Doak Lambert’s career in auctioneering was forged in a crunch. Actually, two.
He was working for an auctioneering company that did cattle sales and whatever else someone needed to sell.
“Nobody in the company was actually an auctioneer,” Lambert says. “We just managed all the details of the auction.”
Well, leave it to the proverbial act of God to change the course of one’s life.
The auctioneer, traveling from Texas for a sale in Evansville, Indiana, got stuck in a blizzard in St. Louis. No one was going very far from St. Louis that day, much less to Evansville. Lambert and his partners scrambled to find another auctioneer, this one with a specialty in antiques. It worked out, he remembers.
However, the partners decided they needed a ready backup plan in the event that happened again: Somebody in the company needs to be an auctioneer. Just in case.
Says Lambert: “They looked at each other and one of ’em goes, ‘Well, I’m not going to auction school.’ And the other goes, ‘Well, I’m not going to auction school.’ So they pointed at me, and they go, ‘You’re going to auction school.’”
They’re trained in the legal and ethical rules that govern auctions, the mechanics of working with the ringmen — the traffic cops on the floor — and the business side of marketing a sale. And, yes, there’s the chant. One has got to master the bid chant. The first time I heard the hypnotic, rhythmic chant, I was just a wee sprout and thought I had stumbled into a tent revival mid-sermon.
No one works a room quite like an auctioneer.
Yet, unbeknownst to Lambert, that was the beginning of what has become a storied auctioneering career that has included the sale of just about everything, including — my favorite — that old jalopy Jethro Bodine drove around in “The Beverly Hillbillies” at a Barrett-Jackson auction in Scottsdale, Arizona, about 10 years ago.
That classic pre-war heap of the moonshine Deep South fetched more than $200,000, as he recalls.
One of his favorite days of the year is coming Saturday. For the thirty-something consecutive year, Lambert will auction off the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo’s grand champion steer, one of upwards of 300 sales at the annual Fort Worth Stock Show Syndicate’s Junior Sale of Champions at Watt Arena.
This is no Mott’s Five and Dime. Last year, the six-hour sale brought in more than $10 million for the youth exhibitors, including $375,000 for Alley Cat, the grand champion steer. Alley Cat was an American crossbred steer shown by Mattison Koepp of La Vernia.
Lambert splits trilling duties with Bruce Miller. Steers, barrows, goats, and lambs, as well as the student exhibitors, get their time on stage.
“We go up there and work for the kids. That’s what we do. It’s just very, very well run. The leadership at Fort Worth, ever since I’ve been involved, has been as good as anywhere I’ve ever worked — any group of people I’ve ever been associated with. Fort Worth just kind of rises to the top in my mind.”
Lambert, 63, was named for the patron saint of SMU football — Doak Walker, a Dallas native and star at SMU who won the Heisman Trophy in 1948. Walker is also a Pro Football Hall of Famer.
Lambert’s father, a Doak Walker devotee, was a high school football coach. That profession is akin to career military people. Home is where the next job is.
“We were in one place as long as he was winning,” Lambert jokes.
For the family, that meant stints in Memphis, Texas — up U.S. 287 in the Panhandle — where Lambert was born; Childress; down to Lubbock; back north to Dumas; and, finally, a “big” high school job in Dallas.
Lambert played football at Duncanville, though, he jokes, he “didn’t live up” to his namesake. Lambert also did ag at Duncanville, then a mere rural suburb south of Dallas. Today, Duncanville is a football power. Then, its standouts were as likely to be members of the Future Farmers of America cohort. He went to Texas A&M to study animal science with the thought of becoming a veterinarian.
Instead, after graduation, he went to work managing a ranch, which had a production sale and auction every year. The ranch hired an auction company to handle it.
“I kind of got fascinated with the auction business through that experience,” Lambert says.
Lambert estimates that he does about 300 auctions a year, including about 100 purebred cattle auctions. That includes conducting several in a day, such as Saturday. He was off to do two car auctions on Tuesday of this week.
His very first one was an experience in crisis management.
He was working for that same company that was left in a lurch by the Midwest blizzard. It happened again in Jackson, Mississippi, only shortly after Lambert had completed auctioneer’s school. The event was the haltered heifer sale at the Dixie National Stock Show.
“I was not a full-blooded auctioneer by any means,” he says.
However, he was going on stage, his boss told him.
“I’d been back sorting cattle, had [stuff] on my shirt, had a ball cap on. I didn’t look at all like an auctioneer.”
Not impressed was the sale chairman, Joe Frank Sanderson, the man behind poultry empire Sanderson Farms. Sanderson was also a prolific Brangus cattle breeder. When informed of the situation, Lambert says Sanderson looked at him with a wary and cold stare, like “King Saul looked at David.”
With a laugh, Lambert recalls his introduction by Sanderson: “As sale chairman, Joe Frank welcomed the crowd and introduced all the dignitaries and everything. And he goes, ‘Well, if y’all hadn’t heard, our auctioneer didn’t show up tonight. We’re going to let Doak here do it.’ And he said, ‘Y’all bear with us. We’ll just muddle through this. Here’s Doak.’”
Not exactly a vote of confidence for the rookie, but Lambert nailed it. The first consignment was Sanderson’s, which went for $10,000 — “a ton of money back then.”
“He perked up, like he thought, ‘Well, I think this is going to be all right.’”
The experience was exhilarating, Lambert says. Everybody knew the fire he had been thrown into. Lambert has been chanting ever since that day some 40 years ago. He went out on his own in 1988. In addition to farm, ranch, and livestock, Lambert Auction Company does real estate auctions, personal property, and benefit fundraisers. He operates the company with his wife, Wendy.
Being behind that microphone and feeling the rush of adrenaline of watching people get caught up in the bidding — and the end result — is something more than a mere thrill.
“I’ve never done drugs,” says Lambert, “but it’s a rush that I would think would be similar to a narcotic. And it is addicting. You get through with one and you’re kind of exhausted, and so you want to recuperate, but then you kind of can’t wait to go do the next one in hopes that it’s going to bring that same rush.”