Amy Anderson and Richard Hatch

[00:03] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: My name's Amy Zadig Anderson. I am 62 years old. Today's date is April 28, 2023, and we're here in Logan, Utah. And I am here with Richard Hatch, who is a colleague, friend, board member, and quasi landlord.

[00:24] RICHARD HATCH: Hi. My name is Richard Hatch. I will be 68 in a month, and today is still the April 28 of 2023. And we're recording in Logan, Utah. And I'm with Amy Anderson, who is, as she said, a colleague, a friend, a tenant, in a way, and looking forward to the conversation.

[00:45] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Well, thanks for agreeing to do this, Richard. I really appreciate it. You are a very important part of our Sunshine Terrace foundation, and we really appreciate everything that you do for us and everything that your family has done for us. So I thought maybe we could start with you maybe sharing just a titch of your family's long and lengthy history here, not only in Cache Valley, but especially with sunshine terrace.

[01:10] RICHARD HATCH: Okay, I may need some guidance, because I can go on and on.

[01:14] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: I know.

[01:14] RICHARD HATCH: So you may need to say, okay, talk about this instead of that. So three of my four grandparents were born and raised here in Cache Valley. Both my parents were and raised in Salt Lake City. But both of my father's parents were from Cache Valley and grew up here and eventually settled in Salt Lake for professional reasons. And both their families go back several generations before that. So there's a town here in Cache Valley, Nibley, that is named after one of my great grandfathers, who was the father of my grandmother, Hatch And he has an interesting history. I think a lot of Utah history in that way is interesting. He was a polygamist. He had three wives. And here in Logan, two of his wives lived Kitty corner, in mansions, really, on Center street that still exist.

[02:03] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Oh, my gosh.

[02:04] RICHARD HATCH: And one of them, you know, Thad and Jenny. Oh, that.

[02:12] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: And Jenny's house is.

[02:14] RICHARD HATCH: That's not the home. That was the wife. That was one of the two wives. Not the wife that I'm descended from. Kitty cornered that. The one with the kind of columns that once housed sunshine terrace. It was, I think, the first official home of sunshine Terrace. That was the home where my grandmother grew up. And there's a rumor that there's a secret tunnel between the homes, but I've never been able to confirm that. Anyway, so that's one side of the family. That's the Nibley side, the hatch side up in Franklin, Idaho, where my grandmother Nibley. Grandmother hatch. But the Nibley, she was actually born in Franklin because it was just across the border from Utah and polygamists that were worried about getting arrested had their wives cross the border to have children, which was the case for her. But that town of Franklin has something called the hatch house, which is owned and maintained by the state of Idaho, and they acknowledge it as the oldest non indigenous dwelling that still exists in the state of Idaho. It was built by my great great grandfather, Lorenzo Hillhatch, who was sent up there by Brigham Young as a bishop to start a community or something. And the home still exists and has family memorabilia. It's a little museum, so it's kind of interesting.

[03:21] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Yeah. Didn't you bring the whole family there?

[03:23] RICHARD HATCH: We did for one month ago, yes. When Sunshine Terrace acknowledged the hatch family's kind of contribution to the founding and development of sunshine Terrace. And so we took an outing up there. It was pretty neat. It was fun.

[03:34] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Could you imagine living in a house like that?

[03:38] RICHARD HATCH: That one is one of these stone houses, pioneer houses. And it's substantial in size. I mean, it's not a mansion, but it's neat. I wouldn't want to live there. There are a couple of stone houses here in Logan that go back to my family. Thatcher homes are ones I'm thinking of that are by crumb brothers on. What is that? Third west?

[03:58] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Oh, third west, yeah.

[03:59] RICHARD HATCH: There are a couple of homes there that were that part of the family. But then of the three grandparents that were born here, my mother's mother was born in Smithfield and eventually moved with her father to Salt Lake City, probably when she was about seven or eight years old. But she grew up in Smithfield. Her father was the mayor at one point. And she can remember one of Logan's famous events, which was the burning of the Thatcher bank, above which was the Thatcher Opera house. That was in 1912. And there's a famous. You can go online and see the headline in the newspaper. You know, Thatcher bank burns the largest fire in Cache Valley, and in a small column next to it is a less important headline. Titanic sinks.

[04:42] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: All news is local, right?

[04:43] RICHARD HATCH: That's right. Yeah. Anyway, so my fourth grandparent that wasn't born and raised here, he was born and raised in Salt Lake and has a whole other different, interesting heritage. My grandfather, Clawson. But anyway, so that's the local part of it to jump forward several a generation or two of my father's uncles. So sons of a man named Hezekiah Eastmanhatch, as was my grandfather, son of that man, they ended up starting what has become the Sunshine Terrace foundation and sunshine Terrace. And correct me if I'm wrong, I think that was in 1947 that they started it.

[05:17] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: I think we're going to be 75 years this fall, so that's too quick of a time for me to do the math.

[05:23] RICHARD HATCH: Maybe that'd be 1948 then. But the story is, which I think is fairly reliable, it's told a couple of different ways, is that one of my father's uncles, a man named L. Boyd Hatch, the l was for Lorenzo, for his grandfather. So Elboyd Hatch had become a very successful businessman in New York City. He was the junior partner, so the vice president of something called the Atlas Corporation, which was founded by a man named Floyd Odlum, who's very interesting, and you can check his Wikipedia page and find out more about him. But there, the first line, practically, of the Wikipedia entry on him is he's considered to be one of the only, if not the only, man who made a fortune during the Great Depression.

[06:00] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Oh, seriously?

[06:02] RICHARD HATCH: They cashed out in the summer of 1929, I think. And then when things. So they were sitting, sitting on several million dollars, and when the market crashed, they bought things on the cheap, and several years later, we were able to sell those off. It was a holding company, is how I understand it, where they owned a lot of other things. At one time, they owned Madison Square Garden, trailways, bus services, RKO Pictures, which they sold in 1948 to Howard Hughes. Anyway, so my father's uncle, Boyd Hatch, was the junior partner in that, and he was actually the brother in law of Floyd Audlam. They'd started in Salt Lake. Floyd Audlem was a young lawyer. They lived in a boarding house run by misses McQuarrie, and she had two daughters, and they each ended up marrying one of the daughters. So they were then related by marriage and moved to New York and started building their fortune. My great grandfather had Zakia Eastman Hatch ended up marrying the mother. Oh, my goodness, the widow that owned the boarding house. So then. So your son in law is also your. No, your son is also your steps? I don't know. It's complicated. And that's, again, probably a Utah thing. But anyway, so he, Boyd hatch and his partner Floyd, developed what had been a family property up Logan Canyon, sometimes known as Hatch Camp, now more commonly known as St. Anne's retreat. Something was owned for a while by the Catholic Church. After Boyd Hatch gave it to them, they would come out here for the summer and go up the canyon to this retreat, and it was very nicely developed and spend the summer, large chunks of the summer there. And on one of his summer visits, Boyd Hatch went to the old family home which was one of these thatcher home, stone houses, pioneer houses on third west. And it was by then being used as a quote unquote, old folks home. And one of the newspaper articles about it years later said that the only thing the folks were doing there was listening to their arteries harden.

[07:58] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Oh, geez Louise.

[07:59] RICHARD HATCH: Anyway, he was appalled by the conditions in what had been his grandparents home, and so he decided that there needed to be something better for indigenous elderly in the community. So his brother that was living here, the only remaining, there were several siblings, but all of them moved away except for the brother Adrian, who was the youngest brother, and he ran an insurance business here in Logan. Hatch insurance company used to be kind of where the lyric and Utah theaters are in between those, I think. Anyway, there was still a hatch insurance company when we moved here in 1969, but nothing run by him. He died in the fifties. Anyway, he was local, so he could take his older brother's vision and do the heavy lifting. So the older brothers provided financial help, which was substantial and also ideas. But they formed a local committee of men here. I don't know all their names, but I know one of the Cardans was involved, and Asa Hatch who was part of it, and they formed the initial board of the Sunshine Terrace foundation. And the first thing they did was to use my other great grandfather's home, the Nibley home with the roman columns. And that became the first location for Sunshine Terrace. Later, I think they moved up the hill closer to where Logan Temple is.

[09:19] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: There was where the hospital was.

[09:21] RICHARD HATCH: Yes, and they were part of that somehow. And then I think, in the mid sixties, moved to their current campus and developed it anyway. Both of those brothers passed away in the mid fifties. Adrian Hatch I think, died first in probably 1954, thereabouts, and his brother, Boyd Hatch, died in 56, I think, and family members stayed involved. His widow, who worked as a librarian at Utah State University. After his death, she was on the board for a while. And my grandfather, although he lived in Salt Lake and I think 1975, became a board member. So I don't know if he would commute up to meetings or how actively involved he was.

[10:02] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: But when there was no zoom then, right?

[10:03] RICHARD HATCH: No, not then, not in 75. So my parents and our family, we moved here in 1969 and we had never lived here, but obviously there were a lot of family connections, so that was kind of neat to bump into. And eventually my father took over his father's board position and served for many years. And when we moved here to be closer to my parents as they got older, my dad already had the beginnings of Alzheimer's, and so was needing extra attention. I pretty much took over his chair in that and in a couple of other organizations in town. And I think Janet Osborne, who was then president, is the one that asked me to serve and have been involved ever since in that way.

[10:47] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Like I said, it's so appreciated that you've been able and willing to continue that kind of family legacy.

[10:53] RICHARD HATCH: So on the other end of it, my uncle David, who was institutionalized from his early twenties, he was a diagnosed schizophrenic and just was never able to live outside of an institutionalized situation. As kids, we'd go to Evanston, Wyoming, where the Wyoming state hospital was, and take him out to lunch, and it was much better for him when his father was able to move him to Utah. And then my father was able to move him to sunshine Terrace, and we could see him more regularly. He had much better quality of life. And so I think he spent about 20 years there. Maybe he died in 2000 and benefited from the music therapy program they had. He was a very talented pianist, and I think that did a little bit of singing, too. So he was there. So that's another family connection. My father ultimately went on hospice at skilled nursing and passed away there, as did my grandfather, his father at the very end, and my mother's currently a resident of the assisted living complex, Terrasgrove. A lot of connections in different ways.

[11:58] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Yeah. So is your involvement out of a sense of obligation, or how would you describe why you're still there? I know that's kind of a personal question.

[12:07] RICHARD HATCH: Well, it's tough. I do feel a sense of obligation. I guess I could have turned down the initial invitation to join the board, but it probably would have disappointed my parents, who probably put Janet up to asking me, and I think it does great work, so I'm happy to support it. I'm currently technically on vice president. I'm trying to get out of that role because I think someone else could better fill the vice presidential obligations. But for now, I'm kind of a placeholder until we find someone better suited to the skill set needed.

[12:45] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Yes. I loved when you came and did your presentation that you entitled it in lieu of flowers.

[12:51] RICHARD HATCH: Yeah. A lot of the family obituaries would solicit donations for sunshine terrace in lieu of flowers, and it just became a recurrent theme that amused me at the time. But again, it's a good thing that hopefully people responded to that, and flowers are ephemeral, but you can give a donation that maybe helps someone in a more meaningful way.

[13:15] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: So I know one of your relatives that intrigues me is Marjorie Hatch

[13:20] RICHARD HATCH: Now, she was the wife of Adrian and quite a remarkable woman in her own right. And she was living here when we moved here. And I remember visiting her up in what was then the usu library. I think she was the head of the children's section or something. I do remember. And I still have a magic book that she gave me. Magic is my profession. At that time, it was my hobby, and so it was a book I didn't have, wasn't familiar with, and it's still one I've kept. But she eventually ran for office unsuccessfully as a democratic candidate for, I guess, the legislature. I'm not sure a position like that, either representative or legislator. Her husband actually had been a state congressman in the late forties for a couple of years. So she was active politically, but she was not successful in her bid for that office, but very, I think, influential in the community, very civic minded, and eventually moved to California when she was ill and passed away there. I think she was in the care of her daughter Elaine, who lives there. And she has one other surviving son, Stanley Hatch, and I think they've both been supportive of sunshine Terrace as well.

[14:29] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Yeah. So no political interest on your part, though, huh?

[14:33] RICHARD HATCH: No. My brother was active politically, and he served in Salt Lake on, they have a county council system, so he was a county councilman for many years and was very active in the Utah Democratic Party. He is an attorney and retired a couple years ago and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where his wife was born and raised and seemed very happy there. But I do not have any political ambition myself. I'll probably go this Saturday to the democratic county annual meeting, whatever it's called. Convention. County convention. I guess there'll probably only be about a dozen of us, and I may go down to the state convention as a result of that, but it's an off election year, so it's less interesting.

[15:13] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: So what is it like being a Democrat in a predominantly republican community?

[15:19] RICHARD HATCH: It's a little discouraging at times. At the last election, I had some signs out, yard signs out, and a couple of them disappeared. I kept replacing them, so that wasn't an issue. But then I saw them. I was doing yard work and looked over the fence, and there they were in my neighbor's yard. Now he says it wasn't him, and I don't think it was. I think someone pulled him up and threw him over the fence. But it was about two weeks before I discovered him. There. Surely he would have seen them there and known where they'd come from and could have told me, hey, put these signs back up or something. So I thought that was a little strange. But as far as I know, that we haven't suffered any other repercussions. The last election cycle was an interesting one because the Democratic Party, at their state convention opted to support a non democratic candidate, knowing that the Democrat, who was very well qualified and a good guy who was running for the office at the convention, he would have lost without any question running against Senator Lee. And it was felt that this independent, who had formerly been a republican and very involved in republican politics on a national stage, that he would have a better chance against Lee than an actual Democrat. And he did better, but he did not win. And so I'm not clear what strategy they have in mind going forward. It was fun to watch.

[16:43] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: So is that, obviously you weren't here for a while. Were your parents always Democrats, or did that happen because they moved away?

[16:54] RICHARD HATCH: No.

[16:54] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Or did they influence you? Maybe they're still Republicans. I don't know.

[16:57] RICHARD HATCH: No. They were raised kind of in republican families. My grandfather Clawson particularly, was not fond of Franklin Roosevelt, for whatever reasons. I'm a big fan myself, but Hezekiah Eastman Hatch. So my father's grandfather, who was here in Logan, he was a Democrat and a supporter of. If you go back that far, who was the guy? William Jennings Bryant. That's going back over.

[17:24] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: That is going back.

[17:25] RICHARD HATCH: But apparently he came through Logan on the Chautauqua circle. Then my grandfather went with his father to hear him speak, and we're very impressed. It was probably his cross of gold speech that was famous. Anyway, my grandparents remained pretty much Republican. My brother, who's two years older, was very active as a Democrat, even as a teenager, and I remember would march against Vietnam and got in trouble at his school. This is not a democratic republican thing, but he got in trouble at school for having hair over his collar. They wanted him to cut it. My mom supported him keeping it the length he wanted. So that was kind of controversial. My parents both, I think the first Democrat they voted for might have been Lyndon Johnson. At that time, we were living in Iowa. We'd spent a number of years in Germany before moving to Iowa. And I think they were very scared of Goldwater and the nuclear threat. And that campaign about that was probably pretty effective in creating the landslide it did. And I think they remained democratic after that.

[18:33] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: So I know when I was a kid growing up, I remember doing nuclear drills in school. Did that happen in Iowa for you?

[18:41] RICHARD HATCH: I don't recall it. Yeah, I've seen those duck and cover kind of advertising. I don't recall it myself, so it didn't make an impression. Particularly my brother and I, growing up, were active in Boy Scouts. He actually made Eagle Scout. I dropped out after we moved here, and he'd already had his eagle. And I didn't participate here, but we were. We were into the kind of the kids war games. And because we'd lived in Germany, I'd always play the german soldier because I thought that was cool at the time. Now I realize that was not the right side, but, yeah, I think we're pretty pacifistic in our leanings. Currently, the current world situation is rather concerning. It's hard to be a pacifist seeing what's going on.

[19:26] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Why is it hard to be a pacifist?

[19:30] RICHARD HATCH: Well, obviously you want peace and you want to minimize violence, but it seems like there's some point where you have to stand up to bullies. The problem is, if the bully has a nuclear weapon, how do you confront that? I don't have a good, easy answer. I don't know, but it's extremely concerning.

[19:48] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Obviously, I know you have a son.

[19:52] RICHARD HATCH: Yes.

[19:53] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Is that a topic of conversation? Does politics enter into your relationship, or do you skirt around it?

[19:59] RICHARD HATCH: He actually supported Trump. We don't know why. I think kind of because he felt Trump was more entertaining. He did not vote for Trump. He saved his. He saved and framed his ballot, so we feel good about that. He didn't cast a vote that would have been in the first 2016 election. I'm not sure that he voted or did anything in the 2020 election, but we don't talk a lot of politics. He's not politically too engaged. I would say his sister is very active. She would proudly describe herself as woke. And she lives in Juneau, Alaska, and actually ran a campaign or helped run a campaign. I think she might have been the communications director or something for a campaign for mayor in Juneau. They were not the winning campaign, but she's quite active in other civic issues and will march and speak out at meetings and that kind of thing. So we're proud of her for doing that.

[20:58] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: So where do you think she gets that from?

[21:01] RICHARD HATCH: Not for me. Not from her mom? I don't think so. Maybe from her uncle. I don't know. Some of it she's probably just developed on her own. She took off her college, and I pretty much been on her own after that. And she lived a couple years in Europe also.

[21:16] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Oh, did she? So I know you brought up St. Mary's.

[21:21] RICHARD HATCH: Yes.

[21:22] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Or St. Anne's.

[21:22] RICHARD HATCH: St. Anne's.

[21:23] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: St. Anne's retreat.

[21:23] RICHARD HATCH: Yep.

[21:24] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: So, like, the reputation of that is that it's haunted.

[21:28] RICHARD HATCH: That's the reputation.

[21:29] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: So who's haunting it? Is it your ancestor?

[21:32] RICHARD HATCH: That goes back to when it was a retreat for catholic clergy, both nuns and priests. And they also, I think, held retreats there where, you know, couples could go for the weekend and help them strengthen their marriage or whatever. So what happened was my uncle Boyd and Floyd Oslom, at some point their lives changed and they decided not to maintain their ownership of that property, and they tried to give it away. They offered it to Utah State University and didn't find any interest. Eventually. Serious. Yeah, they offered it to the LDS church, which again, no interest. So eventually the Catholics took it. I don't think it was sold. I think it was a gift donation. And they kept, that would have been in the mid fifties, 56, 57. And they maintained it probably till the early nineties or so. It sold at some point to private ownership, and those investors have been trying to sell it ever since. It hasn't been upgraded or maintained. It would cost a lot to. I thought I had a great idea. I thought they should donate it to the Stokes center, who was looking to expand, and they could, you know, improve the property, and they'd be a win win. They'd get a, whoever gave it would get a nice tax deduction. And anyway, I didn't find any interest on either side for that idea.

[22:50] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: So that's not a place that you summered then. They had already gotten left the family by then.

[22:56] RICHARD HATCH: My father remembered going there, and my, his cousin Eileen and her older brother Stan remembers helping open it and turn on the water and do other chores for his I uncle, but I visited it twice, courtesy of the current owners, like when we had the family and they let us go and tour it. And I've been one other time, and it's pretty interesting. There's things in the building that was owned by Floyd Odlum, who was the wealthier of the two. He imported a lot of things. Again, he bought them on the cheap in Europe after the depression, a lot of antiquities. So there's a staircase and wooden things that I think were sent from abroad. The fireplace, which is a big stone fireplace. I read an article in the fifties that indicated that those stones were from the Thatcher opera house and bank from when it burned. There was rubble. And they rescued it years later. Yeah, it's kind of neat so what.

[23:51] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: Did you do as a kid then? Where did you.

[23:53] RICHARD HATCH: So I was, I was born in Pasadena, California, where my father was completing his PhD in nuclear physics. And when he completed that, then I spent two years on Long island, where he was working as a postdoc at Brookhaven National Lab. And his boss, who became his friend, is a real interesting guy. Samuel Goudsmit the co discoverer of electron spin, should have gotten the Nobel prize, he and his partner, but never did. But a real interesting guy who visited us in Logan years later, got to know him a little bit. Anyway, that was till I was age three. Then at age three, we moved to Germany. We spent two years in Frankfurt. And I think it was interesting what my father was doing. I don't know a lot about it, but he was, if at a cocktail party, he would, would tell people that he worked for the agriculture department. He was actually there as a civilian working for naval intelligence. You know, what's the navy doing in Frankfort? There's no body of water there. What they were doing was he was a scientific liaison that scientists would escape from the east, and they would need to be interrogated to find out what the communists were studying. Are they working on some kind of weapon or what are they? So he would be with part of a team, a german translator and a. He is a scientific translator, and they would write up a classified report on, here's what this guy says they were working on over there. So that was for two years. And then the third year we spent outside of Heidelberg, where he was a postdoc at the university there. Then he was offered a position at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. And he was on the faculty there for. Till 1969, I think we went there in 1961. So eight years. And that's where I started my schooling, started to junior high. And then what would have been what became my 9th grade year, 1969, we moved to Logan. And I didn't realize this until we decided, my wife and I decided to move back here. I've always, you know, people say, where are you from? I tell them, Logan, Utah. But we moved here in 69. A year later, I left and spent a year in Germany with family, friends that we'd made while we were over there. And then I came back and graduated from high school after two years. And then I took off for college. And after college, I spent a year in Spain. And then I came back and spent a year at graduate school at USU. And then I took off until we moved out. So I'd only spent four years of there, which only two were in a row. But it still felt like a homecoming. We'd always come back to visit my parents and stuff and didn't have ambitions of moving back. But I'm very happy we did. It's been a good move. We spent about 25 years in the Houston, Texas environment, and I enjoyed that. But I think it was a good move to come here when we did.

[26:27] AMY ZADIG ANDERSON: So how did you go from becoming a physicist to a magician? Because those two things do not seem to make a lot of sense. I mean, you mentioned earlier it was a hobby.

[26:40] RICHARD HATCH: It started as a hobby when I was about eight years old. So I just realized someone asked me how long I'd been doing it. Gosh, I'll be 68 next month. I've been doing it almost 60 years. So it started as a hobby that became an obsession. It really grew the year I spent in Germany in high school with these family friends. They thought it's kind of a cool hobby. How can we encourage it? And the mother of that family, my tante route, woot Ettingruber, she tracked down a professional magician. And you think, how do you do that? Pre Internet today? We'd go to Google and you'd find someone. But she called a local television station, and they gave her the name of an entertainment agent, and he gave her the name of a magician who lived not too far away. So he came by and visited me. And to me, that was a transformative event that I'd never seen in person. Anyone that could do what he did didn't even realize it was possible. And everything he did, it looked like magic. But I was doing things that you could get at a magic shop. My grandfather Claussen, who had a slight interest in magic, he'd had an older brother who had run away at the turn of the century and become a traveling hypnotist and magician. And there was a twelve year age difference. And that older brother died when my grandfather was just twelve. But he had this romantic vision of his older brother, who'd traveled throughout South America doing magic and hypnotism. So he actually was a professional dentist and actually used hypnosis in his practice for people that had allergies to anesthetics, things like that. So he encouraged my interest in both magic and at that time, hypnosis, which is not something I'm involved with at all, which is another story. But this Jackson was his name. Fredo Jackson was his stage name. He was fantastic. He was very charismatic. Drove up in a brand new mercedes. So I'm impressed that he's obviously successful, that you could make money doing this. And then he created extraordinary effects using ordinary objects. And as I say, at that time, I was, you know, you take a. You'd have a kind of a. Well, here's an example. You'd have a little box with a screen in front, and inside is a tube with probably a genie's face painting on it. And you take the tube out of the box and show it's empty. Then you put it back in the box. Then you take the box and show the box is empty. And you tap it with a wand, and you can pull out all kinds of things that I think I'd usually pull out some fruit and a tablecloth and basically set a meal from what was in there. But that was, I think even an unsophisticated audience knows that the magician is nothing doing the magic. It's the prop that if they could get and look at that box or that tube, they'd figure out what was going on, and they're generally right in that regard. And I had no clue how he was doing, what he was doing. It just looked like magic. And he didn't give me lessons, but he encouraged me, and I'd show him something. He'd say, well, hold your finger a little bit differently and look a little bit better, that kind of thing. And pointed out some books that I should pay attention to. And when I got back to America, some performers that I should study with, if possible, or, you know, watch their work involved that kind of thing. And so, to me, that was a transformative effect. So I had a negative result. When I came back to Logan after that year in Germany, I packed all my props away and started practicing, because he did what magicians characterize, a sleight of hand magic, which requires a lot of practice and rehearsal. And so what had been a very extroverted activity, where I'd buy the property, the instructions, run through it a couple times, and then do it. School talent assembly to a good response. So it took something that had been very extroverted and became something very introverted. It's just me in my room with a deck of cards or some coins.