On a slow summer night for
television a few days ago, I just happened on a documentary on WKAR tv called Sale
Barn, by Brooke Dagnan and Producer Angel Vasquez. What?! Is that our
Saturday Sale? And sure enough a soft little awareness film about a place that
gave us so much way back in our homestead history from learning about and
acquiring our first goats to picking up Free-Take-One Amos the absolutely best
dog that ever lived (I know, that’s a little romantic, but I swear he is
becoming legendary in our memories). Sale
Barn gives a lightweight visual of the Saturday Sale now known as the KenFrecker Auctioneers Inc ,
but in our memory the weekly event was far more than a casual auction. From the
book, A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life we described the
Saturday Sale a little differently:
“The Saturday Sale in this rural
area is quite different from another popular Midwest cosmopolitan sale at
Shipshewana. Tune up your senses, here we go: Sweaty human body smells through
old damp wool. Goats with urine/sperm spray radiating from their coats. Coffee
steaming from plastic foam cups. The misty vapor of barn manure, muck, rotted
straw and grain drifting from thick rubber boots. And old oil and grease smells
intermingling with contrary drifts of excessive after shave colognes.
“That is just the smells. Sounds
from all the activity include a symphony of comments from bleating goats, angry
roosters, braying asses, ducks, chickens, geese, horses. Humans are blowing and
wiping amid a cacophonic chatter of tones, accents, words working their way
through rough graveled throats. And children. Children who are free for a time
running, laughing, whispering anticipated mischief to each other. Imagine a
long journey through human gatherings – the Saturday Sale is the medieval
market live.”
One important item the film, Sale Barn, captured is Martin “Barney”
Barnhart, auctioneer. We forgot the gift of Barney’s captivating auction song.
There are many effective auction rolls rattling numbers and enticing bidders in
a crowd, but we have yet to hear one that quite compares to the cadence of
Barney’s call, it is truly a song bringing the notes up then finalizing the
punch down – “45 doll-ars, you got it.”
Barney Barnhart auctioneer is
well-known in Southern Michigan, in his mid-nineties at this writing. KenFrecker has a nice page on the history of the gentle man with the big voice –
an exceptional singing auctioneer. As for the documentary, Sale Barn, thank you for reminding us, you may have captured more
than you know.
Thanks always for stopping by. Be sure to go walk among
those beautiful wind towers in the previous blog.
Affectionately,
Helene
