Time goes by quickly at 4-H auction

Editor’s note: This column is being reprinted from Aug. 1, 2012. Jack was a regular at the annual 4-H auction. Even in his later years when he left most of the fair work to the rest of the staff, he was always there to bid and to take pictures of the grand champions, 4-H members and buyers. (This year’s auction is Thursday.) It’s easy to lose track of how many times we’ve done this or that. It’s a good idea to sit back sometimes and remember.

Pete Shawver leaned over and asked, “How many years?” 

Good question. 

Melodi Haley and I had been talking about that same thing earlier in the week.

It was the monthly informal gathering of my high school class. We were having lunch at Ponderosa, and Melodi mentioned that she wouldn’t be bidding at this year’s 4-H livestock auction for the first time in 19 years. She’d be in attendance, she assured me, to support some treasured young 4-H members in her family. But since her retirement from Harvestland Co-op, the job of bidding had fallen to someone else. 

Nineteen years, I thought. 

If Melodi was on hand for 19 auctions, I had to be present for at least that many. So when Pete leaned over and asked his question, I guessed 20. 

“At least that,” he said. “More than that. Twenty-five at least.” 

He could well be right. 

I returned to Jay County in 1974, settling uncertainly into a job as a reporter in August that summer. My first fair as a reporter, in 1975, is a blur. But I know that I didn’t take the photos of the grand and reserve champion animals at the livestock auction that year. That was the job of Frank Kenyon, the best photographer on the staff. But as my duties changed and my skill level improved — and as Frank got older — I picked up the assignment. 

It was a dual job: Photography and bidding on 4-H livestock on behalf of the paper. The second half was easy. The photography not so much. 

This was, after all, in the era of film. Taking pictures in the livestock arena could be challenging. The light meter tended to pick up sunshine outside the barn, and a flash was preferable. So F-stop settings needed to be flexible. 

Usually every photo was what photographers called “bracketed.” It was shot with at least three different exposure levels. 

The real pressure came from the fact that the event couldn’t be duplicated. Sure, in some ways, it was a routine picture: A 4-H kid, the buyers, and the animal. But the animal might end up at Fisher Packing before the weekend was over. There was no way to call everyone on Monday and recreate the gathering. And, because it was film, it would be sometime Monday morning before I could be sure I had useable images that would reproduce in the paper. 

In a kind of a silly way, it was a high-pressure photo assignment. Not so today, with digital cameras that let you review your pictures instantly. Those thoughts were flashing through my head after Pete’s question. 

Was it really 25 years? Was it more than that?

Probably. 

I looked around the show arena and thought of how many auctions we’d all seen and remembered the folks who weren’t there. I looked at Gary Loy and remembered his dad Ernie. I looked at Mel Smitley and remembered his dad Grant. I watched Pete letting young Pete and Zane do their jobs. 

And, of course, I thought of Dan Orr and his dad Karl Ed. 

And then I waved a fly away and nearly bid more money than I had to spend.