By Rick Houser-
It happened in the months of January and February and maybe even in early March. As a young boy, it seemed to me that they occurred quite often, much more than these days, though I really don’t have statistics to back me on it. Looking back, I guess what was happening back in the 50’s and 60’s played a role in the way farming would turn out today.
I’m referring to the farm auctions. It really seemed to be a frequent event in the first couple of months of the year and that was just in and near our neighborhood. It’s safe to say the auctions were happening in farm communities everywhere. During those years the farms were small and the generation of farmers and their wives were retiring or maybe even sadly passing away. Either way the size of those farms was in today’s terms referred to as “baby farms”. Either the farmer retiring and probably moving to town would place all his equipment, livestock, and any extra accumulations of household items up for public auction.
Sometimes my Dad would attend the auction to bid on an item or two he was interested in or felt he could use. At these auctions there was always a group who would set up a booth and sell hot dogs and barbeque, chili, and potato chips along with iced tea and lots of coffee. Around our neighborhood it was either our church ladies aide group or the Moscow Eastern Star Chapter that had the food booth. Since Mom was a member of both she was always one of the workers in the booth. (They could always depend on her I guess.) The thing was that if Mom was there Dad would go and help them and of course, how could the booth and the auction go on without me?
Almost every Saturday in those winter months it seemed that a farm auction was being held somewhere. There was a lot of activity at these events and it kept me busy watching the bidding on items that I thought were of interest and running back to the booth to ask Mom for a hot dog or maybe a piece of homemade pie. I think that since I was kind of what might be called a “nuisance”, Mom or one of the other ladies would serve me so I would move on and looking back I must have run up quite a tab in a day’s time.
In a lot of cases I knew the farmer who was going out of business. I would feel sad that I wasn’t going to see him working on his place whenever we would pass by and I wouldn’t see him wave to us. I learned quickly that at one of these sales you would usually find the farmer near the back of the crowd who were bidding and it was pretty easy to tell by his expressions how he felt as his items were selling. It has been years since I realized that on the day of the sale he was selling what he had amassed in his lifetime and that was the measuring tape of how well he had done.
All of these farm sales gave way to younger farmers with bigger equipment and ambitions were of buying up the land and getting more acreage for them to farm. It was the beginning of the end of how the countrysides looked then as things moved toward the farmer dealing in big business. It didn’t happen overnight, it actually happened one auction at a time. I still didn’t have the real grasp of how an auction might feel until my Dad had sold our farm and my wife and I were living on the farm and we were still working it.
Having been born and raised on that farm, it really hit me hard at the time but as the years have passed I understood why Dad sold it. The farm was costing him more than he was getting from it and sentiment should never overrule the facts. So on a Saturday in July (not when I thought an auction should be held) our farm auction was held. My Mom was sad and my Dad was ready. As for me I stayed toward the back of the crowd and listened to the auctioneer deliver his cadence and I must admit he worked very hard to get every cent he could for me. When it was over I felt I had done well and my wife and I put what we got out of the auction into the house we had bought at the edge of Felicity.
That was the last farm auction I ever attended. Years later after my Dad had passed we had to hold an estate sale. We decided not to hold it at the house so everything was taken to an auction house in Williamsburg and there again I stood to the back of the crowd and watched so many items that it took my parents to collect over 60 years of marrige. This was harder than the farm auction. It was more personal, but this time there was really no option, it had to be done.
Now as I think it over I can really understand just how those old farmers must have felt, to let it all go to the highest bidder and at the end of the day walk away from all you had worked for. Only in a small way can I feel how they must have felt, but I understand for sure.
The thing about our auctions was there wasn’t any food booth for me to get a hot dog and a Coke from. Times have changed and I’ve been told that many auctions today are run on computers. Just log on and bid. It sounds very impersonal but it makes it sense for the man selling to not have to stand and watch and folks to look at him and wonder how he is feeling. These days he might just be figuring how much commission he is going to have to pay the auctioneer, but to not hear the sound of the auctioneer’s cadence takes a lot away from the event for sure.
Rick Houser grew up on a farm near Moscow in Clermont County and loves to share stories about his youth and other topics. If you would like to read more of his writings he has two books for sale “There are Places to remember” and “Memories ARE From the Heart,” He can be reached at houser734@yahoo.com or mail him at P.O. Box 213 Bethel, Ohio 45106.