Sale Day

Every year on the family ranch we had a sale to market the bulls that my dad and uncles had raised.  My cousins, siblings and I enjoyed the event for many reasons,  never really understanding all the effort and stress our parents experienced to make it happen.

  Preparations began in early September with transforming the barn on our part of the ranch into the sale ring.  The large barn had two distinct partitions to it.  The south side had an alleyway lined with pens for two animals each where my dad kept his show cattle and a feed pen.  On the north side was a large open pen using two-thirds of the area with the rest used for storing equipment and feed sacks.  This side had bleacher-type seats pulled up to the bottom of the hayloft above and an auctioneer's stand raised above the ground level of the pen below.  For the sale, the large pen was cleaned out and the  auctioneer's stand set at the back wall and the seats were lowered to form a semi-circle.  The men built a wire grid fence for the sale ring. This provided a fantastic venue for us kids to play, especially a game of team tag.  We would dash up and down the seats chasing each other, ducking through the seats to avoid being caught. If  tagged, we had to go into the sale ring and wait until someone else on our side came to free us. Amazingly enough I do not remember anyone getting hurt with this wild and crazy chase.

 Daily after the school bus would drop all of the cousins off at our house, we would play tag until our parents finished for that day. The women cleaned the seats where the sparrows had roosted for the last year or washed the barn windows. The men were fencing, fixing and getting things in order for the big day.  To the adults, sale meant intense preparations.  To the kids, sale was fun and games.  One time, when we were younger, we decided that it would be fun to pound the knotholes out of the bleacher seats.  Though this was quite entertaining to us, my dad was not amused as this made sitting on seats with holes less comfortable.  Unfortunately for me, I faced the discipline for this caper after my cousins had gone home.

We got to miss school on sale day, which was delightful from our perspective.  The day began early in the morning before sunrise.  The men brought the bulls in from the pastures and put them into various pens outside the barn to feed them and to start getting them groomed for the sale.  We kids were the errand runners taking homemade cinnamon rolls and coffee out to the workers and getting anything else that we might be instructed to accomplish.  Prospective buyers began arriving shortly after daybreak to look over the different animals and begin making decisions on which bull would be the best fit for their herd. 

The women served lunch to everyone before the sale began at one in the afternoon.  Our mothers fixed barbecued beef sandwiches, salads and a dessert.  There was a soda dispenser for drinks that we kids thought was awesome, never realizing that our parents had to pay for all that we were drinking as well.

At the end of the day, everyone was exhausted.  We kids had played ourselves out and filled up with soda.  Our mothers had fed over a hundred people and cleaned up after them.  Our dads had seen the result of a year's hard work.  Sale day was the culmination of their efforts and the majority of the ranch income for the year--a big day for all of us.