December 24, 1958:
This new typewriter is great! It's a portible so I can take it with me to school and everywhere. I just set it out on the old table here at granma's. open up the case put paper in and start typing!
Oops. that lever sure is easy to bump by accident. Moms kinda sick so dad took her to the hospital so Gramma Gertrude is taking care of my baby brother. I hope mommie is OK, she's having another baby soon and she had a hard time with the two of us when we came. That leaves me with just uncle Woody and uncle Ricky to play with.
Uncle Woody is good at making stuff and he can sorta fix anything, but uncle Ricky is more fun. There, finally got that lever set right. My baby brother and then grandma fall asleep, so Uncle Ricki suggests we go downtown and see the lights. Uncle Woody's car is broken down again, so we walk past the old brickyard to the bus barn and hop on one headed for downtown. Just about every bus is headed for downtown, so we just get on the one at the front of the line and in a few minutes we head south down Washingon Avenue. I liked the old streetcars better though- the buses stink and never seem to warm up.
We get off at Hennipen and 4th Street and Ricky leads us down an alley and into a back door, down a narrow hallway, and into a room. Ricky flicks on a light and I see that the room is full of mirrors, gowns, and all kinds of strange stuff. I am only 8 but I read pretty good, and my eyes caught a stack of booklets titled "it's been a pleasure, the Jewel Box Revue". Ricky hands me one and says to keep it hidden from my mom. I open it up and read it, it's the program for some type of "female impersonator" show. Then I look up and see that Ricky has become... a beautiful woman! I've seen men dress up like women on TV before, but they didn't really look like women and Ricky did. Ricky ordered me not to tell mom about this either, and signed some pretty pictures of her (oops) "Ricki Raymond" and gave them to me too. While we were talking uncle Woody had gone further up the hall to what I think is a bar, and a bunch of tall ladies and a short man came in. They talk about getting something to eat, but for some reason they don't wanna go outside. Finally they collect up about $10 and send me up to Great Northern Market for food. They're still open, and I barely manage the two huge bags for the two blocks back.
The kitchen and the main room with it's tiny stage was empty so Ricki, the other tall women, and the short guy set to work preparing dinner and setting out a table with the best dishes in the place. They told me that they were in the cast of the Jewel Box Revue and the show was off for Christmas eve and Christmas day. They'd played here for weeks though, and though the show's mailing address was in New York City they spent so much time in Minneapolis it was like home to them. They told me the show started in Miami but moved out a few years later when the politicians started harrassing them and what they called the "green and yellow" clubs. Dottie and Storme, who were pretty darked skinned told me they felt safer in Minneapolis since the city had outlawed discrimination in 1948, but apparently the law didn't apply to the way they dressed up, which they called "drag".
These tall ladies cooked way better than my mom or grandmas and we ate food I'd never heard of before. Then I fell asleep in a booth while they exchanged presents and carried on. When I woke up they had left a bunch of little gifts for me in my typewriter case, stuff like signed pretty pictures of them performing and jewelry. They were getting restless, by now it looked like the whole cast was there and they wanted to go out. They decided to visit a bar down Nicollet just south of Downtown. We headed out the front of the small side bar that was open and grabbed my uncle Woody and a few hangers on as we walked up to Nicollet and overwhelmed the first bus going south. Fortunately they were still running weekday schedules and the bus was empty except for the driver. We got off a few blocks past Grant Street and I was instructed to stay between a couple large women in big skirts as we entered the bar. While the streets were empty the tiny bar was packed and I couldn't see over anyone anyway.
The party continued past one in the morning, and then the police broke down the door...
from a block over from Hawthorne Primary School,
D. Sluyter
