This March 18-19 was the 35th year for the Sublette Toy Show, which began in 1983 with a small group of collectors.

 

The show took off that first year with a crowd of 600 visitors. While that seemed like a large crowd at the time, today the average attendance is 7,000.

 

The Sublette Farm Toy show offers an array of things to see and do and coincides with National Agriculture Week. Visitors could easily celebrate both because the streets were filled with farm tractors and six buildings were filled with farm toys.

 

Ag Week has been celebrated since 1973, just a decade before the Sublette show began, and honors more than 21 million men and women responsible for producing food and fiber. Sublette is in an agricultural area and the town has been tied to agriculture since it was first settled in the 1830s.

 

Along with toys and tractors, the show also has a variety of trucks. Since International Harvester was the featured brand this year, visitors spied a couple of IH Scouts. One truck at this show was a rolling museum owned by Jerry Shaw. His display is a tribute to his late father, George B. Shaw.

 

The trailer was pulled by an International tractor and although not all of the trucks in George’s trucking history were IH, the brand weighed heavily in his past. “Early on, Dad was the manager of Lewis Masear Trucking Company, “ Jerry said. “Dad bought the business in December of 1950, for $11,900.”

 

This purchase included the name of the company, and all of the equipment. “There were no lawyers, just a handshake and this paper,” he explained,pointing to the business agreement the two longtime friends had signed.

 

The purchase was for $250 down and $250 due at the first of the month for 47 months. Born in Denver, Colo., George grew up in Leland, Ill., a town not far from Mendota and Sublette. The business itself was conducted out of Somonauk. Over the years George had Dodge,  Ford, Chevy, GMC and, of course, International Trucks. He ordered a new Diamond T532 and a 40-foot trailer duringhis working years, at the cost of just under $10,000.

 

Jerry’s was just one of the beautiful trucks on display at this annual show. One of the highlights was the Saturday night banquet. Max Armstrong was the speaker and provided a fun and interesting presentation about today’s agriculture and stories from the road.

 

Max is a farm broadcaster who began broadcasting at the age of 11 when he hung an antenna from wire from his rural Indiana bedroom window to a pole behind the chicken coop. He has recently been named president of the Farm Broadcasters Assoc. During the Saturday night banquet, several scholarships to 4-H and FFA members were handed out, and one was a scholarship in Max’s name.

  

His IH tractor was on display at the show, which made sense for the featured brand. Every year at Sublette there is a featured farm toy, and this year that toy was a Farmall Model 806 tractor.

  

The funds from the tractors and otheritems sold go back into the community, some of which becomes funding for the scholarships, and money is also donated to local schools, churches and other charities. The Sublette Toy show has a group of 150-200 volunteers who help bring this annual show together.

 

Mark your calendars for the 2018 show – always held the third weekend in March, this is a must-attend for toy collectors all over northern Illinois, and beyond.

 

Readers with questions or comments for Cindy Ladage may write to her in care of this publication. Learn more of Cindy’s finds and travel in her blog, “Traveling Adventures of a Farm Girl,”