This was to be my last major event I'd cover with my camera in the U.S. before permanently moving to Thailand one month later.  Fittingly, Nudes-A-Poppin's annual nude outdoor beauty pageant is also what I consider to be the finest single adult event in the country.  Over 100 naked female entertainers  (and a big handful of male performers as well) come to a little whistle stop of a town called Roselawn Indiana each year to compete for more than thirty titles such as Miss Nude Galaxy, Miss Nude Entertainer of the Year, Best Buns, Best Breasts, Miss Nude Petite North America, Rising Star, Miss Nude Go-Go, Most Beautiful Natural Body, etc.    The most prestigious trophies are nearly six feet tall.  But no matter what trophy a girl wins, her prize is highly esteemed among the people in the know in the Adult Entertainment Industry.

Consider this--"Where else can a girl compete where she will be watched by 5,000 spectators who are willing to pay $50.00 for the privilege?  Let's put this in perspective.  If you go to many other pageants such as Miss Texas or Miss Kansas, expect to find anywhere from 200 to 600 spectators watching the event which is in almost all cases held indoors.  At Nudes-A-Poppin the audience is usually at least  ten times as large.  So if you are an entertainer wanting to become known, where do you want to go?

Also bear in mind that one normally pays an entry fee to be in most of these other pageants whereas at Nudes-A-Poppin there is none.  And who is going to have the best chance at winning--the local girls when the judges are typically chosen from the local area and the audience being local is going to tend to cheer the loudest for the local dancer or the entertainer who's just traveled hundreds of miles to compete from another state?

And which pageant is going to attract the most photographers and magazine writers from all over the U.S.?  It's a no-brainer.  Obviously the biggest and most highly regarded competition is going to draw the most industry professionals who can get a girl into a magazine or prominent web site.   And Nudes-A-Poppin which is held at the Ponderosa Sun Club, a nudist retreat situated on 80 acres of Indiana farmland is simply the biggest and best there is.  By a country mile. 

And speaking of farmland and corn patches, it is because Nudes-A-Poppin is held out in the hinterlands of country America that gives the Nudes-A-Poppin its unique charm that no other adult event can begin to match.  Just imagine the spectacle of over a hundred nude entertainers along with a number of nudists running around what had formerly been an Indiana corn field.  There are walls around the Ponderosa Sun Club.  And inside these walls is a large well appointed swimming pool where one has to swim fully nude with no exceptions.   Yet just outside these walls is small town and rural America with their traditional values and typical Midwestern friendliness. 

Yet that Midwestern charm has firmly entrenched itself into the psyches of the people running the entire Nudes-A-Poppin spectacle.  For the most part the people running the big show here are nudists from the  Midwest.  Yet they come here to get away from it all.  Many are from the Chicago area which is only sixty miles away or from Metropolitan Indianapolis.  Even the men and women wearing the yellow security t shirts are  typical warm and open  Midwesterners.

The Nudes-A-Poppin pageant is held on Saturday and Sunday on the third weekend of July.  But the actual competitions are held on a long outdoor stage next to the pool on Sunday whereas Saturday is reserved for photo shoots and outdoor games for the entertainers.  Its usually hot on that weekend, and the two days of the pageant seem to float along dreamily.

 I stay at the Holiday Inn Express just off I-65 near Rensselaer.  The Holiday Inn is almost out in the country roughly twenty miles from Roselawn.   Being a photographer I have to get up early.  And on Sunday early means painfully early--something like 5:00 a.m. since I have to be at the signup building over at Ponderosa ready to have entertainers sign my releases at 7:00 a.m.    During the past years I've driven my Mazda Miata Sports car with its top down in the early morning chill, usually accompanied by my pal and sidekick Mike Skymaster.   At the Holiday Inn we normally meet several of the entertainers.  Some of them are feature entertainers we already know.  Others are house dancers, usually girls we have never met before.

On Saturday the photo shoots are usually finished by 1:00 p.m. or so.  This gives most  of us a lot of time on our hands.   Mike and I often wind up having lunch with whomever.  Often the whomever includes entertainers who will compete the next day.  Sometimes we bring a girl or two back to the Holiday Inn for photo shoots for magazines I have written for.   Which is really no big deal.  One thing just flows to another out in those Indiana cornfields and everyone seems just so accommodating.

The girls are here to get noticed and I can help them get noticed through my writing and photography.  Whereas I have a huge smorgasbord of beautiful models to choose from so it's a win-win situation for everybody.

*******

But this year's Nudes-A-Poppin festival somehow seems so different to me.  For one thing, Mike Skymaster cannot be with me this year.  And I no longer have a Mazda roadster to drive around in.  Just my 4 wheel drive pickup since I've already sold the sports car since I will have no use for it in Thailand.  And I won't even have the pickup much longer, or a home in the United States. 

Sunday's festivities begin with S.P.E.W. Wrestling and my pal Big Daddy who is General Manager over at the Iowa Playhouse is Mcing that.  S.P.E.W. stands for Sexy Professional Exotic Wrestling and this is the first year that its two founders, Big Daddy and Big Mike, have brought it to Nudes-A-Poppin.  This includes the ring itself along with the female wrestlers who are from the Iowa Playhouse club.  Big Daddy and Big Mike have been holding S.P.E.W. wrestling matches over several different states.  Any club that is interested can pay a set fee and for that fee get ten entertainers from Iowa Playhouse and the Lumberyard to work in their club for two nights along with putting on one of the most entertaining spectacles ever to be exhibited in a strip club.  When the girls are not wrestling they are free to help work the crowd which gives the hosting club a huge shot in the arm of fresh new faces. 

But for S.P.E.W.s debut here at Nudes-A-Poppin there is to be just one match whereas typically there are five or six, which is normally an all evening affair.  

Big Daddy's in his prime here at Nudes-A-Poppin.  Ex professional television wrestler and ex professional night club D.J., Big Daddy's far from your stereotypical club manager or club owner, since he's simply one of the most entertaining D.J's you will ever find anywhere. 

While the wrestling is going on, Big Mike, Big Daddy's partner in crime stands close by.  I am saddened to think that I won't be seeing much of Big Mike anymore, who's become another of my good buddies in the adult entertainment world I had become so much a part of.  Big Daddy will be joining me in Thailand as often as he can.  Other than him, my life will soon change because I won't be seeing much of any of them any more. 

At the conclusion of the wrestling, the actual competitions for titles begins.  Natasha Stone is here and Regan Anthony, both feature entertainers I've shot hundreds of pictures of over the past several years.   Kloey Love is here too and so is Darien Ross and Naomi Knight as is Kelly Taylor, not to mention Lauren Kaine.  I know practically all the features most of whom I've written magazine articles about.  But one feature entertainer I've never even seen before is Morgan Summers from Australia. 

I think Morgan is one of the most beautiful girls here and find her stage performance to be utterly breathtaking.  I'd give her my number one prize in a heart beat, but she winds up only getting a third place finish in the Miss Feature Entertainer of North America category.

I believe the judges are doing about as good a job as humanly possible.  There's more than a dozen of them, and they seem to be deadly serious about how they are filling out their scorecards. 

But I must leave early.  I have to go to Chicago where I need to spend three days getting my 1 year visa to Thailand lined out with the Thai Consulate there.  And Big Daddy's got a flight to catch back to Omaha, Nebraska and I'm his ride to Midway Airport.  The two of us leave without being able to catch the supper with all the entertainers and other adult professionals outdoors next to the signup building.  We can't stay even long enough to see who the winners are or to photograph them with their trophies.

In a few months Big Daddy will be flying out to join me in Thailand where the two of us will continue our misadventures in the adult entertainment arena, but it won't be the same arena anymore since it will be in the mysterious world of the Orient.  All of which is so symbolic for here I am driving to Chicago so that I can get my Visa to stay in a different world with an unknown future.  And I had just left behind--in fact, had even left early from what I had come to know so well, and what I regard as the finest single adult entertainment event in the U.S. today.