Growing up in a farming community for me every now and then meant getting our chores done early so we could get away and go to the Sale. What we meant, more precisely, was that we were going to a farm auction, but we called it "Going to the Sale." That would sometimes mean that a farmer was selling out and moving away. Sometimes it meant that the farming operation had failed and gone broke. Or it might mean that an aging farmer was either downsizing or giving up his farming operation, to go into something else that he could handle, given his health status and stamina.
In the early days of my life, especially during World War II, we farmers often didn't have the resources to buy new farm equipment, so often we "went to the Sale" in hopes of finding a good buy on moderately used implements and tools that we could put to work on our farm. That's how we came to have our first farm tractor in 1948. Of course, sometimes a farm auction might include cows and horses and pigs and other livestock.
I remember as a little boy being fascinated with all the flurry of activity that was associated with a farm auction. Usually a large crowd of people would converge on the place of the auction. Fences would be taken down to give the cars and trucks access to a field for parking, and there would be long rows of vehicles reaching out into the field. All around the farm buildings, the people who were putting on the auction would have items gathered convenient for the sale, so the auctioneer could move along selling item by item, or sometimes groups of items, or everything in the box, or even a pile of junk. The junk piles were interesting to me. The word "junk" usually means "no longer useful." But on a small farm in the 1940s and 1950s, the junk pile, where broken and worn metal pieces were discarded, just might be somebody's treasure. A little re-imagining, and a little skill with a welder and cutting torch, might transform a piece of junk metal into something useful and durable again. Even the junk pile wasn't worthless.
The most fascinating part of the farm auction, to me, was the auctioneer himself. I say, himself, because all of them I can remember at the time were men. In the old days, the women were busy in the food booths at the auction, maybe a group of church ladies raising money for a project or for missions, kind of carrying on their own sale at the sale. But I loved to listen to the auctioneer.
At first, the auctioneers talked so fast that my little ears couldn't keep up with them. But, after a time, I could often begin to tune in to his cadence, and begin to understand what he was saying. My people were usually pretty slow talkers; we didn't usually get in a hurry with what we were saying. So, listening to the auctioneer meant that I had to shift my hearing into a higher gear, and get tuned in to a different kind of rythm. Sometimes it sounded to me as though the auctioneer was throwing in a lot of nonsense sounds to keep things going between his "We got thirty, thirty now who'll give forty?"
But then I'd hear that what I thought was a nonsense sound was just more of his rolling around his description of the bid and where the bidding was going. Often the auctioneer seemed to know many of the buyers by name, and from time to time he would single out an individual to ask him, "Now, Jake, won't you give sixty for this fine machine?" Back in those days, I never gave much thought to the auction clerk. The clerk was always present with his writing pad, but the auctioneer was always front and center, and I never really paid much attention to the clerk. Later I would realize what an important job the clerking was. Otherwise, how would you keep track of who bought what and for what price? I do remember Mr. Henry Bray as being the clerk for many of the early auctions I attended. Even though back then I was paying more attention to the auctioneer than to the clerk, I can't remember the names of the auctioneers, while I do remember Mr. Bray. I had another tie to help the memory there, because the Bray family lived across the road from my grand-aunt Anna Nichols, and I came to know Rodden Bray, and Ronald and the other Bray boys and their sister Rhenda. I do recall auctions done by a well-known Rogers auctioneer named C.J. Henson, but I think Mr. Henson was active as an auctioneer a bit later in time, like the 1960s.
I have never been very good at guessing what people may later do as an occupation. I went to school with Derry Camp and with Harold Calloway, and I would never have guessed that they might become auctioneers. But both of them have done so, and both have made really good auctioneers.
I would probably never do very well in trying to be an auctioneer myself. An auctioneer needs to have a quick mind. The auctioneer needs to be thinking while he is talking. His mind has to be doing a little multitasking while he keeps up the din of his spiel. He has to keep in mind where the bid is at the moment, where to push it next, watching for the bidders to make their move or do their nod or wave their card. It helps if the auctioneer is a bit of an entertainer, and can carry on a conversation with his crowd. I don't have a quick mind. My mind works fairly well, and remembers pretty well, but my mind has no high gear, it lumbers along.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history, member of the Pea Ridge Alumni Association and vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. Opinions expressed are those of the writer. He can be contacted by email at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 08/23/2017