Blue Ravens: Historical Novel by Gerald Vizenor Page A

familiar sound of the steady clop clop clop of horses on the cobblestones. We walked past great stone buildings, theaters, and restaurants, on our way to the Waverly Hotel.
    The Orpheum Theatre was a majestic dominion of murmurs, theatrical recitations, ironic pronouncements, acrobatics, the lively tease of vaudeville, and the memorable voices of great lectures and plays. The theater that late afternoon was empty but not lonely. No one was at the ticket window so we entered the great auditorium without a ticket or a story. Everywhere we could hear the rich and evocative voices of actors in the balconies, the secrets, shouts and moans in the cluttered dressing rooms backstage.
    Aloysius declared the theater his second home of visions and fantasy. He selected a seat in the front row of a side balcony and painted blue ravens in a stage play. The ravens of the theater turned a wing and raised their beaks to the audience. The only real play we had ever seen was the shortened government-school production of Hamlet by William Shakespeare.
    The Waverly Hotel rented rooms by the week, but the manager was a friend of our uncle so we paid only five dollars for two nights. “Electric lights, bath, and telephone” were advertised in theater programs and newspapers. The hotel was located near the public library.
    We walked past several restaurants on the way to the hotel and later read the advertisements, “Superb Cuisine at Café Brunswick,” and “Schiek’s Café Restaurant,” but the menus were too expensive and ritzy. So, we ate meat, potatoes, and corn at a nearby cafeteria for students. That first night we lingered in the tiny lobby of the hotel and found a program of events scheduled earlier in the summer at the Orpheum Theatre. Aloysius imaginedthe grand performances from our special seats in a side balcony. The program listed matinee admission to the gallery for fifteen cents. We were two months too late for the performances.
    â€œScotch Thistle,” a musical program directed by Theodore Martin, was advertised in the May 1909 program of the Orpheum Circuit of Theatres. Miss Charlotte Parry and Company presented “The Comstock Mystery” that same month.
    â€œMaster Laddie Cliff,” featured in another program, was “England’s famous little Comedian and Grotesque Dancer.” Another program announced the “First American Tour of Three Sisters Athletas, Direct from New York Hippodrome.” The sisters were “Extraordinary Lady Gymnasts.” “The Kinodrome New and Interesting Motion Pictures” reported that the pictures were about a “Ring Leader” and a “Jealous Hubby.”
    Naturally, we were excited to read the programs and would have attended every matinee performance. We were more interested in the Lady Gymnasts than the Kinodrome. The movies we saw on the reservation were trivial and flimsy. The stories in the movies were monotonous, more about agents than the ice women or the dance of the plovers.

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    C ARNEGIE T OTEMS
    â€” — — — — — — 1909 — — — — — — —
    The Minneapolis Public Library was only ten years old that summer of our migration, a massive stone building with magnificent curved bay windows. The turrets on two corners resembled a baronial river castle, but the books inside were never the reserved property of the nobility.
    Andrew Carnegie, the wealthy industrialist and passionate philanthropist, donated more than sixty million dollars to build public libraries, and more to establish schools and universities around the country. A slight portion of his great treasure acquired from the steel industry and other investments was used to construct the Minneapolis Public Library.
    Carnegie was a master of steel, stone, railroads, and the great bloom of libraries. More than two thousand libraries were built in his name,