Livestock Market Memories!

Unknown Livestock Market--Photo by Getty Images, Bruce Forester

When I was a boy growing up in Knott County Kentucky, one of my favorite things to do with my father and one of his friends, whoever that friend might be on any given day, was to accompany them on a trip to one of the three livestock markets in the area to which my father, Ballard Hicks, often traveled since he regularly bought and sold both cattle and hogs as a means to supplement his income from operating our country store at Dema, Kentucky, and from his Social Security since he was already 64 when I was born.  I learned many things from my father and two of the things I learned which I have utilized throughout my entire life involved handling and dealing with livestock and attending, understanding, and benefiting from auctions.   My father never drove and owned only one car in his life, a 1955 Plymouth sedan which he took in lieu of a bad store debt.  When he wanted to travel to one of the stockyards we visited, he would make arrangements with one of his many friends who had a pickup truck and also traded in livestock or at least enjoyed going to the stockyards.  On those occasions, my mother would remain at home to run the store and my father, his friend, and I would all end up, in most cases, on the bench seat of an old pickup which would usually range in age from the early 1940's to the late 1950's.  I would be in the middle in most cases with my legs on each side of the manual shifter on the hump in the floorboard.  Just to the left of the gear shift would usually be the old fashioned floor starter button which a driver had to utilize with a foot.  There would never be any air conditioning and the heat might either be too hot or too cold in winter.  But I would not have missed these trips to the Isom, Paintsville, or Ivel Stockyards for anything in the world.  

Historic Livestock Sale, St. Paul, MN--Getty Images

I learned a lot about cattle, hogs, and horses, and maybe even a little about sheep and goats although neither Daddy or me ever wanted to trade sheep and goats, and there weren't many of them in Eastern Kentucky in those days.  I also came to love the art of auctioneering and and these stock yard trips had a lot to do with my desire to become an auctioneer some day and stand up in front of a crowd and induce them to do my bidding with a smooth, fast, professional chant.  We would spend the day at the sale until either Daddy or his friend bought or sold what they wanted to buy or sell, or sometimes we might stay for the entire sale and leave without either of them having spent or earned a dollar.  But it was always fun for all of us. 

I have learned a lot about several other things at livestock markets over the years.  Those educational experiences involved things like the difference between good auctioneers and bad ones just as much as they taught me the differences between bad cattle and good ones.  I learned about honesty and dishonesty.   One of the phrases I remember quite well from my father was that when he was selling livestock "if somebody asks the right questions, I give them the right answers".  That idea meant that you did not lie to a potential customer but you might not tell him the entire truth unless he asked the right questions.  I also remember another slightly different twist on this same concept when I walked once with my maternal grandfather Woots Hicks to a small farm a mile or two from our house to look at a milk cow the man was selling.  The man wasn't home and his wife sent one of their young sons to the barn with us to inspect the cow.  My grandfather asked the boy, a few years younger than me, "Does she give a lot of milk, son?"  The boy replied, "She sure does.  She gives a bucket full but you can't drink it.  It's bad milk."  It goes without saying that he did not buy the cow because the boy had volunteered more information about the cow than was necessary to give an incomplete but still honest answer to the question.  A simple answer of "yes" would probably have sold the cow and my grandfather would have taken his lumps on the deal without saying a word because he had not asked all the right questions in order to achieve the right answers.

Luling, TX Livestock Sale, Setup A Lot Like Paintsville--Getty Images

I also learned a lot about people in general, whom you could trust, whom you shouldn't.  I learned about how to associate with other males in the unique cultural world of Eastern Kentucky, Central Appalachia, the world of the livestock traders.  I learned concepts about people and dealing with them which I used years later both as a door to door salesman and as a mental health and substance abuse therapist.  I also learned things about people which I use today to create characters in Appalachian short stories and novels. I learned a little about trading everything from pocket knives and guns to other random items of value although I have never been a knife or gun trader.  I learned about what I like to call the "squat and spit" method of social interchange which was more common then than today.  Men would engage in conversation and squat on their heels to rest their legs and backs and, since most of them chewed tobacco, they would talk, spit tobacco juice occasionally, and just hang out together anywhere two or more of them encountered each other.  I learned a lot about the people, their family names, who lived in which county, who took better care of their livestock, who could afford what they needed, who might write a bad check, who always asked all the right questions, who might not know all the questions to ask, and who had the respect of the other livestock traders. 

The story below which I located in some old files from the Mountain Eagle, the local newspaper of Letcher County, demonstrates that I was not the only Appalachian child who learned valuable things at the stock yards. 

"The Isom Stockyard was a fascinating place for a child, mainly because of the cattle sale that took place every Saturday afternoon. It was also a social meeting place. You could learn everything that had happened in Isom during the past week. Women and children would attend, and while the men were interested in the cattle sale the women sat in the top bleachers to talk and gossip while the children played. I can remember going with Mother a few times. Dad usually went to see how cattle were selling as he bought and sold cattle now and then. Each year the cattle sale grew and vendors with all kinds of wares began to set up on each side of the highway until you could buy almost any thing you needed. Large numbers of people from all parts of the county visited Isom on those Saturday afternoons. On Saturdays, both the Ison and Holcomb restaurants served lunch to the cattlemen and buyers attending the sale. The Isom School served many purposes. In addition to teaching the children it was used to hold funerals. When a funeral was held while school was in session, the children were not dismissed but had to attend the funeral. If the burial was to be across the road in the Isom Cemetery, school children had to attend those. These funerals caused me to have many nightmares." The Way We Were Remembering Isom in the 1940's by Mountain Eagle Staff, & by Elva Pridemore Marshall, September 11, 2013, available on February 27, 2020, at 5:21pm at https://www.themountaineagle.com/articles/the-way-we-were-316/

Sadly, I have not been able to locate any online records of a similar nature about the Ivel and Paintsville Stock Yards or any photos of either of the three I have mentioned.  But I know quite a bit about the Ivel Stock Yards because the owner, Chester Layne was also a Tom's Candy and Peanut distributor in Floyd, Knott, Pike, and Johnson counties and was in our country store every week whether or not we had been to the sale at his facility at Ivel.  He was a wonderful salesman and I have written about him in other places in this blog.  Chester and my father often traded livestock outside the stock yards and he sometimes either delivered a registered bull to Daddy or bought and transported livestock from our property to his stock yard. He always kept Daddy up to date on what prices livestock were bringing and gave him tips on when to sell out or when to buy and hold.

I have a vague memory of the first time I went to the Paintsville stock yards with Daddy.  I remember walking into the somewhat larger than usual sales area which still exists today although it has deteriorated badly and only has one sale a month for goats only.  We entered it from a walkway which was elevated above the holding pens and came in at the back and top of the semicircular seating area.  The auctioneer and clerk were in an auction block at the bottom and front of the arena which was slightly elevated above and behind the sales ring.  Livestock were driven into the ring through a gate operated by a chute man on the left side and, after being sold, left the ring on the right side through another gate operated by another chute man.  Usually one ring man was in the ring and they sometimes allowed the commercial livestock buyers to get inside the ring.  I don't even remember the name of the auctioneer who was working Paintsville in those days but I will always remember that I wanted to be an auctioneer some day when I looked the situation over and realized that one person was in charge of that whole setup.  I learned something there, and at other auctions that I attended in my youth, which I used in every auction I have ever conducted since getting my license in 1980.  Someone at every auction is in charge, either the auctioneer or the crowd, and if it is the crowd that means that the auctioneer and the sellers are having a bad day.  I also learned a lot about good and bad ring men and when I was in the auction business I was lucky enough to find the best ring man alive, Dewey Rogers, who has since passed on and I think of Dewey nearly every day.  No good auctioneer ever fully reaches his potential without at least one really good ring man or ring woman which are more common today than then.

One of the most lasting memories I have of going to auctions at the stock yards came about sometime in either the late 1950's or early 1960's.  Daddy and a friend of his, Johnny Banks, took me and two of Johnny's nieces about my age to the Isom sale and we were all wandering around in the walkways over the livestock pens and the two girls and I decided to have an adventure.  We climbed out on the big joist beams over a pen which held a bull which probably weighed close to a ton.  The bull was in one of those small, one animal pens which were usually used for bulls or other animals which needed to be kept alone.  He was not enjoying what was probably his last trip to the stockyards since he was most likely headed to the meat packers in Chicago that afternoon.  The bull was actually trying to turn around in the pen which was not more than three feet wide and eight feet long a lot like a rodeo chute in which cowboys mount bulls before a ride.  The two girls and I were actually sitting on the joist beam directly over the bull pen as the bull tried to turn and he had nails and lumber squealing, popping, and complaining when suddenly Daddy and Johnny Banks saw us and realized where we were.  They didn't actually give us a whipping when they yelled at us and got us down and back under control.  But you can bet your butt that before the talking was over we knew better than to ever crawl out over a bull in a pen again.

I also remember one occasion at Paintsville when I saw an incident which nearly cleared the arena for a while.  The gate man on the entry side yelled out, "Watch this one boys.  He's a little wild."  and a young bull, probably not over one thousand pounds shot out of the chute into the ring.  The auctioneer started his chant and the ring man jumped up on a little concrete wall which circled the ring about two feet high and held steel posts strung with steel cables to allow buyers to see livestock but keep the animals inside the ring.  The bull shot around the ring one time, saw that the exit gate was still closed and whirled back to the steel cables in front of where some of the commercial buyers and bigger farmers sat in the front row.  He hit the cables at full speed and his head and shoulders shot through the cables nearly into the laps of these regulars.  Most of the crowd thought the bull was going to actually make it through the cables into the seating area and a mad dash to the back started.  But two of the commercial buyers started kicking the bull in the face and actually managed to drive him back into the ring where the gate man on the exit side already had the gate open.  It was a very brief but exciting flurry for about a minute and has stuck in my memory for more than forty years.

Most of the small, local stock yards are gone now including Ivel and Isom.  Paintsville is primarily a dying flea market with one goat sale a month. Ivel and Isom are long gone. Lee City in Wolfe County has been rebuilt with steel and just isn't the same kind of place the old auctions were.  I miss the old Eastern Kentucky livestock yards and I am betting that some of my readers do also.   I apologize for not being able to locate historical photos of Paintsville, Ivel, and Isom.  If you have any you are willing to let me use on this blog post, send me an e-mail at rchicks@mrtc.com.  I will be sure to give you photographer credit on the blog.