The younger children enjoyed the show most of
all – the kids, who had pushed their way through the crowd
to the front row and now knelt or sat on the asphalt, pointing
and poking one another, their eyes wide open in amazement. Most
were hypnotized by the bewildering magician, as if he were a
Pied Piper ready to lead them off to a better world.
I, too, more than enjoyed his clever
deceptions, the wonder and mystery of not knowing all the
answers. In those mystical moments I became a child again, lost
deep in the wonders of magic, trying to take it all in: the
magician, the crowd, the sunshine. I recalled when I was the
little boy, watching my first magician, clinging tightly to my
father's hand. Just like the children kneeling in the street, I
would have also pushed my way up to the front of the circle;
because, when I was a little boy, I wanted nothing more out of
life than to become a famous magician. Of course, those were
just the dreams of a little boy.
Watching the magician perform, recalling those
memories, I flashed back to my own childhood, in Springfield,
Missouri, back to the time when I first decided to be, or
perhaps discovered that I was going to be, a magician.
My father had taken me with him to the smelly
old junkyard, to help him dump a load of garbage. Dad loved to
visit the junkyard; I never could understand why. The smell
alone could almost kill a small boy like me. But Dad was always
on the lookout for something of value. "One man’s
trash is another man’s treasure," he’d say.
That particular day, while we were unloading the trash
from the pickup, my nose held with one hand, Dad spotted a
potential treasure, a dilapidated old trunk lying in
amongst the junk. With a little luck and a few hundred hours of
sanding, he said that stinky old trunk could eventually become a
coffee table, one with a new avocado-green
imitation-antique finish.
The trunk was padlocked shut so he couldn’t
open it, but Dad picked up one end and gave it at shake. We
could hear something inside, but couldn't tell what from the
sound. The mystery alone made the trunk irresistible to Dad, and
even caused me to forget the junkyard stench for a while. Dad
used to say, "Curiosity is a sap running deep in the
Carpenter’s family wood." After offering the junk
dealer five dollars for it and the dealer countering with ten,
eventually they settled at seven. The dealer didn't know it, but
Dad would have paid a lot more than seven dollars just to find
out what was hidden inside. Mom often said that that was the "sap"
he was referring to. We endeavored to open the trunk right then
and there, but the lock was rusted solid. Dad decided, after
beating on it with a tire iron for a short while, that even
though both of our imaginations were working overtime, we’d
simply have to wait until we got home.
