Do You Believe in Magic?

After the kids were gone and we had reclaimed the house, I started thinking about the time when I was Andrew's age and all I thought about was doing magic tricks and putting on shows.

I was serious about it - I wanted to be a professional magician.

I got catalogs from all the big magic stores - like Douglas Magicland in Dallas, and Abbott's Magic Company in Colon, Michigan. These catalogs were full of pictures of silver rings and brass tubes and multi-colored foulards, and smoke, and mirrors, and common everyday objects like milk pitchers and golf balls that could stupefy the mind. And everything was for sale!

All my money, from birthdays, Christmas and occasional petty theft, went to these places. And I got all this great stuff back that looked just the way it did in the catalogs. It was a thrill just getting it in the mail. To me, it was like, magic.

But that wasn't why I wanted it so bad. What made it worth the money was finding out how the tricks worked. I was amazed at how sneaky the guys were who thought all that stuff up. But finding out was like joining a club. Putting on magic acts was secondary.

I got the magic bug early in life. When I was about five, whenever my father drew babysitting duty, he would take me downtown to the financial district, where all the pawnshops were. He knew everybody down there. We would visit and he'd show off his kid. When we got to the end of the street, he would look back and say, "They're all bums."

One of the places we went in, you had to walk down some steps to get to the entrance. It was called The Fun Shop, where jokes, novelties and magic tricks were on display and for sale. If you needed a whoopee cushion or a joy buzzer in those days, this was your place.

One time, the guy who worked there laid a penny out on the counter, right in front of me, and then brought out a small, square block of wood, that had green felt on the bottom and was painted red on the top. While my father and I looked on, he passed the little block over the penny, and the penny changed into a dime. Right in front of me.

I was astounded. I knew the guy did something, but I didn't know what it was. I begged my father to buy me that trick, just so I could find out how it worked. And so he did. He wanted to know how it worked, too.

From that humble beginning, I rose to a point where I was fourteen and known as a high roller in the best magic shops in the country.

Later on, I teamed up with Larry Copeland and we started putting on shows at school and other places. Once, we got a letter from the principal of Pearl High School, inviting us to do our act at their annual Talent Show. We found out that their Talent Show was a big deal in town and they didn't ask just anybody to show up. So we went.

That night, there were a couple of singing and dancing acts before us, and we saw that the audience wasn't just sitting around - they were letting everybody know whether they liked them or not. We started getting nervous.

When we came out, I did several tricks to warm up the crowd, but just got little murmurs back. Copeland did a few jokes and got some laughs, and the general mood seemed to pick up a bit. Then I pulled out a biggie from my bag - three large silk scarves, colored red, green and yellow, respectively, that I waved around until they somehow got transmogrified into one great big scarf with a sunburst of all the colors in it. That got a big response - everybody started yelling at me and themselves and everybody else, at the same time. It took a while before they settled down.

By and by, I was ready for the big closer, the Box of DUZ trick. The trick that never failed to start a riot. I was terrified. I looked over at Copeland. He whispered back, "You gotta do it, man."

The trick involved three white silk scarves that were all dirty with big splotches on them. And a cardboard box, the kind you might get popcorn in, but this one had "DUZ Soap" printed on the outside. The deal was, I was going to clean the scarves to their original pristine whiteness by putting them in the DUZ box and using it for a washing machine.

So, with a lot of snappy patter, I stuffed the dirty laundry into the DUZ box, closed the top and starting shaking it up and down. This didn't seem to accomplish much, so Copeland brought me a pitcher of milk and I poured the milk into the DUZ box. This got a little rise out of the crowd. I resumed shaking the box up and down and, while doing that, I slowly turned the DUZ box upside down. The "DUZ" label was now showing upside down, but only a couple of people seemed to see anything odd in that. When they started calling out about it, I pretended not to understand them.

Instead, with a flourish, I opened up the other end of the box and pulled out three sparkling white silks, entirely free of splotches. I held the silks up in one hand and the box in the other and took my bow.

But, by then, word was getting around about the box being upside down and there commenced a general row and eruption - they wanted me to open up the box. Several offered to come down and open it for me, if I didn't feel up to it. Copeland didn't make things any better. He started scratching his head and pointing at the box. Which, of course, he was supposed to do.

Eventually, I tore the box into little pieces, scattering it over the crowd, and everybody went crazy. We took a quick bow, grabbed our stuff and got offstage as fast as we could.

As it turned out, we won the Talent Show and got our names in the paper.

I decided I was on my way to becoming a professional magician. I told my father about it. He said, "Don't be a chump - go to college, become an engineer and make five thousand a year."

But I kept talking about it. One of the things I went on about was the annual magicians convention, which was held in Michigan. I wanted to go and hobnob with my brother wizards, but I knew there was no chance that my father would go for that.

Which shows what I knew about my father. He said, "Let's go."

So we drove to Michigan, the only time I remember ever going anywhere with just my father. The convention was held in this big theater in Sturgis. I got to see all the big magicians, on and off stage. My father sat out in the lobby area and watched all the sharpsters, some of whom were famous, doing their fancy card tricks. He seemed to be having a good time.

I caught up with him and asked him what he thought about the sleight-of-hand artists. He said, "They're all bums."