In February of the fourth year, the notice ran in the Kearney Hub.
A sale bill went up on the bulletin board at the co-op the same week. Right next to the seed corn flyers and a poster about a lost dog.
PUBLIC AUCTION. Brandt Homeplace. 80 acres more or less with improvements. Sale to be held on site. Last Saturday in March, 11 a.m. Kruse Auction Service. Denny Kruse, auctioneer.
Grant Ostrander had bought a bigger place up in South Dakota where the pheasants were better. He was done with Nebraska.
I read the notice standing in my own kitchen with my coat still on.
Then I called Mr. Ostrander before Luke was even home from work. I wanted to be the very first call he got.
“Mr. Ostrander, this is Amy Brandt. I watered the lilacs.”
“I remember,” he said. He sounded friendly.
“We’d like to make you an offer before the auction,” I said. “A fair one.”
He was quiet for a second.
“I’m sorry. I’ve already signed the listing with the auction company. And I want a public sale. That way nobody can ever say I played favorites. But you’re welcome to come and bid like everybody else.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
It was fair. It was more than fair, if I’m honest. And he wished me luck before he hung up.
The terms were printed at the bottom of the sale bill.
Ten percent down on sale day. Balance due at closing, on or before April 30. No contingencies. Every bidder had to register on site and show a letter from a bank.
So the next morning, I went to our bank and sat down across the desk from the ag loan officer, Tom Riley. I had four years of savings statements in a manila folder.
We had seventy-one thousand, four hundred dollars.
Tom went through it twice.
He asked about Luke’s county job. And my two offices. He pulled our credit. He called a man he knew who’d appraised land in that same township the year before.
“Here’s your number,” he finally said.
He wrote it on a yellow sticky note and turned it around so I could read it.
Three hundred and five thousand.
“That’s your bid,” Tom said. “Not one dollar over. I mean it, Amy.”
He typed up the bank letter and signed it.
I put that sticky note in my coat pocket.
And it stayed there until the auction.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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