I am so excited about this! Join me in my town for an evening of laughs, wonder and fun!
I’ve shared my unique brand of make-believe all over the world. However, I’ve made my home in Mount Dora, the last 21 years. Join me for an evening of intimate illusion. This show is full of laughs, wonder, and joy! Where convincing deception meets the reality of your perception. You are part of the experience. You are not just viewing but actively doing. I’ll hope you’ll join me! It’s going to be a wonder-filled evening.
The host location of the performances is the Historic Donnelly House, an icon in Mount Dora. The 100 year-old-can’t-miss yellow Victorian structure is home to the local Masonic Lodge #238. However, during Mind, Myth, & Magic, the house is transformed into a magical mansion. My team and I bring in magical-history decor, transforming the downstairs rooms into a unique parlor of prestidigitation. Guests will see rare antiques from the golden age of magic—and get up close and personal with not only the memorabilia but the engaging show.
Since seating is limited to just 39 people, so each performance is intimate and unique. No two shows are precisely alike. Everyone is engaged during the show. Laughing, applauding, and charmed by some wit, wizardry, and warmth. Each performance runs approximately 90-minutes with a brief intermission. Coffee, water, and delicious local bakery items are complementary before and during the interim.
There’s always more room in our lives for joy and astonishment. I’d love for you to spend the evening with me—in a historic, old-school setting laughing and experiencing the delight of wonder.
For more information on tickets, dress code, and dates, please visit mindmythmagic.com. Or call 352-269-0621.
“You should meet him. He’s a nice young man and a good magician.”
“I don’t want to.”
“He just moved here, and I think you’d be good friends.”
“No, I don’t need to meet him.”
“He’s got a car, Fetaque.”
“Ok, I’ll meet him.”
And that is how my friend and mentor Sammy Smith got Fetaque Sanders to meet me.
Nashville
It was Nashville, 1990, and I had just moved to attend University. Sammy was up on a trip to visit his friend, and mentor, Fetaque (pronounced FEE-TAKE) Sanders.
Fetaque’s Car & Trailer used in his tours.
Fetaque was born in 1915, and grew up in a fourteen-room house on Heiman Street, in what is now known as the Germantown area of Nashville. His father was the director of the first segregated YMCA in Middle Tennessee. As a young boy, Fetaque fell in love with magic and became the leading African-American magician in this country in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s. He performed at the Chicago World’s Fair when he was just 18. He toured with Pearl Bailey and knew Langston Hughes personally. He was dapper and talented, and I was honored to call him my friend for the last two years of his life on this earth.
When we met, I was a freshman in college, and he was living in a run-down nursing facility near Vanderbilt University. Three days a week, he went to dialysis. On the other days, I’d get a call, typically about 7:00 in the morning.
“Hello?” I said, usually half asleep.
“Scott! It’s the apple-man,” he said, enthusiastically. “Let’s go get some apples.”
“Fetaque, I have class at 8:00,” I’d retort.
“Hmm.” He’d pause. “Okay, I understand, class, good,” he said.
“I’ll pick you up at 10:00,” I countered.
“Great. See you then.” Click.
And that’s how an old black man and a skinny white kid became dear friends. Instead of taking girls out on dates, I embarked on adventures with Fetaque. We’d drive from the nursing home he lived in through the ghetto to the “treasure house,” the house he’d lived in all his life. My first trip there, with Fetaque in tow, I couldn’t imagine what marvelous things might await me: magic props, memorabilia, perhaps amazing Wonders akin to that first magic shop. My imagination ran wild on the drive over. The reality, however, was that no one had lived at 1601 Heiman Street for many years, so as we pulled up to the curb out front, the “treasure house” was more like a home in a dystopian novel than a magical Wonka wonderland.
BB The Dog
Upon arrival, our first job was to untie BB, Fetaque’s dog, an old lab mix who stood guard tied up in the front yard, to deter thieves and squatters. BB was always happy to see his elderly owner, but he was most often fed by James — the friendly, occasional, caretaker of the property and full-time manager of the house of ill-repute that operated just two doors down. Ironically named the “Hacienda,” the red porch light confirmed any mysteries one might have had of a motel on a residential street.
Fetaque At McDonald’s
We’d let BB run through the house, chasing out any critters or, for that matter, people that didn’t belong there. Fetaque often returned to the house looking for a specific item, something he was convinced he needed back at the nursing home. I’d help him dig through the massive piles of stuff, trying not to act shocked by the chaos that surrounded me. We’d eventually find what he was looking for, which was incredible, actually. Like the preverbal needle in the haystack, his house would have made the cut on the Hoarders reality television show. Then we’d be off to McDonalds and me — a fledgling college freshman paying for coffee and lunch. Then we’d hit a Goodwill to see if Fetaque could find an attache case — never mind the fact that there were at least a dozen such cases in the “treasure house.”
A Breath of Fresh Air
“Fetaque, would you like a breath mint?” I asked while driving. He had terrible halitosis on a regular basis.
“No, thank you.” Pause. “Okay, I guess I should take one. I believe you may be trying to tell me I need one. Never turn down a breath mint when it is offered to you,” he said.
What seemed like a simple piece of advice at the time, in hindsight, held great wisdom for a kid my age. Actually, for a kid of any age. Fetaque was often full of rooted wisdom.
Life on the road had taken a toll on his life in ways incomprehensible to my 19-year-old self. His first wife, Irene, died from pneumonia while he was performing in Washington D.C. They had known each other since childhood and married at age 20. He arrived back home, just after she’d passed. She was only 28. He never fully recovered from that, not that any loving human who loses his soulmate at such a young age could. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” makes for a feel-good meme until you lose someone, and your heart hurts so much you can hardly stand to go on living yourself. We all have known someone who has experienced this depth of pain.
In our time together, Fetaque told me how he had remarried and had one daughter. His new wife — to his great disappointment — never really liked the magic, his friends, or the difficult living that sometimes accompanies an artful life. Eventually, she left, taking their daughter with her. This loss only compounded the pain of his first significant loss.
Sometimes Wonder comes from where we’d least expect it. And many times, our Wonder can lead us to wisdom
[bctt tweet=”Sometimes Wonder comes from where we’d least expect it. And many times, our Wonder can lead us to wisdom” username=”scotthumston”].
Can’t Play Ball Without A Team
I had called and written to many local churches while in college hoping to build my ministry and continue to pay my way through school. These cold calls and letters often resulted in invitations to come to perform, many times, for what church people know as a “love offering.” This is an offering that is ordinarily collected at the end of the program, people giving what they can to help support my calling.
This particular church was small — building-wise and people-wise. When I arrived about an hour before service time to set up, the pastor met me at the door.
“Hi, Pastor! I am so excited to be with you tonight!” I stated with the enthusiasm of a 19-year-old.
“Oh,” he replied, his face awash in surprise and confusion, “is tonight the night you are coming?”
(Gulp.)
“Yes, sir,” I replied — (Gulp.) — standing in the doorway with a case full of props.
There were six people in the audience that evening. Three of the six were the pastor, Sammy, and Fetaque. It was tough all around.
Afterward, Fetaque came up to me — an upset, embarrassed 19-year-old — gave me a big smile and said, “Well, you can’t play ball without a team.”
I’ve carried that little nugget of wisdom with me since.
Regret.
By the end of May in 1992, I was finishing up my sophomore year of University. I had some bookings lined up at home for the summer, and I was itching to get back home to Florida. Fetaque had been in and out of Vanderbilt hospital in the spring and was assigned to a rehab facility just outside of Nashville. I had been to the hospital to check in and on him several times, including bringing college friends with me. When he was moved to a rehab center, I was tasked with going to the nursing home to retrieve his belongings there and move them to his temporary home. So, it wasn’t my priority to stop and see him in the center as I speed down I-24 towards Chattanooga. As I passed the exit to Antioch, Tennessee, where the rehab center was located, I remember thinking to myself, “Fetaque, I’ll see you in a few weeks when I get back to Nashville.” I had an opportunity to stop and see my friend, but I didn’t take it.
Fetaque died on June 3, 1992.
Sammy’s wife, Laurel, called me at my parents’ home to deliver the news. Sammy was too distraught to talk. A couple of days later the three of us got in Sammy’s Buick and drove through the night to get to Nashville. It was a small service at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in the heart of the city, with just a few people in attendance. He was the first person — outside of my family — whose death left me weeping in grief, riddled with regret.
Lessons Learned
Even today, some 27 years later, words cannot adequately describe why this man — whose life experiences were so far removed from my own but with whom I shared a passion for the art of Wonder — meant (and means) so much to me.
Emotionally speaking, I can’t articulate the difference he made in my life.
But practically speaking, Fetaque taught me the importance of planning, preparation, and promotion so that more than six people come to my show. But beyond that, Fetaque taught me that the Art of Wonder could transcend all social and cultural differences, that passion and imagination and … can span lifetimes to unite a young white kid and an old black man.
I was blessed with the gift of his friendship near the end of his life and at the beginning of mine. Don’t pass the exit. You might just miss an unexpected Wonder.
Sharing Wonder,
This story/post is part of my forthcoming book, Sharing Wonder.
Part memoir, part inspirational roadmap, Sharing Wonder is a conversational collection of stories about a boy who was born with a speech-related birth defect, how he became a magic man and what he learned about the real magic of Wonder along the way. Drawing on his experience as an award-winning family entertainer, magician, and speaker, Scott Humston’s personal story of overcoming great physical challenges, while embarking on his own magical mystery tour will encourage kids of all ages — especially parents of young children — to seek and discover the miracles that surround each of us daily.
I am sure I had experienced it before. I just don’t remember. But the wonder moment on this day, I do remember well. I was in the second grade. We had moved in mid-year from Orlando to a little community called Milford, Kansas. My father had joined the Army as a Chaplin — and stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas.
It was a significant change. Leaving chilly Florida in November and arriving in freezing Kansas was quite the shock. After all, Florida alligators are cool and lizards in the house a pretty normal Florida life occurrence. But, seeing Buffalo on the way to the store? And look at that snow! Piled higher than my head. The icicles were like bomb pops. By Christmas, we were able to move from on post housing to a home that my mom and dad actually owned. Before that, it was from parsonage to parsonage. That home, Route 1 Box 86, on Old Milford Road was an idyllic place for a young boy in 1980. Behind our large yard was a field of smalls hills and ravines. And coyotes. Yes, real coyotes. Hearing them howl at night was eerily beautiful. It was very different from Orlando. I learned to love Kansas.
And, I loved my little school, Milford Elementary. Situated in the small village of Milford, just outside Junction City and Fort Riley, Milford Elementary was a small-town school in the truest and best sense. It still is. In small-town elementary schools, the classes are small, the kids all know each other, and the teachers know everything.
I vividly remember that the lunchroom ladies made us finish the food on our lunch trays. Honestly, that’s why I won’t eat green peas to this day. Horrible little things. But I digress.
Anyhow, the older custodian at the school was quite a delightful, kind man. Dressed in a clean custodial uniform, he was a gentle, grandfatherly soul.
I distinctly remember sitting at the table — no doubt trying to figure out how to get out of eating something I didn’t want — and Mr. Ron Shady coming over to talk to us. He’d either stand or contort himself onto the bench beside one of us green pea haters. The lunchroom tables were the kind that came out of the wall, with the benches already attached to them. Probably wasn’t a comfy seat for a man of his age, but he didn’t seem to mind.
One day Mr. Ron came up and put a stack of nickels, maybe four or five on the table. He took a little brass cap — about the size of a plastic water bottle cap — and placed it over the nickels. I don’t remember what, if anything, he said. But when he lifted up the little lid — and I remember this part like it was yesterday — the nickles were gone! And in their place? A small stack of dimes. Real dimes! About four or five, their rough little edges all stacked up together.
The tension in my seven-year-old, freckled face melted in the moment. My eyes grew wide, astounded by what just happened. There were gasps and oohs and “Whats?” and in some, pure captivated silence.
Then and there among the peanut butter and jelly crumbs and crumbled milk cartons — it was the first time I can remember being utterly astonished by something. It was my first time experiencing the magic of wonder.
That is the only trick I remember Mr. Ron doing — although I imagine there were others. A guy like that almost always has more than one trick up his sleeve.
The school next year Mr. Ron passed away unexpectedly. As a small town, tightknit school family, we all went out front and planted a tree in his memory. Today, that box elder maple tree stands tall, not nearly as vast as the impact Mr. Ron had on generations of kids like me.
About five years ago I had the opportunity to return to that little school and present my show — in that same cafeteria — to the kids, teachers, and families of Milford Elementary. What an honor it was to go back and share wonder where it first began for me.
Do you think Mr. Shady knew when he showed a group of second grade boys his little coin trick, that it would change a life forever? Is there any way he could’ve known that one of those boys would overcome many facial and vocal challenges to stand on stage and share wonder with people from all over the world?
I doubt it. But Mr. Ron entertained us — opened our eyes to the mystery of what, on the surface, seemed a fool’s trick — because he cared for us. I’m sure he loved our seven and eight-year-old reactions, of amazement and delight. Decades down the road, I’m sure this small-town school janitor in Milford, Kansas, had some concept of the captivating power of wonder. The magical, mysterious moments were likely the highlight of his day, maybe even the reason he got out of bed in the morning — to share the joy of astonishment with elementary school kids.
Which begs the question: If Mr. Ron understood the power of Wonder on children, imagine how much more God understands us? Whatever is happening in the lunchroom or in the classroom of our lives — even in our doubt, shame and sorrow — He is there. In our laughter, He is there. In our love, He is there. We need only have eyes to see the ways He appears and reappears in our lives. And, perhaps best of all, we can love because He first loved us.
1 John 4:7-12
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
I was on a preview visit to the University I was hoping to attend in Nashville, Tennessee. Somehow
At age 17 with David Price at the Egyptian Hall in Brentwood, TN
—not sure how—I’d heard that there was a museum of magic history in a suburb, of Nashville, called Brentwood. I had a great Uncle that lived in Brentwood so my parents were familiar with this upscale community. Perhaps that helped me as I convinced my mom and dad to take me there when we finished the University tour.
1954 Old Hickory Boulevard.
David Price and his lovely wife, Virginia, met us at the door. Virginia was a sweet, sweet lady—with a love of birds—and was a perfect hostess. Mr. Price—as I would come to call him was intriguing to this young seventeen-year-old magic addict. He looked like an old wizard to me. An old wizard who had traded in a magic carpet for a motorized scooter. Ever see Dick VanDyke’s portrayal of the old-old magician? That’s what it was like.
With the (fake) head of Famous Magician Harry Kellar.
As entered the modest ranch-style home, off of Old Hickory Blvd, a right turn, then left—and my eyes were transfixed on artifacts I had never seen the likeness of before! I was mesmerized. Really. We went from the front room of a residential home to a “room” that was, well, a museum of magical history. Posters covered every wall. Shelves of Scrapbooks were full of magician ephemera. Props, sculptures, mini-models of illusions, and a whole “wall” of magicians’ wands. “What’s this, Mr. Price?” “Oh, that’s T. Nelson Downs Coin Ladder.”(You mean the guy who wrote “The Art Of Magic“?? I owned the prestigious Dover paperback copy. :0))
I was “hooked.” It was the same as when I first walked into Tom Craven’s VIP Magic Shop in Auburndale, Florida. In the Egyptian Hall I was bitten by the “magic history bug” the pharaoh David Price had cast his Egyptian Magic deep into my psyche. :0)
I am sure that David could see that I was awestruck. The initial shock of wonder began to wear off, just a bit—and we were asked to sign the guestbook. I indeed wasn’t the first of those who had read, too, about the amazing feats of these giants whose profiles now hung “3 sheets” high all around me. Kellar, Thurston, and of course, Houdini.
The first magic poster I purchased, (thanks to reprinting by Lee Jacobs, from the magic shop at Cypress
Gardens Theme Park, in Winter Haven, Florida) was Houdini’s King Of Cards— a fantastic poster! That poster and the stories I had read up until that point had fueled my imagination of becoming a world-famous magician, too.
One peculiar thing that many magicians of the golden age seemed to have on their posters–which was absent from the King Of Cards was that of Imps; Little devilish characters. They seemed to be making the magic happen for the magician. These characters intrigued my clergy father. Who, up until this point had an insufficient experience with magic, tricks, or magicians. So, when it came time to ask Mr. Price questions during this inaugural visit to the Egyptian Hall—my father enquired as to the reason that all these posters had these Imps on them. Although I don’t remember exactly what David said in answering my father’s question—I do remember Mr. Price was intrigued by the question—and gave a sufficient enough answer that my father never questioned it again.
It was a day that would—and has—stood out in my memory for more than 29 years. And was the first—but not the last of Egyptian Hall Memories.
Tim B., a friend since college, sat down with me a year-or-so-ago for an interview for his podcast, “In the Corner Back By the Woodpile” This is a delightful podcast that features a variety of conversations of life with interesting people…I guess I qualify. :0) If you need a diversion from radio, news, audio books, or whatever it may be you may be tired of…I invite you to spend a refreshing, fun, thirty minutes with Tim and me as we discuss being a kid magician, mentors, magic tricks, and life. Pull up a stump, in the corner, back by the woodpile.
