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Paw Lawton Reveals His Real Name

This isn't a status on the current state of tricks or how high prices are getting. It's just a fair and honest question. What the heck is going on with magic? Where are the youngsters looking to learn? It used to be in dusty old shops with cards on the ceiling and faded posters on the walls.

Read on . . .

When I was a young man, I learned at the hands of the Champlaine Magic Shop. There were no special counters with adult items, no fast moving crap tricks, no nothing except magic and magicians.To be honest, I have no idea how they stayed in business. I'd be sitting on a bar stool — no different than I am now, I guess — all day watching the magicians that visited town and came in to check out the local color.

I learned how to second deal from a magician based on Florida but on a short tour that brought him through the Midwest. Ace (I'm leaving out his last name) was one hell of a manipulator. I couldn't do anything he could do but he did one hell of a great second deal. He could do it 'one-handed' or with a mechanic's grip or even how Dai Vernon did it with the slop push. He took time to show me the mechanics and I practiced the rest of the day as I listened to him and Mr. Champlaine talk about their favorite magicians and favorite tricks. At the end of the day, I was no closer to mastering the seconds.

Ace told me something I'll never forget. "Pete," he said — that's my Christian name — "don't give up but practice for a half hour before you fall asleep. Then when you wake up in the morning, don't get out of bed, just start dealing seconds. Use a brand new deck every other day."I nodded. "Then one morning you'll get the concept. It will kick in and you'll never forget it."I did exactly as Ace told me. I never saw him again.

Champlaine's Magic Shop

He headed to Florida and I went out west to do something that would get my name in the papers. One morning in a piece of garbage hotel in Rumatilta, California, I pulled out a new deck — it was an even numbered day and new decks were used on even numbered days — and I had it.

I figured it out. I could do it. The sad part, though, was I was alone. Sitting in a piece of garbage motel, with cards all over my stained and cig burned covers. I wanted to show someone so I rushed down to the Sambos — they don't have those anymore but they were like "Dennys." I ordered a cup a coffee and asked the waitress if she wanted to see a trick. I did my seconds for her and she nodded. She wasn't impressed. I realized I hadn't done a trick, I'd just shown her how I could deal seconds.

Paw Lawton Reveals His Real Name

Read on . . .

Champlaine's Magic Shop

It wasn't the technique that should have amazed her, it was what I could have done with the technique. I knew then, I'd have to find a magic shop; some where I could talk to other magicians and get their feedback and ideas. I found one outside of Sacramento and it was as I had remembered. Dirty, dusty, but with a back table where magicians of all stripes were in doing their stuff and learning. I did my seconds and got some nice compliments. "Where'd you learn that, Pete?" asked a young man of perhaps 14 years.

I told him about Ace and how he had taught me and the practice method he insisted I employ. The boy smiled as if I had told him the secret to free money. I contrast that experience with the kiosks we see in the malls and the open-air markets. They've got a margin that will kill them if you sat around all day doing tricks and talking. You need to see what you want and move on.

I have no idea how a young man or woman would learn from a kiosk. Who knows, maybe the Internet is like the back room of a magic shop. If that's the case, we need to be a hell of a lot more tolerant of the "newbies" that come on to ask questions that us smarter/wiser magicians haven't thought about in decades. We need to be like Ace to the kids (even if their in their 40's) and help them find the community that we had growing up in this art.