NOTE: The byline to the contrary, this post was jointly written by both K and Nerdmeyr.
NOTE 2: This will probably be a long post with enormous amounts of painful details. So, grab a tea or mug of beer.
Last night, K and I accompanied our friends M. Valliant and Julia to Dinky’s Amish Auction House in Daviess County, about a forty-five minute drive from our town. M.V. and Julia offered to take us after their first visit when they came back with 75 cabbage plants ($10) and an old-school drinking fountain ($1).
Perhaps it was the overly long winter, perhaps it was K’s and my relative sequestering of ourselves in our house over the overly long winter, perhaps it was the first day of sticky hot weather, but I (Nerdmeyr) was overwhelmed upon arrival. And I don’t mean arrival inside the auctioning areas, but rather our arrival in the parking lot. We, in a station wagon, were dwarfed by the hundreds of giant full-size pickups in the packed parking lot.
Oh, and back up for a second. Part of the reason I was overwhelmed by the parking lot and trying to find a space in it is that we had picked up a passenger along the way. Not knowing the exact way to Dinky’s, we had stopped at a gas station and Julia asked a person, John W., who looked as though he (by way of dress) might know the way. A ride for him and directions for us worked out for everyone! And, after passing time amicably conversing the way that strangers converse, we were at Dinky’s.
[[MAJOR ASIDE NUMBER 1: When I say that we all conversed in the way that strangers do, I mean that we discussed where we all live, where we come from, and what we do, assuming (at least it seemed to me) that we would have little in common or that we expected to have to explain ourselves to one another, so best not to go into too much detail. This didn't really turn out to be the case. M.V. and Julia discussed their respective fields of study, which led us to the topic of hormones in meat. All of us agreed: hormones = bad, but none of us could say for sure why. In the nanosecond after I (Nerdmeyr) realized how surprised I was by this point of commonality, 
I was struck by how stupid was my assumption. Our passenger lives in a rural area and is probably faaaaar more up to speed on the evils of modern agriculture than I, hippie city dweller, will probably ever be. Either way, that point of commonality was less surprising than finding out that we all buy meat at grocery stores. My surprise probably is due the fact that my knowledge of the Amish is limited to Witness, produce purchases at the farmer's market, and a family-style restaurant in Shipshewana. [[[[END MAJOR ASIDE NUMBER 1]]]]]
Parking lot: Where I’m suddenly uncomfortably aware of how much space all the trucks (I’m assuming owned by the English) take up compared to the horse-n-buggies off on the perimeters of the parking lot. Why do the trucks get the middle area? Why are the horse-n-buggies – at an AMISH auction – shoved off to the side? It’s as if at a gay bar, the gay people must be off to the side in order to make room for the bachelorette parties.
Once inside, you must first go to the central accounts counter. The central accounts counter is manned by both Amish and English; while the division of labor is unclear, it did seem like maybe only the English use the computers. To get a bidding number, you provide some form of ID. You only have to do this once and Julia had already done so the last time she came, so we got two bidding cards on her account. Then, once the bidding card complete with 3-digit number in 100 pt font is procured, you wander the various auctions.
But to say that “you wander the various auctions” doesn’t quite capture the experience. The whole enterprise is impressively vast in scale, and yet remarkably sparse in infrastructure. A good way of describing it (via nerd-terms) might be a co-located array of giant tin-roofed buildings. And also interstitial open areas where large pallets of building products like corrugated tin and lumber and also decrepit cars – hoods opened up like women in the Amsterdam red-light district - were being sold. We would witness several hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff sell over the course of the evening; everything from a dollar’s worth-box of fake flower arrangements tossed in with a Polaroid camera to a $650 Angus steer. Mysterious, amazing, wonderful stuff of worth sometimes understandable and other times unclear all sold by men (yeah, we mean that pronoun literally) who have the gift of unintelligible gab that is the hallmark of all amazing auction sellers:
{trying to sell a mysterious Rube Goldberg machine labeled “Lollipop” which featured clear plastic walls to better see the interior guts involving plastic gears, ramps, and some sort of american coin acceptor that last saw daylight in a trucker’s gas station on a major interstate}:
“LOLLIPOPP MACHINE! WOW! LOLLIPOP MACHINE! LOOKIT THIS LOLLIPOP MACHINE! gitcherlollipop fivefivefivefivercanwehearafivefivervfiverfivefourfity
fityfityfourfityfityfourfourfourfourYEP!fourtwentyfiveYEP!fourfityfityfityYEP!fourseventyfive fourseventyfive fourseventy five DO I HEAR A four seventyfive five fivefiverfiveityfive five five doihear another fiveity fourseventyfiverty five fivety GOING GOING SOLD!”
[[MAJOR ASIDE NUMBER 2: On the ride home, someone suggested that Lotus World Music Festival procure an auctioneer to perform, as the more awesome auctioneers definitely incorporated melodic intonations to their auctioneering, often turning the timbre of their voice down or up at the end of statements. I (Nerdmeyr) thought that the better auctioneers shared many characteristics with Tuvan throat singers, but maybe 
that's just me. K thought that maybe the up/down intonations were to help the auctioneers remember at what price point they were at, as I'm sure by the end of the evening one bin full of socket wrenches might blend into another. I (K) also think that the rhythm helps let you know how long you've got to make any additional bid, like a clock counting down. I've no doubt both auctioneers and buyers use that time to control the direction of the sale, but how one might go about doing so completely escaped me. [[[[End of Major Aside #2]]]]
At any rate, the auctions take place in huge rooms filled with everything from live stock to antique cabinets to hanging plants to manually-operated butter churns and Budweiser mirrors (the latter of which was, surprisingly, not such a hot commodity with the Amish). These wildly varied items emptied out of the building by the end of the night under minimal oversight. And by “minimal oversight”, we mean, “none at all”. As soon as you win an auction, you can grab up your parcel of schtuff and take it out to your vehicle before the thunderstorm that’s threatening Vigo County gets to Daviess County. Everything large and furniture-like is marked with a numbered piece of masking tape representing the seller’s ID; we never saw how they marked the smaller animals like rabbits and guinea hens, much less the horses, cars, and old-school electric generators.
As I said, the infrastructure is simple; the overwhelming aspect to it is the scale of the event: at least six auctions going simultaneously, some in the same room and the sheer volume of stuff for sale is what really impresses. More overwhelming than the parking lot was figuring out how to jump into the bidding. It was like an enormous, multi-tiered, sped-up game of double dutch that never stopped. There was no telling (at least on our end) what items would be hotly contested, or by whom. And the vernacular of bidding was intimidating, too. Nobody waves their hands about; rather, its all about making eye contact with the auctioneer or his helper, and nodding “yes”. Or making an abrupt up/down motion with the hand that’s carrying the bidding card. Subtle head nods, esp. when there’s a bidding war going on, also seem to be acceptable. (M.V. warned us against superfluous motion before we went in for this reason.) Also interesting was the sad, ashamed “no” head-shake by a bidder when the bidding had gone past their top price point – as if the auctioneer was asking “Have you not killed multiple people in acts of rage?”, and then the person has to hang their head, downcast their eyes, and then shake their head, “no. no, i _have_ killed multiple people in acts of rage, and thus I do not deserve the vintage child’s hobby horse currently being auctioned for $12.75.”
In some cases, you could communicate your interest in particular items and thereby steer which things were auctioned at what time. In most cases, though, there were just clusters of people hovered around waiting for the auctioneer to make his way to an item. You could also figure out which stuff you were interested in and estimate how long it would take for the auctioneer to make his way over to that item, and then wander to another room and bid on something else and come back.
The fact that somehow, magically, the stuff that fills these room replicates every Friday night, begs questions like: Where does the stuff come from? Who brings their stuff here? Why are the Amish, who make their life not following English ways, peddling popcorn machines and clock radios? This auction serves a relatively finite and stable population (compared to say, oh, Ebay). For it to maintain a customer base, I would think it would have to be the only place that most folks purchased anything ever. Think about it: imagine purchasing all your groceries, household items, major appliances, and frivolous knickknacks all on one night only, once a week. But, the stuff for sale isn’t new, so it must either continuously circulate through the auction house, or perhaps people acquire it with the specific intention of auctioning it? And if this is the primary, or exclusive, shopping site for most people, then is it really a deal for the buyer? The only sense you would have of an item’s market value would develop in the 30 seconds it takes to auction it off. This would be economical only if the auction was truly an isolated economy unto itself.
The more pressing questions is: How exactly did Mountain Dew secure its monopoly on the Amish market? We’re thinking it probably wasn’t the ads featuring extreme snow boarding. We have never seen so much Mountain Dew consumed in a single space, ever. Everyone – man, woman, child, silver marten jersey wooly rabbit – seemed to be sucking down a 20 oz. of Mountain Dew. In general, there was a remarkable amount of junk food available. Not necessarily crappy-shitty-but-oh-so-tasty-state-fair-food either; we’re talking giant bins of potato chips and melting candy bars sold 5/$1.00. And there’s something not right when at 11pm, herds of kids running are about and screaming at the tops of their lungs [what Nerdmeyr means to say here is: "I was not allowed to run wild on sugar highs at 11 pm and I wasn't even raised in a strict religious community...what gives?"]. Having said this, Nerdmeyr certainly enjoyed a chicken finger (with mustard and BBQ sauce) as well as a chocolate soft-serve sundae so splendiforously provided, it spilled over the sides of the styrofoam cup [all of which tasted particularly good due to my strict "unstrict" upbringing].
When you’re ready to leave with whatever you’ve won, you settle your account back at the central desk. Besides the bidding price, there’s a 7% bidding tax (to help pay for the auctioneers and the space), and the state sales tax.
So, what did we come away with? A seriously sturdy, well-made clothes drying rack. That we got into a bidding war with M.V. over. For $17.50. M.V. and Julia made much more efficient use of the auction, bringing home 5 boxes of Mason jars, a pitchfork, a giant stoneware crock, and 2 former xmas lawn decorations that will be repurposed for a pea trellis.
A Note on the pictures: All procured from Google, as I (Nerdmeyr) thought about bringing some sort of recording device but then decided against it in the name of Not Being A Touristic Asshole For Whom Poore Country People Are Just a Good Blog Poste. A good decision, as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure Dinky’s gets its fair share of summer tourists, but I definitely felt in the distinct minority of outsiders. I felt like I had travelled to another country but then felt like an asshole for feeling so (”Are Not These But My Country Brethren In This Time Of Economic Depression”)… then felt slightly less atavistic when M.V. also said that he felt he went into “world traveller mode” when he was there. I (Nerdmeyr) commented early on that the place seemed ripe for some sort of community activism, as the people there seemed of a common cloth, Amish and English alike – of rural experience, of rural living, of common challenge to make a living without being poisoned by hormones or pesticides, and (biggest point of commonality): not on anyone’s minds, not, it would seem, the current presidential administration. yet, who would do that work? To what ends?
