My Life as a Magician


My name is BILL COOMER, I live in Cape Girardeau, Missouri and I have been a Magician for 55 years. I became interested in magic at the age of eight. I am not sure exactly what prompted my interest, but I did have an uncle who did a few simple tricks. Also the local dime store had a paper backed book for fifty cents with all kinds of tricks in it. Most of them could be done with everyday objects that could be found around the house.

I lived in Heyworth, Illinois and about 12 miles to the north was Bloomington. There was a greeting card shop there which had a counter of magic tricks. The gentleman who worked there and demonstrated the tricks was named Roger Dixon. My dad owned a coal company and I worked for him after school and on saturdays for $1 per hour. I earned lots of money that way and spent quite a bit of it on magic tricks and books.

One of the books I bought I got from a friend of mine who was slightly interested in magic. I do not know where he got the book but when he told me that he would sell it to me I jumped at the opportunity. I paid him $13.00 for it. Back in 1954 $13.00 would buy 26 hamburgers. The book was called "Greater Magic," it was written by John Northern Hilliard. It is probably the greatest magic book ever written. It has over 1000 pages in it. In Greater Magic there is a chapter on the master of playing cards. It talks about the first person to print playing cards. They were first printed with wooden blocks and the same printer who printed playing cards was also the printer who printed bibles. Chapter two of Greater Magic is about card fanning. Card fanning is the art of spreading the cards in a fan to show the beautiful patterns on the back of the cards. A deck is not good for fanning unless the pattern on the back was printed all the way to the edge. In that chapter it mentions a gentleman named Goodlette Dodson. Dodson wrote, in 1935, a booklet entitled "Exhibition Card Fans". Keep that in mind, we will get back to it later.

One of the first shows I did for money, my dad paid me $5 to perform for a group he belonged to. I did 7 tricks and two of them did not work. But I learned a lot, I learned that more important than your tricks working is what you do when they do not work. If you are the great so and so and your tricks do not work you have a problem, but if you are a nice guy who is just doing your best to entertain folks and something goes wrong they will not mind so much. I believe that we performers must remember that we are not doing anyone a favor to perform for them, they are doing us a favor. With out an audience we are out of business.

When I was in high school there was a fellow named Bob Tucker, who was one year behind me in school. We became friends and at one point he told me that his dad wrote books. Of course I did not believe him because during that time frame I did not believe much of anything. Later I found out that his dad did indeed write books. His name is Robert Tucker but he writes as Wilson Tucker and he has written about 30 science fiction novels.

I worked for Steak and Shake in Bloomington and they required us to wear all white including white buck shoes. I did a magic show for a family reunion out in the country and Bob Tucker (Wilson Tucker's son) went with me. I wore all white and he wore all black, we really thought we were sharp. The family paid me $5 to do the show and when it was over I was carrying my suitcase full of magic stuff out to the car and a member of the family asked me how much they had paid me for the show. I proudly told him $5. He said that is not enough and proceeded to pass the hat and gave me another $8 dollars. When Bob and I got back to town we had $13.00 and that was a time when you could get the biggest cheese burger in town for about 60 cents. We went to the local restaurant and pigged out. To this day that is the most I have ever received for a magic show: 160% more than I asked for.

One of the men who went to the same church as I did sold automobile parts to garages and one Sunday he told me that there was a man named George Dennewitz who owned a garage in Chatsworth, Illinois and he was a magician. I rode with the automobile parts salesman (Willis Golden) one day and we went to Chatsworth so I could meet George Dennewitz. He was about 50 and had never been married. He and his brother owned the garage together. Later he called my dad and offered to take me with him to the Abbott's magic convention in Colon, Michigan. He said that he would pay all of my expenses just to have the company. My dad agreed and I got to go with him. That was in 1955. Percy Abbott was from Australia but he moved to the United States and started a magic company. Their magic catalogs are real collectors items now. That year I met Percy Abbott and also Hen Fetch, Dr. Harlan Tarbell, Ed Marlo, John Braun, and Stewart Judah. Within a few years most of these men had died and I would never have met them if I had not gone to the 1955 Abbott's convention with Mr. George Dennewitz. Thanks George!

Also that year they had a very unusual act. They had a fellow from Caracas, Venezuela who was crucified on the stage. For real. No tricks. He had a doctor come up on the stage, the doctor pushed some surgical steel spikes through his hands and then lightly tapped them into a cross with a hammer. Then he put another spike through his feet. The cross was raised slightly; not enough to allow his body weight to pull against the spikes. But his hands and his feet were penetrated by the spikes. His name was Chami Kahn. What a way to make a living.

Next door to our house in Heyworth, Illinois there was a grocery store, it was owned by Art Neal. One day Art's son Johnny told me that they had a cookie salesman who came in to sell them cookies and was a magician. I didn't believe him but later he was there and they came and got me. I met the man, his name was Ted Colteaux. Ted and I were friends for many years. He died in January 1995, and I later bought all of his magic from his wife Hazel. He was the first (real) magician I met. He was retired from business and was slowly letting his magic go. I bought a number of things from him before he died.

In 1957 I joined the Marine Corps and went through boot camp at San Diego, California. I went through infantry training at Camp Pendleton and then was stationed at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station near Santa Ana, California. About 40 miles away was the largest mouse made people trap in the world. They call it Disneyland. I went there and went in the magic shop on Main st. I did a couple of card tricks for the guy who worked there and he told me that I needed to meet Leo Behnke. I asked him where Leo Behnke was and he told me that Leo worked at another magic shop in the Disneyland Hotel. I left immediately and went to the Disneyland Hotel which is across the street from Disneyland and there I found Leo Behnke. Leo and I hit it off right away and he offered me a job working in the Main Street magic shop in Disneyland. I took it and worked there for about a year. The shop was managed by Leo but it was owned by Merv Taylor. I worked for Mr. Taylor for over a year and I never did meet him. There was one man I did meet though, he came into the magic shop one morning and said hello to us. His name was Walt Disney. I shook his hand, that was a great moment.

Leo and I used to go to lots of magic things together. We went often to ring 96 in Long Beach, California and also we attended Ring 22 in Hollywood. There I met Charlie Miller, Mark Wilson, and Bill Larson Jr. Bill had a father named Bill Larson Senior who started the Genii magazine. After Mr. Larson senior died his wife Gerrie married Art Baker of you asked for it fame. I met them both. Leo Behnke was and is a consummate performer. He taught me much about magic and how to present it. I am certainly happy that I met him.

Another guy who worked with us at the Disneyland Magic shop was Alex Weiner he was better known as Aldini the king of roughing fluid. At the Disneyland magic shop we sold a gag item. It was an arrow with a spring in the middle which when you put it on your head looked like the arrow was going through your head. In 1962 I left California and went to Japan with a Marine Corps fighter squadron. Leo had to hire someone to replace me. my replacement was a fellow named Steve Martin. Steve Martin took that arrow through the head prop and made millions of dollars with it. I did not think to do that.

While in Japan I met many Japanese magicians but the greatest thrill of all was visiting in the home of a man named Tenkai Ishita. Also while I was there an American magician was doing shows for NCO and Officer clubs in Japan. I was lucky enough to meet him and spend lots of time with him. His name is Arnold Furst. Arnold not only did magic he was a hypnotist. I saw him hypnotize a Japanese actor who did not even speak English. Arnold and I used to look through shops together. They had lots of items in Japanese shops that would look good as a prop for a magician. The Japanese would print English names on things but often they did not understand idioms or tenses. We almost died laughing one night when we looked in the window of a toy store and saw an Erection set.

While I was in Japan I used to buy American decks at the post exchange for twenty cents each. I would always carry a few decks in my camera case when I was off the base. Often I would find a deck of Japanese cards that I wanted and I would trade them the American decks. They were always happy to get the American cards and I was happy to get the Japanese decks at the lower price of twenty cents. When I came back to the United States in 1963 I had lots of decks from Japan. I still have them.

While in japan I did a magic show for a Japanese orphanage, I did not speak much Japanese but the kids loved it. Magic is a universal language. When I came back to the United States in 1963 I was stationed at Millington Navel training center just north of Memphis, Tennessee. While I was stationed there I heard about and attended a magician's convention at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. I did some card tricks for a couple of guys and they told me that I should meet Goodlette Dodson. I asked where I could meet him and they said he is here. I looked him up and we became good friends. I corresponded with him for about five years from 1965 until January 26, 1970 when he died. I was also lucky enough to visit him in his home in Birmingham, Alabama. While there he showed me his collection of over 600 decks of cards from all over the world. He also informed me that when he died I would be one of ten people who would receive decks from his collection.

One of the decks I had picked up in japan was a very unusual deck which looks like dominos. It is a full deck with two jokers and they all fit into a little box. I had shown that deck to Goodlette Dodson while he was at the magician's convention in Memphis. He raved about it. One day I got a letter from him and he mentioned it again. I told my wife that if that deck meant that much to him I was going to give it to him. I did and when he died in 1970 I got that deck back and also 52 other decks of cards. When that box arrived in the mail I sat down and cried. To think that I had been fortunate enough to meet this man and then to become his friend to the point that he picked me to leave some of his cards to. I still have 86 letters that I received from him over the five years that we wrote back and forth. There is a wealth of knowledge and information in them. He was a great man. His giving me those 52 decks of cards sparked my interest in collecting playing cards. Here I was back at chapter one and two of greater magic; card collecting and card fanning. I now have more then 2500 decks of cards.

Also in Memphis there was a magic shop, it was owned by Louis Anderton and he had a guy who worked for him to demonstrate magic. His name was Dick Oakley. Dick was a juggler and played the organ as well as performing magic. I spent many happy hours visiting with Dick Oakley.

In 1966 I got out of the Marine corps and my wife and I moved to Catron, Missouri where I pastored a Baptist church for about three years. Then we moved to Cape Girardeau, Missouri where her folks lived. I attended college there and graduated in may of 1970 with a bachelors degree in secondary education. My majors had been Speech and English. While in college at Cape Girardeau I decided to take classical Greek. I had a teacher named E. Otha Wingo. He was to have an incredible influence on my life. When I met him I was a dyed in the wool Southern Baptist preacher who believed (with all my heart) that there was only one truth and we (the Southern Baptists) knew what it was. Dr. Wingo never told me that I was wrong but he asked questions and planted ideas. He told me about books that he felt I should read and here many years later I know what I believe and I know why but I do not try to shove it down everyone else's throat. I was in his Greek and his Mythology classes, I told him that I was a magician and he was not very impressed. Then I took a deck of cards one day and did some stuff for him. He was impressed and I started doing magic shows in his Mythology classes. It is a great way to get people started thinking about what is real and what is not. I performed magic in his Mythology classes for 20 years plus. It has been an experience.

It was in one of his classes that I met a student named Marka Sawyer. Marka was going through a divorce and needed a friend. I was her friend and in appreciation she called me one day and told me that she had something for me. I met her and she handed me a brown paper bag. I reached inside and pulled a book. I read the first chapter of the book and had tears running down my face. I felt that I could have written this book. This book has done more to change my life and the way I perceive it than any other book I have ever read. It is called "Illusions by Richard Bach". It is easily the greatest book I have ever read.

Dr. Wingo has a son named Eric and Eric became interested in magic also. He often comes over to my house and spends hours reading books on magic. As I write this he is 35 years old, he lives in St. Louis where he does magic full time.

When I first met Dr. E. Otha Wingo I had come to Girardeau, Missouri to go to college. I had surrendered to preach in the Baptist church while in Millington, Tennessee, so one of my interests in college was the Greek language. The Greek professor at South East Mo. State U. was one Dr. E. Otha Wingo. Before I met him Dr. Wingo had become interested in astrology. He is a Virgo and therefore is very detailed in his search for information. He had called the Missouri Federation of Astrologers and they sent two people down to Cape Girardeau, Mo., from St. Louis to visit with him concerning astrology. They were Rex and Diana bills. They had talked with him for several hours about astrology and were ready to leave to go back to St. Louis when they casually asked him if he had ever heard of Huna. He had not and they said that he might find it interesting. They then gave him the name and address of Max Freedom Long who had rediscovered the secrets of Huna as it was practiced by the Hawaiian people. He had written a number of books about the subject the first being Recovering the Ancient Magic which was followed by Secret Science at Work and several others. Max had an organization which had started in the mid forties. By now he was quite an old man. Dr. Wingo, being a Virgo, followed up on their suggestion and wrote a letter to Max Freedom Long. To his amazement max answered his letter with a letter of his own which said that he wanted Dr. Wingo to take over the Huna work.

One day I was over at his house and I remember seeing some printed material concerning Huna and I asked him how he could be a good Baptist and be interested in a Hawaiian religion at the same time. He suggested that I might profit from reading the material to see just what Huna is and then we would discuss it further. When I read the Huna materials I found that Huna is not a religion but a Polynesian science of real magic. I know that is a strong statement but it is absolutely true. Huna is real magic and it works. Dr. Wingo did take over the Huna work. He became the director of the Huna organization for the entire world. I also became a member of the Huna organization and purchased all of the Huna books and materials that were available. I learned it well and over the years Dr. Wingo and I have traveled to a number of places to present lectures on Huna. I would often do magic for the people which is a great way to get their undivided attention.

Sometimes strange things happen and here is one example of something that happened to me. several years ago I went into the insurance business. I worked for a number of companies and ended up working for Consumer Benefit Services in cape Girardeau, Missouri. Consumer Benefit Services worked mostly in the medi-care field, selling a policy to people on medi?care to pay what medi-care did not. We did most of our business by mailing material to people and if they had an interest in seeing what we had to offer they would send a return card back to us and we would go to their home and present our program. I was working in Columbia, Missouri, going to people's homes and selling them our products. I had been there all week and on Thursday it started raining so hard that I could not see the addresses on people's houses. Even if I could have seen the address it was raining too hard for me to be able to go up to the house. So I decided to visit some antique shops. I am always looking for items for my playing card collection which includes not only playing cards, but glasses, cups, cuff links, belt buckles, and other items with cards on them. I got a phone book and went to every antique shop listed in the phone book. When I got to the last one I asked the lady if she knew about any antique shops that were not listed in the phone book. She told me that there was one and she gave me the name and address of it. I went there and when I walked in the door there were all kinds of things hanging on the wall. I was looking at them and therefore my back was to the girl who worked there. She told me later that she sensed something different about me but she did not know what it was. She was wanting me to turn around so she could see my eyes. I finally did turn around and she asked me if she could help me. I told her that I collected playing cards and she told me that she had a postcard with cards on it. I asked to see it and she handed it to me. I noticed there was a young man working there also. He was putting some things out on display. I found out later that he did not work there, he was just a friend of hers and was helping her out. He asked me how many decks of cards I had and I told him around 800 decks. He asked me if I had any tarot decks and I told him that I had about 35 different tarot decks. He said that he was interested in learning to do readings with tarot cards but he had never met anyone who knew anything about them. He then told me that he had a question about the tarot that he would like to ask someone. I told him that I was probably as knowledgeable about the tarot as anyone he would every meet and he asked me the question. While I was answering his question, the girl turned around, reached under some papers on a desk, and pulled out a book which she laid on the counter. I looked over at the book and almost fell down. It was a paper-backed copy of Growing into Light by Max Freedom Long. I stopped talking to him long enough to say to her, I will tell you something about that book in a moment. I finished my answer to him and then told her about Huna and the fact that my best friend was the head of the Huna organization for the entire world. I asked her why she had put it on the counter and she told me; "self told me to do it."

She then told me that she had bought it at a yard sale a few days earlier and had read it but had a question about the Huna concept of prayer. I told her that I could probably answer the question and I did.

Here I was the only person in the world who is a member of the Huna organization and a collector of playing cards and therefore knowledgeable about tarot. It was not unusual for him to ask me about playing cards or the tarot, because I had mentioned that I collected playing cards. But, I had not mentioned Huna. There was no way that the girl could have known that I would be aware of a book on Huna. When she told me that self had told her to put it out the self that she was talking about is her higher self which Huna teaches is the God consciousness. Obviously her high self would have known that I would be aware of Huna. The old occult axiom says when the student is ready the teacher will appear. Was I lead by the Universe to walk into that antique shop? Did the Universe cause it to rain so I would visit antique shops that day? I don't pretend to know. All I do know is I did walk into that shop and that conversation did happen. When you find yourself in a situation where it is obvious that the Universe has matched you up with someone it is a strange feeling. But it is a good feeling because it is like a love letter from god. This girl had bought that book, she had a question about it and the universe created a set of circumstances in which I would walk into her shop.

In 1968 they had a gentleman perform at the university in Cape Girardeau, Mo his name was Dr. David Hoy. I went to that performance and as a result became good friends with Dr. Hoy. I was invited to attend his 25th wedding anniversary celebration and I was at his funeral in 1981. He died from a heart attack at the age of 50. After his death I bought 100 decks of cards from his wife Shirley that had belonged to David. They are in my collection (which now numbers over 3000 decks) and each deck has a sticker on it with the name Hoy written on it.

In 1973 I did a magic show for the Lynwood Baptist church, there was a young boy (13 years old) there who was interested in magic. He became my good friend and I have taught him a little magic. His name is Kevin Propst and he is now performing magic professionally as Kevin King. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Kevin and I have spent hundreds of hours together talking magic. He even traveled with me when I was doing magic in the Wal-mart stores. He is on the Ralph Emery show quite often.

Sometime in the mid 1970's I was doing magic for the Wal-mart stores, I was in Columbia, Missouri and I met Dr. Charles M. Hudson. Charlie was a university professor and a magician. He wrote the Card Corner column in the Linking Ring magazine for 25 years. He had an absolutely encyclopedic knowledge of card magic.

My agreement to do magic for the Wal-mart stores was; I did 16 shows a day. I would start at 1:00 and do a 7 minute show every hour and every half hour until the last show at 8:30. At the end of each show I produced some candy and passed it out to the kids and thanked people for shopping at Wal-mart. I did it full time for about a year and a half and during that time did magic at 75 different Wal-marts in seven different states. I performed at the Columbia Wal?marts many times and always visited Charlie Hudson. I also met a lady in the Wal-mart in Columbia who worked at the Daniel Boone library in Columbia she had me perform at the library several times. On one of those trips I did an adult show on esp in the evening and Charlie was there. He was very impressed with the content of the program. Not so much with the magic, it was all standard stuff, but in the way it was presented which made people think. He told me it was one of the most thought provoking shows he had every seen. Coming from him that was nice.

At the end of that adult esp show several people came up to talk to me. the library was closing at 9:00 p.m. and they still wanted to talk some more, so we all went to a local establishment called Bogarts. We bought a bottle of wine and talked until after midnight. It was excellent. Finally people started leaving one by one until only I and one lady were left. She wanted to know if I was leaving the next day (Sunday) to come back to Cape Girardeau. I told her that I was and she told me that she wanted me to meet her husband. He had not been able to attend the performance because he had to work. She invited me to come by their house and eat with them before I left town so that I could meet him. I did that and he was a great guy, very intelligent and very well read. We hit it off and the next thing I knew they were inviting me to stay with them anytime I was in Columbia. They had an extra bedroom down their basement and I did stay with them several times after that. At one point they introduced me to two guys who did a radio show in Columbia and they interviewed me on the radio.

Another time I was performing in a Wal-mart store and a couple came in. I thought that they were married, but I did a card trick for them that included a story about twins and they said we are twins. He told me that he owned a restaurant in town and wanted me to come by after I finished the shows at the Wal-mart. I did and he fed me a steak and would not let me pay for it. Later I was back up that way and I called him and he had a bunch of friends over at the restaurant after the shows at Wal-mart and I did a show for them for which they paid me $100. They also fed me again. There are some wonderful people in this world.

In 1979 I was performing magic at the mall in Paducah, Lentucky and a young man came up after the show and wanted to talk to me. his name was Steve Schlanger. His mom and dad live in West Wood an exclusive section of Los Angeles, California. His father owns two automobile dealerships. He and Steve had a blow out and Steve left home. Somehow he ended up in Paducah, Kentucky. I invited him to come over to Cape Girardeau to visit me and see my magic library (over 2000 books). He did come and we were sitting in my magic room one night and I said Steve I want you to do me a favor. I want you to pick up the phone and call your folks and let them know that you are alright. He said that he did not want to do that. I said either do that or leave. He did not want to leave, he wanted to talk magic, so he called. A few months later he decided to go back home to see them. I went with him and spent a week in his folks home. His father Lou loaned me a new car to drive while I was there. I got to fulfill a dream. I got to go to the Magic Castle. I met some folks there including Neil Lester who can split a card in thirds and glue them back together to make unusual cards. I also met Bascom Jones who for years wrote the magazine of mental magic called Magick. I had a trick in there once.

When my second son was born I named him after the greatest magician who ever lived. His name is Dai Vernon Coomer and he is named after the professor. The professor was born David Frederick Wingfield Verner June 11th 1894 in Canada. He later shortened the David to Dai and then changed the Verner to Vernon. When he was 21 and in the Canadian air force he went to New York and fooled all the magicians there. He was a living legend for more then half of his life. He died on august 21st 1992 at 98 years and 71 days old. He sat in the magic castle in a corner and enjoyed a good cigar and life. He has known every magician of any note over the last 70 years. He knew Houdini, Keller, Thurston, Blackstone etc, etc, etc. The first time I actually met the professor was at the Mid-West Magic Jubilee in Kansas city, Missouri in 1978. I worked my way up there doing magic in Wal-mart stores and my whole family went with me. when I met Dai Vernon he was sitting at a table with Joe Cosori. Joe Cosori was a good friend of the professors and he did a card fanning act. I mentioned that when Goodlette Dodson died he had left me 52 decks of cards and Joe said that Goodlette Dodson had a couple of decks that he sure would like to have. I asked him which two they were and he told me the Indian chief and the Indian princess. They were decks that had been printed in London for the Woolworth's company and I had them. So I told Joe that I had them. He wanted to know if I would sell them. I told him no but that I would send them to him as a gift in memory of Goodlette Dodson. I did send them to him and he sent me two fanning decks of Peau Deau cards which had once belonged to Cardini. Cardini was named Richard Pickford. He was a Welsh coal miner and he was hurt in a mining accident. While in the hospital he played with a deck of cards and developed a magic routine that was a good as any magician had ever come up with.

Back about 1973 or so I did a magic show for the Fort D Senior Citizens club. An older man came up to me and introduced himself as Ira Helderman. He told me that he used to do magic. He invited me to come to see him sometime. Well, I did go see him, he took me down the basement and showed me 4 cardboard boxes full of magic stuff and he told me to take it home with me and do with it whatever I wanted. I took it home, cleaned it up, there were tricks made of rubber that had completely rotted away, but there was some glass and metal items that were still good. Later I went back and did another magic show for the Fort D Senior Citizens club and I did the entire show with magic stuff that came from Mr. Helderman. At the end of the show I had him stand and had everyone give him a round of applause.

About 1975 a man named Glenn Oberlin opened a magic shop on Broadway in Cape Girardeau. He had always wanted to own a magic shop so opening one fulfilled a dream for him. I went to work for him on Saturdays demonstrating magic. There was an old guy who came in occasionally to say hello his name was Bill Ruesskamp. He was in his late 70's when I met him. Bill and I became good friends. I would visit him on sundays, at that time he had a sister who lived with him, later she died and Bill was alone. His eyes were bad and he could not read anymore so I would read his magic magazines and then tell him what was in them. About 3 months before he died I bought all of his magic for $200. He had over 250 books, 700 magazines, and many many small tricks.

I had heard that there was a man in Jackson who was interested in magic, his name was Henry Jones and he owned a drug store. I even called him on the phone once and talked to him but I never did meet him. Then about 1978 I did a magic show at the Holiday Inn for a group of court reporters. At the end of the show a lady came up to me and introduced herself as Wilma Jones. She told me that her husband used to do magic but that he had died. She was Henry Jones's wife and she gave me all of his magic. She would not let me pay for it. There were about 20 magic books including a copy of greater magic and two trunks full of other stuff. I was very happy to get it.

As a result of collecting playing cards I became aware of a deck of cards called the tarot deck. The tarot is the oldest deck of cards in the world. There are many different designs and there are tarot decks from almost every country in the world. I had collected several of them and also I had a file and a three ring binder filled with information about the tarot deck.

A man named Stuart Kaplan was in Europe at a toy fair and he saw a tarot deck there and asked what it was as he had never seen one before. The man told him and he was so intrigued that he later started a company in New York called U. S. Games and he sold all kinds of cards but especially he sold tarot decks. He wrote a book called the Encyclopedia of Tarot. In the back was an annotated bibliography of materials on the tarot. I looked it over and discovered that I had a number of things that he did not have listed. I wrote him a letter about it and he asked me to send him copies of some of the items. I had also written a book entitled the Egyptian Bookmobile. It was the story of a group of people who traveled back through time to deliver the tarot to the Egyptian people. I told him about my book and he asked for a copy of it also. I sent him one and later he wrote another book entitled vol. II of the Encyclopedia of Tarot. In the annotated bibliography my book is listed as an unpublished manuscript. Interesting! It is small world.

In 1984 I was working with an insurance company. My territory was in Northeast Arkansas. I was in the car with another insurance man and we saw a sign which advertised a television show called the Theater of Magic. It was on channel 8 which was a local cable channel. I remarked to him that I would like to meet the guys who were on that show. It was close to noon and we drove into a McDonald's restaurant to eat. I ordered a cheese burger, fries and a coke. The girl did not give me any catsup. I went to a table and noticed that I did not have any catsup, so I said something about it. A girl at the table next to us said that she had some extra catsup. I took it and thanked her. We ate our food and I told the guy I was with that I was going to go do some magic for her because she was so nice about giving me the catsup. I did a couple of tricks for her and she told me that she knew some card tricks. I asked her how she knew some card tricks and she said that her boyfriend had taught her. I asked her who her boyfriend was and she told me Rich Cristiano. I asked her who Rich Cristiano was and she told me that he and his brother were the producers of the television show theater of magic. She gave me his number and that night I called Rich Cristiano and he gave me Joe Floyd's number. Joe had started a magic club called the Northeast Arkansas magic club. It met at his house and all of the performers on the theater of magic were members of that club. Later I became the 5th performer on that show. I did close up magic and it was on for 30 minutes each week for about a year. The club also did a Halloween show every year for several years. I was in two of them. My association with Joe Floyd and the other members of that club meant a lot to me when I was working 150 miles away from home.

One time I was at Joe Floyd's house and he had invited a friend of his to come over and meet me. the mans name was Guy Pardue. Guy was a very successful real estate broker and was used to being the center of attention. Joe introduced us and when he introduced me to guy he said this is the greatest magician you have ever seen. Guy said something like I had better be pretty good then. Joe said just watch. Well, I did about ten minutes for him and there were about a dozen other magicians watching me perform. When I stopped he could not talk. I had eaten his lunch. He pulled out his wallet and asked me if I accepted tips. I said do I look crazy? He handed me a fifty dollar bill. Here is a man who needs the spot light to be shining on him. I had moved it from him to me and the only way he knew to get it back on him was to tip me a fifty. What ever it takes to make you feel good Mr. Pardue.

In 1985 I went with Dr. Wingo to the 7 Continent Dowsers Convention in Chicago. The group was formed and run by a man named Ed Sarnachi. Ed took a liking to me and asked me to speak and later to be the master of ceremonies at the convention. I have been attending this convention for nineteen years now and some of the people I have met and some of the material I have been exposed to have done more to help me than anything else I have ever done.

I later wrote a book entitled The Magic of Creating The Life You Want. I do a four hour seminar based on the material in the book. I have done it in Chicago twice, and also here locally but in march of 1989 I went to San Francisco to do my seminar, after the seminar I went down to Los Angeles to visit Steve Schlanger. We went to the Magic Castle again (four nights in a row). On Monday night Leo Behnke came to the Magic Castle to see me. On Tuesday night another man came to the castle to meet me. his name was Larry Jennings. Larry Jennings was probably the greatest card magician alive. I enjoyed very much meeting him and seeing him perform. But more than that I enjoy meeting the man. We too talked about life.

I decided that I had lots of magic books I would never read again. So, I sold Steve Schlanger about 2/3rds of my magic library for $2000. While in California Steve introduced me to Chuck Fayne. Chuck had about 35 decks of cards that he had gotten from an old magicians estate. I bought them for $275.00.

While in California I saw Arnold Furst. He pulled a few strings and was able to get Steve and I into a magic museum which is owned by the Society of American Magicians. Arnold looked very much like he did in Japan back in 1962 and that was many years ago. In that museum there was a collection of playing cards that had belonged to Ronald Haines. Ronald Haines worked for a man named John Snyder. John Snyder had a magic shop which did lots of mail order business. He bought decks from the United States Playing Card company. He also owned a summer home on a lake in Wisconsin which was called Fox Lake. The cards he sold were aviator bridge sized cards but they were sold in boxes specially printed for him. They were called Fox Lake cards. After Mr. Snyder's death Ronald Haines bought out the business and called it the Haines House of Cards. He was a good friend of Goodlette Dodson.

Over the years my love for playing cards has grown to the point that I can not begin to explain the fascination I feel for playing cards. Years ago I belonged to the Chicago playing card collectors club but about 80 percent of their members were people who collected single cards. I have no interested in single cards (unless they are very old or very unusual). To haul a brief case around with hundreds of single cards in it has absolutely no appeal to me. As a matter of fact I find it distasteful to break up a deck of cards. It is like breaking up a family.

But several years ago a new club emerged. It is called 52 + Joker and it is for people who collect full decks. I joined and in september of 1987 we had our first ever convention. It was held in Cincinnati, Ohio and along with meeting other collectors we were able to tour the United States Playing Card Company and actually watch them print playing cards. We also went through their museum and were able to buy things at the gift shop.

On Saturday night we had a banquet and I did a magic show. One of the tricks I did was the card in the wallet. Someone takes a card, sticks a little white sticker on the face of it and signs their name to the sticker. The card is put back into the deck, the deck is shuffled and at the end the card is found in a sealed envelope in a zippered compartment of a wallet with the sticker and signature still on it. The person I had help me with this trick was Margery Griffith, Margery was in charge of the museum at the United States Playing Card Company. Margery had designed a fantastic poster with examples of cards that are in the United States Playing Card Company museum and everyone who attended the banquet received one. My wife Jurea was with me so we both received one. Out of about 80 people we were one of a half dozen who thought to have Margery autograph it for us. Also at this convention I met Gene Hochmann and his wife. Gene was a walking encyclopedia of information about playing cards. He wrote a six volume set of books called the Encyclopedia of American playing cards. I purchased his encyclopedia and learned more in a year than I have learned in the 25 years before that. I now know which decks are worth looking for and over the last few years have bought and traded my way to 3000 decks of card which are worth more than $10,000.

In 1988 our convention was in Chicago and in 1989 it was in Indianapolis, Indiana. I am one of the few people who had attended every convention but then a few people took the club over and began to run it they way they wanted without caring what the members thought. I still collect playing cards, but I am through with 52 plus joker. It is sad that you can not even have a playing card collectors organization without politics kicking in.

Over the years I have performed magic for most of the companies in Cape Girardeau where I live. I have performed at the West Park mall the day that Santa Claus arrives. As a result of being a magician I know many people who I would not know if I had not met them as a result of being a magician. I have performed regularly at the local holiday inn, a restaurant called Port Cape Girardeau, and a steak house called Jeremiahs. I have done a magic show for the daughter of the United States Congressman for this Congressional District Bill Emerson.

I wrote this account on January 30th 1990. A couple of weeks ago I was in Columbia, Missouri, while I was there I called Clara Hudson, Charlie Hudson's wife and took her out to eat. Charlie died six years ago this year. Clara told me that of all the people he knew she felt that he would want me to have all of his magic and magic library. I went there on march 3rd of 1990 to pick it up.

I called my good friend Steve Schlanger in California and told him that I was going up to Columbia to pick up that magic, he flew into St. Louis and I picked him up on the way through. When we were talking on the phone he told me that the book: Stewart James in print had come out. He told me that he could get me a copy of that book from Arnold Furst for $65 ($20 less then most places) so I told him to bring me one. We went to Columbia and picked up all that magic. He gave me that book.

When I got home and was sorting out all of Charlies magic I found something amazing. In the Stewart James In Print book there is card trick called: Ten nights in a card room. In the stuff from Charlie I found the original manuscript that Charlie had bought from Stewart James back in 1947 for $3.

Then I read the Stewart James book. I wrote Stewart a letter and told him that for over 40 years the greatest magic book would have been Greater Magic, but that now I considered it his book.

In 2000 I was on my way to Omaha, Nebraska and stopped at U. S. Toy in Kansas City. There I bought the James File which is two more books and an index to all three of the books. They quoted from my letter and I am in the James File. I was very pleased with that.

One of my regrets in life is that Charlie Hudson did not live long enough to see the Stewart James book, he would have loved it.

Someone asked me once why I was so lucky that people are always giving me stuff or dying and leaving me stuff. I believe you reap what you sow. You get back what you put out. I went to visit Bill Ruesskamp when no one else did. I drove all the way to Columbia, Missouri (5 hours one way) to take Clara Hudson out to eat. Some people forget, I do not forget, I remember. I remember how great these people were. I try to take Henry Jones magic tricks and make someone smile with them. Henry may be gone but his magic is still alive because it was passed on to another generation.

So I salute them all Charlie Hudson, Goodlette Dodson, Joe Cosori, Henry Jones, Ira Helderman, Bill Ruesskamp, David Hoy, Ted Colteaux, magicians, performers, gentlemen who tried to make someone smile with a trick. And as long as Bill Coomer lives so do a part of them. When I shuffle off this mortal coil I will pass it on also to Kevin King, to Eric Wingo, to Steve Schlanger. It has been and continues to be amazing and wonderful this world of magic.

I was born in 1939 in Paris, Illinois. My father worked for an oil company at a pumping station which pumped crude oil from the oil fields in Texas up to the Chicago refineries. He died on January 31, 1983. He was a great father. If God had handed me a blank piece of paper and said, "design a father." I could not have designed a greater father then I had. My home town was Heyworth, Illinois with about 1200 people, it is in central Illinois and 140 miles South West of Chicago. I went through 12 years of school there before joining the Marine Corps in 1957. But I have been very lucky. I have met the world's greatest magicians. Some of them have become close personal friends to me. I ate supper with Harry Blackstone Sr. I also saw his full two hour show at Peoria, Illinois in 1953 and to this day it is the greatest magic show I have every seen. He was a master performer.

My son is named Dai Vernon after the professor. I have sat in the Magic Castle, in Hollywood, at a table with the professor and had him show me tricks with a deck of cards. I was in Tenkai Ishita's home in Tokyo, Japan. I knew Charlie Hudson very well and he considered me a friend. I corresponded with Goodlette Dodson for five years and he left me 52 decks of cards. I sat with Dr. David Hoy and talked about magic and yes about life. When I performed at the Paducah, Kentucky mall one year he came out and hollered his enthusiasm at my magic.

The world of magic is a wonderful world. If a doctor walked up to the door of another doctor's home and knocked and the doctor answered and the other doctor said I am a doctor the other doctor might say so! But if you are a magician and you walk up to the door of another magician and knock and when he answers you say I am a magician you will be invited in. No other brotherhood does that. No other art allows you to fill people with so much wonder and excitement. No other art allows you to touch other people so profoundly. No other art allows you to open so many doors.

I do not believe in accidents. I do not believe that anything happens by accident. I do not believe in coincidence as chance. I think there is a force in the universe, perhaps it is under the control of the master magician, that causes things to happen the way they do. Maybe that explains this fact. There was a magician in the late 1800's his name was Angelo Lewis, he was a lawyer by profession but he also loved magic. He wrote books on magic but he was afraid to use his real name for fear that people would not use him as a lawyer. So he wrote those magic books under the name Professor Hoffman. He wrote More Magic, and Modern Magic, and Later Magic. These are three of the greatest books every written on magic. I found out many years ago when he was born. He was born on July 23rd 1839. I was born July 23rd 1939. That's not all...he was born on a Sunday, so was I. Coincidence? No! Magic.

A couple of years ago a playing card collector friend of mine from back east called me. he told me that he had been up in Maine looking in antique shops. He had found one with some magic for sale. I called them and bought the stuff over the phone. I send them a check and the stuff came in, among other things there was a very old blank faced deck of playing cards. I wondered what I was going to do with it. One day an idea jumped into my mind. I started mailing the cards out to magicians, having them autograph them and return them to me. i quickly filled that deck and bought some more blank decks. I now have over 700 magician's autographs on playing cards. Life is an amazing thing.

My good friend, Leo Behnke, worked for David Copperfield for several years. He took care of the museum. In december (1994) I did a show for a nursing home in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. They paid me enough to buy two round trip tickets for my wife and I to Las Vegas. We spent one week with Leo Behnke. He drove us down to Lake Havasu City. I did two shows at the nursing home, one for the residents and one for the staff. Back in Vegas we saw Lance Burton's show at the Hacienda. It was an incredible week and we spent less than $200. My friend Steve Schlanger bought us tickets to California and back, we flew over there on Monday and went to the Magic Castle that evening. I walked in the Castle hoping that Mr. Tony Giorgio would be there. He was performing in the close-up room. He took my wife and I and my friend Steve in the side door and sat us in the front row. At one point in his show he looked right at me and said, "Coomer I am doing this next trick just for you." what a magician he is. It was awesome. Magic paid for it.

May your world be filled with love, magic, and butterflies.

In October of 1995 I drove up to Cincinnati, Ohio. Leo Behnke and his lady friend Pat McCarty (and now she is Mrs. Behnke) flew in from Las Vegas. We were there for the 10th convention of the 52 plus joker playing card collectors. But we arrived early because we had plans. On Tuesday we spent the afternoon with Van Jones at the United States Playing card company museum. On Wednesday we spent the day with Ken Klosterman. Ken owns Klosterman bakeries in Cincinnati. He has a museum of magic under his house in a subterranean basement. We did not begin to see it in one day so Ken invited us back the next day to finishing looking at it. There are many magicians in the United States who would love to see either the Copperfield museum or the Klosterman museum. I have been lucky enough to see them both. It is an awesome thing to think that I was raised up in a little town in Illinois with about 1200 people, and I have seen the world. I have been to Tokyo, Japan and Tenkai Ishita's house. I have been to Birmingham, Alabama to Goodlette Dodson's house. I have been to the Magic Castle in Hollywood California and sat at a table with Dai Vernon (the greatest magician who ever lived). And I have seen the two greatest museums of magic in the world. It is magical. But magic will not work unless you believe it and neither will life. David Copperfield says: there can be no wonders until there is wonder. And in his book David Blaine says: you do not get into magic, magic gets into you. I believe them both.

Doug Henning was a young man from Canada. He wanted to be a magician. He got a grant from the Canadian government for $4000 and went to California where he studied with Dai Vernon (another Canadian). He went on to star in the magic show on Broadway and became famous. Shortly after he wrote a book about Houdini. Houdini died in 1926 at age 52 (the number of cards in a deck). Then Doug got out of magic and did some other things. He was just getting back into it when he died of cancer. He was 52. Amazing!

I use my magic to get people's attention and then try to remind them how incredible they are. Magic will not work unless you believe it and neither will life.

You reap what you sow and you get back what you put out. I keep trying to put out love and when it comes back to me I am not surprised.