The Biggest Number Plate Fan Ever?

Mark Adams looks up and down at the “license plate barn,” as it’s known, which serves as the reckoning point for directions in this tiny Spencer County community on Indiana 161, five miles north of Richland City.

“You just say, `Go to the place with all the auto tags, and make a left or a right or a whatever.’ Everybody knows,” says the 56-year-old man who has lived in Midway most of his life.

Louie “Doc” Magee, a former county commissioner, decorated the barn, his mechanics’ shed and two corn cribs with more than 8,000 unsold license plates, many dated 1961 and 1962.

“Doc was known as an off-the-wall individual who worked as a self-employed carpenter,” Adams says. “He had access to the plates that didn’t sell and used them to put Midway on the map. He banged them in with roofing nails.”