.

The Sphere consoles are actually pretty legendary, and a lot of people don't know about them because so few were made.

I believe 52 were made.

There's 12 left in existence that are working in the world.

And ours, as it turns out, was one of the very first ones made, and it's the only Eclipse Type 2 ever made.

That's a really rare and important piece for us.

We also have a lot of rare vintage instruments.

So we've got a fully refurbished Fender Rhodes.

A Wurlizter piano, a lot of rare guitars.

If a band wants a Stratocaster sound, they probably have a Stratocaster.

If they want a Gibson Les Paul sound, they probably have a Gibson Les Paul.

So I have sort of weirder guitars, like, if they want to have something unique or different when they are recording.

Same with that, we have a lot of really rare and interesting effects units, a lot of vintage stuff.

The same with guitar pedals.

Like, it goes on and on.

So when a band comes here, they are not, like, wishing they had something.

Like, there's more than they could ever need.

♪ >> BRANDON: You know, hearing him talk about some of the microphones and the technology that was lost as various locations were upgraded, it makes me think about my own collection of various technologies, and years down the road, what are we going to find out was, like, actually really ahead of its time that we take for granted now?

>> ASHLEY: You can learn more about Mike's day job at russianrecording.com.

>> BRANDON: Up next, we're headed to Zionsville for a look around and around and around at the Antique Fan Museum.

Producer John Timm has the story.

♪ >> I get asked often what my favorite fan is, and I don't -- I can't say that I have a single one.

I have many favorites because of the circumstances, you know, the hunt, but I can't say that I have a single fan.

♪ I'm Tom Frampton.

I'm owner of Fanimation and curator of the Antique Fan Collectors Association Fan Museum.

All of us collectors, we've pulled our nicer pieces together for display, two floors of probably 3,000 fans on display of all types and shapes and colors and finishes.

We have water-powered fans, hand-powered fans, alcohol-powered fans, belt-driven fans.

I don't have an actual count on the number of fans here.

I probably personally have a couple of thousand, and there's another thousand or so on loan from other collectors.

♪ >> I got into fans when I was in high school.

Between my junior and senior year of high school, I went to work for an antique dealer.

One of the many things he worked on were some reproductions of some antique belt-driven fans.

Pulley-driven fans.

My first day on the job was to work on a reproduction of an antique fan.

One thing led to another, and we became the Casablanca Fan Company.

♪ It grew from just the two of us, to hundreds of us, and about ten years later, I ended up buying my department, which was the specialty end of the business.

I started Fanimation.

So I have always been around antique fans.

♪ I came in contact with the Antique Fan Collectors early 2000s, 2003, 2004.

And one thing led to another, and I now host the museum for the club.

Here we are many years later, and many more fans.

♪ In most any collecting, it's the thrill of the hunt, tracking a particular fan down, particular model down.

You are always looking.

I mean, the usual things, antique stores, auctions.

I've got a technique for looking for fans.

A good example in Nice, in France, the streets are narrow.

The doors are usually open, and a lot of people will go in and look up.

I look at the floor for shadows, just the shadows that a fan makes from a ceiling fan, and I can find a lot more fans that way.

♪ I've got fans from Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Singapore, just off the top of my head.

One of the interesting early stories, I was in Kenya to start a tour, and prior to the tour, we had gotten in the night before.

A political riot broke out, started at our hotel, spread into the park next door, and the tour operator sent a car and driver over just to get us out of town until things calmed down.

And the driver asked what did I want to do?

I asked, well, do you have a rail museum?

He said they do.

A really nice one.

So he took us over there, and a fantastic colonial era rail station, and in the rail yard were two sleeper cars, and there were 14 DC-powered wall-mounted fans in the compartments.

And I was able to buy two of them from the museum.

These days, you know, eBay sort of took some of the thrill out of the hunt.

♪ I don't know that we have -- necessarily have a favorite fan joke.

You know, you hear "fan-tastic" a lot.

We also make a hand fan, a giveaway here at the museum, and it says, you know, when your arm gets tired, give us a call.

♪ I like things mechanical, always have.

You know, you pick any collection, anything that's antique, the techniques and designs that were around 100 years ago, are, you know, truly amazing.

It's a rather limited group of interest in this, but those of us who are into it are really into it.

♪ When I walk in here, yeah, I'm often re-impressed again by the collection, and I come in here fairly often.

♪ Anybody interested in things of the past should visit the museum.

You will see things that you will recall, oh, my grandparents had this, or I used to have this particular fan.

People who don't have any idea what's in the museum often come in with pretty low expectations, but I haven't seen one person yet who wasn't blown away by what they find in here.

♪ >> ASHLEY: You know, he must have such an interesting perspective on travel.

You know, talking about going to these beautiful places, Nice, France, and looking at the ground to see if he can find shadows of fans.

>> BRANDON: You can learn more at fanimation.com/museum.

>> ASHLEY: And finally, a look at a true furniture icon, the Hoosier cabinet.

Producer Jason Pear has the story.

>> Today, almost everybody knows these cabinets as Hoosier cabinets.

♪ >> For women in the early 20th century, they were by any name a game changer.

>> It is perfectly legitimate and appropriate to say that the Hoosier cabinet revolutionized kitchens in America.

>> The early kitchen was basically a table the housewife worked on, the family ate at, the food preparation was done on the table.

The storage may have been a shelf, boxes on the floor, not really organized.

>> If you had a Hoosier cabinet, the idea was you could consolidate the kitchen into a much smaller space and save steps.

It was frequently referred to as a step saver, literally.

>> The marketing of Hoosier cabinets also utilized monikers such as kitchen piano, cupboard with brains, and scientific pantry.

It was ingenuous and effective.

>> We know of 65 other companies that made cabinets that I call Hoosier cabinets.

They are all across the country.

>> The largest, by far, was New Castle's Hoosier Manufacturing Company.

They are reported to have made more than 2 million cabinets by the 1920s, nearly 700 per day at their peak.

In the 1930s, built-in cabinets, more or less what you would see in kitchens today, started to become the norm.

>> Eventually that style of cabinet took over, but we were in business with this type of cabinet for approximately 40 years.

>> And although they were no longer being manufactured, they didn't disappear.

In fact, today, more than a century after they first hit the market, Hoosier cabinets are collected, restored, and often past down from generation to generation.

>> There are literally millions out there in kitchens, in garages and barns probably no longer being used, but they are still out there.

♪ >> At Coppes Commons in Nappanee, they are on display, in greater numbers than probably anywhere in the world.

It's an ideal location, because for decades, starting in the late 1800s, Hoosier cabinets were constructed in this very building.

>> We collect just about anything related to Hoosier cabinets.

The brand that we made, Dutch Kitchenettes, and if they are affordable and nice, we pick up our competition.

We have several cabinets in the corner of the room which I call the competition corner, and we have Hoosier, Sellers, Dearborn Desk Manufacturing Company, which is sort of an odd brand.

We get them everywhere.

You know, if they are unique and extremely interesting, we will pursue them.

But most of them came locally, within, I would say, 50-mile radius.

>> And on occasion, they just get lucky.

>> I was here showing people around the museum approximately four years ago, and a young couple came in and were talking to me, and said, oh, I have a cabinet.

It's in my storage unit.

My ears perked up.

And approximately three years later, I was able to purchase that cabinet after going and looking at it and realizing it was a very unique Dutch Kitchenette cabinet, made in 1904, which was one of our very earliest ones.

In original condition.

It is one of the highlights of this museum, and we got it basically by accident, following up on a lead.

If those people had not been here and told us about it, who knows where it would have gone.

♪ >> You can't possibly reduce the definition of the Hoosier cabinet's effectiveness to whether they actually saved steps, because it goes so far beyond that.

I mean, anything that gives you that much pleasure -- look, it's like Marie Kondo today.

Does it spark joy?

The Hoosier cabinet sparked a ton of joy for its users, partly because of the hype.

You hype it enough, you are clever enough in your marketing, and people will love it!

>> ASHLEY: The interesting thing about these cabinets is that I think we look back at them now and we say, oh, it's just a cabinet.

It holds things.

But, you know, the historical relevance at the time, they didn't have anything that held anything in kitchens.

>> BRANDON: Right, everything under the table.

There was no shelves.

There was no cabinets, no pantries, just a table.

And then to combine them all and make something that's so useful and we're so used to now, it's just built into our homes.

>> ASHLEY: It was really revolutionary.

>> BRANDON: You can learn more at the address on the screen.

>> ASHLEY: And as always, we encourage you to stay connected with us.

>> BRANDON: Just head over to JourneyIndiana.org.

There you can see full episodes, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram and suggest stories from your neck of the woods.

>> ASHLEY: We also have a map feature that allows you to see where we've been and to plan your own Indiana adventures.

>> BRANDON: And before we say good-bye, let's spend a bit more time with the crew at Wizards World.

♪ >> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by Columbus Visitors Center, celebrating everywhere art and unexpected architecture in Columbus, Indiana.

Tickets for guided tours and trip planning information at Columbus.in.us.

And by WTIU members.

Thank you!