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 Three generations of Powell men were
together outside the main barn at the intersection
of Packing Plant and Galilee roads earlier this
week: father H.B. with son Braxton and grandsons
Hank and Hudson.
H.B. Powell shares his story of
the family's
67-year-old livestock business
Here's
transcript of Gary Ridout's interview with him:
 My name is Hugh Braxton
Powell Jr. but everyone calls me “H.B.” My father,
Hugh Braxton Powell Sr. (pictured here) was
born in the late 1920s on a farm on Cleveland Road in
Johnston County. He farmed and traded horses and other
livestock.
In the late 1940s, Hugh worked for Charles Owen
“Smooch” Heavner at Mr. Heavner’s mule and livestock
business in Downtown Smithfield. The mule company was
in the back portion of the block where First Citizens
Bank is now located.
Many people wonder how “Smooch” Heavner got his name. According to
his son, Dan, his father was in elementary school and
was caught kissing a girl. His friends berated him and
said “from now on we are calling you Smooch because
that’s what you were doing!”
In the early 1950s Hugh worked at a livestock business
that operated on property owned by J.E. Wilson on
Highway 301. My father established Powell Livestock as
a separate business in 1958. At that time it was
located on a lot that is now a former tobacco
warehouse housing the Harper Flea Market on the corner
of Wilson Street and Highway 301 in Smithfield.
Powell Livestock rented 20 to 40 horses and ponies at
$5 per hour, mostly on Sundays, at that location. In the early
1960s much of South Smithfield had no houses. There
were roads built in anticipation of building houses,
but the land was basically vacant. There were
trails where people could ride horses from our
location on Highway 301 down Wilson Street and then go
through the woods all the way to the Neuse River.
My father instilled a real love for livestock in my
siblings and me. There were four children in our
family: Larry,
Cathy, Ronnie, and me. Sadly, Larry was killed at a
young age while helping out at the livestock barn. The
other three children and our mother, Geraldine Powell,
are pictured below receiving an award in the 1960s.
Cathy
Creech, H. B. Powell, Geraldine Powell, and Ronnie
Powell with County Commissioner Norman Denning at
the Johnston County Livestock Show and Sale.
In 1968, my father realized that there was a need for
the business to expand so he purchased 40 acres on
Packing Plant Road and moved Powell Livestock to that
location.
The first barn built at this location lasted one year
and burned down. Everything burned except a metal hog
scale. We don’t sell hogs anymore, but we still use
that metal hog scale to weigh cows. Our regular cow
scale will not accommodate a cow with extremely long
horns. The state inspectors have said that we can use
the hog scale to weigh long-horned cows when the need
is there.
My father would drive to New Holland, Pennsylvania to
buy horses. Sometimes he would go up to Pennsylvania
to sell horses also. He had contacts in Dover,
Delaware where he would buy trotter and pacer horses
that had retired from harness tracks in that area.
Harness racing is a form of horse racing in which the
horses race at a specific gait. They usually pull a
two-wheeled cart called a sulky operated by a driver.
Powell Livestock purchased some well-behaved horses
from these tracks. They responded well to a rider’s
commands and were very calm animals. Powell Livestock
provided carts for people who wanted to rent a pacer
or trotter horse.
During those days our dad and the family would go to
local horse sales to buy and sell horses and ponies.
There were horse and pony sales in Pikeville,
Greenville, and Beulaville. We learned that we had to
be very careful buying horses at a horse sale. Many
times a horse that appears to be a good horse at the
sale turns out to be very ornery and mean when you get
home. Some horse sellers give the horses sedatives to
calm them down so they can be sold more easily.
As youngsters, my brother and sister and I were given
the task of breaking the ponies that our father
purchased. Breaking a horse or pony means getting it
used to obeying the commands of the rider. I remember my
sister Cathy rode a pony in the spring one time.
Horses and ponies shed their winter coat in the
spring. Cathy was wearing short pants and rode
bareback on the pony. She rode it so long that she
wore all the hair off the pony. When she got off
the pony there was Cathy’s imprint on the pony’s back!
Some Sundays in the early 1960s, my dad and I would
race the trotter and pacer horses on the road off 301
that is now Wilson Street. Sometimes people would come
out and sit in their cars to watch us.
I can remember in the 1950s and 1960s it seemed like
just about everyone had a horse or a pony. That is
different now, but truly the populations of horses and
ponies are just more concentrated in equestrian areas.
According the Department of Agriculture, there were
4.3-million ponies and horses in the United States in
1850. In 2012, there were 3.6-million horses and
ponies in the United States. So we now have 83% of the
horses and ponies that we had 174 years ago.
 In the 1980s
Powell Livestock had a customer that bought and sold
cattle for 10 or 12 years. He was one of our best
customers. His name was Mr. Josefiak (pictured here).
At that time, I was
hauling cattle for Fred Smith. We were on the turnpike
in Tulsa, Oklahoma and stopped to eat lunch. This man
came up to us and said: “Where are you from? What are
you hauling?” I was in a real hurry because we had
another six hours to drive and we had already been
riding 23 hours from North Carolina. We were “give
out.”
Whenever I would go out
west hauling cattle in a truck, all I could think
about was “how fast can I get there?” I did not want
to take the time to talk to this man. I had never seen
him before and did not know his reputation. He was
persistent and followed us out to our truck. I gave
him my phone number and he called me a couple of weeks
later. He wanted me to buy him some cattle and ship
them to him.
All I could think was that I did not know this man
from Adam. He is from halfway across the country. I
was leery but I went out to see him with a load of
cattle. He looked over the cattle, he liked them, and
he wrote me a check. He said, “We are going to be
doing some business.” I never dreamed how many cattle
I would sell him. I ended up selling him 40
tractor-trailer loads of cattle in one year! There are
approximately 100 cows in each load. That’s 4,000 cows
in one year.
I was able to buy brand-new trucks and brand-new
trailers because of this lucrative relationship. Over
a period of 12 years I sold him a lot of cattle. He
was a good customer and a good man. He never
complained and was happy all the time. He had a huge
farming operation with the big tractors that turned in
the middle. The tractors had four wheels on the front
and two in the back.
I purchased Powell Livestock from my father in 1984.
He passed away in 1987. In 2008, Powell Livestock got
a letter from the Federal Government congratulating us
on 50 successful years as a family livestock business
in Johnston County. Powell Livestock is now 67 years
old and I am very proud of the company.
THE
PRESENT-DAY BUSINESS
Currently, Powell Livestock has a goat and sheep sale
every first and third Wednesday of the month. On those
days 175 to 225 goats and sheep are sold. These sales
are very weather-related. On cold days people do not
want to bring the goats and sheep out in the cold to
be sold. They are transported in open trailers and
cold weather causes them to get sick.
Every Thursday, we sell 350 to 550 cows. This is
highly unusual, but if someone brings a horse to sell,
they will sell it on Thursday at the beginning of the
cow sale. Some of the major cattle breeds sold are
Black Angus, Simmental (a Swiss breed of
dual-purpose cattle with reddish and white markings),
and Charlois. A 1,200-pound Angus will sell for $1,600
to $1,800.
I have to admit that although I like horses, horse
sales are a nightmare. At the last horse sale I had, a
man bought some horse brushes. He gave me a bad check
which I have never collected from.
My son, Hugh Braxton Powell III, is promoting a
program that encourages farmers to vaccinate their
cows. Vaccination material is not that expensive, and
it can mean an increase in $50-60 more per cow.
One interesting thing about the creativity of our
cattle customers is that several of them buy the cows
here and then take them to the mountains of Virginia
where they graze. The rich soil of that area grows
excellent grass for feeding the cows. Many of these
pastures can be seen along the Interstate highways in
that section of Virginia.
Carolina Packers is a meat-processing business located
less than a mile from Powell Livestock on Highway 301.
Powell Livestock had a good relationship with them for
over 40 years. Each week Powell Livestock furnished 40
to 50 1,800-pound bulls to Carolina Packers. This
began in the 1950s and lasted until the early 2000s.
We also supplied hogs, hay, and feed to them. Mr. J.A.
Jones started Carolina Packers in the 1940s and lived
in the brick house across the highway from the plant.
J.A. Jones’s son, Buck Jones, and I were close
friends.
 The picture
shown here was taken in Idaho of H.B. Powell, Jean
Jones, and Buck Jones (left to right).
Buck was a very interested and talented entrepreneur.
He had an airplane and we flew all over the country
doing livestock business with horse and cattle
retailers. He especially liked purebred Angus cattle
and we flew all over from Texas to Montana, the
Dakotas, Kansas for the big sales. Buck Jones had the
ability to walk into a group of 40 bulls and pick out
the best one. He would be right 90 percent of the
time.
As I reflect back on my career in the livestock
business, I have witnessed several trends in livestock
sales over the last 50 years. The first is hog sales.
Powell Livestock stopped selling hogs in the 1990s.
When the big companies such as Murphy Family Farms
changed the sales and processing of hogs, private hog
livestock sales declined sharply.
The second is cow sales. Twenty years ago we would
sell 1,200 to 1,400 cows in a day. Today we are
selling 350 to 550 cows a day. This is a trend we are
seeing in stockyards all over the southeastern United
States. Riding through the rural areas today,
particularly Johnston County, will quickly give you
the answer to why this is happening. Cow pastures are
turning into housing developments.
Older people that raised cows have passed away. The
children of this generation are saying: "Our parents
have passed away; can you come and get the cows? We
don’t want them because we go to the beach every
weekend. We don’t want the cows; we want the money.”
Next thing you know the pasture is being subdivided
into lots for homes. We see this first-hand because
Johnston County is one of the fastest growing counties
in the state.
The third trend is the decline in dairy-cow sales and
dairies. In the 1970s and 1980s if you drove toward
Apex from Smithfield on State Road 1010, there were
dairies all the way. There would be one dairy after
another. The only dairy that we sell cows to now is
Cherry Hospital Dairy in Goldsboro.
The last trend I would mention is the tendency of
cattle to become sick easily. Thirty years ago we
would get 100 cows on Thursday, load them into the
tractor-trailer on Saturday morning, and be in Kansas
by Sunday morning. The cattle would be doctored and
processed and get along fine. You can’t do that
anymore. Nowadays you could buy a load of cattle on
Thursday night and if you drove them to Kansas they
would get sick and 20 percent of them would die. This
is why we promote vaccinations. We also believe that
purebred cattle have a greater tendency to get sick
than other cattle.
In summary I will say that I am proud of Powell
Livestock and the hard work my family has put into the
company. It is an interesting business, full of
interesting people, and I continue to enjoy it.
Undated
photo of Powell children on pony under their
father's supervision.
Unloading cattle earlier this week
in preparation for Thursday's sale.
RETURN TO
THE SMITHFIELD WEEKLY SUN FRONT
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