This Sunday, September 20, Terre Haute, Indiana throws its 38th annual Old Fashion Day — a free, five-hour event at Collett Park built around the radical idea of stepping away from your phone. The pitch comes straight from the parks department: craft vendors, live music, a car show, wagon rides and free ham and beans, from noon to 5 p.m. According to Yahoo, parks superintendent Kilie Smith frames the whole thing as a break from screens. "We need an experience where we can unplug and just be with our community," she said.
That framing is why a small-town park festival belongs on a beauty-and-culture site. The event is essentially a live demonstration of the analog ritual — the thing our feeds keep trying to sell back to us as "slow beauty" and "digital detox." If you are going, or want to borrow the idea for your own Sunday, here is how to actually do it.
Old-fashioned routines show up everywhere once you start looking for them — in hair oiling's climb from kitchen ritual to cult step, in the return of the barbershop shave, in the way a plain bar of soap suddenly photographs well. The impulse is the same one Smith is naming: an afternoon that does not require a charger. We covered a connected angle in How Hair Oiling Went From Kitchen Ritual To Cult Step.
What is actually happening at Old Fashion Day?
The confirmed lineup, per the event's coverage: craft vendors, live music, a car show, wagon rides, food vendors, and free ham and beans. Admission is free. It runs noon to 5 p.m. at Collett Park, at the corner of Maple Avenue and 7th Street in Terre Haute. That is the whole verified program — no headline act, no app, no schedule to sync. Plan around wandering, not around a timetable.
How do you plan a phone-light afternoon?
Smith's quote gives you the goal: "a break from our technology to have some fun outside." A few practical moves that keep the day honest without going full hermit:
- Decide your one phone moment. Screenshot the address — Maple Avenue and 7th Street — before you leave, then pocket the phone. One check-in photo at the car show is a souvenir; forty is a scroll.
- Bring a real camera or nothing. If the point is unplugging, an old point-and-shoot does the job with fewer temptations in your pocket.
- Eat what the event serves. The free ham and beans are the house specialty by definition. Skipping them to order delivery defeats the assignment.
- Go with people, not a group chat. Wagon rides and a five-hour window reward conversation. Save the recap for Monday.
What should you wear for five hours outside in September?
Keep it simple and sun-aware. An outdoor noon-to-5 slot in Indiana September means real sun exposure, so a hat and sunscreen are the practical baseline — and if you are reapplying, it helps to know what chemical versus physical sunscreen actually changes before you pick a bottle. Flat shoes for grass and gravel, layers for the late-afternoon cool-down, and nothing you would mourn if a wagon ride or a bean spill got to it. Vintage-leaning dressing is optional; comfort is not. Readers following this should also see Chemical vs physical sunscreen: what the difference actually changes.
Can you borrow the ritual if you cannot get to Terre Haute?
Yes — the event's structure is the template, not the location. Smith said the event's importance "becomes more and more poignant every year as we need a break from our technology to have some fun outside." Build your own version from the same parts:
- Fix a window. Five hours, one afternoon, decided in advance. A boundary is what makes it a ritual instead of an errand.
- Pick a park or a street with vendors. Craft stalls, a car show, live music — the mix matters because it gives your hands and eyes something analog to do.
- Add one shared meal. A free community dish or a potluck does the social work a group chat cannot.
- Leave the feed at home. The whole premise only works if the phone stays pocketed.
For the cultural reading: the aesthetic outlived the platforms that sold it. A 38-year-old park festival was doing "offline core" before it had a name — and it charges no admission for the vibe.
Why does a small town fair matter to beauty culture?
Because the industry keeps packaging what events like this give away. The unplugged afternoon, the craft object made by hand, the no-mirror social hour — these are the raw materials behind half the wellness marketing in your feed. A community day like Old Fashion Day is the unbranded original, and Smith's framing makes the comparison explicit: the product is the break itself, not anything you buy at it. If your beauty routine has started to feel like another screen, an afternoon of wagon rides and ham and beans is the cheapest reset on the market.
What the evidence establishes: a free, 38-year-running community event this Sunday in Terre Haute, built explicitly around unplugging, with a parks superintendent making the case out loud. What it does not establish: attendance figures, weather, or how the day will feel. For that, bring a hat, a friend, and a low battery.
