Tobacco auctions quickly becoming a thing of the past.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

WILSON, N.C. _ "Onedollarfiftyninefiveninefiveeight, sooold!"

It's the cry of a Carolinas tradition, the tobacco auction.

Some details have not changed: Farmers in dusty overalls still pound down Sun Drop and chain-smoke Lucky Strikes to hide their nerves. Company buyers dress the part of money men in pressed chinos and golf shirts. Everyone, even three visitors from a Thailand cigarette company, talk about the product of choice in a twang that turns "tobacco" into "baccey" or "baccer."

The auctioneer, the man in the middle of it all, still chants faster than it's possible to convey in print, quicker than you can read his words aloud.

Yet these days, the sale at Wilson's Liberty Warehouse feels less like a celebration of the golden leaf and more like a wake.

The farmers huddle to one side, looking anxious. The buyers spend more time joshing each other than digging through the piles of leathery, yellowish-brown leaf. They pass most bales without bidding.

"You can't make them buy. You can't beg," auctioneer Al Whitfield says during a break in the inaction. "This is history. We're history. I'm history."