2018 Update: Auctioneers still need speed, stamina, and livestock savvy to do the job. This video from several years ago show several champion auctioneers in action.
Barn Sale Memories: This sixth generation farmer recalls attending barn sales with her dad,
and she now sees the ranchers as one giant community where everyone is watching
out for each other.
Rappin' Out a Sale: Check this short video to catch a cattle auctioneer with a bit of "rap, rhythm, and rhyme" thrown in.
Some livestock auctioneers have added an
online audience to their ringside performance with as many as 10,000 potential
bidders logging on, but a skilled voice still makes the difference. Good auctioneers have a “signature
chant”—individual rhythms and tones help them coax buyers and bring up the bid.
Like the digital world, the cry has a binary scheme to it. Auctioneers repeat
two numbers—the current bid and the next desired price—and they add filler
words to tie the chant together.
When Dedicated Lines Were Rope;
When Digital Mode Meant Finger Action
In days gone by, those hypnotic cadences rang
out in sale barns filled with restless cattle, tobacco-chewin’ farmers, and
local women selling meals along with “some of the best darn pie you’ll ever
find.” The business end was handled by “clipboard bankers,” and they might send
their receipts along a clothesline-pulley system so the transactions could be
recorded—a type of dedicated line for the analog age.
Dad has firsthand
knowledge of that era since his father—everyone called him Pappy—was an
auctioneer. “Good ones knew how to work the crowd,” says Dad. “Pappy had a
sense of humor and an easy-going style. He started at his uncle’s sale barn in
Zearing, auctioning off anything from hogs to turkeys, and maybe a few geese
somebody had in a burlap bag. And local farmers might herd in cattle, sell them
off, and then help move them to the train station several blocks away.
Townsfolk put up with a few cow pies on the potholed streets.”
Back then, the only
digital aspect came when buyers lifted fingers to bid, and the social media
interaction was in the form of gestures, grunts, and the daily chit-chat that
fueled rural towns. A thin cloud of cigarette smoke and dust might hover above
the ring, but the auctioneer kept his voice flowing and the sale moving. A few
skinny hogs became “pork chops on the hoof ready to fatten up.” It could be
tough putting lipstick on a pig, so they used body language and smooth tongues
to emphasize an animal’s positive aspects—sort of like digitally enhancing a
photo, but in this case it was verbally hypnotizing the buyer.
Dad says,
“Most auctioneers also did house and farm sales, and they thought it was better
to have a cold, dreary day in the front yard. It would cut down on the chatter
and get sales going.”
Apparently Pappy had another method to keep
things rolling during winter sale days. He kept a flask of whiskey in a hidden
pocket of his raccoon fur coat. “A bit of antifreeze courtesy of the
bootleggers back in prohibition times.”
Pappy was a cattleman at heart, and I imagine
he preferred doing livestock sales rather than house or farm foreclosures. “He
was good with people and with cattle,” Dad says. “He knew how to keep the crowd
interested and the bids flowing.”
That couldn’t have been easy at times. “I
heard about an old boy named Junior,” Dad said. “He’d slouch on a bench in the
stands, seemingly asleep the whole day, but by the end of the sale, he’d bought
a truckload of cattle—usually ones nobody else wanted. When sick, lame, or
skinny steers came into the ring, usually somebody would mumble ‘better wake up
Junior.’”
Whether it involves eager buyers with laptops
or drowsy “Juniors” in the stands, it takes a certain gift of the gab to be a
successful auctioneer. Times change, but the traditional auction cry still
echoes from sale barns across the country.
by dan gogerty (top pic from outbacknotes.blogspot.com; bottom pic from web.missouri.edu)
Pre-digital days on the farm were different. It was magic to hear that school was cancelled and the yellow bus would not be sliding down the gravel roads to snatch us away. Mom only tolerated our version of "flipping a house" for so long until she accessed her "cabin fever app"--the front door. She bundled us up in snow suits and boots--and sent us out into the winter wonderland of a farm with creeks, barns, and sledding hills. The fun but frigid details are in this blog.
