How East Oregon’s Great Salt Lick auction helps in the fight against Parkinson’s disease

This Saturday, the annual Great Salt Lick auction and contest will take place in Baker City in Eastern Oregon. Whit Deschner, a retired commercial fisherman, poet and photographer, created the event after visiting a friend’s cabin where he marveled at how much a block of salt that had been licked by a deer resembled a sculpted work of art. Deschner recruited his neighbor, Mib Dailey, to wield the gavel while he served as the emcee, and coaxed ranchers in the community to donate salt blocks licked by horses, goats, cattle and wildlife to auction off. A contest is also held for a People’s Choice award and other categories, including Best Poetry with Block.

Since its launch in 2006, the event has raised more than $212,000 for the Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders program at OHSU. Deschner was diagnosed with the disease nearly 25 years ago and wanted to find a way to contribute in the fight against it. The auction serves that cause, and has grown to attract visitors from around the nation. Deschner and Dailey join us to talk about the Great Salt Lick and the impact it’s had in Baker City and beyond.

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The annual Great Salt Lick auction and contest will take place in Baker City this Saturday. It was created almost 20 years ago by Whit Deschner, a retired commercial fisherman, poet and photographer. Deschner coaxed ranchers in the community to donate salt blocks licked by livestock or wildlife into interesting shapes. And he recruited his neighbor, the rancher Mib Dailey to be the auctioneer. Over the years, this event has raised more than $200,000 for the Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Program at OHSU. I’m joined now by Whit Deschner and Mib Dailey. It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud.

Whit Deschner: Thanks.

Mib Dailey: Thank you.

Miller: So Mib, first – As a rancher, I assume you have a lot of familiarity with salt licks. What are they?

Dailey: They’re a 50-pound block of salt with different ingredients, such as vitamins and minerals. They are squished into a 50-pound block, and you haul ‘em out in the hills and put them out on dry ridges and stuff to coax the cows up on top of the hill to eat the grass.

Miller: So the idea is that the salt will attract them, and then while they’re there, they’ll eat the grass that’s there?

Dailey: Yes. Keep ‘em off the creek bottoms and up on the hills.

Miller: Whit, how did you get the idea to get these licked licks from around there and auction them off for charity?

Deschner: Just always enjoyed their shapes, even before I came up with the idea of an auction. And that’s out one day with another neighbor, we were out mushrooming. He has a cabin back in the woods. And at the end of the day we were having a glass of wine, and he puts out a salt lick for the deer. And he had one that was severely licked, but that was just fantastic shape. And I just said, “Boy, that looks like a sculpture that you’d stick in front of a federal building or something.” Only they have to be blown up. He hesitantly agreed. It did look like art. And darn it, Mib didn’t live in the neighborhood, and I got the idea, well, let’s have an auction and try to sell some of them, and we need a cause. I’ve had Parkinson’s for about four years. Let’s make a donor station for that. We did. The rest is history.

Miller: Mib, what was your first reaction when your neighbor Whit came to you with this idea to auction off salt licks?

Dailey: I thought he was crazy. You know, art’s all in the eye of the beholder. And Whit’s got some pretty weird eyes, I think. I don’t see a whole lot of art in it. It’s pretty fascinating, the different shapes and stuff.

Miller: But you don’t see art … because you’ve been around them your whole life, and you’re just used to seeing them?

Dailey: Well, that. And art – I think, a picture, a painting or something is art, but a salt lick? Well, I guess you could distinguish as art. They’re all different. There’s no two alike, that’s for sure.

Miller: Whit, what kind of conversations did you have with other ranchers? Because it was up to them, I understand they had to agree to donate these salt licks. What were those conversations like?

Deschner: Brief. Others said, “Well, that’s a great idea.” Most of them really went for it. A couple of ‘em accused each other of stealing their licks.

Dailey: That’s the truth. They do run around the neighborhood stealing everybody else’s salt. Then they take it in and get a free block of salt for the one they traded in.

Miller: Oh, is that the way it works? So, if a rancher takes a licked salt lick and gives it to you all to auction off, then you give them a new one?

Dailey: Yes. At the food stores.

Miller: How much does a fresh one cost?

Deschner: About 10 bucks, aren’t they, Mib?

Dailey: Well, it depends on the variety you get. The plain white salt is the cheapest. It’s about $5 a block, and it goes up from there, from iodized to sulfur, and all different kinds.

Miller:  At this point ... Sorry, you were saying about the colored ones, Whit?

Deschner: There’s different colors. It’s yellow sulfur, blue cobalt, I believe, red is iodine. And there’s another red block that has multivitamins and we’re really deficient in selenium out here.

Miller: Whit, can you tell what animal made the various designs, if we’ll call them that, based on what the licks look like?

Deschner: Absolutely. I’m going to be an expert at what animals do what. The goats and deer are really realists. Cows are kind of modernist, like cubists. Horses are worthless. They just don’t have any sense of art whatsoever.

Miller: They’re worthless. What does a salt lick look like after a horse has gotten done with it?

Deschner: It’s just beat up and rolled down an alley several times.

Miller: Mib, do you have a favorite animal style when it comes to what they end up looking like?

Dailey: Well, it depends on how long they’ve left it there. If they leave it there for ‘em till they really get it licked down to 50% or less, there’s usually more form to it. And the smaller tongued animals like the sheep, and goats, and deer, and things like that, will make smaller indentations in it. Cows will lick holes through it so that it’s got holes in it in different various shapes, and forms, and places on the salt block.

Miller: Let’s have a listen to what these auctions sound like. As I noted, Mib, you’re not just a rancher, a neighbor and a longtime friend of Whit, you are also the auctioneer. This is what one of the auctions sounded like.

Auction [Recording]: 10, now 11, now 11, now $1,100, bidding on $1,100. They got a lot of money down there in Portland … [inaudible] … Now 12, $1,200 … Remember, this is the People’s Choice, there’s only one of it. 12, now 12 … $1,200. Give me 12, $1,200, 12 … Sold. It’s going for $1,200. [Inaudible] thank you very much.

[Applause]

Deschner: I tell you that I couldn’t have done it without Mib.

Miller: Why is that?

Deschner: He just got a special knack for it. He started off with auctioning rocks to his dad when he was a kid, self taught, now he’s doing salt block. He’s gone from rocks to blocks.

Miller: Wait, you would auction off rocks?

Dailey: Yeah. When I was a little kid before I went to school, I was going to the cattle auction here in Baker with my dad and my granddad, and the auctioneer just intrigued me over the years. And I’d come home and I had three colored rocks. My great grandmother had sat in a rocking chair out on the veranda of the old log house, and I’d run these rocks across the cement step in front of it and auction ‘em off to her hours on end. I had no idea how to count or anything, but I kept her well entertained.

Miller: [Laughter] You’re keeping me entertained, so I can only imagine. How old were you?

Dailey: Oh, I was probably five or six.

Miller: So you’ve since moved on to doing this, not just for worthless things as a game, but you do a lot of different kinds of auctions for different events ...

Dailey: Nonprofit charity auctions.

Miller: Right. So, how does …

Dailey: And I work for food.

Miller: You work for food?

Dailey: Yeah, they feed me.

Miller: How do the Salt Lick auctions compare to other things that you auction off? What’s the scene like?

Dailey: Oh, normally most of ‘em are pretty much the same, until you get into things like Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. And I don’t think they get as wound up as they do at the Salt Lick auction. I do Oregon [inaudible],  NRA, Wild Turkey Federation and a lot of benefit auctions around Baker County. I usually get ‘em wound up pretty good. I do the Fourth of July fireworks auction over in Halfway. And that’s an all-pie auction. The last three years we’ve done like 60 pies and they’ve brought anywhere from $18,000 to $19,000 for 63 pies just for the fireworks donation for the fourth of July. So they do get wound up pretty good. And if alcohol is involved, it’s even better.

Miller: Do the prices go higher when alcohol goes in?

Dailey: Yes, and people really get wound up. And they’re laughing, hooting, hollering and having a good time.

Miller: Whit, when did you realize that this thing, it was actually going to survive, that it was going to be an ongoing thing, as opposed to a one-off event?

Deschner: Had about 40 people show up for the first one, which was fine. And I wasn’t sure, at all. We were hardly organized. The first one went for about 140 bucks. And from that moment on, I knew if it was marketed right, it’s why it’s fine.

Miller: About 140 bucks, but as we just heard there, now the prices can be around $1,100 or $1,200. What’s the most that salt lick has gone for?

Deschner: I think about $3,500.

Miller: At this point, can you have a pretty good sense, when you look at the salt licks before the auction starts, for which ones are going to fetch the highest bids?

Dailey: No.

Deschner: Not at all. We have a Peoples’ Choice contest that usually picks out a pretty unique one, but some, it just surprises you. I think some people get into grudge matches, fun ones.

Miller: They don’t want to be beaten by their frenemies?

Deschner: That’s right.

Miller: Mib, you were saying you, too, can’t tell which ones are going to get the biggest prices?

Dailey: No, because it’s all in the people’s hearts. I think  Baker County is one of the most giving communities I have ever seen anywhere in my life. And when people come to it, they come there to spend a certain amount of money, and they’re gonna do it, no matter what the salt block looks like. It might be the last one that’s as flat as a pancake and no shape to it at all, and it might bring $2,000. It’s like you said about the art of it. It’s in the eye of the beholder and the heart of the giving.

Miller: Whit, one of the categories is “Best forgery.” What does that mean?

Deschner: [Laughter] Oh, there’s a lot of people you can tell that are sculpting their blocks with water and stuff like that. I said, well, let’s just go for it. So there’s cinder blocks forgery and [inaudible]. People get pretty elaborate, now, some get some really good sculptures of salt blocks.

Miller: Oh. So Mib, is the idea that at a certain point you realize that some people were actually etching, carving or doing their own art on the salt blocks, and so you all said, well, if people are going to do that, let’s make it its own actual category?

Dailey: Well, it’s very definite if they have. And I don’t know when Whit decided to make it its own category. But the one that sticks in my mind most was one that was carved out to look like Venus de Milo. And it was very well sculpted and we sold it. I think it was one of the earlier ones, and I think we sold it for $400 to an ex-school teacher.

Miller: It’s a steal, and you were pretty sure that a goat had not done it?

Dailey: [Laughter] Yeah, I’m pretty sure a goat didn’t do it unless it was an old goat like Whit. Only he would think of something like that.

Miller: Whit, I want to go back to the beginning of this. You said – and some folks may have missed it because it went by quickly – that you had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, something like four or six years before you came up with this event. Why did you decide that you wanted to make this auction a fundraiser for Parkinson’s research?

Deschner: I guess I wanted something to do to keep busy. I do a lot of writing, and I couldn’t fish anymore. Had gone overboard without Parkinson’s help, once, didn’t want to do it again. I quit and it wasn’t out of boredom, I just thought it would be just a good challenge.

Miller: I can imagine some people choosing to only disclose an illness like Parkinson’s with close family or friends. But in a sense you’ve gone the other direction. You’ve made your diagnosis a lot more public with this event. What’s that been like for you?

Deschner: It was tough to come out of the closet, so they say. But really, I’ve really been proud of what it’s done. That took away my shyness, that’s for sure.

Dailey: Well, you’ve got to realize, Whit, that it’s something you can’t hide.

Miller: Mib, Do you have a favorite memory involving Whit from any of these auctions?

Dailey: [Laughter] Yeah, I do.

Miller: Let’s hear it.

Dailey: Well, we was doing an auction one time, and we had these little microphones that clip onto your collar. That was the first and only time we ever used one of those. And I can understand why we quit using them afterwards. Anyway, we were up there doing this auction and pretty soon there was a little bit of a lull for some reason, while they was going out and getting another salt block. And Whit leaned over to me, he says, “I gotta go pee.”

So, he gets up and goes back into the restroom. Everybody’s kind of sitting there waiting for their salt block to get there. And pretty soon we hear, “z-i-i-ip…tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. Ah …,” he goes. I mean, everybody was on the floor rolling, just laughing their heads off. The hot tears come out of their eyes … pretty soon … “Ahh, z-i-i-p,” … and then the door opened, Whit comes out, and everybody’s just rollin’ around on the floor, red in the face, laughing like hell, tears in their eyes, and Whit is looking like, “what the hell is so funny?” He’d forgot he had his microphone on. But that was one of the most memorable events.

Miller: Whit, that sounds like a mistake somebody only makes once.

Dailey: Yeah, we got rid of the clip-on microphone.

Miller: This is gonna be your last year as emcee, am I right about that?

Deschner: It’s gonna be my last year helping to organize it. They asked me to emcee, and I probably will. It’s a heck of a lot of work put on, and I just don’t have the energy for it anymore.

Miller: What are your hopes …

Dailey: We’re hoping he’ll be our mascot for the salt lick.

Miller: The mascot [Laughter].

Dailey: We’re gonna prop him up on a pile of salt blocks or something.

Miller: Whit, what are your hopes for this event in the coming years, as you take a little bit more of a backseat?

Deschner: I hope it continues. I mean, it’s gonna change, that’s for sure. But I just like to see Baker’s synonymous with a cause. That it’s a small town, but it’s got a big voice if it wants one. I’d like people just to drive through and just say, “Boy, isn’t this the town that [inaudible] Parkinson’s research,” and go from there.

Miller: Whit Deschner and Mib Dailey, it was a pleasure talking to both of you. Thanks so much. Have fun this weekend.

Deschner: Thank you.

Dailey: Thank you very much for having us.

Miller: Whit Deschner is the founder of the Great Salt Lick auction. Mib Dailey is a rancher and the auctioneer for this auction. Again, it takes place this Saturday at 6 p.m. at the Churchill School in Baker City.

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