Each sale was as fascinating as a circus to Jim. There was always a huge throng of people gathered under the big roof—men, women and children from all over the surrounding countryside. There is some form of contagious excitement at an auction. When the crowd surged forward to bid on some choice item, the tenseness and excitement of the group would grip Jim too. He would hold his breath as the colonel skillfully maneuvered the bidding higher and higher.
Jim gained a new respect for Colonel Flesher at the auctions. He had always wondered secretly how a man could be as fat as the stock buyer unless he were lazy, but he changed his mind at the sales. The big man was going from three in the afternoon, when the sale opened, until it ended, usually about nine in the evening. It was a mystery to Jim how the colonel’s voice managed to keep up its steady flow, hour after hour. He never lost his enthusiasm either. He would shout as jovially and interestedly while selling a fifty-cent used ironing board as he would over a prize cow. The auctioneer was particularly adept at keeping the crowd in a good humor. If the bidding were not progressing well, he could always manage to bring up a joke or story to get the crowd laughing.
“Now look men,” he might say, while selling a used washing machine. “You can’t let this washing machine go for a paltry ten dollars. No wonder the divorce rate is rising. You tell a woman you love her, and then, after you are married, you would rather let her break her back over a washboard than spend more than ten dollars. Now let’s have a bid that will show chivalry is not dead. Besides, I think with a little bit of trouble you could hook an ice-cream freezer to this motor. What am I bid? Fifteen, fifteen, fifteen, sixteen, sixteen, eighteen, who’ll make it twenty. Twenty dollars by the man over there who loves his wife. Twenty—twenty—going at twenty. Going, going, gone! Sold for twenty dollars.”
In the beginning Jim was baffled by the methods used in bidding. During the first few sales he jerked his head back and forth frantically trying to locate the various bidders but he seldom saw more than half of them. After a few experiences helping the colonel upon the platform, he began to solve the mystery. Some men would lift a finger while others would wink an eye or use a nod of the head. Whatever the signal, the colonel seldom missed it. He seemed to have an uncanny knack of knowing who was a likely bidder on each item, so that often it was unnecessary for a bidder to announce himself as a party to the bidding even on his initial offer. It seemed of particular importance on expensive items, such as large farm machinery, that the bidders maintain secrecy.
“They don’t want the other bidders to know who their competition is,” explained the colonel to Jim. “Everybody knows everybody else and about how much money he has. If a man knows who’s bucking him at an auction, he knows just about how high the other fellow is willing to go. That’s bad at a sale. For example, if a good milk cow was being sold and everybody knew old man Wilkins was bidding, they might get discouraged because they know he’s wealthy and stubborn. On the other hand, he doesn’t want people to know he’s in the race as someone might run up the price just to spite him.”
Jim enjoyed his duties at the auction. He led out cows and horses to be sold, handed small items to the colonel, or even held up an occasional article for the inspection of the crowd while Colonel Flesher sold it. When there was an unusually large amount of stock to be sold, part of it was kept at the stockyard and driven over as required. Those instances were the only times that Ticktock’s services were needed. However, Jim always kept the pony tied in the stock barn during the sales. He liked the mustang close by, and Ticktock seemed to enjoy the sale as much as the boy.
There was a half-hour pause at six o’clock while the colonel and his helpers ate a quick supper. The meal usually consisted of several hot dogs or hamburgers, a piece of pie and coffee. The food was obtained at the lunch counter just outside the main entrance to the sales barn and was taken into the colonel’s office to be eaten. Jim always looked forward to the brief meal. Not only did he like hot dogs and hamburgers, but also he enjoyed the conversation.
“That big gray horse went dirt cheap, didn’t it?” the sales clerk, Carl Mason, would say.
“Yeah, it was a steal,” Colonel Flesher would agree. “I tried my best to get the price up on that. That tractor was way overbid though. Sold for twice what it was worth.”
Jim began to have a very shrewd idea of what various articles were worth, ranging from mops to gang plows.