Barry Gibbs on Petrick and Mia
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| Petrick and Mia |
I first met Petrick and Mia about 20years ago or so when I was running A&B Novelties Magic and Fun Shop in West Palm Beach, Florida. At the time, they were a very young couple on one of their first lecture tours.
They were scheduled to
lecture at IBM Ring 117, and the arrangements were that they would
drive into West Palm Beach, meet me at the magic shop and I would in
turn accompany them to the motel we had booked for them, take them to
dinner and then to the lecture hall at the Moose Lodge where Ring 117
held their meetings.
All was going fine. After a couple of calls for directions they arrived at the Magic Shop close to 5:00 PM.
They were driving a van and were accompanied by two (2) beautiful,
black Afghan Hounds. After closing the shop, the beautiful Mia got into
my car and Petrick followed in the van.
We drove to downtown West Palm Beach to the old Holiday Inn, arriving in front of the Holiday Inn at about 5:15 P.M.
I told Petrick I would take Mia inside, and get them registered while
he parked the van in the lot at the back of the motel. Hopefully we
would save some time that way and have an opportunity to go to dinner
before the lecture. Petrick agreed and Mia and I went into the motel to
register, while he went to park the van.
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| Holiday Inn (West Palm circa 1982) Parking Below |
About 10 minutes passed while I got them registered and took Mia and
the luggage up to the room. The room was located at the back of the
motel and faced the Inner Coastal Waterway on Flagler Drive. The balcony overlooked a large parking lot in the rear of the building.
While Mia changed clothes for
the lecture I stood on the balcony awaiting the arrival of Petrick.
Almost 15 minutes passed and there was still no sign of Petrick. When
Mia came out of the room I told her I was going down to the lobby to
see if perhaps Petrick was there waiting for us.
When I got to the lobby there
was no sign of Petrick and none of the staff had seen him. I thought
great "he's disappeared"! I pictured him having made a wrong turn and
"just knew" he was now aimlessly driving through the maze of "one way
streets" in downtown West Palm Beach, and hopelessly lost.
I returned to the balcony,
where Mia was waiting, but there was still no sign of Petrick. Another
15 minutes passed when suddenly Mia excitedly exclaimed, "there is
Petrick"!!. Looking down into the parking lot, sure enough, there was
Petrick, finding a place to park. It was then I noticed that there was
a gaping hole in the top of the van, where about an hour before there
was a nice "bubble top".
It seems that Petrick,
instead of driving around to the back of the lot initially, decided to
take the Van into the underground garage. Unfortunately the Van, with
the "bubble top", did not quite fit, and as Petrick drove into the
underground garage, the top of the van wedged against the ceiling and
the "bubble top" was shattered.
It took him quite some time
to back the wedged van out of the garage entrance and finally make his
way around to the back parking lot.
To make matters worse, it was
starting to rain! I went to the lobby and the staff of the motel were
kind enough to give me a number of large garbage bags and some tape.
Petrick and I spent about 15 minutes taping up the gaping hole in the
top of the van, and by now it was close to time to be at the lecture
hall.
Finally the hole was repaired
enough to heap the rain out and Petrick followed Mia and I to the Moose
Lodge, arriving at exactly 7:00 PM. So much for dinner.
While the short business
meeting was going on, Petrick and Mia set up for the lecture, and
although still hungry, they put on a tremendous lecture that night. I
truly felt that this was a couple that could overcome any adversity and
give a tremendous performance.
True professionals in every
sense of the word, and Petrick spent a lot of time answering questions
and explaining every effect in detail.
After the meeting we finally went out for a very late dinner and many of the members of Ring 117 joined us.
I really felt sorry for them
though, as it was one of their first lecture tours, and I felt the
agent booking them certainly did not seem to care about the way he
lined up the schedule. I found out they had to lecture the following
night and the drive to the next lecture was 800 miles.
I don't know if they made
that lecture on time, but even if they didn't, I realize that no matter
what time they got there, because of their obvious love of, and
devotion to magic, no matter how "late" they might be, they would
always be "great.'
Copyright @ 2006
Barry M. Gibbs
