The sounds of selling ...

The music was first rate but the lyrics left a little to be desired: hum-in-a, hum-in-a, hum-in-a, 2, hum-in-a, hum-in-a, 3, sold American.

At least that’s what the tobacco auctioneer’s sing-song cadence sounded like as he demonstrated his talent at the Exposition Center. The lovely sounds of his call — a mix of earthy folk blues and birdsong — only mattered to those pretending to buy the 200 pound sacks of golden leaf tobacco. Still some inquiring minds wanted to know: What is he saying.

“Mostly numbers,” explained 70-year-old G. Sherwood Stewart, who auctioned tobacco from Georgia to Kentucky for almost 50 years. “I say the bid, 81, 1,1 until I get two, then 82, 2, 2, 2, 83, 3.”

Stewart’s parents were tenant farmers in Smithfield. “I saw how hard my father worked and thought there has to be a better way than this,” he said.

He saw his first auction at age 10 and began working when he was 15. He stopped in 2001, as the tobacco industry phased out the auction system in favor of contracts.

Stewart said his wife had always told him he had musical talent. “She said that if I put as much energy into country music as I did into auctioneering, I would have been a star. But my heart was always in tobacco.”