The Full Details of My Meeting with "The Man Who Cannot Be Hung".
Teller

While we were in Springfield, Illinois, I visited the place Lincoln lived for 17 years, and the Dana-Lawrence house, the largest of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie-style homes. But these attractions are overshadowed in my recollection by the visit we received here from Mr. Howard Bone. Mr. Bone is a 68-year-old carny, who over the last couple of months has been writing to me, and, after due consideration, determined that Penn and I would be the right men to inherit his side show act, THE MAN WHO CANNOT BE HUNG. He hitched a ride with his devoted friends Mike and Carolyn, a printer and a medical technician, who published his book HURRY HURRY HURRY about sideshow magic, and made an appointment through Krasher to show us the act and present it to us. Mr. Bone is bald and has tiny, translucent ears. His black- framed glasses and his narrow chest and protruding abdomen make him look like a cartoon vulture. He wore a rare (limited edition of four) American Museum of Magic t-shirt under his sport coat, and brought me a signed color photo photo of him in a black martial-arts outfit. His voice is high and thin (he lost half the larynx in a stroke a few years ago), and he's got the zest for living of a man who's come back from the dead. Coming back from the dead has been his occupation, more or less. Standing in the basement of the theatre, near our dressing rooms, he took off his jacket (his arms are covered with faded blue tattoos) and brought out a twenty-foot length of hemp rope. He had a short and earnest chat with Danny (our truck driver) and Woody (our limo driver) explaining exactly what they were to do. He wrapped a small towel around his neck to prevent rope burn, then tied a single half-hitch in the center of the rope and put it around his towel-wrapped neck. He placed his hands on his knees and took four, concentrated, very serious, deep breaths, then nodded. Danny and Woody wrapped the ends of the rope around their hands and pulled in opposite directions. Howard turned purple and fell down. Carolyn, acting as Mr. Bone's assistant, loosened the rope from his neck and he stood up and took a bow. We all stood in the hall and applauded. I was videotaping and had to tuck the camera under my arm to applaud, so there will be a few seconds of armpit on the tape. Mr. Bone then asked to speak to me privately for a few moments. "May I humbly beg your indulgence for a small favor?" he said, once we were alone in my dressing room. "What is it?" "Would you be so kind as to call me Howard?" I agreed, and he spent several minutes with me, imparting the inner secrets of how to place the rope so as to avoid crushing the larynx. I asked him where he learned the act, and he told me he got it from the Monroe brothers, Jack and Preacher. They had told him to use it well, and to pass it on to people who were worthy when he retired. He told us we were his favorite performers and said that he was honored to present it to us. He eagerly asked whether I thought we would use it. I told him that it was a very cool act and we'd certainly think about it, and we are. Though as Penn pointed out, it might be nice to have our doctor friend who advises us on questions of life and death, pull the rope the first couple of times. After the show I invited Howard and his friends to be my guests at a meal. His friends followed. Howard rode with me in the long white limo. "Well," he said, looking around at the interior of the car, "Another first for me." The limo driver had arranged for an out-of-the-way family-owned pasta joint called Bianco's Supper Club to stay open late for our little party of four. We ate linguine, gnocci, and sauteed mushrooms. Howard and his friends praised the freshness and delicacy of the food, and they told me stories. I will not pass judgement on the truth or fallacy of the stories. They were told with absolute conviction, in detail, and with the little touches of humor and verisimillitude that leave no doubt in the listener as to the veracity of the narrative. Howard was trained in karate during WWII and was sent in to carry out covert operations, principally assassinations, in 1946/47. Later he was paid by certain government organizations at home to carry out assassinations of key underworld figures. That was how he first encountered Mike. Mike also worked covertly for the government. His cover was: he set up the lights and tech for Holiday on Ice. This enabled him to travel from city to city without attracting notice. Once the show was in at a particular venue, he had his days free to carry on his real work. His real work was cleaning up after assassinations, and he met Howard after a "job" in which Howard had dispatched four armed Mafiosi barehanded. Mike was never sent abroad except for one time in 1967 when he spent a week in an operation in East Germany; he made it out alive by spending a week on a train disguised as a fraulein, not an easy task, since his plump figure suited the lecherous tastes of those East German "chubby chasers". As the evening unfolded, so did another story, and this one I have no trouble believing. A few years ago, when Howard had a heart attack and stroke, which put him in the Veterans' hospital (where they were willing to treat his heart, but, to his exasperation, not correct the damage done to his voice) he became listless and depressed. Released from the hospital, he saw no reason to go on living. His friends Mike and Carolyn, the printer and the medical technician, suggested that if he wrote a book about sideshow magic, it would be a very great service to history and his fellow performers. So he did. He described his version of the needle trick, of card tricks, of glass-eating, of the Electric Girl. And in the closing chapter, he detailed the workings of THE MAN WHO CANNOT BE HUNG (except for the top secret details he had imparted personally to me). I told him how effective I thought the patter he gives in the book was. "That patter in the book -well, you know I never used that. Nope. That story about the prisoner-of- war camp just came to me. A gift, sort of. It just came right out of nowhere. As you might say, an inspiration." Carolyn edited the book: the two men figured that if she, completely ignorant of magic, could follow the descriptions, then they would be clear to anybody. They carefully inserted red WARNING paragraphs, admonishing the reader of the lethal nature of certain acts. Howard picked out illustrations from public domain material at the library but, of course, invented his own pun-filled captions. When the book was published, they advertised it in Circus Report and they made some sales. One person even wrote asking details, as he wanted to perform the MAN WHO CANNOT BE HUNG without an assistant (essential for safety). Howard wrote a two page note to him, warning him of the seriousness of his risks, and the chap wrote an apology. But eventually Howard got tired of being partners in publication, sold his interest in the book to Mike, and used the money to buy himself a bus trip to visit the American Museum of Magic, where Donna Delbert lives in an apple box. He brought Bob Lund, who runs the museum, the original manuscript of HURRY HURRY HURRY, and Bob and his wife Elaine feted Howard for several days, taking him out to eat and driving him over Colon, Michigan where Blackstone and other conjuring greats are buried. It was a high point of his life, visiting this legendary shrine to magic. Bob established a HOWARD BONE file at the museum, and introduced him to a Dan Waldron, a columnist for "Circus Report", who gave MWCBH a nice plug in the mag. Becoming an author, thanks to the encouragement of Mike and Carolyn reawakened Howard's appetite for life. Knowing that he's now on record at Lund's Museum, lets him see himself as part of history. And now, thanks to Dan's mention in Circus Report, he's contemplating a return to the stage. When I think about a man having friends like these, I think humanity a fine organization indeed. If you spot HURRY HURRY HURRY on the shelf, you will notice it is written under the pen name, "Col. Don E. Kerr" (donniker is carny slang for toilet). Howard is now contemplating a second book. It will cover "adventures which may or may not have happened to me in my long career as a sideshow performer". I'm guessing it'll be a heck of a story. His pen name for this one will be "Jack Potts." And, like any true cosmopolitan, Howard left us with a joke: A carny gets to the gates of heaven. St. Peter says, "Sorry, can't let you in. I don't want this place full of show people." So the carny says, "Don't worry, sir. If you let me in, I'll see to it that no other carnies ever bother you." So Peter okays it. Now, the carny keeps an eye out, and whenever he notices another carny walking up the path towards heaven, he runs out and says, "Hey, you. I hear there's a red one in Hell." Red one is carny talk for a town where fairs fare well. Well, the minute the carnies hear that, they turn right around and run straight to the Inferno. And this goes on for decades; each time canvasmen come up the path, our hero runs out and says, "Howdy brothers. I hear there's a red one in Hell," and they all turn tail and head straight for the nether regions. About a hundred years goes by. Then one afternoon St. Peter is sitting by the gate when he notices our carny, carrying a suitcase and sneaking toward the door. "What are you doing, my boy?" "Listen, boss," says the carny, shaking his head, "it was real nice of you to let me into Heaven, but I'm afraid I just can't stand it. I tell all those carnies there's a red one in Hell, and they all believe me and go down there, and not a single one of 'em ever makes it back." And with that he starts out the pearly gates. "Now, now, son," says St. Peter. "That was just little white lie, to keep the neighborhood up. No need to blame yourself." "Blame myself? You got it wrong, Pete," says the carny, hurrying eagerly down the path toward Hell. "I'm afraid I might have been telling the truth!"