Regular visitors to the annual 3i Show have fond memories of strolling through the exhibit brought to the show by George and LaDonna Brown — a collection of John Deere and McCormick Deering International antique tractors.

This year, any of those visitors who have yearned to own one or more of those beauties will get the chance of a lifetime. On Saturday, Oct. 14, the last day of the show, Carr Auction and Real Estate of Larned will conduct an auction to sell 12 John Deere tractors ranging in age from a 1929 Model D to a 1960 830, with many models in between.

Three McCormick Deering International tractors will also be auctioned off as well as a John Deere 10-foot Grain Binder with show canvases and binder twine and a E-Z-Go customized golf cart with an umbrella that are part of the Brown collection.

“LaDonna and I will celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary on Sept. 1,” George says. “We discussed it, and we decided it is time to let go of them. We got married in Hawaii in 1957 when I was still in the Navy. LaDonna was from Dodge City, and we moved back here.”

For more than 20 years, the Browns have been restoring and showing antique tractors.

“We’ve bought them mostly from farmers around Kansas and Nebraska who wanted to sell them to someone who wanted to fix them up,” George says. “I’ve got two sheds. One is my shop and the other is for storage. My storage is pretty much full now.”

George says he was an aircraft mechanic in the Navy, and after the Navy, he worked as an aircraft mechanic, rebuilding engines.

“I’ve done 221 engines in 27 years on the job as an A & P [airframe and power plant] mechanic,” he says. “Rebuilding tractors and taking them to shows has been my hobby most of that time. We’ve tried to give them what they need and put them back to looking like they did when they were new. LaDonna has researched the history on each tractor I’ve done. Every one of them has a story to tell.”

George says he and LaDonna have seen a lot of the country and met a lot of nice people at tractor shows. “I can always tell when a person walks into an antique display what they worked on,” he says. “They walk right up to the model they remember.” He says a driving factor in the decision to sell the tractors is the fact that the heyday of antique tractor shows has passed.

“A lot of the small shows have closed down, and some of the bigger shows that used to be three days are down to one day. Someday all this will be a thing of the past, and the only place you’ll see these tractors is in a museum somewhere.”

George says as tractors got bigger and bigger, there were fewer of them — even older ones — that made it to shows because transporting them has become too difficult.

“Most of mine weigh between 3,000 and 8,000 pounds,” he says. “I usually haul two and she hauls two when we go to a show. The newer models are up to 16,000 or 24,000 pounds, and that isn’t that easy to transport.”

George acknowledges that the auction is likely to provide him quite a nest egg for his retirement years, and he hasn’t decided yet what he might spend some of the profits on.

“I know I’d better not go buy a tractor with it; she’ll shoot me,” he jokes.

He says he will be busy in life after antique tractor shows, however.

“I won’t be sitting around watching television, I know that. I have some neighbors and friends who have asked me to do some rebuilding work for them. I might do that. Heck, I might go get me a job somewhere. LaDonna is going on 18 years working at Walmart, and she enjoys her work. My doctor always tells me to keep moving and keep doing something. It keeps you healthier.”

He says he will miss the shows, especially the 3i Show.

“Sometimes you might wish you could go a ways,” he says. “I’m the baby of a dozen kids; there are only four of us left now. I can remember when our ring was a long and two shorts, and you sometimes had to get the neighbors to hang up before you could hear who was calling. Nowadays, I have a flip cellphone. I don’t do internet, and I don’t text. The missus, she’s on the internet some, but not me.”

The antique tractor auction will be held at noon on Saturday, Oct. 14, in the dirt side of the Western State Bank Expo Arena. Online proxi-bids will coincide with live, on-site bidding.

You can learn more about the tractors that will be sold online at carauction.com as well as on the 3i Show Facebook page event listing.