When a building like this one is viewed from the highway, a person can only guess at the story that belongs to it. I read an interesting quote from Dee Brown, the author most famous for Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, who said on being a historical novelist, "Sometimes there isn't enough material. There's a story there and you can't fill it in with facts, so you let your imagination run wild."
I'm finding that I need to be a historical fiction writer when I work at my story writing. There exists a scant outline of events but little else. How else to give shape to the story? I know that in 1867 a wagon train returning to Fort Abercrombie from Fort Ransom got caught in a three day blizzard near Lisbon. That plus only a few other tidbits are all that exist regarding their being stalled. That is when I had to invent a character to carry the story along making him a veteran of the Civil War who confused the smoke of battle with the zero visibility of the storm.
I know that a few months earlier that year a large prairie fire swept down upon an encampment of half-breed Indians near Fort Ransom and killed twenty of them but spared the fort. That's about all. So the old imagination got called into play again and a story materialized.
I know that a man named Hickey lived his later years in Sheldon and died there. His obituary stated how he traveled with Major Reno as a freighter at the time of Custer's demise and probably saw a good deal of the aftermath of that battle. Boy, I think there's a big story there and am working on it now.
I know that a location in Owego Township is named Pigeon Point because of the thousands of Pigeons seen roosting there in the 1860's. I did not know they were trapped to ship to cities as a meat product and that in order to decoy them in trappers would sew shut the eyelids of a few of them to flutter about underneath the net. There's a story there, too.
If only a person uses his imagination he can fill in all the blank spots.
I'm finding that I need to be a historical fiction writer when I work at my story writing. There exists a scant outline of events but little else. How else to give shape to the story? I know that in 1867 a wagon train returning to Fort Abercrombie from Fort Ransom got caught in a three day blizzard near Lisbon. That plus only a few other tidbits are all that exist regarding their being stalled. That is when I had to invent a character to carry the story along making him a veteran of the Civil War who confused the smoke of battle with the zero visibility of the storm.
I know that a few months earlier that year a large prairie fire swept down upon an encampment of half-breed Indians near Fort Ransom and killed twenty of them but spared the fort. That's about all. So the old imagination got called into play again and a story materialized.
I know that a man named Hickey lived his later years in Sheldon and died there. His obituary stated how he traveled with Major Reno as a freighter at the time of Custer's demise and probably saw a good deal of the aftermath of that battle. Boy, I think there's a big story there and am working on it now.
I know that a location in Owego Township is named Pigeon Point because of the thousands of Pigeons seen roosting there in the 1860's. I did not know they were trapped to ship to cities as a meat product and that in order to decoy them in trappers would sew shut the eyelids of a few of them to flutter about underneath the net. There's a story there, too.
If only a person uses his imagination he can fill in all the blank spots.
