Toy Tractors and Other Sacred Things

A story about dads, diecast, and the fragile glue that holds it all together.

TL;DR: I went to a farm toy show with my dad and realized these miniature tractors aren't just toys—they're time machines connecting generations through plastic, die-cast, and unspoken forgiveness.

Farm toy show tomorrow at the Alerus.

Yeah? Going?

Dad’s texts are always like that—short, clipped, no fluff. A man economical with his digital words. Pure economy. Zero emoji.

Time?

10:30 work?

No. I’m already in town. I wanna be there when it opens.

You gotta hand it to the man. He knows what he wants.

The Greater Grand Forks Farm Toy Show has never been a marquee event. For most folks, it’s a 20-minute stroll through childhood memories and overpriced collectibles.

But for people like us—the lifers, the diecast disciples—it’s holy ground.

The moment you walk in, the smell of popcorn hits you like stepping on frozen gravel in your socks. You clock the roller dogs spinning under sad lights, already calculating the heartburn risk. You lose. You grab one anyway.

Then you pause. Take it all in.

People, young and old, buzzing around tables of Ertl glory. (Ertl—if you never stepped on a toy tractor barefoot—is the company behind nearly every great farm toy since 1959.) Fathers pointing to the first tractor they ever drove. Sons clutching 1:64 scale sprayers like holy relics. Carpet farming’s greatest underground tradition is in full swing.

It’s loud. It’s weird. It’s beautiful.

And if you squint, it’s a time machine.

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Redemption in a Plastic Clamshell

My dad probably still holds it against me that I broke the hitch on our custom-made John Deere beet harvester—1:64th scale.

We had an Arts Way, too—the classic blue-and-white Heath version—collector-grade.

Snapped that one clean off, too.

Couldn’t help it, Dad. It was a wet fall. Try getting the crop off with one good wheel and a gravity wagon from 1987. Shit happens.

So here I am, back at the Farm Toy Show with my dad—the Ertl whisperer, the man who thinks opening a toy box is a crime against humanity.

Maybe I’ll find a replacement harvester.

Perhaps I’ll finally earn forgiveness.

Or maybe I’ll drop $300 on a sprayer I don’t need and traumatize him all over again.

Either way, I know what I’m walking into: grown men carpet farming like it’s the Super Bowl of pretend agriculture.

Small boys with big dreams.

Big men with small tractors.

And somewhere in that sea of Ertl, redemption might be hiding in a plastic clamshell.

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Hot damn—things have changed since I last broke a hitch.

3D printing changed the game. Back then, farm toys had to survive the bedroom floor—no fancy setups—just carpet and raw imagination. Now, these kids show up with full-blown ops: grain bins with working augers, Behlen quonsets where tiny farmers change oil, and livestock that doesn’t lose a leg the second you touch it.

One kid had poultry smaller than rice grains. Farm cats. Commodity sheds. The works.

These kids have no idea what it was like to fill in all the gaps Ertl never bothered to manufacture. Today, you can buy a scale-model beet lifter with more detail than the real thing.

If this stuff existed when I was a kid, I might’ve turned out differently.

Maybe a plastic ag engineer.

Maybe a better man.

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Dad’s still parked at the first table. It’s been 27 minutes.

He’s bartering like it’s 1982.

Once he sees that 16V-747 Big Bud, he’s going to lose his mind.

I’m supposed to be in Minot for my son’s hockey game in nine hours. At this rate, I might make it in time for next season.

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This show has exploded. Three years ago? 60 tables. Today? 107—and they had to turn away 20 more thanks to the damn fire code. Twenty thousand square feet couldn’t contain it. They’re expanding to 25,000 next year.

It’s wild.

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The hot dogs are terrible—but if you’re gonna do something godawful to your digestive system, do it with conviction.

The energy is hot. The boxes are sacred. The bartering is biblical.

Pray for my wallet.

And yeah—I’m still on the hunt for a mint-condition ArtsWay beet harvester, hoping to finally make amends.

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Diecast Devotion and Chrome Confessions

Somewhere between the roller dogs and the smell of cold popcorn, Sheri’s crouched low with her camera—hunting angles like a National Geographic photographer embedded in the wilds of Ertl Nation. She gets it. Maybe more than most. Capturing legacy in 1:64 scale, one frame at a time.

I wander off, letting Dad work his magic at the tables. That’s when I start talking to this guy about his mint-condition 7520 John Deere four-wheel drive—more intricate detail than anything I’ve ever seen in 1:16 scale, right down to the chrome stack. I warn Mike from Mike’s resTOYration (very clever) that it’s risky flaunting chrome that close to the entrance with a toy hound like my dad on the prowl.

Mike grins and flips into storytelling mode, giving me the backstory on the 7520 and how it wasn’t always this clean—not until he worked his magic on it.

“You mean, you restored all these?”

My mind goes all bendy as I look down forty feet of tables lined with 1:16 scale John Deeres, Case (both pre-and post-International Harvester merger), and Versatile iron.

Just then, a whiff of salt from a pretzel dusts the air, and my eyes lock onto a late-’70s Case International 2+2—that goofy red tractor with the long beak, the one expected to win the 4WD tractor wars of its time. Except this one isn’t red. It’s construction yellow—something you’d expect to see parked under a bridge outside the Twin Cities.

Mike lets out a confident chuckle, clearly enjoying the setup for a line he’s delivered a few times before.

“They painted those special for the city of Chicago and O’Hare Airport. But it wasn’t a factory job. If you’ve ever seen one, the interior’s still red. They just sprayed this scalloped potato color over the top and shipped ’em out. Not many people know this.”

“You’re not wrong,” I tell him.

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The Combine That Came Home

Somehow, the conversation drifts from tractors to memories. We started trading stories about the first toys we ever had—the ones that meant something. That’s when I feel it: that goosebumpy, butterfly-stirring feeling in my gut. The one that says, Hey, pay attention. The muse is tapping my shoulder again, whispering, Forget the hot dogs. This guy’s the real deal.

Mike tells me his first toy was a 6600 John Deere combine—brought home by his dad from the local implement dealer. He and his brother played the hell out of it. Solid rig. Built like they meant it. Harvested a mountain of carpet crops over the years.

A few years later, he and his dad were at the Oslo Toy Show—the last one they ever had there. Mike traded the 6600 off for some other tractor. Said it wasn’t worth it—one of those “what the hell was I thinking” trades.

Ten years pass.

He’s at a show in Fargo—or somewhere like it—and spots the same guy he made the trade with. Long shot, but Mike asks: “Hey, you think you still have that combine?”

“Yeah… think I do.”

The guy tags in a booth babysitter and heads out to his sawed-off pickup box trailer parked out front, mission in his eyes. He digs through the dusty relics for a bit, then reappears holding the 6600.

Mike flips it over. Underneath, right where it always was, are his initials—carved in by his dad—just a tiny scratch of permanence.

Ten more years go by.

Mike’s at another show. Starts thinking about that old toy guy—wonders if he might see him again. Sure enough, there he is. This time, in a wheelchair. Stroke survivor. Doesn’t look great.

Mike walks up, unsure if he’ll remember.

The guy lifts a finger and says, “Don’t you go trading off that combine again.”

Three weeks later, Mike’s wife finds the obituary in the paper.

By then, my arms are goosebumped and my heart’s all tangled up. Because stories like that? They’re not really about toys. They’re about connection. And it’s stories like that—the quiet, perfect kind—that remind me why I write at all.

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More Than Toys

That’s when it hit me.

This isn’t about toys.

It’s about time. Memory. Connection.

And how damn fragile it all is.

One day, you’re pretending to harvest beets with your dad’s old toy tractor.

The next, you’re the dad—hoping your own kids will remember how that felt.

I bet I could stop twenty farm kids on the street, and twenty-one of them could still tell you their first or favorite toy. I was the kid who couldn’t leave a John Deere dealership without something diecast in hand—a spoiled brat, maybe. But selling my dad on a new Ertl was the easiest pitch I ever made. He’s got the fever, too. Always has.

Because those little toys? They carry weight.

They’re more than plastic.

They’re a straight line back to our dads, our first dreams, and that version of ourselves we sometimes lose sight of.

They remind us what mattered—before things got complicated.

I didn’t find the beet harvester. But I found something better.

A reason we keep coming to places like this.

A reason we hold on.

A reminder of who we are—and how easy it is to forget—until some old guy in a folding chair points to a toy box full of ghosts and tells you a story you didn’t know you needed.

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Forgiveness in a Vintage Combine

Dad silently walked up and handed me a 7721 pull-type John Deere combine—the same one he had when I was a kid.

The one I remember my mom running.

The same one I nearly killed a John Deere mechanic in—he was inside the machine, and I was in the cab, fiddling with the buttons like a dumbass.

I walked out holding that combine—and an overpriced hot dog.

Dad said nothing. Just nodded.

Forgiveness granted.

At least until I break another hitch.

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📸 Photos by Sheri Oteri—keeper of moments, patron saint of diecast documentation, and the only person who could make a toy tractor show look like high art.

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If this hit you in the feels—or reminded you of your dad, your favorite tractor, or that one carpet farm that never quite yielded right—consider subscribing or sharing. This place grows by word of mouth, and I’d be honored to have you along for the ride.