Colon — People everywhere giggle when they hear there’s a town in Michigan called Colon. They giggle even more when they find out there’s a “Magic Get-Together” that takes place every year here.
But just like the people who live in Hell and Climax, the folks in Colon have heard it all and no longer chuckle at their town’s name. To them, it’s just their beautiful little village of about a thousand people in southern Michigan, smack dab in the middle of Amish country, surrounded by lakes and cornfields.
And magic wands. Yes, to the world’s magicians, Colon is their mecca, their holy land, a place they have to visit at least once in their lives, if not hundreds of times.
Colon is the Magic Capital of the World, a title that’s well-earned and especially comes to life each year in early August when the aforementioned “Magic Get-Together” takes place.
The town’s population roughly doubles that week, as a thousand or so magicians from all over the world appear in Colon. It’s one of the world’s largest magic conventions, as the conjurers meet in this charming little town for four days of shows, lectures, shopping, street performing, and most of all talking—all about magic.
Colon became the Magic Capital of the World thanks primarily to Harry Blackstone Sr., the legendary magician who bought a summer place in Colon 99 years ago.
It was originally intended as a place for the performers in his vaudeville show to recharge their batteries in the summer, but Blackstone loved Colon so much that he decided to stay and make it his home.
He started the Blackstone Magic Company along with an Australian magician named Percy Abbott, and when that company folded, Abbott teamed up with another guy named Recil Bordner to start Abbott’s Magic Company.
That company became the world’s largest manufacturer of magic tricks, and it’s still going strong in Colon today, owned and operated by Recil’s son, Greg Bordner.
In 1937, Percy and Recil decided that the world’s magicians needed to come to Colon once a year for a convention, so the Abbott’s Magic Get-Together was born.
It’s been going on every year since then, with the exception of 2020 during the pandemic. (Even the greatest magicians couldn’t make the ridiculous shutdowns disappear.)
Soon after the Get-Together began, Colon became known as the Magic Capital of the World, and no other town has come close to wrestling that title away. In addition to Abbott’s Magic Co., Colon is home to two other magic stores. Considering the entire downtown area is only two blocks long, that’s a lot of magic shops for one little village.
For 51 weeks out of the year, Colon mainly belongs to the tourists who come to see a magic show at one of the shops or maybe buy a trick for their children. And indeed, there’s no better day trip in Michigan if you’ve got kids.
During the first week of August, though—Magic Week, they call it, very unoriginally—the town is overtaken by magicians. You can’t swing a magic wand on State Street without hitting another one. They’re everywhere.
And I’m one of them. I’ve been doing magic since I was a little kid, and I’ve been coming to Colon for Magic Week since I was about 5. I’m considerably older than that now.
I got into magic thanks to my dad, Hank Moorehouse, who was very well-known in magic circles as a performer, magic dealer, and producer of magic shows. As magicians go, I’m just a hack who dabbles in it. But my dad, who passed away in 2011, was a stone-cold legend.
Hank performed all over the world. He was a past president of the Society of American Magicians (Harry Houdini was one of the group’s first presidents), and he worked for Abbott’s for many years producing shows for the Get-Together.
My dad is also the one who inspired a young Arsenio Hall to give up magic and just concentrate on comedy—a story that Arsenio himself told Howard Stern in 2021.
So when I say that I’m a magician, it’s like saying Frank Sinatra Jr. was a singer. Technically true, but we’re both just riding the coattails of the old man. When I show up at Colon even now, I’m still “Hank’s son.”
Being Hank’s son, though, I’ve been coming to the Get-Together for a long time. The highlights of Magic Week are the nightly shows, which take place in the Colon High School gymnasium.
Back in the day, I always used to sit in the front row, and many times when a magician needed to haul a cute kid out of the audience to assist with a trick, they’d pick me.
When I was 6, my parents for some reason sent me to the Saturday-night show wearing a bowtie, so that I looked like a little boxing referee. A legendary magician named Duke Stern was performing that night, and sure enough, he hauled me and my friend Jimmy out of the audience to help with a trick.
It was my first time on the Colon stage, and I couldn’t stop smiling.
Some decades later, I got to perform at the Get-Together several times myself as an actual magician, earning me the distinction of being one of the few people to appear on that stage as both a child assistant and an adult magician.
The stage at Colon High School is hallowed ground in the world of magic, because you’re appearing on the same stage that Harry Blackstone Sr. and his equally legendary son, Harry Blackstone Jr., performed on.
Almost every great magician of the last century has performed there. It’s like making it to the Grand Old Opry as a country singer or Radio City Music Hall as a dancer. Performing at the Get-Together means you’ve made it as a magician.
I know that I made it there only because I was “Hank’s son,” but I don’t care. It was pretty damn cool being on that stage.
I came every year as a kid, but I only make it to Colon sporadically these days. I made it this year, which was the 87th Abbott’s Magic Get-Together. I saw some old friends, saw some magic, and saw that things haven’t changed much at all since I was a 6-year-old in a bowtie sitting in the front row.
Like the Amish who ride their buggies through town, Colon never changes and the Get-Together never changes, and that’s a wonderful thing.
There are magic lectures every afternoon and magic shows every evening, and each night ends at the Colon American Legion Hall, where the magicians stay up until the wee hours doing tricks for each other, eating cheeseburgers and dissecting that night’s show.
At some point, the whole crowd spills out into the street, and they all throw cards into the air, seeing who can zip one the farthest. When you show up in Colon during Magic Week and see playing cards all over the streets and sidewalks, that’s why.
One of the other great traditions that still endures during Magic Week is the Graveyard Tour at Colon’s Lakeside Cemetery. There are dozens of famous magicians buried there, including Blackstone Sr. and Blackstone Jr., and walking through the cemetery is like walking through a Magic Hall of Fame.
Sometime in the 1990s, a magician named Karrell Fox decided to do a Graveyard Tour, taking people from famous grave to famous grave and telling stories about the legendary magician buried there.
When Karrell died, my dad took over doing the tours. When my dad died, the task fell to a magician known by his stage name, Al the Only. Al the Only grew up in Hamtramck but lives in Hawaii now, and he knows more about Colon’s magical history than anyone.
Every year during the Get-Together, Al the Only takes dozens of people on a tour through the cemetery, telling the stories and keeping the history alive.
He wrote a wonderful book about the most famous cemetery in magic called “The Magic Graveyard,” and if you’re at all curious about all this, you need to get a copy.
I’m proud to say that my dad is buried there, and his grave is part of Al the Only’s tour. Karrell Fox is buried there, too.
There’s always a risk that the magic might end someday, but Greg Bordner has already announced that there will be a 90th annual Get-Together in 2026. He considers it his duty to keep it all going as long as he possibly can.
If you have a family and you want to visit Colon during those other 51 weeks of the year, it’s a great time. Saturdays in the summer months are the best time to visit, because the stores are always open and they usually offer daily magic shows.
But if you really want to experience Colon in all its glory, come during Magic Week. The “lay people” (that’s what we magicians call you) are always welcome to join in the fun.
Come to one of the evening shows or just walk and watch the street magicians. If you make eye contact with any magician, I guarantee he or she will yank out a deck of cards or a piece of rope and show you something.
But be prepared. You might become the butt of their jokes.
This is Colon, after all.
Buddy Moorehouse teaches documentary filmmaking at Hillsdale College.
