Earlier this month, Sue, Rose and I went to North Livermore, Maine to do a special Saturday evening service after a church pot luck dinner.  Our good friends, Rick and Val Massana are the pastor and pastor’s wife at this small, rural Baptist church.  (Jo and Naomi were both still home from college at the time, but they had the opportunity to see Life House at the Asylum in Portland for only $10 the same night.  They went with our full blessing... and a little coveting.)

While the pot luck meal was very good – including southern  biscuits and gravy – my performance was less than spectacular.  I opened with “Dry Bones Dance”, my glow in the dark diabolo routine.  I dropped only once, but it went off the stage, which is never a good thing when the sanctuary is in total blackout.  After getting it back from a kind audience member, I held back on the rest of my tricks.  Part of the reason for the difficulty was the skeleton mask I wear.  The eye holes limited my vision.  (Since then I have cut them wider, and the mask works perfectly.  My next blog will talk about that). 

As anemic as my opening routine was, things were about to get worse.  My next routine was to be “Johnny’s Café”.  As I brought the table center stage, it collapsed, dropping props all over the floor.  I tried to start the routine anyway, but a few seconds in I realized, between props scattered on the floor and my broken focus, it was pointless, and I told Rose to stop the music.  I actually stopped mid-routine, possibly for the first time in my career!  To make matters worse, this being small town Maine, a reporter from the local paper was there to do an article on the show.

Slowly I regained my composure, and ended a lot stronger than I started.  I introduced the bleeding rose illusion as part of a closing routine about communion.  It will definitely be a ‘keeper’.  In the end, we had a nice evening of fellowship with some old friends and their congregation, had a great meal, reiased $155 for Paraguay, and, by the end, gave the crowd a decent show and hopefully some spiritual truth to challenge them. 

But what a difference a show makes.  Three days later I would do my best show I can remember in a long, long time.  That will be the topic of my next blog.