Arecent issue of Discover Vintage America shone a light on neon lights – their history, their function, the way they evoke a sense of yearning for an earlier age. They’re everywhere you turn in the bevy of roadside attractions along vast stretches of Route 66. And the inventor of the neon light himself came from Paris, France – known the world over as the City of Lights, of course.

Country Club Plaza lights

Well, here in Kansas City – the “Paris of the Plains,” as we’ve been called since the early 20th century – we’re known for our lights, too. Though they’re not of the neon variety, they’re a cherished part of our city and its culture. If you’re a fellow Kansas Citian, you know I’m talking about the Country Club Plaza lights at Christmastime.

The Plaza is an historic open-air shopping center in the heart of the city, its various buildings inspired by Spanish architecture and beautiful, historic fountains sprinkled throughout (we are, after all, known as ‘the City of Fountains’ as well). Some of Kansas City’s most beloved traditions have been born on the Plaza, none more highly anticipated than the annual Plaza Lighting Ceremony. Colorful lights are strung up on just about every building within the center’s boundaries, illuminating the shops and fountains for holiday revelers all season long.

100th anniversary

In 2025, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first time the lights appeared on the Plaza – a single strand above the doorway of a single merchant’s building. By the time of the first Christmas lights being hung in 1925, the Plaza itself had been welcoming Kansas Citians, since 1912, when it opened. It wasn’t actually until 1930 that the lighting became an actual publicized event.

“The Plaza Lights grew in scale and became a symbol of the holiday season in Kansas City,” according to an article published on kcyesterday.com. “Each Thanksgiving, nearly 100,000 people gather to witness the illumination ceremony, now considered one of the most significant lighting displays in the country.”

There was a brief hiccup in the tradition in 1973, during America’s energy crisis. President Richard Nixon encouraged Americans to conserve energy; thus, the annual lighting ceremony was cancelled. Later, Nixon might have insisted he was no crook, but that Christmas, he couldn’t deny that he was seen as the Grinch, putting the kibosh on holiday fun for many.

This month’s issue of Discover Vintage America will help conjure up some good, old-fashioned ghouls and spirits with our lead editorial on the history of the ghost story.

Fascination with the para-normal has been around for as long as Halloween itself, and even earlier. Specifically, the spiritualism fad that swept America and Europe in the Victorian Era convinced us that the living could communicate with the dead.

In the U.S., the Spiritualist movement began in 1848 in a village in New York, when two sisters claimed that they had communicated with a ghost of a man murdered in their house many years before they moved there. Just a few years later, in 1852, an American medium named Maria Hayden visited London, conducting table seances in which she conveyed “messages” from the dead. And what séance would be complete without a little noise from an other-worldly realm? Hayden also made sure to rap her fist underneath the table for an extra eerie effect.

“Fascination with Spiritualism and psychic phenomena reached a high point in Great Britain in the late 19th century,” according to an article on victorianweb.org. “A rich diversity of people during that period shared the fascination, formed organizations to pursue the subject system-atically, and patronized a spiritualist press that served to publicize the activities of spiritualist circles around the country.”

Even Britain’s Queen Victoria was hooked on the fad, paying to have seances conducted for several decades during her long reign.

Soon, journals targeting the Spiritualist community were being published seemingly everywhere while at the same time, mediums were perfecting their craft by incorporating table tipping, automatic writing, and levi-tation, according to victorianweb.org.

Mummy dearest

Spiritualism wasn’t the only spooky fad that captured the hearts and imaginations of those living in the 19th century. Egyptomania – a fascination with all things related to ancient Egypt – especially mummies.

In the 19th century – decades before Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922 – mummies weren’t viewed as artifacts to be revered and viewed in museums. No, for hundreds of years, in fact, mummies were viewed as possessing medicinal properties. Their flesh and bone often were ground up into powder and eaten to help people ingest the mummy’s powers.

When I was in elementary school in the late 1980s, a pretty girl in my class slipped me a note in the opening days of the school year.
“I really like your lunch box,” the hastily scribbled note read. This was useful information to possess, for now I knew the love for Ghostbusters that I shared with Audrey could have been the foundation of something special.

Though no young romance came of that brief, silent interaction, it makes me think of the lunch box not just as a useful tool that transports the midday meals of students and blue-collar workers alike; when you’re a kid, the type of lunch box you carried was almost a status symbol of sorts. Most of us carried metal lunch boxes bearing images from a popular TV show, film, or cartoon; today, the metal boxes have fallen out of favor, replaced by soft, insulated polyester models.

According to the Smithsonian Magazine, the lunch box’s origins can be traced to the 19th century, when working men had to protect their midday meal from the rigors of their everyday job. Smaller models would be made for the children who inevitably wanted to emulate their proud dad. The first commercially available lunchboxes in 1902 were metal and designed to look like a picnic basket.

Beloved pop culture characters began appearing on lunch boxes in the mid-1930s, with the first being the big guy himself, the face of the Disney empire – Mickey Mouse in 1935. After the invention of television and the creation of even more pop culture characters, lunch boxes – especially those manufactured by a company called Aladdin Industries — became the hot item to buy for the coming school year, festooned with icons such as The Lone Ranger, Batman, and Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

“Reaching the height of their popularity at the dawn of the television era, lunch box sales became barometers for what was hip in popular culture at any point in time,” according to the Smithsonian’s website.

The arrival of vinyl lunch boxes onto the school supply scene in the 1960s didn’t halt the ever-increasing popularity of metal versions. Metal boxes remained the standard until the 1980s, when plastic took off. The following decade, Aladdin would stop making lunch boxes, but Thermos picked up the slack.

Believe it or not, the Smithsonian itself boasts a sizable collection of vintage lunch boxes featuring characters like Barbie, Woody the Woodpecker and the Partridge Family, as well as TV shows like “Lost in Space.”

In this issue of Discover Vintage America, we examine the history and popularity of comic books, that highly entertaining form of ephemera that also has become highly collectible.

As we prepare to bid farewell to summer, our minds might travel back in time to those carefree afternoons when we felt the warmth of sunshine on our faces as we lounged outside with a glass of lemonade in one hand and a comic book in the other.

The appeal of comics seems as if it only continues to grow even as the medium has undergone major changes in recent decades. According to data supplied by Grand View Research, in 2024, the global market size for comic books stood at $9.38 billion. By 2030, that number is expected to swell to $17.52 billion.

“Comic books and graphic novels appeal to both children and adults, offering a unique storytelling experience that blends visuals with narrative,” the report notes. “Many readers prefer them over traditional novels as the combination of text and imagery enhances engagement and emotional connection. Graphic novels also serve as a form of escapism, allowing readers to immerse themselves in imaginative worlds beyond reality.”

In recent years, the explosion of North American children and adults consuming Japanese comic books called manga has breathed new life into the medium. Even those critics of manga might shrug and say, “Well, at least my child is reading,” while a secondary benefit has been a boost to Japan’s tourism industry as manga fans pour in from other countries with perhaps a romanticized version of the country and its culture in their minds. And vintage comic book heroes are returning to the pages of comics, this time in digital form – companies and websites like gocomics.com allow fans to read the latest issues with a subscription. It’s given me the chance to meet my favorite characters like Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon all over again.

Like all other forms of media, this popularity didn’t always exist. Quite the opposite, in fact. In the 1950s, at the height of the Red Scare, German-American psychiatrist Dr. Frederic Wertham expressed a deep concern about the effects of violence in mass media. His most notable published book on the subject was titled “Seduction of the Innocent.” The book, published in 1954, made the argument that comic books were to blame for juvenile delinquency due to its excessive portrayal of violence; Wertham also claimed that hidden sexual themes could be found in comics. To bolster his claims, Wertham included comic panels he found especially offensive.

When I was a young boy, my parents would always drive by an old farmhouse on the way out of town. Without fail, no matter the time of day, on the porch would be sitting an elderly couple, waving at the cars driving by. It was a comforting, heartwarming sight, seeing two people making others’ day brighter by offering a simple greeting from their porch. You could always count on them being there.
Several years ago, though, the porch sat empty. I assumed the kindly couple had passed on. A short time later, the house was demolished, and with it, a cherished time when people took life at a slower pace and paused to appreciate the smaller gestures of goodwill that people like them provided.

These days, porches remain spaces where one can relax and watch life unfold; now, however, the gesture of greeting comes in the form of small gatherings called “porchfests.” A porchfest is a small music festival, with each musical artist or group playing on the front porch of homes.

They can be found in communities both large and small, and they’re a somewhat recent phenomenon, having begun in Ithaca, NY, in 2007. More than simply a music festival, they were begun in order to gather local musicians and local residents of a particular city and create a sense of community.

If you live in one of the neighborhoods in which a porchfest takes place, you may volunteer your porch as a “stage” of sorts for a musician or group. Signs are posted in front of your porch with the name of the artist and the time(s) at which they will perform. Feel free to bring a lawn chair and soak up a variety of musical genres – you’ll find nearly every one, from jazz and blues to rock and R&B.

Here in our coverage area, you can find at least one porchfest in just about every state in which you can find this publication. In Kansas, Atchison hosts such an event at the start of each summer; Missouri has Kansas City and Joplin, while Omaha, NE, hosts its own porchfest as well.