He used the stage name “Uncle Butchie.” Kiddy act, damn good too. Did magic, balloons, had a couple of birds, put funny wigs and costumes on the kids. Older guy with a mop of grey hair like wool on a lamb. Wore a funny bow tie and always had a trick and a business card ready. Worked schools, bible camps, churches, kiddy parties. Made some money, bought property, owned an apartment building. Did over 200 shows a year and worked the little monsters like a maestro. He was on the road constantly and lived in motels. Hookers and porn took the place of family.

Like many kiddy acts, he hated kids. Hopalong Cassidy couldn’t stand them, nor could most of those Saturday morning kids show people. Six Shooter Pete, Captain Pluto, Professor Fizz. It got so bad with Patches the Clown they had to take him off the air.

If you work with kids in large numbers all the time, and you don’t have the authority to punish, be ready for trouble. Kids won’t sit back and watch. They have to be actively involved. Uncle Butchie had been at it for so long he knew all the secrets. He talked fast and moved fast so he was always three steps ahead. He’d say, “I can’t hear you!” until they screamed their lungs out. He made them sit and shut up in exchange for letting them hold a prop, or be the one to say the magic words. It’s called “reward,” and Uncle Butchie used it like fish scraps to a bunch of seals.

It was never perfect, though. Kids rushed the stage and tried to grab his props, while the adults stood back and thought it was cute. They’d yell stuff like, “Oh I know how that’s done!” Or throw things, or start fighting among themselves over a snip of rope or a piece of confetti. They mobbed him afterward and inevitably one kid would pull out a sheet of paper for an autograph. Then they’d all want Uncle Butchie’s autograph, shoving ever smaller torn up pieces at him until the last kid stood there with a scrap the size of a postage stamp and no pen. Every autograph would be lost by the end of the day.

Uncle Butchie never did anything that would get him into trouble. No threats, no pinches or push pins or poison candy. But he had his ways of getting even. If there was a curtain, he’d peek through it and make eye contact with a kid. When the kid tried to point him out to his friends, he’d shut the curtain. If he had a show at a school he’d give a kid a cheap whistle and say, “at one thirty, no matter where you are, blow it as loud as you can. Why? It’s magic. Go ahead, you’ll see.” And so the kid would blow the whistle and get into trouble and say the magician told him to do it. But of course no one believed him. When they came around afterward, pestering him like flies, he might give them the attention they so rudely demanded. He’d say here, hold this penny at arms length, and when I get back you’ll have more than a penny in your hand. Then Uncle Butchie walked away. But he never came back.