Meeting, Monday, October 15 – “Magicians from the Past”

The October meeting featured effects that were related to Famous Magicians of the Past.  Greg McNeil performed an invisible deck routine with Malissa volunteering (accompanying member Allen Broomfield). The Invisible Deck has its roots in the past under a different name. Kathy Martin showed a vintage Harlan Tarbell book Chalk Talk and demonstrated an example using a dry erase board. Kathy drew some lines to start a drawing while accompanying with a poem. As the poem progressed, the drawing evolved into the figure of a bird in a tree. It was discussed that there were others that used similar chalk talks to express a religious message.  Char Gott has discovered that there are four books in the Tarbell Chalk Talk series, from 1924-1931, including one in reference to Sunday Schools.  Tarbell was from just east of Peoria in the Morton/Tremont area.

Char Gott performed an interesting routine with cut and restored newspaper clippings (Clippo) evolving from an experience in her old childhood home. In the routine, a column of newspaper was cut several times and restored. The accompanying story that Char told was actually written on her bathroom wall before her father put tile over it.  Char had heard Blackstone Sr. tell the story on early TV in 1954.  This was around the time of the last stop of his touring illusion show, which was in Peoria.   Char also told some personal remembrances of the Peoria Magicians Assembly in the old days when she was perhaps the only female in the club and stories of Harold Martin, who owned a local magic shop, and visits at her home from Harry Blackstone Sr. and Jay Marshall. (Our club is named with respect to Harold as the Harold Martin IBM Ring.)

Allen Broomfield performed a packet card effect where two red cards switch places with two black cards. Doc Lowery brought a couple youth size orangutan puppets in green Hawaiian shorts to demonstrate that are also for sale from Doc. A replica of the large-headed/large-handed vent figure from the movie Magic, about an evil ventriloquist, was brought in to show.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Gordon Snow brought a white cardboard animal box with air holes on the side up to the counter to show the young lady at the counter and one of the young cooks. Of course, Mike Tate was along as well as a few other members. From somewhere inside the box came the sounds of frogs croaking but when the box was opened, there was only some sunflower seeds and some sort of green "evidence" that some kind of animal had been here.

Members Gordon Snow, Grant Golden, Greg McNeil and special guest Tom Craven entertained at the annual banquet show for the Springfield IBM Ring on Monday, October 29.  The Banquet was held at Diamond's in Springfield and was attended by over 100 folks.  Gordon performed a mentalism effect where women in the audience wrote down on memo notepad paper an imagined trip location and a desired guest such as a celebrity.  Gordon then chose several ladies to stand up and revealed each of their choices one by one.  He also performed a routine guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar where he and an audience member each guess twice and then add up the numbers to reveal the previously predicted total.  Greg McNeil performed a linking ring routine with a youngster from the audience.  Grant did some silk magic, transforming the silks inside a container into a Bontania and his famous sponge ball routine with a youngster from the audience.

Lecture-Tom Craven, Tuesday, October 30

Tom Craven's lecture featured a variety of magic and mentalism that was entertaining and enjoyable.  Tom featured silk magic, card magic and mentalsim.  One of his signature effects presented was an effect where there are five glass goblets, each containing a different color silk.  An audience member selects a color.  After the four unchosen silks are removed from the goblets, the chosen color silk is found to contain a special coin with it to indicate the predicted choice.  As a finale, the coin then is then shown to have a sticker indicating the Zodiac sign of the volunteer.  Tom also performed ring-off-silk and ring-off-rope routines.  The lecture was well-attended with about 25 enjoying Tom's magic.  It has been said that Tom is one the great masters and we experienced that through his magic this evening.