LURE OF A COUNTRY AUCTION (part 14 )

MOST MEMORABLE AUCTIONS

One of my most memorable auctions was one I attended myself in Neillsville at the Fairgrounds.  It was a Sheriff’s Sale.  That meant that the sheriff of our county was the acting auctioneer and the items had been seized by the county for failure to pay property taxes.  The home was located in town and was put up for sale but all the personal items were removed from it and brought to the fairgrounds to be auctioned off.  This meant the sale itself was actually someone’s hard luck story and sure enough when I arrived at the auction and began exiting my car, there she was.  A worn out looking middle aged lady approached me and said, “You’re not going to buy any of my stuff are you?”   I just looked back at her and said I don’t know.  I didn’t know what to make of the situation.
There were very few people in the crowd that day and there were a few antiques and some furniture up for bids.  I remember the sheriff trying so hard to get a bid on a beautiful antique player piano.  It still worked and had many rolls of music that went with it.  He was not a pro at auctioning but was easy to understand and kept calling over and over for one hundred dollars to start the bidding on that piano.  No one bid and finally he said if no one wants it then I’ll bid the one hundred dollars and it was his.
I took a liking to a box of antique dresses made of velvet and silk in many colors, some black and many earth tones.  Along with the dresses in this box were umpteen strands of embroidery floss of all different colors and other sewing paraphenilia.  I had some ideas that I could use the material to make a quilt and I also loved to embroidery.  The box was cardboard and square but it measured about 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide, deep enough to possibly have some treasures in the bottom of it.  Well I won the bid on that box as I was the only bidder and I got the whole thing for 50 cents.  Immediately after I’d won the bid three neatly dressed women approached me with a pen and paper.  They said they were related to the owner of this merchandise and had looked high and low for a purple heart medal that belonged to their grandfather or someone in the family and couldn’t find it.  They wanted to know that if I found the purple heart in the box I just bought if I would mail it to them.  I said yes, of course I could do that, so they gave me their name and address.  When I got home I checked and there wasn’t anything close to a purple heart in the box.  But I used the beautiful velvets and silks and threads to make two crazy quilts that I still treasure.  I often felt bad for the lady who lost all her possessions, but I also believed that I had put what little I purchased to good use, something that she would have been pleased with.

One auction that we attended was what I would call an all-dayer and an all-nighter.  The auctioneer must not have realized how many items he had to sell that day because when the sun had set he was still busy calling for bids with tons of merchandise yet to go through.  Boxes of household items were strung out in rows all over the yard.  When darkness came the auctioneer pulled out a flashlight and shined it on each item as he sold it.  We luckily grabbed a flashlight out of our truck so we were able to find our way around the yard and check out the items before they were sold.  It was a grand but crazy sale as we filled up the back of our pickup truck in the dark.  When we left the auction it was still going strong and the night was pitch dark.  I never attended any other auction outside that went on into the darkness of the night like that one did.
At wintertime auction at a farm just a mile from my home was memorable for me.  Inside a pole shed barn were several wagons loaded with small items to be auctioned off.  I located a large old galvanized mail box on top of a wagon and inside of it were dozens of very old catalogues, some from the early 1900’s.  They were catalogues for farmers that featured everything from farm implements to barb wire.  I thought they were a quite rare form of ephemera.  Luckily I won the bid on the mail box, they didn’t bother to open it up when they sold it, and I paid just $11.00. for it.  The mailbox was so heavy we put it on a plastic sled we brought from home and pulled it up the long snowy driveway at that farm back to our car.
I was at an antique auction once where an antique dealer was going out of business.  She was a lady who attended many auctions in years past.  Sometimes auctions like this are opportunities for great deals as I’ve found that antique dealers do not want to attend auctions of other antique dealers who have been their competitors at sales in the past.  They seem to have the attitude that they are not going to pad their rival’s pockets.  The auctioneer was selling an old shotgun and couldn’t quite read the inscription on it.  He said it was a Winchester, and I thought it was going awfully cheap so I bid and won it at under $30.00.  Why others didn’t bid me up I’m still not quite sure, but everyone in the crowd was commenting how great of a deal I just made.  When I got home I realized that it was not a Winchester but was built in Worchester, Massachusetts.  Nonetheless, my husband was quite pleased with the gun and the price I paid as it functioned well and he didn’t care what make it was.
Near the end of summer the town of Loyal, Wisconsin, has what they call a corn festival.  It’s kind of a celebration of the growing season and sweet corn is boiled on the cob in a large kettle downtown.  There is enough sweet corn for everyone to fill their faces with.  It’s a big deal and an annual event.  One year an auction was held at a nearby farm about a mile east of Loyal and we attended it.  What is most memorable about this auction was how few people attended.  When you go to an auction you have to give the clerk your name and phone number and sometimes show your driver’s license.  Then you are given a paper with your bidding number on it and when you bid you show your number and it is recorded along with the name of the item and the price it sold for.  Well at this auction we were number 6, and that was the highest number for the day.  With only six bidders you’d think they would have cancelled the sale but they didn’t.  The auctioneer was one of those elderly men with a felt fedora hat on.  We got some great deals that day, it was a crazy sale to be sure.  One special purchase that I remember was an antique three gallon stoneware crock in mint condition for $6.00.  It is unique because the number 3 was printed on it upside down.  A lesson learned might be that you shouldn’t schedule an auction on the same day as the Loyal Corn Festival.
One time my husband’s aunt and I struck off on our own toward Black River Falls to a household auction.  We had a great day.  It was a sit down auction outside, a sale where the auction company provided chairs for almost everyone to sit on.  What stands out with me is the huge oval braided rug I purchased that day.  It was a mighty chore carrying that heavy rug from the auction and loading it on the top of our car.  With she at one end, and I at the other, we struggled and laughed as we kept dropping that big old slippery rug on the ground.   But we got it tied up there o.k. and it graced my living room floor for many years.
Just because an auction is memorable doesn’t mean it was a good one.  One time we drove up to Washburn, Wisconsin, to attend a realty auction.  It was sponsored by the county and included parcels of land that the county had obtained from delinquent property taxes.  We decided to make a mini vacation out of the event and had mailed to us a list of all the properties coming up on the sale.  We investigated several of them beforehand and decided to bid on a little lot near Cable, Wisconsin, in a small subdivision.  We set the max amount we’d be bidding, our reserve, and when the parcel came up we won the bid on it.  Or at least we thought we did.  When it came time to call out the number of the winning bid we raised our card high and no attention was made to us despite the fact that our hand was in the air and “sold” was shouted our way.  Turns out it was an inside deal, someone from the auction company ended up with that parcel.  We tried to fight it but we had no luck.  The parcel only went for just over $400.00.
My husband remembers being at a farm auction in the fall where the crowd was quite small.  We bought a few items and after the sale was about half over the crowd was so small the auctioneer stopped the sale.  He said it wasn’t fair to the owners to carry on because things weren’t going as high as they should have been.  That was the only sale I ever remember attending that was halted because of poor attendance.

TAKE A HIKE

Some days I find the best thing to do,

To clear my mind and feel alright,

Is to lace up my boots, camera in hand,

Hit the woods and take a hike.