May 23, 2021 Sunday

    I went to the auction yesterday of our neighbor Frank Cwikla. Auctions are popular in this area. Many people will attend with no intention of buying anything but as a mini-holiday where they can see people and have lengthy chats. There is always lunch available.

   There were no auctions last year because of Covid and even though it was a cool drizzly day, the mob that descended on Frank's farm yesterday was enormous. I got there at 9:45, just before the auction began and my bidding number was 186. By the time I got my coffee, the bidding had started. I hadn't left myself time to inspect any of the boxes on the two big trailers by the shed.

   Auctions always begin selling boxes of miscellaneous stuff: small and obsolete kitchen appliances, dishware, old dictionaries etc. The auctioneer was good, He had a tremendous amount of things to auction off before he could move to the real moneymakers, the guns, furniture, vehicles and farm equipment. He would start a box at $2.50. If it didn't go to $5 immediately, he sold it for $2.50. The crowd learned his rhythm. If he couldn't even get $2.50, he added another box. Most of this stuff went cheap, but if something was really old, the price would climb. Boxes of orange glassware approached $100. You could have fooled me.

   Eventually Steve Reynolds showed up (#310). Steve is related to a lot of the people there through the Palm family. This auction was in Palmville Township and Frank had married a Palm woman. Steve also knew a lot of people from the place he used to work. We chatted with the woman who had taken over Steve's job. She showed off the box of eight track tapes she had gotten for $2.50. Why? Because she has a vintage car made during the two year period that cars came with eight track tape players.

   I like to go to an auction once a year. We used to take them more seriously when we were younger. Our house is full of stuff picked up at auctions. But we don't need more stuff. A couple of hours is enough now. Frank's auction is the end of an era for me. Frank was our neighbor directly to the south. Our little forty acre patch is surrounded by his hundreds of acres. He told me once he wanted to buy our place when it came on the market in 1974, but he had a cash flow problem. I should thank the Arabs for starting the war that led to the oil embargo that made the lenders nervous. We had a cash flow problem too, but we wanted the place more than Frank did.

   Frank had extensive wooded areas along the river where large numbers of deer wandered. Frank considered these deer as his own and was delighted to learn I was not a hunter. He was paranoid about other hunters shooting deer on his land. I guess such things do happen, so he asked to put "No Hunting" signs on my land to help seal the border.

   I only saw Frank during farming time. If he saw me in the yard he'd stop to chat. After a bit he'd ask if I supposed I'd like a beer. Frank had a taste for room temperature beer which doesn't matter with Schmidt. Frank discussed the difficulties of farming, sprinkling his palaver with "son of a biscuits," an oath I've since adopted.

   About twenty years ago Frank started renting out his land and just did the cattle, then even that went, and he moved to an apartment in Thief River and finally to the nursing home. He died last August at the age of 88. He was a good guy.

Frank loved a lukewarm Tuborg after a long day in the fields.