Tag Archives: The Tape

Posted in The Tape

The Tape – Chapter 6

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by Bob Sparrow

I hadn’t realized that it has been almost four years that I’ve left you hanging since the last episode of ‘The Tape’. For those new to the blog or those who may need a little refresher, here is where, in our ‘Archives’ (the column to the right) you can find the first five chapters.

Chapter 1 – Jan 6, 2014; Chap. 2 – Jan 20, 2014; Chap. 3 – May 5, 2014; Chap. 4 – July 14, 2014; Chap. 5 – March 30, 2015.

OR you can just email me or ask in the comment section below for the Word document with the first 5 chapters on it.

Chapter 6

Francisco Pizarro

As daylight slipped away, the Chief slowly got to his feet and started making his way back to the Jeep. I followed. We rode in silence back down the mountain as the lights from the Jeep bounced and searched the darkness for the unmarked road home. When we reached the café where we had begun our journey this morning, the Chief stopped in front, but before he motioned me to get out, he said, “By the time Meeka’s work was done there, she was sought after by the authorities as well as several vigilante groups. After narrowly escaping with her life on several occasions, she decided to leave the desert and headed toward the coast. The story goes that she found a ship out of San Diego headed for South American and signed on as a cook. She wanted to get to Peru as she had read many stories about the Spanish Conquistadors and their oppression of the Incas; it reminded her of what had happened here.” The Chief open the glove box, “There is an author and historian who can probably fill in a lot of blanks about Meeca’s experiences in South America.” He fumbled around a bit and finally pulled out a small business card and handed it to me. I could barely read the name in the dark; ‘Dr. Bud Easton’ and it had a telephone number with a Los Angeles area code underneath the name that was all that was on the card.

“Who is he?”, I asked. The Chief looked into the night sky for a moment and slowly shook his head and said, “I don’t know the whole story, in fact, I don’t know much of it at all, but I know that Meeka was an amazing woman, she was a crusader who was driven to try and right the wrongs of the world, even if she was hundreds, if not thousands, of years too late.” Doctor Easton is a fountain of knowledge on Meeka’s exploits in South America.”

“I’ll definitely look him up, thank you Chief for an amazing day.”  He nodded solemnly, I shut the car door and he drove off. I got into my car and started my ninety-minute drive home.

Don: Ninety minutes home and you’ve got my 90 minute tape in your pocket . . . coincidence?”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” I said as I pulled ‘The Tape’ out of my jacket pocket and clicked it into the cassette player anxious to listen more carefully than I ever had before in hopes that, for whatever reason, it might make more sense to me now. I thought about meeting Dr. Easton, who miraculously was supposedly a fountain of knowledge about someone I’d never heard of until today.

The next day I drove to Dr. Easton’s house in a nice area of L.A.

Don: Is there a nice area of L.A.?

Yes, we’re in one. A long tree-lined driveway lead back to a beautiful home surrounded by a good deal of vegetation – very nice, and expensive I’m sure. I guess he’s sold a lot of books.

I parked and nervously rang the doorbell. Dr. Bud Easton opened the door almost immediately. He was a short stocky man with close eyes, a balding head and an easy smile. I had called him the night before and asked for a meeting, which he immediately agreed to and gave me directions to his home.

“You must be Bob, come on in” he said in a welcoming tone.

“I am, thank you so much for meeting with me.” I entered his beautiful home and he directed me to his library off the entry. It was like the ones you see in the movies, high ceilings, filled with dark oak paneled book shelves all the way to the top and filled with more books than I could imagine one person owning.

He went to a file drawer and pulled out a large folder filled with manuscripts and photos and I don’t know what else, and said, “So you told me you had an interest in learning more about Meeka and her exploits in South America.”

I said “Yes, but it astounds me that there is even any material about her at all. Wasn’t she just a poor Indian woman who had this crazy idea of avenging the deaths of some of her forefathers? How were her exploits even known about?”

Dr. Easton open the binder and said, “Before we had scribes and history books, events were preserved through oral history, passed down from generation to generation. I’ve made a life’s work out of collecting oral history and getting it down on paper; that’s how I came across Meeka’s story. It had a lot of different version, as you might suspect, accounts of oral history can change depending on who’s telling it.

Don: Isn’t that just like written history which is written by the winners?

“You mentioned that you have a tape of some rather obscure language that you’re trying to translate is that correct.”

Yes

“Do you have the tape with you?”

“Yes, I said as I set it on the desk in front of him. It’s 90 minute in total, I don’t know if you want to listen to it all right now.”

“Well, let’s start it and see how far we get.

I clicked the tape in the cassette player he had on his desk and we sat and listened until we got a little past half way through the first side.

“OK, that’s good.” he said and I shut it off

He continued, “About half way through this first side the language changed a bit which coincided with her move from the deserts in Southern California to South America.

With eyes wide open I said, “You mean you know what is being said on this tape?”

Don: Does this mean we’re actually getting someplace?

Dr. Easton continued, “Yes, for the most part.  The first half of side one is spoken in Inviatim, a language thought to originate from the Aztecs, and it tells of the story that it sounds like the Chief took you to in the Santa Rosa mountains. Then half way through it switches to dialects more associated with the Inca, which would follow Meeka’s travels from the deserts in Southern California to the west coast of South American.”

What I heard in the second half of this first side is the story of how Meeka researched this history of the Spanish invasion of the new world, specifically Francisco Pizarro, who was a Spanish conquistador, who some revere as the person who brought Christianity to the people in the new world and reviled by others who saw him as lying, murdering, intruder who eradicated nearly 90% of the Inca people.

Wow, how did he do that? How could he do that?

Actually it wasn’t that hard.

To be continued . . . sooner than 4 years!

Posted in opinion • travel

‘The Tape’

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(Author’s note: I have many interesting places to go this year and I thought I would add the following ‘search’ to my adventures.  I’d be interested in your feedback of this episodic allegory – good, bad or indifferent.  If you don’t like it, Suzanne will be back next week with something more normal I’m sure.)

by Bob Sparrow

The Tape

‘The Tape’

     I turned The Tape over in my hands several times; examining it like it was a rare gem – which, in fact, it might be.  The title written on the plastic cassette case was ‘In Search of Xoon’.  Xoon was my dog in Japan in 1968.  Titles, I must tell you, were always non-sequiturs of sorts, never really pertaining to anything on the tapes – ‘Music to Slit Your Wrists Over’, ‘Zsa Zsa Sing Bob Dylan’ and ‘Garbage Soup’ to name a few.

     I exchanged a number of cassette tapes with Don while he was living in the Middle East in the late 80s and throughout the 90s.  We’d affect our DJ voices and ‘do a show’ for each other; I’d send him the latest hits from the US, he’d send me off-the-wall songs from his vast collection of eclectic music – we’d separate the music with talk about the news of the day as well as the personal issues going on in our lives – 90 minutes, commercial-free.  It kept us close at a time when the Internet was not available to the common man, or even two uncommon men like ourselves.  I think there were 39 tapes in all, plus the one I was holding, the one he sent toward the end of his stay there; the one in a strange language, a very strange language.  When I first listened to it I thought it was going to confirm that ‘Paul was dead’.  It was just gibberish, backwards or forward.  I fast-forwarded it to see if the gibberish stopped and he started talking in English, it didn’t and he didn’t.  B-side was the same, ninety minutes of gibberish, but it was commercial-free . . . I think.  I concluded that he had spent too much time wandering in the desert sun or had been captured by a herd of Bedouin camels and was forced to confess something.  I think it was he talking on the cassette, although it sounded a bit altered or perhaps addled.  No, I’m sure it was his voice – now that I think about it, it was unmistakable – I could hear the humor in his voice even though I couldn’t understand a word he was saying.  But after 50 years of companionship with this eccentric genius, I was used to not understanding a good deal of what he was saying.

     He lived 13 years in Ta’if, which is in the Sarawat Mountains of Saudi Arabia, so he spoke some Arabic, but The Tape was not in any form of Arabic, it had a much more euphonious, even a melodic lilt to it.  He had lived in Sicily in the shadow of Mt. Etna at Sigonella Navel Air Station and spoke Italian.  He spent several years in Caracas, Venezuela  at the foot of the Maritime Andes, so he knew several dialects of Spanish and Portuguese.  The language on The Tape was none of these.  It didn’t sound like he was reading from something, it sounded very improvisational.      What the hell was he saying and why had he sent this to me?  In subsequent tapes and years later in face-to-face conversations with him when he came back to the states, I’d ask him about The Tape.

I said, “OK, are you going to tell me what was on that crazy tape?”

“Did you destroy it?”

“No”

“So do you mean what is on the tape?”

“Yes!  Were you drinking when you made it?”

“Don’t you have to be drinking to spend 13 years in Saudi Arabia?”

     I got so frustrated with his answering a question with a question that I stopped asking him about it altogether – I’d show him!  Who cares about this stupid, nonsensical tape anyway?  I forgot all about it.

The case

Cassette carrying case

     Every few years, particularly on a long, solitary drive, I’d put my cassette carrying case in my car and pop in tape after tape – it was always great to hear his voice.  I did just that when I drove up to his funeral service following his death in February 2012.  While driving up Interstate 5 and fumbling through the cassettes, I inevitably pulled out The Tape, laughed to myself, shook my head and put it back in the case.  But this time, perhaps because he was now gone, I stopped before I put in another tape and starting thinking about The Tape, what it could possible say, what it could mean and why did he send it to me.  So I ask him to help me solve the mysteries of The Tape.

He said, “Yes, but you do understand about my ‘condition’ don’t you?

“Your condition?”

“Yes, do you think I’m as sharp as I used to be now that I’ve been dead for several weeks?

     For the next 90 minutes I listened to The Tape in its entirety.  I asked him, “What language is that, I don’t understand any of it”

“Do you understand the song Nessun Dorma?” he said.

“No”

“Do you know it?  Do you like it?

“Yes, I think it’s maybe the most beautiful song ever as Pavarotti sings it.”

“But you don’t understand it?”

     I popped it in the car’s cassette player and spent the next 90 minutes listening to The Tape, more carefully this time, and I did hear it a bit differently; I heard more of the rhythm of the tape and . . . perhaps I picked up what might be some small clues as to where to begin my search for the translation and thus the meaning of The Tape.