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Tennessee man wins contest on toy display

<b>By CINDY LADAGE<br>
Illinois Correspondent</b></p><p>

ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Every year there is a farm layout and model contest that is part of the Gateway Farm Toy Show. At this year’s event during the first weekend in February, a Jackson, Tenn. native braved the snowy weather and traveled to St. Louis with his John Deere disk display.<br>
This contractor builds disks as a way to relax. He doesn’t sell his works, but only builds them for the enjoyment he receives from them.<br>
Each year, Darryl comes to the Gateway Farm Toy show and brings his scratch-built disks and sets up in one of the rooms.
Last year he decided the disks were not easy enough to see, so he set out to build a wooden display with a shelf for each JD implement and enter his disks in the layout contest.<br>
On each shelf the implement sat on a mirror, and behind the implement was a diagram or picture of the piece of equipment to compare to the model. The time and trouble paid off. Darryl and his nephew, Dusty, won first place in the adult layout contest.
Darryl creates his JD implements out of brass. He then paints them but this is a labor intensive effort. Once the brass disk is complete, Darryl said, he has to take it apart piece by piece, prime it and then paint each part individually then rebuild it.<br>
He said even though he built them, “Sometimes it is hard to remember what went where.”<br>
Dusty has only been enamored with the scratch built hobby recently. Darryl is thrilled to have the younger generation involved in what is often a more mature generations hobby.<br>
For the winning display, Dustin contributed a John Deere 235 centerfold disk like Darryl’s father used on the farm and an 8-row Do Better which has a combination scratcher, rolling chopper and a hollow leveling board.<br>
Dustin’s interest came about because, “Like my uncle, I farmed and grew up with granddaddy farming. He used a JD 235 that he pulled.”<br>
For this young man being part of a winning duo at the Gateway Farm Toy Show was just part of the joy for 2008. He just found out that he and his wife Breanna are going to be parents.
Breanna has encouraged him in the hobby.<br>
“My wife helps me work in the garage,” Dustin said. “I plan to build a 230 yellow gang disk like granddaddy had.”<br>
For Darryl, he has been building disks since 2005 after seeing toys at the 2004 show. Growing up on a farm, Darryl began building brass disks like he used on the farm in his youth.<br>
“I built two disks my dad had farmed with, a John Deere 230 disk and a John Deere 220 Center-Fold Power-Flex disk,” Darryl said. “Being a contractor I use a lot of brass in plumbing, and it is the same material.”<br>
Darryl’s father has since passed away, but he was able to provide insight into the models.<br>
“Dad had one just like it and wore his clean out,” he explained.
Through the years Darryl has built many disks, but his display favorite disk is the JD 220 like the one his father used.
He added, “I can relate to it.”<br>
After building the first two disks, Darryl created a John Deere 637 disk that he said, “looked bad and flashy.”<br>
All in all Darryl said he has built a JD 1630 disk, a 220, 230, 970 fold up with a roller-harrow, a 950 roller harrow, a 340 offset disk, a 637 wing fold disk, and a 200 seed bed finisher.<br>
To build his disks, both Darryl and Dusty use either pictures or take measurement from the machines themselves.<br>
What is next for Darryl?<br>
“I hope to build a one-row JD cotton picker mounted on a 530 JD,” he said. “There was one around home in the weeds not far from the farm.”<br>
Seeing the visitors’ eyes light up when looking at their winning display was what it was all about for Darryl and Dustin Cox.
Darryl summed it all up, “After all the work, the people’s appreciation makes it worthwhile when they tell you it is top notch work.”

2/27/2008