I was a sophomore in high school the
first time I ever set foot in an auction market and it was love at first
sight. I was smitten and immediately wanted to run away from home to
join the one ring cattle circus. I’d have cleaned water troughs just to
be a part of something so magical.
Of
course I was impressed by the auctioneers and i couldn’t begin to
imagine how they did what they did. The market was close to Bakersfield,
California, and was owned by Skinner Hardy, one of the first World
Champion Livestock Auctioneers. He ran a great market.
I
knew I would never have the talent to do what auctioneers did but the
more I watched the cow buyers in action the more I realized that’s what I
wanted to be when I grew up. I never achieved that goal but whenever I
had a free day on the road you’d find me at the nearest auction market
pretending to be a cow buyer and trying to guess the weight of the
cattle as they entered the ring. (Keep in mind this was back in the
1970’s when you didn’t find out the weight until AFTER the animals
sold.)
I
never got tired of watching the battles between the auctioneers and the
cow buyers. It was like a well choreographed dance, one was trying to
get as much for the cattle as he could while the other was trying to buy
them as cheap as possible. The relationship between the auctioneer and
cow buyers is all together different than the one they have with the
order buyers of stocker and feeder cattle. Order buyers for stockers and
feeders are semi-friendly whereas cow buyers just jeer and sneer at
anyone who comes close and woe be the unlucky person who accidentally
sits in “their seat” on sale day.
Stocker and feeder order buyers wear Luchese boots, starched jeans and
monogrammed shirts and have all their appendages. Cow buyers are usually
missing a digit or two, wear rumpled clothes, have holes in the bottom
of their boots, their faces are scarred and they look like they just
finished a knife fight. When stocker and feeders buyers bid they make a
big production of it; when a cow buyer bids he may only wink his one eye
that isn’t made out of glass. Cow buyers chew on unlit stubby cigars,
and write down their purchases on market cards with short stubby
pencils. They are smarter than a tree full of owls, can multiply and add
faster than a calculator, can guess the weight of any cow within 20
pounds and can tell you how much she’ll yield in salable beef. They get a
report card on how they do every week and they gotta be good or they’ll
be gone.
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