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Christopher Glass - YDR

Rachel King, a first-grader, watches Dave Rojahn make coins appear in a bucket during a Bully No More program at Orendorf Elementary School in Northeastern School District.

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Like any good comedy schtick beginning, a man walks into a crowded Springettsbury Township cafe wearing a khaki green T-shirt and jeans and carrying a large briefcase.

The briefcase — worn and dark brown — is alluring in its normalcy, as his attire.

Where is his tuxedo? His black hat, magic wand, white dove and frisky rabbit?

The man sets his briefcase on a chair and it beckons a few curious glances from patrons sipping coffee and eating bagels with cream cheese.

The briefcase could belong to any businessman.

But it belongs to 46-year-old Dave Rojahn, whose magical comedy acts have opened for big names in comedy clubs, such as the Smothers Brothers, The Four Tops, Jimmy Walker and Wierd Al Yankovic.

His talent has also taken him on the road 30 weeks a year — for part of that time as Isaac Fawlkes, a 16th century English magician — and has brought him to the cafe to talk about his life with magic.

In the name of magic, he has burned a $100 bill, fired a black powder pistol at an apple on someone’s head, then made the folded bill appear inside the apple.

He also performs card tricks, mind reading, invisible coin tricks and Halloween seance shows at colleges and universities.

Why ESP and invisible coin tricks?

“Less to carry around,” he says.

Rojahn grew up in Dallastown and went to see a former Ringling Brothers’ clown Charlie Boas’ Circus Kirk when the circus came to the Dallastown fairgrounds.

At the show, he bought a packet of beginner tricks for 25 cents.

Later, he went to the library and checked out “The Amateur Magician’s Handbook.”

He read another book on showmanship in magic. And another.

He started doing tricks with cards, coins, ropes and boxes with secret compartments in his back yard for the neighborhood children.

He did his show for anyone who would watch, including his biggest fan — Carolyn Rojahn.

“The mother of a magician is always cursed,” he says. “My poor mother saw every bad trick I ever did.”

His mother says Rojahn was never the shy type and liked to debate and act in school plays.

“He always loved entertaining,” she says.

Rojahn met some local magicians as a young teen and studied the trade. Before magic became his full-time career, he worked in advertising and was an assistant stage director at Host Farm Resort in Lancaster County, where he watched experienced comedians perform before he became an opening act.

“That was kind of like going to comedy college,” he says. He learned timing and act construction from emcee Lee J. Nelson, whose father, Jimmy Nelson, was a famous ventriloquist.

He has learned from years of practice that it’s best to keep things simple and use your personality as a persona — a fancy way of saying, “Be yourself.”

He is the ordinary guy.

Unlike many comics, four-letter words never make it into his acts, he says, peering out from small oval glasses, looking much like the young boy who liked to read magic books. “They don’t go with the face.”

Rojahn has developed different acts for different audiences. He has entertained families for two decades with a furry spring raccoon puppet — Rocky, the world’s only mind-reading raccoon — on his arm to promote summer reading programs at area libraries.

Paula Gilbert, director of youth services at Martin Library and for the York County Library System, says Rocky is her favorite part of his act. “He keeps him in a cage like he’s real and at some point he takes him out and shoots him into the audience,” Gilbert says. “The kids are like ‘Aaaaah!’”

He and Rocky will be back in York County libraries again when the summer reading program starts June 16.

“I watch the faces of the children and adults watching him,” says Deb Sullivan, community relations director for Martin Library and the York County Library System. “And they are glued to him. And they are laughing... It’s usually crowded. He has a good following.”

He is the married father of three — Noah, Meg and Peter — who created his Bully No More program in 2001 to help kids in area schools. His program weaves magic and humor with a friendship message and has been performed in at least 80 schools.

Rojahn, who majored in sociology in college, developed the 30-minute program with advice from guidance counselors and by reading a study by sociologist Dan Olweus, “Bullying At Schools.”

The program is quickly catching on, he says, and may someday surpass his Renaissance Faire and comedy club acts.

Rojahn pauses in his story — his briefcase still closed on the cafe chair next to him — and he says in his everyday voice that making people laugh is a weird way to make a living.

He giggles at his self-deprecating joke before its delivery. “Try going to a bank when you’re a magician and asking for a loan,” he says. “Everybody can make money disappear.”

He talks about crisscrossing the country in a Plymouth van for 10-day show tours. Staying at luxurious hotels. And plenty of lousy hotels, he says.

He is currently finishing a seven-week booking with Florida schools for Bully No More.

When he isn’t dealing with traveling troubles, something is always going wrong in his act.

Even that can be funny.

A phone rang in the middle of a magic show at a hotel in Williamsburg that was hosting a bridge convention.

“So I answered it,” Rojahn says, picking up an imaginary receiver. “It was someone wanting to play bridge. I said, ‘Gee, no, I can’t right now,’ and everybody laughed.”

At a Renaissance Faire show, his “guillotine” fell apart with the volunteer’s head inside.

“A piece of it just broke right off,” he says. That brought more laughter in the show.

Another challenge with comedy acts is the occasional drunken person in the audience.

Make the heckler part of the show, he says. And keep going.

Along with performing in Plantersville, Texas, in September; Houston for Thanksgiving and Fort Myers, Fla., last month, Rojahn also performs locally for private parties, picnics and regional festivals.

He has been a pirate, Santa Claus and has even dressed as Chuck E. Cheese.

He has done his magic act on WPMT-TV (Fox 43), Nickelodeon, at Walt Disney World and on Carnival Cruise Lines.

Rojahn finishes his coffee and is ready for a few tricks.

But he doesn’t open his briefcase.

He reaches in his jeans’ pocket and pulls out a tiny roll of dental floss.

Waxed dental floss — generic, travel size.

He pulls a thread and breaks it into three pieces, projecting in a booming stage voice and drawing a few strange looks and smiles.

His fingers move swiftly, and he doesn’t need any magic words to put the thread back together.

It’s the classic rope trick, in miniature.

Rojahn’s way of using his own persona for the act. Of being himself.

He opens the briefcase. Inside are promotional fliers, his Palm Pilot, business cards and a cell phone.

He is the ordinary guy.

He slips his floss back into his pocket and chuckles to himself.

“It’s a weird way to make a living,” he says.

Reach Karen Muller at 771-2024 or kmuller@ydr.com.