01/30/2009

By KEN NEWTON  / Associated Press

Sunlight charges in the opened barn door, and heifers follow. A dance of Angus commences, the cattle dazed by the subdued light, the round cage and the Carhartt-and-sock-capped crowd.

Eddie Pickett looks down on the scene. He stands on a wooden perch balanced on a cylinder of hay, waits a beat and starts a run-on sentence always punctuated with the word "sold."

This chant, the bid calling, the auctioneer developed as a young man curious about the business. He drove along country lanes and assigned increments to telephone poles he passed, announcing five dollars upped to 10, then 15, rehearsal for his ears only.

"You just tried to get your flow," he remembers.

After countless herds sold, not to mention untold antiques, farm machines and closed-out inventories, Pickett marks his 50th year in the auction business. Still, he has another anniversary in mind this day.

Charlie Sloan, who farms with his father, Carl, north of Plattsburg, started a cattle auction 20 years ago. Pickett, who has called each one, regards it a sale of the old style, with neighbors pitching in to sort the livestock and run cows in and out of the ring.

Recent years have found the auction in a Sloan barn, buyers sitting on aluminum bleachers in a makeshift arena that displaces 225 round bales of hay. Before that, the sale took place outdoors, all involved braving the January elements and forming a circle around the cow up for bid.

Even in the barn this day, steam rises from the confused Angus. From his stage above the proceedings, Pickett tells the bundled crowd, "I've been coming here 20 years and I've never broken a sweat yet."

The line gets an appreciative laugh, something a younger Eddie would not have anticipated. He went to his first livestock sale when 6 months old, according to a story told by his father. A farm boy, he grew up in Clinton County and in the atmosphere of auctions.

One auctioneer of his youth told his father the boy might be good at the profession. "I felt like I was awkward and shy and had no ability to be out in front of people," Pickett recalls.

He remembered the comment, though, and taught himself the basics of the craft. In 1959, he started what is now the Eddie Pickett Auction Service.

The business revolves around relationships, the small community of sellers and buyers needing to feel good at the end of transactions.

"They've got confidence in him that he's not running the bid up," Charlie Sloan says. "It's an honest deal. That's the way I want to be treated, and that's the way I want to treat everybody else."

Even fellow auctioneers, competitors for accounts, show up. Charlie Golden, another Stewartsville auctioneer, has been one of Pickett's neighbors for years.

"He's just a little older than me and a lot smarter," Golden says.

Pickett replies, "I'm older, that's all."

Longevity in auctioneering depends on health and voice. Pickett, 71, considers himself blessed to have kept both. He and his wife, Karen, have a cow herd but spend most of their time in the auction business. He presides at about 100 sales a year, including his charitable work.

Experiences counts for a lot. A good auctioneer needs an idea of values, the worth of a product and what price to strive for. He keeps track of the prices brought at other sales, and he knows bidders do their research as well. At the Sloan auction, many on the bleachers jot in small notebooks.

And he has a feel for the flow on his auctions, whether people are participating or holding back. "You try to do the best that you can each time out," Pickett says. "Psychology is the marketing of the product, isn't it, really?"

Ten years ago, Pickett got elected to the Missouri Auctioneers Hall of Fame. In 2007, at the American Royal in Kansas City, he became the Missouri Champion Auctioneer. He deflects any praise, admitting 18 years in the competition finally yielded him the top prize. "You can say I persisted," he insists.

His modest tone belies the authority he commands with auction microphone in hand. He wears a Stewartsville Cardinals cap at the Sloan auction and, during a pause, encourages the bidders that "it's a lot easier to say yes than no."

Then the long-running chant resumes.