An Oklahoma Auction

Dad and I are going to an auction today. This is one of the cultural oddities of Oklahoma: the estate auction. Most small towns of Oklahoma look remarkably similar. Former boom towns from the high days of Texas tea (oil, that is), they all have a patently fifties-style main street, full of brick storefronts facing off side by side across a wide avenue. While there may be some unique small stores, almost all forms of local business fall into the same categories: hardware store, gas station, super Wal-mart (or, in even less prosperous towns, a regular Wal-mart and a locally owned grocery store), one or two fast food joints and a few antiques stores to draw in any tourists who might be passing through. Many of the store fronts stand empty, with their sad and faded signs proclaiming the business need they use to fill. Aside from these quaint and common local revenues there are only three businesses thriving in rural Oklahoma: healthcare, senior home care facilities and providers, and funeral-related services. Every town I’ve been to has a hospital, at least two cemeteries and a few funeral homes. Tiny little Cushing has three funeral homes that I can think of off the top of my head and the only new building to be constructed in a decade is an advanced healthcare center on the edge of town.

What all of this basically means is that the strongest client base in Oklahoma is a lot more likely to be checking out than checking in. One of the by-products of the Circle of Life out here in the middle of nowhere is that every weekend is populated by estate auctions and property sales, mostly instigated by children living in a different state who want to clear their deceased parents’ belongings as expeditiously as possible, or widows who can’t stand to be alone in their family homes anymore. The auction we’re headed to today is one of the latter. My parents went to auctions frequently, and my mother spoke of them often, so I’m enthusiastic about going to one.

While I have been a professional eBayer for years now, I have never been to an actual, real-life auction before. Wait, I take that back; I forgot about Enlows. Enlows is sacred to my father. It is a large (mostly tractor and farm equipment) auction that takes place on the first Wednesday of every month in Tulsa. My dad waits anxiously for this monthly event and schedules all other priorities, appointments, financial obligations and family gatherings around it. The man would hail Hitler as Jesus before he’d miss Enlows.

I have, sacrilegiously, only been to Enlows once, and once was enough. We have to leave at six (no later than seven) to make it to Tulsa in time. I really believe this deadline owes more to Dad’s childlike excitement of undiscovered treasures than it owes to being late to the auction. Some people come from as far as California to participate in Enlows monthly tractor auction. There are two categories of merchandise: new equipment and salvage. Dad tells me that they have very stringent demands for the things that go in the new equipment line, so most things that have seen any use at all usually show up in Salvage. People bring stuff from hundreds of miles away to sell, and many equipment dealers and manufacturers use the auction to quickly off-load machinery. The local law enforcement agency also uses Enlows to liquidate crime-related repossessions and wrecked squad cars.

CJ and I were shocked by the buying psychology of Enlows bidders the first time we attended. While nearly working, decent condition, just-needs-some-TLC tractors went for far below their worth, completely trashed machinery, useful only for spare parts, went for much more than said parts could ever be worth. Jim, my dad’s neighbor and best friend, quipped that if you have a nice tractor you want to sell you ought to take it out, set it on fire and roll it down a hill first. While I laughed at first, I quickly realized he wasn’t joking. I take this phenomenon philosophically. I mean, the trashed tractor may not be worth much to the naked eye, but it spells something very valuable to the people massed at Enlows: potential. These tractors will take months to ever make work again, but they present the possibility of being made to work again. The tractors that run? Well, they just don’t have as much to offer. The trashed ones are like maps to sunny beaches with the possibility of ancient hidden treasure. The working ones are like mutual fund stock portfolios. A lot less risky and challenging form of investment, but a lot more boring.

The first time we went there were three items I distinctly remember being up for bid. One was a year-old Audi two-seat sportster that had been repossessed when a drug dealer was nabbed; they’d found $10,000 dollars in a hidden compartment in the gas tank. It had a great sound system and leather interior, and was in really nice shape with low mileage. The car next to it was a Chevy Caprice that had lived a former life as a police squad car before becoming corrupt and running drugs as well. It had been refurbished with expensive custom rims and a sound system worth thousands. The last car was a slightly beat-up ’73 Mustang coupe, red. The popularity contest was a clear win for the Coupe, as elderly farmers lined up around it to tell lies about their misbegotten youth. In the end the Mustang went for $14,000, the Lincoln went for less than the worth of the sub-woofer (let alone the custom rims), and the Audi barely trudged over the $4,500 mark.

Almost everyone you see at Enlows is old, white, male, dressed in coveralls and wearing a John Deer ball cap (with the occasional Allis-Chalmers thrown in for variety and competition). Most of the few ladies who attend Enlows sit inside on the bleacher stands where it’s cooler or warmer than the weather outside. This suits most of the menfolk just fine, as they don’t want any interference with the competitive bidding wars that lie at the heart of Enlows, harkening back to a simpler time and place where men fought nobly for resources, mano e mano. Oh, the ultimate embarrassment: the tag-along-wife, crying out loudly to a bidding husband, “Why on earth did you buy that?”

Dad, Jim and Grandpa have worked out a system for hiding their purchases from their wives. Since all three of their properties share the backline, they just put everything in the middle and if any of the women ask about a new acquisition they point to the man across the way as the culprit of the new purchase – “That? Oh no, that’s, uh…. that’s Fred’s. Yeah, yeah he bought it last Wednesday at Enlow’s, honey. What? No, of course I don’t think it’s ugly!”

I have since been banned from Enlows for such gender blasphemy. The problem started when my father exuberantly bought my husband a riding lawn mower to fix up (my father being under the impression that every real man needs a riding lawn mower). When I patiently explained to Dad that this was stupid because in two months we were moving back to Vegas where, thank God, there is no grass to mow, he denounced me as an interfering female who is no longer allowed to attend the sacred ritual that is Enlows. My husband, however, is still welcome, expected and obligated to be up at six o’clock on the first Tuesday of every month. I take my banishment with studied remorse and silent gratitude.

The auction we are attending today is quite a different matter. It is what is known as a living estate auction. This means that the owner is still alive, but wishes to liquidate all of their property for some reason. In this country that often means for health bills or because a surviving spouse wishes to downsize their formerly shared property. We’re up by seven, have had our habitual breakfast at McDonalds by eight and are on the road. The auction today is in Prague, OK, about 35 miles away from Cushing. I feel this is a much more cultured name than the little town deserves. We drive along the two-lane black-top in the early morning sun, passing cow fields and stone houses and little else. Dad happily chatters on about the truck we’re riding in, a small black pick-up he picked up at a recent auction.

“Yep, sis, this sure turned out to be a good little pick-up. Did I tell you I only paid two-fifty for it?”

“Yeah, you did, Dad,”

“Well it sure is a good little pick-up. Course the windows don’t roll down straight, and that door doesn’t always shut, it doesn’t have a radio and the engine does rattle, but I’ll bet it’s gonna run for another 100,000 miles… can’t beat that for two-fifty can you?”

I agree that you can’t. He then launches into a detailed discussion of his method for fixing the oil leak problem, while I nod often and vigorously to assure him of my interest in this obviously vital topic. As we get closer to Prague we become part of convoy of pick-up trucks and trailers that indicate one is indeed getting close to an auction locale. We finally come to the end of dirt-road lane and find parking in an overgrown wheat field that was probably used for livestock at some point.

We tie Odie (dad's dog) up to the truck in the shade and walk towards the small converted stock trailer that serves as the auction headquarters, where we need to sign in and get our auction placards. Assembled all around the outside of the large, red-brick house lies furniture and long tables stacked high with the remaining property and items up for sale. This allows potential bidders to examine all the merchandise before the auction begins. From the line we’re standing in most of it appears to be your basic household brick-a-brack: porcelain figurines, lots of candy dishes and display bowls, lamps, old used dolls with no clothes and matted hair… the kind of stuff that any of us might find forgotten in the bottom of our hall closets. We finally get up to the front of the line and hand the lady our driver’s licenses so she can give us our bidding placards. It takes her a minute to find my name on my Nevada license.

“Nevada? What are you doing clear out here?”

I smile resignedly and deliver my well-rehearsed line, the one that conveniently omits my mother from the picture and rescues me from explanation to strangers.

“Oh, I’ve come out to spend some time with my Dad.”

Dad winks at me and pats me on the back. The lady smiles approvingly at my daughterly devotion and hands me back my license and my bidding placard. Dad and I meander through the long tables and furniture arrangements, trying to discern from the piles of stuff if any of it would be worth bidding on. Dad is wearing his John Deer jacket, a flannel shirt, Wrangler jeans and his Historical Truck Society ball cap. I’m wearing a silver Chenille sweater from Victoria’s Secret, Ray-Ban sunglasses and designer jeans. I’m also freezing my ass off. While everyone else seems to be enjoying the cooler weather, I’m shivering and my teeth chatter as I blow on my hands and bounce from foot to foot trying to keep warm. I’m clearly the youngest person there, with the exception of a few young children being hauled around by their grandparents. (Grahm, I told you not to touch anything! Is gramma gonna have to whup your butt?) I huff out a sigh and try to blend in. I decide if anyone asks I’ll affect an accent and pretend to be from Russia. It would probably be more acceptable than telling people I’m from Vegas; at least Russians practice a religion.

I go through the glassware and ceramics first, in case there are any valuable antique pieces I could sell on eBay. Most of it’s old, but none of it’s all that valuable. I’ve forgotten my handbook on carnival glass, so I can’t authenticate any of the pieces there. Most of the furniture and lamps are not all that exciting, and the porcelain figurines aren’t made by companies I recognize. Dad seems equally disappointed, having only found some common household items to bid on: a heavy, used table saw and a pair of fire extinguishers. We agree that this isn’t a treasure trove auction, but that we might as well stay in case anything with a marginal resale value ends up going dirt cheap. This is the basic mantra of the weekend auction: If you don’t see anything you really need, you might as well stay in case something you don’t need goes cheap.

Down at the very end of one of the tables I spot some boxes of books and stacks of old papers that I missed on my first circuit browse. I casually wander over. This is another trick of the trade. You never, ever walk excitedly or talk excitedly or whisper or point at an item. To do so would draw the attention of other eagle-eyed bidders to your potential bargain. Instead, you make comments about how common it is and how it’s in such poor condition. You exclaim loudly about how it’s such a disgrace that they even put such junk out to be sold. You remark on how you can’t imagine it will get a bid at all. Above all, you want to sound authoritative, like a person who has deep intimate knowledge about the worth of such items. The real pros even make up critical analysis about such-and-such mark on the bottom of the lamp proving it’s fake, etc. The wary bidder must be on their toes for such deceptions.

The books turn out to be an incredible find. Many of them date to the late eighteen hundreds, most are in good condition. Among the titles are a 1906 copy of the Merchant of Venice, a first edition of Emerson’s Essays, a Robert Louis Stevenson, a Nathanial Hawthorne, a copy of Robinson Crusoe from 1889, a book of poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson from the 1890’s and an 1882 copy of Victor Hugo’s Les Mis. The rest are mostly old bibles and 1800’s textbooks. I’m absolutely ecstatic, and lovingly page through these treasures from another’s past. I love old books with a passion bordering on obsession. While I adore old things in general, books are special. To me, old things are a tie to our past, they tie generations together and are valuable just in their having managed to survive their purpose for a hundred years. Especially books, which are fragile by nature. I love stories and tales, and the idea that a book I’ve read and loved was held and read and loved and owned by someone else over a hundred years ago blows my mind. I quickly decide on my highest price for each of the boxes.

The auction officially starts at ten o’clock. This is my first “real” auction and I’m curious to see how such a thing works. The auctioneers have set up a high stand at the end of two of the rows, in the aisle between the two tables. They clear everyone out from between these two rows of tables, and two of the auctioneers stand inside the aisle, one at each end. Each auctioneer wears blue jeans and a white button-up, long-sleeved shirt, with a white straw cowboy hat and microphone headset. People, with bidding placards at the ready, crowd in around the tables, each angling to get a good spot where they can both see the auctioneer and be seen by him when they want to bid.

I am surprised with how fast it goes. Not the way they talk, I’m used to that, though that’s also an experience the first time you hear it. At first you can’t understand a thing they say, because it sounds like they put a recording of someone’s speech into fast forward. But after a while you figure out that they’re not really talking: they’re stuttering. They stutter out indiscernible syllables, like Porky Pig when he tries to say “That’s all Folks!” They spit out recurring syllables as fast as possible with the only real words spoken being two numbers: the current bid and what the next bid amount will be.

“I’ve got five, I’ve got five, I need seven, need seven (stutter stutter stutter) seven now seven now (stutter stutter stutter) got five got five (stutter stutter stutter) no seven? No seven? Gone on five to bid number double zero, number one zero zero, make that bidder number one hundred!”

Once I figured out that that was all they were saying, the whole thing seemed kind of stupid. I mean, why not just talk normally? If you cut out all the useless stuttering noises it would result in the same amount of time being spent to sell each item. Why make yourself hard to understand? I’ve since realized that it’s psychologically part of the selling strategy. Talking that fast gives bidders a sense of urgency, focuses them intently on the auctioneer and on the manner of competition. Speeding up the sound increases the feeling of haste and excitement with the bidders, making them more likely to bid impulsively because of the perceived sense of being too slow, of being left behind.

No, what surprises me at this auction is the urgent manner with which they seem to want to sell everything. Whereas a single glass candy dish might itself sell for five dollars, the auctioneers seem intent on grouping three or four boxes of stuff together and calling out a starting bid. This annoys me for several reasons, some concrete, some not. Realistically, it’s obnoxious for them to do this if you only want one thing out of a box, and suddenly you have to bid on four boxes. It helps their case, I suppose, because now they’re more likely to move items people wouldn’t bid on otherwise. Though, I’m not entirely convinced of this. If I’m willing to bid five dollars for a green candy dish, I may be dissuaded from bidding if I suddenly have to take four boxes of junk home instead of just one. The other reason it bothers me is harder to identify, harder to define.

One of the auctioneers down in the aisle calls out to the auctioneer up on the platform.

“Now right here Jimmy, I’ve got some boxes of old photos, there’s some frames in here, some old ladies jewelry, We got a whole bunch of doilies in here – I bet some of them’s hand crocheted! – whole bunch of other stuff in here, Jim. Great find, great find. Sell it all!”

The other auctioneer begins calling out numbers going lower and lower until he finally gets a bid for seven dollars for all four boxes. I imagine being the woman who owns this house. Watching from inside her now emptied home as people mill through the boxed up remains of her former life. I wonder how she feels as people pick things up, look them over, toss them back in the boxes. How it feels when three or four boxes of your memories, of your life, barely bring two bucks. I begin to resent the auctioneer for grouping more and more boxes together as whole lots; for some reason this strikes me as insulting to the person who used to own them. The value of such things is so relative. The antique photo of someone who may have been her grandmother or great-grandmother is worth something, it has an intrinsic, immeasurable value. The box it’s in brings a few dollars and the winning bidder tells me happily that she plans to rip the picture out so she can resell the antique frame. I find this whole system depressing, disheartening. Dad is much more optimistic. He sees opportunity, for one thing - the chance to get a box of bolts or an old broken tool that may have otherwise been thrown away; he feels good knowing he can make it useful again. He sees it as a form of cleansing rebirth for stuff that may have been languishing in closet purgatory, sentenced to disuse and disrepair for years. You’d think he was adopting orphans from third-world Africa.

Throughout the day, I jealously guard my boxes as people come through and pick up the books, thumb through them. I wince when they almost drop them and rush over to replace them carefully in their boxes every time they’ve been left out after some savage flips roughly through them as if they were this month’s Reader’s Digest. I carefully size up my competition: the bidders who take their time with the books, coming back frequently to look through the boxes and talk with their spouses about them. There’s a middle-aged man in a fetching camouflaged hunting ensemble: t-shirt, sweat-shirt and hat. There’s a fat, dough-faced man with a perpetual scowl. There’s a young girl who seems especially interested in an old German Bible in one of the boxes.

The auction began with the two rows of tables to our left, and has since moved on to the furniture clustered in the open garage and driveway. Next they’re planning to move on to the vehicles and farm equipment in the backyard before coming back to the row of tables with the books. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. If my items come up late in the day there’s likely to be fewer bidders, which means less competition and lower prices. On the other hand, I’m worried that the later in the day it gets the more likely they’ll be to push boxes together than to sell them singly. I really don’t want to wind up buying eight boxes of books when I’m only interested in three.

As the day passes nearly everyone comes by my part of the tables. As is true of most of Oklahoma, the people are always friendly and talkative, enthusiastically willing to share their opinions, religion and life histories with you. I am plagued by the sensation of not fitting in. Around two o’clock I watch as an elderly lady meanders by, running her arthritic, large-knuckled fingers gently over the spines of the antique books. Her short gray hair is expertly curled with the precise sharpness that only long years of experience with pink foam rollers and cases of hairspray can provide. She’s wearing a faded OSU sweatshirt over a turtleneck covered with Christmas wreathes and reindeers.

“It’s so sad,” she sighs to no one in particular.

Looking around, I see no one else within earshot, and assume she must be talking to me.

“What’s so sad?”

She looks up, clearly startled to see me.

“Well, these books, dear. It’s so sad.”

Racking my brain I decide that the books must sadden her because she remembers using them in grade school, and realizing how old she actually is has depressed her. I’m not quite sure how to respond to such feelings, so I merely nod and murmur an agreement.

“I mean, look at all these books on how great this country is and how free we are. People don’t know how much freedom we’ve lost,” she says sadly after a few seconds.

I find myself surprised to hear such a comment in this part of the country. Most people ‘round here drive big trucks, have big wives they’ve known since high school and proudly display Bush-Cheney bumper stickers; when I first got out here I took the “Promote Peace” sticker off my car for security reasons. I readily agree with her and we engage in a political discussion for a few moments, lamenting the loss of accountability to the citizens, political corruption of the rich and the failure of the current Republican party to take care of their base support. I notice that camouflage boy is giving us menacing sideways glances as he eavesdrops on our heresy.

Finally around four o’clock the auctioneers wend their way back towards the table with the books. Naturally they start down at the other end, meaning the books will be one of the last things up for bid. I steel myself, mentally reviewing my bid limits for the boxes I’m interested in. Other people begin to crowd in around my end of the table, jostling for position. I have decided that I will go to $120 for the box with Shakespeare, Hawthorne and Emerson and $95 for the box with Robinson Crusoe, Tennyson and the majority of the school books. Much to my dismay the auctioneer begins shoving all the boxes together in a large grouping, indicating his intent to sell them all in one large lot. Thankfully, the dough-faced scowler immediately cries out against this maneuver. The auctioneers discuss it among themselves for a moment and then decide they’ll run the books through as choice auctions.

I panic as I’ve never heard of this method of auction before; I call out to the auctioneer on the platform, “What’s that mean?” He quickly explains that we’re bidding to take our choice of the boxes. So everyone bids to their top dollar, and then the winner gets to pick as many boxes as he wants for that price. If there’s any boxes leftover they begin the bidding process again. I nod to indicate I understand, inwardly cursing myself for revealing my inexperience to my bloodthirsty competition. I glance furtively around, looking for any knowing smirks from the other anxious bidders. The bidding starts at twenty, goes down to ten until the first bid is made. From there on it’s fast paced and frenzied, switching back and forth between myself and a bidder standing somewhere behind.

“Now 25, now 30, now 35, now forty,” the auctioneer calls out in a loud, rhythmic voice.

I stare, hard and unwaveringly, at the auctioneer, jerking my head down in one quick motion every time the auctioneer turns back to confirm my higher bid.

“Now 45, now 50, now 55, now sixty,” Sweat is breaking out on the auctioneer’s face as he continues his sing-song chant.

I’m beginning to worry, thinking I may very well have stood here for six hours guarding a box that someone wants to pay more for than I’m comfortable with… I internally begin debating whether or not I’m willing to go to 125 or even 130. Then I hear it… the momentary hesitation, the telling sign that the other bidder is nearing his bid limit, beginning to reconsider his devotion. I know I’ve won; the other bidder is going to swerve first. My eyes narrow on the auctioneer and I become more confident in asserting my next bid.

“Now 65…. Now Seventy… seventy five? I need seventy five bidder? Seven five seven five seven five seven five… and it’s sold for seventy!”

Relishing my victory and pleased that I’m nearly half below my bid limit, I take my time coming forward to pick my two favorite boxes. The process begins all over again, this time only going to forty before I win. This time I pick out a box populated mostly with spiritual texts and bibles. After that the remaining boxes go for $10 each; I leave them to the remaining bidders.

I happily cart my hard-won treasures off to the little black pick-up, then head off to hunt down Dad. Not seeing him among the remaining crowd, I decide I might as well go ahead and pay for my new book collection. I dig my credit card out of my wallet and wait patiently in line back at the auction trailer. I hand the lady my card and bid placard. She hands them right back with a cheery smile.

“Sorry ma’am, but we don’t take credit cards.”

I stare at her blankly for a moment, trying to decide if she’s kidding. What the hell kind of a business doesn’t take credit cards in this day and age? Registering defeat to rural America, I head off in search of Dad and, more importantly, his checkbook.

“Good job on the books, Sis.”

“Thanks, Daddy.”

I explain my payment situation, and he agrees to pay for my books if I pay him back when we get to town.

“Ready to go?” I ask, “I’m starving!”

“No,” he sighs, “I’ve got all this stuff to load.”

I glance behind him and realize that he’s won an entire tables worth of garage stuffings in addition to his table saw and fire extinguishers. I laugh when he tells me testily that all he wanted was the stupid extinguishers, but the auctioneers kept shoving boxes together. We finally get all this stuff loaded, most of which will be thrown away. The disgruntled dog is stuffed in the back corner of the pick-up bed and I have to ride home with all three boxes of books stacked up on my lap.

When I get home my husband CJ is sitting up in bed, playing a game on his laptop.

“Hey, baby. Have fun?” he asks without taking his eyes from the screen. I rush over and excitedly show him my new treasures, waiting impatiently for him to pause the game and look at the books.

“Huh. Yeah, cool,” he finally says handing them back to me and picking up the laptop. I blink in disappointment. What the hell does he mean “yeah, cool”? I comment on his lack of enthusiasm, pointing out that these books are over a hundred year old, and classics. He thinks about that for a minute.

“Yeah, and I’d love to look at them in a museum or in someone’s collection. But if I wanted to read Robinson Crusoe, I’d just download it, baby.” With this he turns back to his game. I’m struck once again with this disparity in our way of thinking. The point of these old books isn’t the story; if it were than you could just download it or buy it on Amazon. The point of the antique book is that it’s old, that it used to belong to someone else. The point is that you now have some kind of direct link with someone who lived and breathed before you were even born, a shared interest that links you cosmically across space and time. It’s almost as if, when you got to Heaven, you could find them and say “Hey, remember that copy of the Tempest you loved, the one with your name written in elegant ink with your birth date on the inside of the front cover? Yeah! I found that, man. At an auction in Pawnee, Oklahoma. They were only expecting to get three bucks for it, but I found it and I saved it. Yeah, yeah, I know! You want to go and get a cup of coffee or something?” And then you could walk on down to Heaven’s corner Starbucks and get yourself a latte, and sit and talk about a shared love of Shakespeare or about the times and how they are a-changin’. Hell, you could even invite the Bard himself on down.