It only seems fitting that one of my final assignments for The Journal Gazette is covering an age-old festival in northeast Indiana with a (hopefully) fresh perspective.

For the tragically unitiated, the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Festival centers on a small city 20 miles north of Fort Wayne, predictably called Auburn and less predictably the self-proclaimed classic car capital of the world.

Like Fort Wayne’s Three Rivers Festival, which I covered extensively earlier this summer, the ACD Festival has been around for a couple hundred years — give or take — and it’s awfully easy to gravitate toward the same story angles that have been rehashed and regurgitated and recycled and re-whatevered in past articles. That’s not to valiantly declare I avoided all pratfalls of festival reporting this weekend, but here’s a few prouder moments:

Never mind the cars, they want garage sales (The Journal Gazette; Sept. 4, 2011)

History in the streets in Auburn (The Journal Gazette; Sept. 4, 2011)

ACD Notebook: Coke and a smile at flea market (The Journal Gazette; Sept. 5, 2011)