Ram Sale

Bernie Hunhoff, who writes South Dakota Road Stories wrote yesterday about the Newell, SD September Ram Sale. According to him, Newell is the Sheep Capitol of the United States. I would kind of like to see that ram sale, myself. A cousin and his son and daughter raise sheep north of Newell.

I used to sit by my grandpa, John Tuovinen, at the Buffalo, SD Ram Sale. I would push up close to him so I could smell his pipe and get in on his buying action as the auctioneer cried out the increasing price for the bucks. Papa, as my mother called him, was a little nervous that I might get into the buck pasture across the road from their house on their sheep ranch in the Cave Hills of SD. A ram had knocked Roger out cold when he was little. I think I heard that story a dozen times when they were trying to get it through my skull that I could get killed if I went over that fence.

The last time I saw sheep was on the South Island of New Zealand a few years ago when two of my high school friends and I went there and to Australia for three weeks. We watched as one type of ram after another was called to the front of an auditorium and they mounted their properly labeled stand on a man-made mountain of magnificant rams.