I started doing magic at age 7 (4 if you count novelty joke stuff). I built a full size guillotine and a burned alive by 14 and some coin gaffs at that age too. Purchased and made improvements on some of that stuff but also invented things and by age 16 sold some ideas to local magic shop (Magic Inc. in Chicago). At 17 founded Mercury Magic Company with two friends and the help of pro-magician and magic prop to all the dealers in the USA and some international, George Wondra. Kid’s birthday and adult parties, school assemblies, hospital shows, banquets and special events throughout my teens and early 20’s. Mid-20’s through early 40’s focused on schools and colleges with magic and drug awareness and prevention themes and also Gospel Magic to Churches and Bible camps. Joined SAM, IBM, FCM, Magic Masters (of Chicago). All along developing and adapting the magic I used. I created all props and staging for the anti-drug shows including huge puppets and vent figures (vents with the help of Bill Anderson of WI). Stage props built for a Camporee show with 25,000 ten – teens attending. After 40 concentrated on Close-up as well as Gospel, but also on Chavez style (Chavez grad 1991 with custom self-made props for much of that too). In 50’s hosted two shows on the “before the arrival of podcasting” Magic Broadcast dot com live internet radio show. One show was interviews with Gospel and other Christian magicians. The other was based on props and how to make and improve as well as to choose what to buy that would work for “you.” Presently teaching an annual 8 week class in Gospel Magic at a local University Church to University students and interested adults in the community. Now in my 60’s I have a nice home based wood and metal shop to help me with my prop and gimmick making, and a fantastic new commercial printer. I am in the too slowly progressing process of developing an online school of Gospel illustrating to include, all forms of visual and auditory illustrations, most of which I have personally created or vastly improved over the last 40 years. http://www.gospleillustrator.com is stagnating and currently a go or soon to be no-go dream. It seems I can build props, but webpages, web-classes, and web-stores are not yet my forte’ even though I started with computers back in the dino-comp age of FORTRAN, punch-card programing, and computers the size of small buildings. Hopefully, I can learn, I have no spare cash to hire it out beyond what I am paying for the host servers already. That is LIFE; or at least mine as it currently is.