"Skags The Milk Horse" by Miriam Blanton Huber, Great Children's Literature From 1931

The first time I came across this book, I bought a copy of it at a large flea market in Northern Indiana, and almost immediately sold it online for a nice profit. In addition to being one of the nicest little pickups I had ever had in that interesting and exciting (at times) pursuit of finding, buying, and either keeping or reselling found objects, this little book has always fascinated me for several reasons. It had survived to be found more than 75 years later in a flea market. I have also spent years of my life working in equine related jobs, more than 20 years in the Thoroughbred horse business and almost four years with the private juvenile treatment company Vision Quest, nearly all of which I spent on the Vision Quest Wagon Trains, riding down the highways of the Eastern United States on one of the best horses I ever knew stopping oncoming traffic on a horse while holding a hand held stop sign. That kind of partnership with a horse is the kind of experience that can give you a lifetime of memories and that mustang, Teepee, and I had a helluva parentership. This book is about a draft horse of unknown breed and a milk delivery man who had that same kind of partnership. The book is 111 pages written by Miriam Blanton Huber and illustrated by Curtiss Sprague. Huber wrote at least 50 or 60 books. Sprague can be found listed as the author or illustrator of about a dozen books. Good biographical information cannot be located online for either of the two. The American Book Company which published the book existed from 1890 to 1981 as an independent publisher of educational books for students at all levels of American education. It ceased to exist as an independent imprint in 1980 after almost 100 years as a publishing company. Another company, unrelated to the original American Book Company, now operates under the same name. The book contains a page labeled "Note" which states that the vocabulary of the book is "512 words of which 81 percent are found in "Gates' Reading Vocabulary for the Primary Grades" and 51 percent are found in the first five hundred words of the Gates list." I have never before encountered the Gates list. I have learned that an author and psychologist named Arthur Irving Gatesin the early twentieth century produced several books in the fields of psychology, education, and the blended discipline of educational psychology. I have since learned that Gates lived from 1890 to 1971 and was an expert on vocabulary in early childhood education. If I had never gotten another positive thing from this book, I would have learned about the lives of three educational professionals who obviously had some positive impact on each of their fields. But, you ask, what about "Skags The Milk Horse". Skags, the hero of the book, is a draft horse who pulls a milk wagon through the streets of an unnamed city, and is driven each day by his regular driver and partner Jim Clark. The milk company has a building and lot somewhere on a city street which is designed in such a way that the milk bottling and distribution operation is on the ground floor and the horse stable is on the second floor with a stall for each horse, a large harness room, an attendant, and a cat named Tibbs who is Skags' friend. Each night, in the middle of the night, the horses are harnessed by their drivers, hitched to their wagons which have been parked in the large lot behind the building, loaded with milk, and set out around the town to make their deliveries. Naturally, each driver and horse have an assigned route with regular customers. Skags and Jim Clark go from house to house and Skags actually knows which houses he is supposed to stop at while Jim delivers the milk. But one day in winter,Jim falls on ice after having walked down an alley between two streets to deliver milk to the only two houses he has on that street. He has left Skags and the wagon on the first street and after his fall he is unconscious and transported to a hospital. No one comes to do anything with Skags and the wagon. Skags waits patiently for Jim until about noon when he finally leaves the spot he has been left in and follows his regular route back to the milk company where no one knows yet that Jim has fallen. Eventually, the hospital calls the milk company when Jim regains consciousness. In the meantime, Skags has found his way back to the milk company and is seen as a hero for knowing his route well enough to return to the company with the wagon, honoring the stop signs and red lights, following his routine, and being safe the entire time. The book describes a very humane operation of the horse stable and the care and handling of the horses. It delivers a wonderful story of the kind of partnership a human and a working horse can establish when they are together nealry every day doing their jobs. Yes, it an aged book and unlikely to ever by used in an educational setting again, except by one or two dedicated teachers who stray into a copy and use it is as auxillary material in a classroom. The book also gives a good history lesson about how milk was processed and delivered in urban areas as American cities grew larger and larger before the common use of automobiles and trucks. The one flaw in the book, possibly, is the fact that the author describes the horse stable as being on the second floor of the building above the milk processing facility. Even in the 1930's when the FDA was much less stringent in their regulation of foods and drugs, it seems unlikely to me that a milk company would have stabled ther horses on a floor above the processing plant. Otherwise, this is a fine early childhood book which is appropriate for grades somewhere between three and five. If you are a horse person or an elementary teacher who likes to use auxillary material in class, this is a fine book to own.

Two Unusual Trips To Arkansas

 

I have always really enjoyed Arkansas and truly wish I could have spent more time there over the years and enjoyed the beauty, hospitality, and unique nature of the state from border to border. While it is not remotely Appalachian, the cultures of the Ozarks and Appalachia do share some significant similarities. I hear people all the time making disparaging remarks about the state and I have never found legitimate reasons to do that.   I will admit that after the Clintons left Arkansas the politics has gone downhill terribly and it is, in many ways, a truly southern state, and that is not a good thing in many ways, especially in politics.  For me the only truly negative aspect of Arkansas, or at least Arkansas geography, is the long, horribly boring drive on the interstate from Memphis to Little Rock.  It is flat as a pancake nearly all the way and you actually want to cheer every time you see a tree standing out in a cotton field or cow pasture.  But the people are generally kind, cheerful, and interesting to talk to.  

But what I really want to write about here are the first trips both my wife Candice and I made to Arkansas and they came years apart because my first trip there happened almost ten years before I met Candice.  In the early 1980's, I was between jobs in the Thoroughbred horse business in Lexington, Kentucky, and I had a friend, Joe Durkin, who owned a small Thoroughbred farm outside Lexington and Joe was having a very bad year.  His father had recently died.  He and his wife were getting a divorce and he eventually lost primary custody of his young son.  Because of the divorce, he also had to declare bankruptcy and was in the process of losing the farm.  Between Joe and the one or two Thoroughbred boarding clients he had left, they owned a total of 7 Thoroughbred mares none of which had outstanding pedigrees.  They collectively made the decision to sell the mares in Little Rock at an auction of horses of all ages which was known as The Arkansas Thoroughbred Breeders Sale which now seems to be defunct which is not surprising.  The next Man O' War was not remotely likely to have ever been sold through that sale.  

Joe got me to agree to make the trip to Arkansas with him, drive a horse van he had borrowed from a well known, generally low end horse trainer named Smiley Adams who won a ton of claiming races but very few stakes races.  I was going to drive the van and do the work of caring for the horses and showing them to potential buyers at the sale.  It turned out the van was a six horse van and we had seven mares.  But the van also had a large tack box which extended over the cab of the truck and a narrow walkway between the cab of the truck and the wall behind the three front stalls which faced backward toward the center aisle of the van.  We managed to load the normal six mares in the normal six stalls and then got the seventh mare loaded into the walkway behind the cab with her rear end facing the door.  We headed to Little Rock with me driving the van and Joe driving behind me in a small pickup he owned with the necessary hay, straw, feed, and other items in the bed of the truck.  We didn't quite look like Okies but maybe a bit close.  

We got just outside Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and the engine blew in Smiley's van.  There we were sitting on the side of the interstate with seven mares in a six horse van which was inoperable and Joe was not a rich man.  But amazingly, it wasn't long before a thirteen horse van owned by Sallee Vans in Lexington came along headed straight to Little Rock.  At that time and still today, Sallee is one of the biggest, and the best, companies in the horse vanning business.  We were able to flag down the van and, to our great surprise, they had only six horses in a thirteen horse van.  The drivers agreed to take Joe's mares to Little Rock if we could figure out how to transfer them from the six horse van to the Sallee Van. 

Then, which was not surprising, a Kentucky State Trooper came along, turned on his blue lights and pulled in behind the two vans and the pickup truck.  We were beginning to look like a drive by parade and traffic was whizzing by at 80 and 90 miles an hour as we held a conference on the side of the interstate.  We all knew there was no safe way to move those mares from one van to the other and our six horse van was immobile.  But the state trooper had the answer which was also very lucky for us.  He said there was an abandoned Kentucky Weigh Station just a mile or so down the highway and we could pull the trucks into there and load the mares on the Sallee van.  So the trooper called for a heavy wrecker which showed up fairly quickly and we had them pick the front tires of the six horse van about four to six inches off the pavement and slowly drive it to the weigh  station.  The wrecker set the van down and the Sallee driver pulled his van up about six inches away from the door to our van.  We laid one of the van ramps across the space between the vans, put the side boards up, and walked the mares from van to van.  Getting the seventh mare into the Sallee van was the hardest part of the deal since she was loaded with her hindquarters toward the door.  The Sallee van driver pulled up beside the door to the walkway and we slid the wooden ramp as close to the mare's hind feet as we could get it and managed to back her from van to van.  

The part I hadn't seen coming was that the Sallee drivers wanted me to ride from Elizabethtown to Little Rock as a van attendant in the back of the van with the thirteen horses.  By that time, I had done a lot things in the Thoroughbred horse business, including stretches as farm foreman at the Stallion Station in Lexington and a horrible year as a farm manager for a lunatic in Upstate New York, but I had never been a van attendant except to occasionally ride in small van with a brood mare on her way to and from a breeding shed or with a yearling or two on their way to a sale, all of which I had never done except in the environs of the Lexington general area.  I had sometimes fantasized that I might like to be a full time van attendant with Sallee so I could travel the country from New York to California.  But I had no idea until then just how miserable it is to ride on four bales of hay and straw in the back of  a thirteen horse van headed into the deep south on a summer day.  It is almost 500 miles from Elizabethtown, Kentucky, to Little Rock and one trip in the back of a horse van was enough for me to abandon all my fantasies about being a van attendant.  

I have no idea how much money Joe Durkin lost on that trip with the need to have a motor either rebuilt or a new one installed in Smiley Adams' van but Joe said Smiley actually took it all pretty well since it was his oldest backup van.  Smiley raced horses at many of the tracks across the country in those days and he had two or three newer vans which he relied on most of the time.  But Joe had to pay the repair bill and tow bill on the van, the haul bill on the seven mares from Elizabethtown to Little Rock, the sales commissions on his own mares, my labor, hotel bills and food bills while we were in Little Rock, and he was already facing bankruptcy, divorce, and losing his farm.  But after all his legal issues were settled, Joe went to work as a clerk in a liquor store in Versailles, Kentucky, and the last time I had any contact with him a few years later he was the manager of an S & S Tire Store in Versailles and had managed to survive.  After we got back to Lexington, he helped me get a job working on a small Thoroughbred farm in Versailles for one of the granddaughters of Huey Long which did not turn out be nearly as exciting as it might sound on paper.  

Now, let's talk about my wife Candice's first trip to Arkansas which was actually to Hot Springs. Shortly after Candice and I got married in 1992, I developed a friendship with an old, somewhat broken down Thoroughbred jockey named Quentin Schlafer.  Quentin was a wonderful fellow but he lived a life of bad decisions and could no longer ride races and most horse trainers were no longer willing to allow him to exercise their horses.  But he got the idea that some trainer he knew who trained horses at Oaklawn Race Track in Hot Springs would hire him if he could get there.   His mother, who was a wonderful, hard working Jewish woman about 80 said she would pay Candice and I to haul Quentin and his gear to Oaklawn.  It was the dead of winter in late December of 1993, I believe, when we started out with Quentin, an exercise saddle and bride, riding helmet, his clothing, and two tack sewing machines in the back of my Dodge Ram 50 pickup.  With three of us in the front seat, it got crowded and both Quentin and Candice didn't like it.  The truck had a manual transmission and every time I shifted gears I was banging somebody on the knees.  In spite of the weather, Candice and Quentin decided to take a sleeping bag and take turns staying in the back of the truck with all the gear under the topper which was still mighty cold.  I would stop every time whoever was riding in the back would bang on the front window of the topper and they would switch.  But we managed to arrive in Hot Springs with both of them still alive and without visible frostbite.  

The Finish Line At Oaklawn

We dropped Quentin off at the race track where he was able to find some trainer who would let him sleep in a tack room and we took the left over money his mother had paid us and checked into the historic Arlington Resort Hotel and Spa, the best, most beautiful place in Hot Springs.  It was between Christmas and New Years and the hotel was fully decorated with a large gingerbread house in the lobby and Christmas lights everywhere.  They were also having a New Year's Eve buffet in the dining room which was expensive but loaded with the best food the south can offer.  Hot Springs is also the home of Hot Springs National Park which used to be a resort for the ultra-rich in the early twentieth century.  We checked in, got reservations for the buffet, and scheduled massages at the hotel which used hot water pumped directly from the hot springs in old claw foot bath tubs with same sex attendants giving the massages while you were in the tub.  We had the spa/massage experience, at the buffet, visited the national park, ate lunch the next day in a little restaurant across the street which had great jambalaya, and headed back to Lexington.  But it is interesting to me to remember that the first trip each of us made to Arkansas was riding in the back end of a truck.  

The Arlington Hotel, Hot Springs

2020--The Year Of The Meaningless Thoroughbred Triple Crown

This year since about March 1, 2020, the Corona Virus has destroyed or damaged many things in America.  One of those which has been damaged the most and talked about the least is horse racing's Thoroughbred Triple Crown, the three races composed of the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes.  I have not been involved in any aspect of the Thoroughbred horse business for more than twenty-five years but I spent nearly twenty years in the industry from about 1975 to 1994 in jobs ranging from general farm laborer to a five year stint when I was the broodmare and yearling foreman on a large breeding farm in Lexington.  I also spent one year as the manager of a large breeding farm in the Mid-Hudson region of New York.  I like to think I understand more about the Thoroughbred industry than the average person and I still pay attention to happenings in the industry.  

2011 First Turn, Photo by Churchill Downs, Inc.

When the Corona Virus pandemic made it clear that having thousands of people in a confined area was dangerous, the horse racing industry, especially in New York, Maryland, and Kentucky, where the Triple Crown races are held, realized they had to make serious changes in their plans.  Thoroughbred racing is governed by numerous state racing commissions in the states where tracks exist.  These state commissions regulate the industry in many ways including the establishment of and granting of racing dates to the various tracks.  As Belmont, Churchill Downs, and Pimlico where the races are held worked to decide what to do, they considered many options including changing the dates and distances of the races.  The greatest quality of the Triple Crown and what has always made it the most significant yard stick by which to measure three year old Thoroughbred horses has always been the fact that the three races, held on three different tracks at three different distances in a period of only five weeks has and always will make it an incredibly difficult task for a young race horse, a jockey, a trainer, and the assorted others including owners and handlers to win. The upshot of all the planning by all the parties involved was that not only were the dates of the races changed but the order was shuffled and the distance of the Belmont Stakes was shortened from 1 1/2 miles to 1 1/8 miles.  The Belmont was also changed from the last race in the Triple Crown, always to be run exactly 5 weeks after the Kentucky Derby which was always run on the first Saturday in May at 1 1/4 miles.  The Belmont Stakes was scheduled to be run at this seriously shortened distance roughly 3 weeks later than usual on June 20, 2020.  The Kentucky Derby was scheduled to be run at its usual distance on September 5, 2020, almost exactly two months later than usual.  The Preakness Stakes was scheduled to be run at its usual distance of 1/3/16 miles but on October 3, 2020, nearly five months later than the historic date of the third Saturday in May.  All these decisions were based on a complex combination of monetary issues, open racing dates at each venue, public health mandates from each of the states and the federal government, and an attempt by the entire Thoroughbred industry to run three races at the three tracks on some date sometime, at some distance or other which they could look at the  world with an almost straight face and say "This is the 2020 Thoroughbred Triple Crown!"  You can bet your fanny that the primary factor in the decision making process was always monetary.  

What this bizarre and laughable combination of decisions did was to make the so-called 2020 Thoroughbred Triple Crown meaningless.  Historically, the running of the three races over a period of five weeks and culminating in the Belmont Stakes at 1 1/2 miles made the task of one horse, one trainer, and one team not impossible but incredibly difficult and without any possibility of denial that it was the toughest assignment the world could ever give to a horse and a racing team.  Running the 1 1/4 mile Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May gave the horse and team the difficult task of winning a race at a distance nearly the entire field had never yet run at a time very early in the racing season against the best three year olds alive.  It was always run at a time when the grind of the racing season had not yet winnowed the field with injuries.  The Preakness Stakes then always followed the Kentucky Derby in only two weeks at a distance of 1 3/16 miles around two turns on another track in another state.  The winner would have to ship from Kentucky to Maryland and come back in two weeks with enough speed to accomplish the markedly different task of the Preakness.  Then in exactly three weeks ,usually the first Saturday in June, the Belmont Stakes was run on a third track at the much longer distance of 1 1/2 miles which required the horse who had already run two difficult races in two weeks to develop enough stamina and finish to win at the greater distance.  And for these reasons, the traditional, historical Thoroughbred Triple Crown has been won by only 13 horses since 1875 which was the first year the Kentucky Derby was run which created the troika of races.  Sir Barton was the first Triple Crown Winner in 1919 which was 44 years after the series was composed of the three races.  

In the abbreviated Belmont Stakes of 2020 on June 20, 2020, a horse called Tiz The Law was the winner.  He is scheduled, so far as we know to run in the other two races and attempt this so-called Triple Crown.   He is a fairly good horse and could win all three races.  But we will never know if he is worthy to be called a Triple Crown Winner even if he walks away with all three races.  In my opinion the worst thing that could ever happen for Thoroughbred racing and the Thoroughbred industry would be for Tiz The Law to actually win these three drastically changed races.  In my opinion, the Thoroughbred industry, the three tracks, and their three state racing commissions might just as well have said "We are going to randomly draw a race from each track's scheduled racing and call it one event in the 2020 Triple Crown."  They could suddenly have elevated three claiming races to Grade I status and not done any more harm to the industry.  Let's all hope that Tiz The Law breaks badly from the gate on Saturday, September 5, 2020, trails the field around the track at Churchill Downs, and finishes dead last behind the biggest long shot in the field who gallops away to an easy win.  At that point, the Preakness Stakes in October will be clearly recognized for the farce it already is along with the Belmont Stakes and, sadly, the 2020 Kentucky Derby. It would be truly tragic if Tiz The Law suddenly in October found a few million fools attempting to mention his name along with those Secretariat, Seattle Slew, Citation, Whirlaway, Sir Barton, and the 8 other Triple Crown Winners who actually accomplished the task. 

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.