Friday, July 10, 2020
My family moved away from Freehold when I was very young, so on the special occasions, vacations, and family gatherings that I did get a chance to spend some time around my Uncle Tommy, Aunt Louise and my cousins, they were memorable. I was thinking about one occasion when Uncle Tommy decided to perform a magic trick for me and my brother. He took a dollar bill and stuffed it into his closed fist using his fingers, and exaggerate the final push of the bill to be completely wadded up and stuffed into his closed fist using his thumb. When he pulled his thumb out, no trace of the dollar bill could be seen sticking out of his clenched fist. Then he would hold his fist out and then say the magic words and.. open both his hands only to discover there was no bill in either hand. It was a pretty good trick, and he totally got us with it. We kept bugging him and asking how he did it. Finally he caved in and gave up his trick. There was a little plastic thumb sleeve that would conceal and camouflage the dollar bill in the hand that was being used to stuff the bill into the other fist. He gave that little plastic thumb sleeve to me and my brother that evening, to the amazement of my cousins who said he had been doing that trick for years at gatherings and never would have expected him to give it up like that. I got a lot of mileage out of that trick thumb over the next few years as a teenager. That is generally how I will remember my Uncle Tommy, as the always kind, generous, perpetually smiling bad magician that gave up his trick secret because he wanted his nephews to learn something from it.
My love to the McMahon family.
David Bulla
