By CINDY LADAGE
Illinois Correspondent

SUBLETTE, Ill. — March 14 was the 27th Farm Toy and Antique Tractor Show, which filled more than six downtown buildings in the hamlet of Sublette, with more than 300 tables of farm toys.
With the Minneapolis-Moline Collector’s Club coming to town, participants celebrated their annual show a few days early, starting March 12 and wrapping up that Saturday. The MMs remained on-site for the Sunday annual toy show.

Prairie gold lined the streets with many rare and unusual MM tractors. Bringing the show to Sublette was the brainchild of resident and MM enthusiast Wilbert Kerchner.

“He said we could do it,” Don Dinges said at the Saturday night meal that served as both the MM banquet and show dinner.
Kerchner was honored with a plaque before the banquet kicked off and Max Armstrong, famed farm broadcaster of Chicago WGN radio and RFD-TV, took the stage. Dinges shared a picture with Armstrong that had the crowd applauding – an enlargement of a MM tractor with Armstrong, a known International Harvester enthusiast, at the wheel.

“Computer generation,” Armstrong murmured jokingly as he took the stage. After the stories and laughter, he took a somber tone when warning those in agriculture that they need to stand up and educate the public on the truth behind ethanol and other issues.
Sunday dawned bright and sunny as visitors arrived from at least 15 states; Dinges said he knew of visitors from Texas, Colorado, Mississippi, Kentucky, Maryland, South Dakota and more.

This year an addition to the show, besides the expanded toy area at the Ellie Dinges Center, was a shuttle bus to take visitors from one building to another.

With a craft show, quilt show and toys and tractors to view, there was something for everyone.

Funds from the toy show go back into the community and are used for many projects, such as youth sports.

Sublette residents were not the only ones benefiting from the show. Forreston FFA & Alumni Tractor members sold raffle tickets for the restored 1939 Farmall H they recently completed. “Every year we restore a tractor for FFA,” Grant Kohlbauer, an 18-year-old senior at Forreston Valley High School, said.

The past few years the group has bought the tractor it restored, but this year it was blessed with a donated machine. “Gary Ludwig donated this Farmall H that we restored,” Kohlbauer explained. “We got it last fall.”

The H had sat in the barn for a number of years and Grant said it was a bit rough and had the front end broken off. The restored tractor looked great and the raffle will end in a drawing on Oct. 23, when one lucky ticket holder will win it.

This was not the only H tractor on-site. Though featuring MM, the show had representatives of all makes and models.

Toys were everywhere, too, in several farm toy layouts. Even Dinges has been working with his nephew on a layout, and this year they added windmills to represent the updated landscape of the Sublette area, now with a windmill farm.