Tobacco auctioneer worked his way up to his position
Stephenson learned the auctioneer's trade "the hard way," he recalls, working his way up from a job unloading trucks as a teenager.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Edward Stephenson, September 21, 2002. Interview R-0193. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- WILLIAM MANSFIELD:
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Tell me how you learned to be an auctioneer.
- EDWARD STEPHENSON:
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I learned it the hard way. When I was about 17 years old, one day . . .
. . .. I kept wanting to sell and wanting to sell. Of course the way I
learned was I started out unloading trucks and I worked my way up to
handing tickets. And handing tickets you're with the
auctioneer all day, every day. Even though you're not
selling. I watched and looked and then I got my chance to try it one
day. And I did it, I sold two rows and then I sold four rows and then
I'd sell six rows and eventually I got my own sale and here
we are in 2002.
- WILLIAM MANSFIELD:
-
You started unloading trucks and then turning tickets . . . . . .
- EDWARD STEPHENSON:
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Right, you just don't walk up and . . . . . . I started at
the very bottom of the scale. When I was a kid I sold lemonade, boiled
peanuts. Then I got old enough to really work, to where you could get
paid. You know, used to be it was all manual. You'd walk one
pile [of tobacco] at a time to the floor with a buggy. Of course
we've graduated up to a whole lot more mechanized way now.
But just being there and then I got in the sale, maybe got to start
placing the tickets [on a pile of tobacco]. And then I actually got into
the sale, behind the auctioneer, handing the tickets to the ticket
marker. And was in there then. And watched enough to where I thought I
was capable of doing it I got a chance to sell a row and the rest is
history.