Michael Mayer - Time Trippers The Nights of the Round Table

A clairvoyant… supposedly he’d be the only one except maybe the strange man who claimed to be Houdini’s assistant. Funny - he referred to 7/29 Antibe - did he mean July, 1929 in Antibe, the French Riviera? How could he know it had any significance?

It was irresistible. Why not another trip? I HAD to look in on my grandkid’s investments anyway, see Europe in the last year of the Twenties, Paris in its finest hour! Why not visit Antibe on the Riviera, drop by Villa America, the Murphy’s oasis for writers? Dottie, F. Scott Fitzgerald and for sure Hemingway would be there - wouldn’t Dottie be surprised? Then I could maybe run into Mr. Hanussen and see what all the fuss was about. German spies? This was well before Hitler came to power and World War II. Germany was no threat to anyone yet, it was only the weak, rather happy-go-lucky Weimar Republic. But what about Herr Prohmann, Houdini’s assistant, could HE could be one of the spies that Hanussen was referring to?

After we returned, I tried looking him up. I eventually turned up some fragments of his diary, which I obtained from an Ebay store specializing in such things. It had to be the same man we met who wanted to see if the wand was genuine.

According to those fragments of that diary, he was the only person besides ourselves who conclusively knew about the wand. I included these strange entries at the beginning of our story.

If we took the next trip, even if he found us again, he really didn’t know that it is THE wand; he really didn’t know that we came from the future and even if he did, he probably didn’t know how to use it. He would probably have no idea that we returned since I doubt he could spend the time watching the General Post Office for two more years, assuming he was the man I suspected of following me on our last day, nor would the German consulate waste time on such a hare-brained notion… no, that should be no problem, if we are more careful next time. Still, the wand is too powerful a weapon to leave lying around so I hid it where nobody could find it until our next trip through time. We would have to be extra careful!

By a strange coincidence we went back to near Philadelphia to stay with my wife’s cousin in Lancaster and for fun, we took the kids back to Philly to visit Independence Hall again, in March. Both my wife and I, with her cousin, her husband and their son Alex, were on the tour. It was mid-afternoon and the kids were running loose in the building, laughing and chasing each other.

They came up to me breathless and told me they had to go to the bathroom.

I told them to go ahead but “Meet us back here, fast, OK?”

“OK Lito!” Jonathan said to me, then turning to Lauren with a mischievous grin, “Come on Lauren, let’s hide from Alex!!”

They ran and found an old supply closet.

“Our cousin will never find us in here!” Jonathan said enthusiastically. He unlatched the door when nobody was looking and they both snuck inside. Lauren smiled shyly at Jonathan and pulled something out of her jacket.

“Look what I found Jonathan!”

He grinned from ear to ear… “The Magic Wand! Let’s try it!”

All events, schedules, and as many prices as possible were carefully researched from various books and vintage magazines and the NY Times at the Univ. of Minnesota Library archives.

Fitzpatrick, Kevin C. (2005). A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York . San Francisco: Roaring Forties Press.

Meade, Marion (2004). Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin - Writers running Wild in the Twenties . New York: Harcourt, Inc.

John Maxtone-Graham (1972). The Only Way to Cross. United States of America: Barnes & Noble Books.

Alvin F. Staufer, Edward L. May (1975) Thoroughbreds , Medina, Ohio: Published by Alvin F. Staufer

Alvin F. Staufer, Bert Pennypacker (1962) Pennsy Power , United States of America: Published by Alvin F. Staufer

The New York Times on microfilm, September 24 – October 1, 1927

Links: Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania http://www.rrmuseumpa.org/about/roster/e6.shtml

The Algonquin Round Table (Wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquin_Round_Table

Michael Alan Mayer (1951 - Born in New York, raised in Florida since 1958 and residing in Minnesota since 1989, he is a serious history and time travel buff. He holds an MA in History from Delhi University in India (St. Stephen’s College), and a BA from University of Wisconsin, Madison. He spent thirty-two years in the airline industry. An avid collector of vintage periodicals of historical significance, he believes that history can be best experienced by not only studying the facts but by seeing things through the eyes of its contemporaries as it happened in the old newspapers and magazines. “As close to time traveling as you can get - so far.”