A Magician of a Different Kind

[Bill Mullins]

RIP Meadowlark Lemon
http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/14454993/meadowlark-lemon-was-also-ahead

[Richard Kaufman]

Saw him as a kid at Madison Square Garden along with the rest of the team (and also watched the cartoon when I was a kid!).

[Brad Henderson]

Saw him in Frankfort KY when he was leading the Buccaneers. I remember this one move the did, running around and through each other, quickly passing the ball. The announcer claimed that they clocked the actual movements of the ball and it was moving faster than the speed of sound!!

So ballsy - no pun intended.

[MagicbyAlfred]

According to the article, the link to which was posted on here, Meadowlark said he always went to the segregated movie theatre in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Saturday mornings for the all-day shows, and when he saw the Globetrotters on a newsreel working their magic, he was instantly enthralled. "When they got to the court, they seemed to make that ball talk, and I said, 'That's mine. This is for me,'" Lemon reminisced. "I was receiving a vision. I was receiving a dream in my heart."

I wonder how many people on this Forum were hooked in a similar fashion as a youngster, and "received a dream in [their] heart" when they saw magic for the first time. For me, it was when I was 5 years old and my parents took me to a magic store in Brooklyn, "The Third Avenue Bazaar." I saw the brightly colored boxes with painted dragons and other eye-catching apparatus in the window, and was instantly attracted to the mystique of it all. But the clincher was when we went inside and the man behind the counter started demonstrating the shop's wares. That day, I acquired nickels to dimes and never looked back.

Within a year or so I was performing the Magic Milk Pitcher, the Dye Tube, the Chinese Sticks, the red vase that seemed to pour endless water, and other tricks, at my parents' and other relatives' parties. One other trick I really liked a lot (and I can't remember the book I got it out of) was where you would put milk in these small clear Scripto ink bottles, the kind with the little built-in wells on the inside of the bottle. To prepare, you put a different color liquid food coloring in each well (red, green and yellow). Then cover each bottle with a silk of a color that you were going to make the white milk change into. When you picked up each bottle to drape a silk over it, you just subtly tilted it under cover of the silk, and that allowed the food coloring to spill into the milk. When the silks were removed, the liquid in each bottle was now the same color as the corresponding silk. Man it was pretty! I even had my own stooge - an uncle whose dress shirt I would pull up and off while he was still wearing his buttoned jacket.

[Brad Henderson]

I didn't have a specific aha moment, but I wanted to comment on the trick you mentioned. When I was in cub scouts a friend of mine did a variation on the trick you described. It floored me because of one little touch.

He poured water into the plastic cap of an aerisol can and back out again. Nothing. Then, after pouring it in, he did the magic and when he poured it out this time it had changed to red.

I thought that was great. The fact that he had poured it in and out already so many times was the part that stumped me! He was also the first person I knew to ever own a squirmel. I had seen the ads on TV and really REALLY wanted it. My parents drove me all around town one day in an effort to find one but to no luck.

finally, as we are traveling down memory lane, this week I finally got my hands on an toy I had seen only ever advertised once, and then never again. It claimed to be a 'levitator' and the picture in the Sears (or jc penny) catalog showed a stick of some sort and what appeared to be a floating object in the air.

This intrigued me greatly. I was interested in magic, but beyond a trick or two from Thornberry's (the local toy store) I didn't really know anything about it, and what was possible. I knew it was impossible to levitate objects but this was not being sold as 'a magic kit' and even if it had, it promised to be a better trick than any I had obtained during all of my toy store visits.

Was this for real Or was this just some scam product that didn't work? Or would this prove to be like that living furry worm that obeys your command and will be your friend?

I never got that item and never again saw it advertised anywhere. No one with whom I have ever discussed it has ever claimed to have seen the ad or heard of the product. (Though I suspect that if any group has people who do know about this, it is this one.)

Anyway; turns out a company is now making them as a liscensed Star Wars product. I got one and my girlfriend's son and I have had a blast playing with it!!