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a little game they cooked up at The Spot
called “The Wizard.”
A group from The Spot would be away
from the bar at a private party somewhere
and would tell a newcomer to the area that
they knew of this guy called The Wizard,
who could identify a randomly drawn
card from a standard deck of 52, over the
phone. To prove it, they’d let the stranger
draw a card from a deck and then they’d
call The Spot.
Rudd would answer and the caller would
ask, “May I speak with the Wizard, please?”
which would be a cue for Rudd to start
naming suits, one at a time, as the caller
presumably waited for The Wizard to
come to the phone. When he hit the correct
suit, the caller would say, “Is this the
Wizard?” and Rudd would begin rattling
off numbers – Ace, deuce, three,
four, etc. When he hit the right
number, the caller would say
“Just a minute” and turn the
phone over to the unsuspecting
stranger. Roy would play it out
like a veteran con man.
“Is the card in front of you?” he might
ask. “Is it face up? I’m seeing a dark card,
either a club or spade, is that right?” He’d
continue to play this game until, to the surprise
of the stranger (and perhaps the loss
of a few bucks he’d placed as a bet), the
card would be identified correctly by The
Wizard. According to “Big Dave” Ward, a
Wrightsville Beach lifeguard from that era,
The Spot crowd “blew everybody’s mind
with that trick for about five years.”
No one knows for sure exactly when
the phrase “world famous” was
attached to The Spot, but it was related
to phone calls Rudd would receive from
what he called “his boys” from all over the
world. When people from the beach would
either move away, or travel, or join the
Army and go to Vietnam, or get stationed
in Fairbanks, Alaska, Rudd had an arrangement
with them to call and let him know
how they were doing. Calls from Vietnam,
as an example, could get expensive, so in
those days of operator-assisted phone calls,
Opposite: A discount card from The Spot, courtesy of William
“Bingo” Bryant. This page: Another day in paradise for Roy Rudd
and, right, a successful fishing trip for The Spot crew.