The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

. WW w iaWiarton cattle sales Started out in a tent '0 i . By TERRY WEBER I Sun Times Staff MARTON â€"_ The auctioneer i sings a strange song. I ' Bouncing off the walls of the kmatal barn at the Wiarton sale l; stands, the call is gibberish to a It few and life to others, l ‘For some the rhythmic sound l! recalls a different time. ! Outside the arena, Roy Rath- ', well sits in the sun. It's too cold for him in the barn today. * One of the original directors of l the Gray-Bruce Livestock Cn-oper- i ative. Rathweli, 53, has been com- i has to the sales since they started l 35 years ago in 1952. _ f On this crisp Thursday morning i he talks about the old days. stop- : ping occasionally to wave his l cane, pointing out sons and fath- 1 rs who've become an integral I part ofthe agricultural communiâ€" t f tyin the area. : l in hist at the feeder sale in Wiarton Thursday _ Things were different when he - started out â€" no barn, no office. :no electricity, just a tent brought 1 in for the first sale. ; “We had to work harder, and I fthink there's no question that we I did," he said. , And Rathwell said the group 'kept a tight rein on the proceedâ€" ' ings in the few first years. K "We didn't let too much rough I stuff go on in here. There was the lodd time some things happened that shouldn’t have." he said. The coâ€"operetive modelled the sale after one on Manitoulin Island. Although the original idea was set down in 1950. it took two years to convince area farmers of ‘ the worth of one central auction. Two years down the road, the idea was presented again at a meeting of Grey and Bruce cattle ‘ producers and was unanimously accepted. The 4.5-hectare site was bought for $2,500 and 1.270 head of cab tle were sold for $214,700 at [he first sale. in 1935. a iota! of 13.700 cattle were sold at a total of $9.436.0DO One of the few origmal direc» tors still around. Rathweii doesn't stay for the whole sale. his days with the cooperative have settled into a memory. He just stopped by to see a few familiar faces and chat. "They all know me here." he said. “Today. why, my days are numbered but I get along pretty well. The little kids, they call me Cramps, even though i have no grandchildren." he laughed Others also remember the earlv clays. Auctioneer Gordon they and farmer Ivan Mielhausen are both veterans of the Wiarton sales. zh Sun Times photo by Doug Camp 2/434} /7 fl? 7) J!