The Independent-News, Volume 100, Number 2, Walkerton, St. Joseph County, 9 August 1973 — Page 17

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equipment, furnishing tricks to more than 10,000 conjurers through a mail order catalog the size of a telephone book. As the townspeople put it, “What cereal is to Battle Creek, cutting a lady in half is to Colon." Magicians at the conventions range in age from seven to “I watched young Harry Houdini do his escape act," and in experience from the topnotch professional to the hobbyist who has performed only for his daughter’s seventh birthday party. Some are still trying to make rubber balls appear and disappear from beneath drinking cups, while others have mastered the floating lady illusion. (Nobody pulls rabbits out of hats anymore.) Visitors are welcome, and it’s quite a place to visit around Labor Day, mingling with people like “Mysterious Nick," “Fakini," “Amazing Conklin,” “The Great Riki,” or “Cowboy Bill." But don’t be shocked to find women floating in mid-air over water falls or your pocket picked and the wallet replaced in another pocket while you're not looking. At each convention the magicians try to discover a new trick that’s better than any ever performed. Last year's was called the “Zig Zag” illusion and it stopped traffic when it was performed at the intersection of Blackstone and State Streets, to prove it could be done in sunlight, surrounded by spectators. The trick begins like many others: A cabinet is shown to be "ordinary,” and the assistant walks in. The audience can see her head, hands and feet after the door is closed, through holes in the front of the cabinet. Slabs of metal are then thrust into the box at her neck and waist —somehow without cutting her apart. Then comes the twist that makes this so appealing to the conjurers. The entire center

!. . ' tn t Throughout the weekend magicians teach each other dozens ot new ways to do pick-a-cards.

By Barry Glassner

portion of the box is pulled out, and the girl is apparently left without a middle. This trick, of course, costs many hundreds of dollars to buy. But at the big “showroom” in the auditorium of Colon Elementary, 20 Abbotts employees stand around long tables all day each day of the convention, demonstrating tricks in all price ranges from the catalog, to magicians who wonder if they are actually as good as they are said to be. The Abbott’s salesmen, all magicians in their own right, are full time employees who work with these tricks — constructing them from start to finish — 40 hours each week. So the amateur may see “how easy and mystifying it is,” and chuck out his $25 for it. But all too often, he gets home with his new trick and discovers that it comes with 15 pages of instructions that are so complicated he can hardly understand them. One magician returned a trick set of candles recently because he said that no matter how carefully he followed the instructions he always burned himself when “producing five lighted candles at the fingertips.” Or, he said, the tew he was able to produce without getting burned wouldn't stay lit. Still, most every trick in the big book is on display in this showroom, including versions of many legendary mysteries. For example, you can cut up a lady with the traditional crosscut saw for $650 complete, minus wife or girlfriend. Or choose the new buzz saw version for SI,OOO. (There is an economy model of the manual type for sllO, but you must supply your own chairs for her to lie on.) If the floating lady trick is your cup of tea, it’s available at prices from $77 to many thousands. The more you pay, of course, the more convincing the feat, and with the lowest price model you may have to carefully position yourself to keep the secret gimmick

hidden from the audience. The showroom is filled with trick decks of cards, most of which are used in fancy pick-a-cards. Then there are dozens of magicians’ tables, painted in bright colors and cut out to look like top hats, rabbits, or aces of spades. There are not, however, many entirely new tricks. “Maybe 10 or 12 new tricks come along each year,” notes Recil Bordner, 62, the owner and manager of Abbott’s Magic Company. “Too many times tricks are put out as ‘new’ when really they are just a redo of an old principle. I guess you could say there are just so many possibilities, and through the ages most of them have been discovered.” Bordner admits a degree of uneasiness about the lack of new tricks being invented, because he says the number of magicians is growing and magic is actually on the increase. Although there are fewer and few-

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er fulltime pros due to fewer stage shows generally, all sorts of new groups are taking up magic. Clearly the most specialized of these spinoff groups at last year’s get-together was the “Magi-Ministers,” a group of clergymen who teach the Gospel by using magic tricks. They meet Friday morning in the new Church of God on Blackstone Avenue, where they listen to a lecture by John DeVries, a Grand Rapids layman who has spent much of a lifetime teaching ministers how to use tricks in their sermons and Sunday school classes. Several ministers who hear his lecture have copies of a magazine called “The Christian Conjurer” with them. DeVries takes out a silver dollar and says, "This coin has a date. 1932. That means it was 1,932 years since Jesus the Savior came into the world. And it also tells us ‘Liberty’ and

‘ln God We Trust’. That’s right. We tell the whole world that we're a people who trust in God. And we better. If we want to know true liberty, we just better." It’s a lead-in to a trick in which DeVries pushes the silver dollar through a piece of glass he claims is solid and four inches thick. But the important thing for these ministers is the patter. Many of them carry portable tape recorders so that they can get down every word. For other splinter groups at the convention the tricks will be used in a medical practice with children, in selling products, or to pay college expenses. But one thing is definite. Technology hasn't killed the art of magic, and conjurers from all over America will converge on little Colon, Michigan again this year to pick thousands of cards, all night long at the American Legion Hall.