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Crime Essay

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CANTORI'S When I was in my mid teens a cousin and I occasionally walked into Doc Crater's drugstore on West Main Street to buy balsa wood gliders and cigars. The gliders were flown in Bollinger's field. I don't recall where we smoked the cigars, though it wasn't around adults. In my later teens and early twenties I'd go into Doc Carter's with a beer drinking buddy to buy all the latest comic books before hitting Crouse's shop on the Square for the comics Doc didn't carry. By the time I got serious about not trying to preserve my brain in alcohol (for posterity, of course) I was vaguely aware that something had gone wrong in this burg. Those two shops had closed and new people were opening new businesses of no interest to me, or most other …show more content…

(This is a concept I can understand. I've seen lots of drunks and pharmaceutical addicts do the same thing.) Cool, though I remained skeptical in the extreme. Then Cantori opens a magic themed shop in Doc's old store and kicks my skepticism almost as hard as Tattoo Don, Pillar of the Community had kicked my negative perspective. (While my perspective whimpers by the curb, it in no way has failed to influence my daily thinking.) Seriously? A magic theater and used book store in Emmitsburg? The books might be of interest to me, but magic shows? Meh. Television magicians were boring during my childhood. (Who cared if they could make an elephant disappear on TV. Anything could be done by editing and camera switching before computer generated imaging became all the rage.) I was prepared to be unimpressed by a stage magician. And then I wasn't. Cantori's slight of hand frustrates me no end. One might think a simple, one-handed card trick could be figured out by a semi-functioning monkey-man, but nooo. After being shown how the trick is pulled off I'm left more frustrated than I was before! Now I'm contemplating the dexterity, the devotion to practice, the desire to master such a simple trick. I'm left mentally exhausted and fumble fingered grumpier than I was before meeting the illusionist! Fortunately, Cantori enjoys explaining the history of

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