Any given Saturday morning you could be driving down a section road kicking up the dust, and there’ll be no other traffic for miles and miles when you come to one of those sudden dips in the road that makes your stomach crawl up into your chest and the children squeal in the back seat.
“Do that again!” the kids will cry just before you check to see if they’ve fastened their seatbelts by slamming on the brakes and sliding sideways on the soft gravel. The open road will have suddenly lost its openness and the narrow two-lane become something that looks like a Walmart parking lot, with rigs lined up every which way and folks darting in and out between the bumpers, totally unconcerned about the two tons of steel you’re no longer able to control.
By fate or just dumb luck, you slide to a stop between a horse trailer and something that vaguely resembles a 1962 Corvair. Your spouse wrongly credits you with knowing where you were going while the kids make their escape through a side window. And that’s how you find a country auction, more often than not.
Mismatched furnishings marred by several eons of wear and tear will be spread out across the lawn before a fading farmhouse along with broken-down appliances and assorted kitchen utensils. Old quilts and clothing items are draped across the white picket fence that frames the people previewing the goods going up for bid. Folks who otherwise maintain a healthy personal space are crowded together cheek to jowl, poking at stuff, turning things over, and keeping a wary eye on what others are fondling.
Step out back of the place and, sure enough, there's a cry of "Eight-five, five, five. I have eighty-five. Ninety, ninety, give me ninety," wafting across a fallow field. Move up closer and you'll find old plows and roller harrows and cultipackers lined up on display along with cardboard boxes filled with bolts, drill bits and other assorted items.
A crowd of bidders follows the auctioneer up and down rows of tractors and cultipackers and shop tools, hovering over each item just long enough to determine whose bid will buy it and then moving on.
You didn’t really have a need for that maple flooring or the tilt frame band saw you bid $450 to buy, but you couldn’t help throwing up your arm when no one else was willing to pay the starting price of $100. Once you bid, of course, then some other folks find the courage to top your price, figuring that you must know what you’re doing, and you stubbornly top their bids to keep them from winning a contest you hadn’t planned to enter.
When the auctioneer’s assistant with a clipboard comes around to record your name and bid for the fifth time, you realize you may have to hold your own estate sale to pay the tab. The kids have made six visits to the snack wagon and are now working off their sugar in the uppermost limbs of a maple tree while your spouse keeps up the bidding.
By mid-afternoon you’ve finished loading the flat-bed trailer that you bid for beyond its street value in order to have some way to cart home all your belongings. And before you pull away, the auctioneer gives you a big smile and hands you a sheet of paper with a schedule of future auctions you won’t want to miss.
You drive home feeling a bit shaken and light-headed, the way you felt when you collided with a deer a few years back.