Tables are turned for me today. Usually I have to leave Iola, Wis., to attend a coin show. This time, the show is coming to me.

Numismatists of Wisconsin gather just a few yards from the Krause building here for their annual convention.

There are 55 dealer tables, so it is a fairly cozy show, which gives me the opportunity to have some nice conversations with show attendees.

I will not be rushing off to cover a board meeting or perform some other must-do task. I simply can be a part of the show and watch the public come in at 1 o’clock this afternoon.

In addition to not traveling, show hours at 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. today and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. tomorrow recognize the habits of the area. We will not see an empty bourse floor Sunday morning while many people are in church. There simply will be no Sunday hours.

This pattern is not something that I am making up, either, nor is it something unique to coin shows. We have an annual Old Car Show in Iola that attracts 140,000 people over the course of four days. This year the dates are July 10-13.

I have been a volunteer worker at the car shows for the Lions Club and before that the Jaycees since 1978.

In recent years, the migration away from Sunday hours is very clear. It is so clear that no admission fee is charged on Sunday to encourage a few extra people to visit and to prevent any sense that those who do visit are not getting their money’s worth.

The heart of the car show is now Thursday through Saturday, which is very much like a coin show.

If you can make it, come to Iola for the coin show and the car show. Admission to the coin show is free.

I have not purchased any First Spouse gold coins. The sixth one, which honors Louisa Adams, comes up for sale May 29 and I won’t buy that one either.

I decided at the beginning that putting together a set of half-ounce gold coins was going to require more money than I was willing to put into it.

However, that does not mean the series has not been beneficial to me – or could be.

I bought a book on my last vacation. It is called “Ladies of Liberty” and it is written by Cokie Roberts, a television reporter and personality.

It is a book that I doubt I would ever have picked up were it not for the existence of the First Spouse series. Vacations being vacations, I did not get very far into the book.

The book is not solely about First Ladies, but they feature prominently among the gallery of personalities that helped establish the norms and practices of the early days of our republic.

My start got me through Abigail Adams. I will finish it, but I am not quite certain when.

History is important and Robert’s chosen topic helps the reader to remember that the Founding Fathers were not sitting out on a mountainside somewhere gazing down on us mere mortals, but were husbands and fathers doing their best for their families and their country with a lot of help from their wives.

Perhaps it was fate that would have me stuck at Abigail Adams. I wrote a column last year in Numismatic News taking a poke at her husband, John Adams. I received a letter of rebuke from Brad Karoleff who urged me to read the David McCullough biography. I did so.

That topic came up again at the Numismatic News table during the Central States convention last month in Chicago when another reader wanted to dispute my take on John Adams.

Even though he disagreed with me, I take it as a compliment that almost a year after I wrote something, he was still treating it as a current event.

Such is the power of our history. Such is the power of a coin series that makes us think about our history.