When the notice for the ranch auction came out, I penned it on the calendar. A morning spent in Ritter, I figured, would help the thinly stocked workshop at Boulder Creek Ranch.

So I loaded up the two dogs, hitched up my 8-foot utility trailer, and drove on down the Middle Fork. That trailer looked puny as I bumped onto the pasture parking lot, already lined with sizeable pickups pulling sizeable flatbed and horse trailers. I could feel the eyes of other ranchers looking over my rig, perhaps wondering how a city boy got so lost.

Tugging my straw hat on a little tighter, I sauntered over to the two shops that were action central. This was an unusual Friday auction, so most of the lookers were serious working men. By their grimy jeans and greased-marked baseball caps, they appeared to be loggers, truck drivers, ranchers.

A life’s collection of man’s stuff was stacked in rows. One pallet was a snake pile of extension cords of every length and condition. Another pallet held box after box of electrical odds and ends – mostly odds, it looked like. After roaming around for about an hour, I saw about 30 piles that I absolutely needed for my Middle Fork ranch.

Right on time, auctioneer Ramona Turmon stepped up on a portable stoop and explained the rules. She was all business, a mark of 25 years roaming the West clearing out ranches and farms. She got right into it, but the Friday crowd seemed a little slow to come to life.

A few boxes of odds and ends went for a couple of dollars. She stopped, looking out of the sea of earnest faces. “Come on, fellas, there’s some good stuff here.”

The low prices seduced me. Soon, I was nodding my hat to Ramona. You know, that almost invisible move that signals you’re in the bidding. I picked up a pack of crowbars for $5. And then there was the dirty wooden box with who knows what in it, but a couple of handsaws poked out. So another $5 went on my tab.

Some of those guys who had been eyeing my baby trailer swung their heads back toward me on some of the bids. You could see it in their eyes: “Who is this fool?” I just held their gaze, like I knew something important about that wood box of junk.

Since I’m new to this ranching stuff, I don’t know what gear you need to keep up a place. But an auction is a quick education. Ramona’s helpers kept holding up stuff I’d never seen before – and she’d explain the great condition of the gadget. Barrel pumps. Fence tape. Wall-mounted drill presses.

And I learned some of that special language – Auction Speak. “One money,” I learned, means you’re going to pay one price for all the items – three shovels, two ladders, whatever. “Three for the money” means each item is going for the final price from the highest bidder. One guy sets the final price, and he can buy all three or others in the crowd can get the same thing for the same price. Pretty efficient, really.

My eyes lit up when the bidding turned to a big stack of lumber of all sorts. I haven’t been on the Middle Fork long, but I know you can never have enough boards. This stack had new 2x6s, 2x4s, planks, and more. Home Depot would want a few hundred bucks for that load. I won the bid at $150.

Winning the bid was one thing. Getting my load home was another. Remember that 8-foot trailer I was telling you about? Well, it’s kinda tricky to load 12-foot boards. The auction helpers used a big farm tractor on two trips to bring me my bounty. They dumped the lumber on the ground. The driver leaned over the steering wheel for just a moment. He looked at the lumber. He looked at my trailer. He decided to stay quiet and go help someone else.

Well, I jerry-rigged a way to get that lumber on board. The drive back up to the ranch was a cautious one, but successful.

When I called Scotta back home in Keizer, I was gushing with joy. Boy, I’d made a good dent in our tool shortage. Let’s just say Scotta was sorry she’d let me take the ranch checkbook along.

But then she caught auction fever. I dragged her to an auction weeks later outside Prairie City. This one was mostly for the big boys, the guys who needed major farm equipment to plow or till or tear up a field. But there were a couple of flatbeds lined with stuff yarded out of some barn.

The guys from Central Oregon Livestock Auction were handling this one, and they set to work on the smaller stuff. They came to a pile of old farm implements – rakes, shovels, etc. Bidding was dead. They kept adding to the pile. “Let’s throw those in,” the auctioneer told his helper, pointing to a stack of what I now knew to be barrel pumps. And then another stack of tools went on the pile.

Good enough for me and two other fellows, who started tipping our hats. I got the pile for $30 – and Scotta thought it was a steal. Of course, she made me get her some antique wooden boxes for $10. She drifted back to the truck to check on the dogs, leaving me bidding on boxes in front of guys who must have thought I was nuts. Well, I like being married and fed regular so I did the bidding as instructed.

Apparently, auctioneers take pride in selling anything.

To prove the point, the guy handling the Prairie City auction held up a pair of old cow horns. Nothing pretty about them. They were hollow, and pretty chipped up.

The auctioneer held up the pair, and asked for a bid. The unspoken joke was this: We’re not moving on to the good stuff until someone buys these horns.

After a bit, a guy on the edge of the crowd and said, “One” Before he could get out “dollar” the auctioneer pointed at him and shouted, “Sold!”

With that kind of salesmanship, I knew it was time to get out of there.

Scotta would never let me have the checkbook again if I bought that beat-up pickup leaking oil all over the rancher’s pasture.

? Les Zaitz writes occasionally about ranch life. He can be reached at zaitzbcr@starband.net