Poultry, hogs, goats, rabbits, calves, equipment and characters
merge at Pittsburg's weekly sale

PITTSBURG - "If it's dead, it sells on Monday; if it's alive, it sells on Tuesday," Bruce Overstreet says in defining the loose parameters governing his weekly auctions.

Speaking of characters, the commander of Bruce Overstreet's Livestock Commission Company (right in the auctioneer's perch) isn't your stero-typical stockman any more than daughter Tammie was a typical Pittsburg High student. Both are nurses - he's licensed, she's registered. He sometimes shows up for the sale wearing gym shorts and sandles; Tammie, whose trophies for showing stock line the office, "was the first girl in the entire U.S. of A to play high school football," boasts her dad. (Photo by Whitney King)

Inanimate and animate might - technically - be more accurate. But the words lack the same ring, coming up short in the entertainment value that drives the sales maybe as much as economics.

"I come because I love the characters," said C.R. Jones, Longview, who also comes to buy and sell ducks. "I'm only about half character myself."

A retired railroad man, Mr. Jones owns and operates Dickie's Duck Yard, a backyard enterprise "that keeps me off the couch," he said, something he does reasoning that a man needs something to do. "You'll rust out quicker than you'll wear out."

The local livestock and farm equipment auctions' roots stretch back to the days when the Pittsburg Livestock Commission Company held weekly sales at the town's baseball park, said Mr. Overstreet. His step father, Archie Lindley, and grandfather, Sam Overstreet, both worked the hog and cattle auction that later moved to the west side of U.S. 271 on the north end of town.

"I started working the sale when I was seven," Mr. Overstreet said. He bagged parched peanuts that sold for a dime, tacking a nickel bottled drink onto most sales. It was 1959, the trailing years of the ag-based economy, a time when local buyers outnumbered the feed lot buyers whose money drives the region's cattle auctions now.

When he was 14, Mr. Overstreet began "writing tickets," recording seller, buyer and price information as stock moved through the auction ring.

In 1977, he bought the barn, running it as a traditional hog and cattle sale until 1987, when he closed down. A licensed nurse by then, he moved to California, changing with changing times.

"People had quit keeping hogs," he said, and his barn had burned in '83, remaining closed for several months.

"I lost some of the market, and couldn't pull it back," he said.

Other sales quit running hogs - returning in 1989, Mr. Overstreet smelled a hog niche. Then goats. His sale caught on, drawing sellers from markets - like Pittsburg - where hog and goat sales were a thing of the past.

Within a year his sale was routinely drawing sellers not just from Camp and surrounding counties, but from western Louisiana, southwestern Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma.

Buyers followed - not the packing house and feed lot crowds. This is the flea market crowd, entrepreneurs who trade in small animals - people who added chickens, ducks and turkeys.

People who keep milk goats, people who butcher their own meat goats. Traders, non-conformists who don't depend on the grocery store for everything, people with laying hens.

Crowds swelled.

"We've got about 800 buyers with permanent numbers," Mr. Overstreet said. "If they all showed up every week, there wouldn't be room for everybody."

This is a different deal.

Rather than being anchored by a handful of buyers, "when the bid opens, it's not unusual to see a dozen hands go up," he said. "It's lively."

It's fraternal, a social event that draws horse traders like a light-house beacon lures ships to shore.

It's wise, comprised of sellers who understand their market depends on leaving room for buyers to make a profit.

The characters he enjoys at Bruce Overstreet's auction are of a nature that appeals to the gentle side of a man, says C.R. Jones, right. Adding, "I can always use a dose of that." Below, Sam Groves was an honor grad of the school of hard knocks. Kim Harris says she likes raising just about anything but hogs.

An hour before the 6 p.m. Tuesday sale, Kim Harris, Gilmer, prowled the alley, inspecting cages of rabbits, chickens and baby goats.

Before the auction began, she'd picked out a pen of baby rabbits, expecting to buy them for anywhere from 50 cents to $1 each.

"They're cheap when it's hot," she said.

Taking them back to Gilmer, she said she'll set up on a tailgate on the Wal Mart parking lot and sell them for $5 each as pets.

She picked out a weaning-aged goat, market value ranging between $20 and $30 in the ring. In six months she'll bring it back, expecting it to bring as much as $150, no less than $100.

At present, her back-yard enterprise includes an inventory of 13 goats, eleven rabbits, two horses and a baby calf.

"I like raising anything but hogs," she said.

Sam Groves drove better than 60 miles, coming down from Lamar County for the sale. A retired hospital maintenance worker, he buys poultry. Back at home, on weekends he stacks his one-ton pickup with cages of poultry and goes to flea markets.

Sporting a snow-white handlebar mustache he hasn't shaved in 15 years, he volunteered that he can't "read or write a lick.

"Never went to school a day in my life," he said. "I was born in the Depression. My daddy died - mama worked in a government sewing room and got a $21 check every two weeks."

He can't remember when he didn't work.

"When I was nine I got picked up and hauled into court for truancy," he said. "That judge told me he'd send me to reform school. I told him he might, but that was the only school he'd send me to. They never fooled with me after that."

Inside the auction, alley hands were pushing a steady stream of hogs into the ring.

With his daughter, Tammie, writing tickets beside him, Mr. Overstreet leaned over from his auctioneer's perch, beaming as he bragged on a portly sow waddling in.

"Look at that special glowww," he drawled, inviting buyers to admire the twin rows of swollen teats. "She's in that family way, folks, looks like the table's set for about fifteen."

Fried pies and grandchildren beat whatever comes in second, says sale barn vendor Retter Shaw, with 11-year-old Dekota.

In a lunch-counter-styled dining hall, a tiny room just outside the door opening to the auction ring, 11-year-old Dekota Porter nested in the ample lap of his grandmother, Retter Shaw, who'd set up shop selling her fresh-made fried pies amid the circus mix of scents - burgers, chili and livestock.

"It's all good," she promised a customer musing over the selections of fruit filled pies. "You get what you want; no worrying about everybody else on those old diets right now. We can't all be cute and little. Some of us have got to be big and pretty."

As unbidden as Mr. Groves with his no-schooling tale, she added advice as if explaining her pie sale, a lemon-aide stand styled off-shoot of the auction.

"Whatever you can find to do with your hands," she said, "do it and you'll be blessed."

Characters indeed.

Characters with character.