Members came from Oklahoma, Nebraska, North Dakota, Tennessee, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Texas, South Dakota, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Virginia, and Missouri. A check of the door prize tickets revealed that spectators came from those states and Pennsylvania and New York as well!

We had a wider variety of brands, models, and colors than I have ever seen before, but as always, John Deere was very well represented, and in lots of colors. Todd Poach and Dave Tetlie brought some beautifully restored patios from Minnesota. Jack and Donna Yearwood, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin had a colorful display which included their pink John Deere 111.

Steve Kazenske, of LeClaire, Iowa had a nicely modified black John Deere.

Apparently, many members saw the modified units on display the last few years and decided to try their hand as well, because this year we had an increase in the number of custom built or modified items on display. Jerry Hoover, of Monroe, Wisconsin, celebrated his 62^nd birthday by showing off his narrow front 110. Glenn Peterson, of Arkansaw, Wisconsin had a really nice homemade 4x4 articulated John Deere with field cultivator that he used not just in the parades, but for plowing! I will have more about Glenn next month. Tom Batterton of Petersburg, Iowa displayed the full 200 series of John Deeres, plus several handmade wood wagons. Pat Osterhaus, also of Petersburg, displayed his handmade wagon with barge box. Jerome Lansing of Dyersville had several homemade units including a crawler and John Deere combine with wagon.

Shorty and Jean Johnson, of Germantown, Wisconsin and Brian and Amy Ashmore, of Silvis, Illinois had awesome side-by-side displays of various John Deere garden tractors and attachments. John Mousel of Dubuque showed his John Deere pride in his choice of clothing and accessories on his 2009 X728SE diesel with full time 4WD and 62 inch deck. Ron and Colleen Twedt, of Huxley, Iowa had the funniest John Deere t-shirts I have ever seen.

Two items on display that people took lots of pictures of weren’t John Deere but still need mentioning. One was OUR latest find, the Case tractor with working backhoe and loader that we were able to buy from our church. They had used it for years to dig the graves in the cemetery. The other non-John Deere item was the wagon that A.J. Hinrichs rode in during the parades, but Dad Andy, used a John Deere to pull it.

As usual, the parades were the crowd favorite, but the fun- pull was a close second. We were also able to get in some poker runs. A cool summer with lots of rain must have made the plowing easier because more people than ever tried it and three times as much ground was plowed. We had lots of comments on the great food and thanks to Brian Prescott, Roger Lundeen, and WLSR, the Laser in Galesburg, Illinois, we got lots of compliments on the great music.

Thanks to the generous donations of: RC2/Learning Curve for all the Ertl toys, a custom Expo 2009 pedal tractor from Scale Models, a variety of SpecCast products, an Expo 2009 custom- decaled set of Ertl patio garden tractors donated by Pat and Patsy Osterhaus, and donations from Brandon Pfeiffer, Joe Thompson, Brian Ashmore, and Weekend Freedom Machines, we had a nice variety of items for door prizes and Silent Auction items.

The only down side of Expo 2009 was the early loading of tractors on Sunday morning. Despite it being stated in the rules that there could be no early packing up, many people began pulling in trucks and trailers early on Sunday and it again caused congestion and made it unsafe for tractor games. I know this is always a problem at toy shows, and we will spend the winter gathering suggestions on preventing the problem at next year’s expo. Another small problem was the people who wouldn’t wear name tags and/ or didn’t have any kind of sign on their display. It leaves me with hundreds of great photos that I can’t use, because I don’t know the names of the people in them or I don’t know who a great display belongs to.