Dreaming Wide Awake: (Historical Fiction Writing) Part 1

Dreaming Wide Awake: Fiction Writing

Fiction is about making things up. So the fiction writer imagines and makes up stories. A writer can dream the same dream for a long time or for the duration of the story over many days. The fiction writer takes both personal and collective history memories into account.

Mini Story/Short Story

The St. Louis's Old Courthouse Auction

(On an October 19, 2008 campaign rally, biracial Presidential candidate, Barack Obama, addressed 100,000 people on the steps of the Old Court House where Slave Auctions were once held.)

Days before the auction was to take place on the steps of the Old Court House, heralds were trying to drum up sales by promoting the quality of the goods. Right in front of this prestigious building, a temple of the legal system, potential buyers, merchants, planters and farmers were going about their business. They were minding their own business for the day. They knew the weekend spectacle or mini-carnival was about to come to town from the nearby plantations. The heralds walked up and down the steps with a long list of heads of cattle in their hands.

Small and large farming communities had an excess of heads of cattle. They could not afford to keep them on the land. They had to get rid of some of them in the next auction. Trading slaves was a quick way to make money in those times. Ox-driven carriages and wagons were loaded with extra slaves who were heading to the auction on the steps of the St. Louis Old Courthouse. After all, the planters and various brokers and middlemen had bills to pay to the bank. They could not afford to feed the new crops of slaves that were born on their farm and grew up the maturity age.

Not all slaves were transported in covered wagons to the auction site. Some slave-owners and merchants thought they could fetch higher prices by parading their goods. So wearing restraint necklaces and chained at their ankles, the heads of cattle as slaves were referred to, started walking around the streets of St Louis en route to the Steps of the Old Court House. Children and adults of the free society stopped whatever they were doing to take a good look at these men, women and children. The slave drivers were nearby on their horses. Vicious barking dogs were following them. They were there to keep the defile of misery moving forward and in check (to be continued. If you want this history series to continue, write to livetutoronline at gmail.com)