My father was the only breadwinner in our family which meant that even if we made it to Newport, two of us would've had to crawl under the fence to get in to the festivities. I was the youngest and my father exploited this every time he had to pay an entry fee. He tried to pass me off as twelve long after I learned to drive and grew a mustache. Lucky for us the local news outlet was covering the visit of the tall ships all day and into the evening.Back then videocassette recorders (VCR) were state of the art in home entertainment. At the time you could record one channel while watching another. On "extended play" (EP) you were able to tape eight hours on one videocassette. The quality wasn't so good, but you could stuff a whole miniseries like the The Thorn Birds on one tape. On "long play" (LP) you could capture four hours of television with a bit more quality. The best picture quality was achieved on "standard play" (SP) which offered the shortest duration, two hours. Videocassette tapes weren't cheap, but we were so we always recorded on EP. This would work out perfectly for my mother's master plan for the tall ships bicentennial celebratory extravaganza which was coming to our television that summer. The local news station planned on covering the event twelve hours a day for four days. My mother used a piece of paper and a pencil along with her Radio Shack calculator for the heavy math involved in determining the number of tapes she needed.
On her first attempt she came up with 24. At two dozen tapes, it looked like the once in a lifetime nautical circus would pass us by like a ship in the night. I checked her numbers.
"You can fit eight hours not just two," I noted.
"But I want the best quality," my mother declared.
I convinced her that it was impractical to switch out tapes every two hours. On extended play only six tapes were required which is the way they were often bundled and sold in bulk. Prior to the event my father picked up the blank tapes from Benny's, the local department store chain. My mother told him to get the highest quality tape, Sony, but my dad returned with six tapes labelled "GoldStar." My mother looked them over disapprovingly. She frowned but said nothing. She was a bit of a spendthrift. Once when she went grocery shopping, she returned with a broom handle and a scrub brush. My father asked,
"Where's the milk?"
"I didn't know we were out of milk," she admitted.
So my father did all the household purchasing. It made sense since he earned all the money. My mother taught art lessons in a studio she set up in the basement. She charged so little that she operated at a loss for decades. My father once said that her income didn't cover the light bill. Unlike my mother my father was good with finances. Along with lying about my age to get into events for less coin, he filed some pretty creative income taxes over the years. He wrote off my mother's art business losses with a devil-may-care attitude. As a struggling head of a household working two factory jobs while treading water in the stagnant economy of the 1970's, my dad thought a lengthy stay in prison for tax fraud would be a lighter sentence. He said that he always expected a letter from the IRS informing my mother that after a careful review of her tax filings, they recommend she try something other than teaching tole painting.
My mother often complained about money which led to my father taking on a second job. It never dawned on her that she should get a job herself in lieu of toiling away in her basement for fifty cents an hour. As long as she got her tubes of cadmium yellow, prussian blue and titanium white along with enough turpentine to level the family home should the stove catch fire, she was going to refrain from expressing her overt distain for the knock off videocassette tapes my father brought home.
As the historic event neared, my mother commandeered the television then dutifully manned the VCR, taping all 48 hours of the tall ships sailing up the bay, then down the bay, then back up the bay. The parade of sail dragged on all day and into the evening as each country unfolded their glorious flag under sheets of white canvas. My mother watched the spectacle of primitive power from yesteryear live so she could pause the recording during the commercials. As she watched, she commented,
"Raymond look. Spain."
My mother never left Rhode Island but over four days in the summer of 1976, she was a world traveller.
"Oh look. Brazil."
I was outside tossing a football with my friends in the street when she stuck her head out the door and yelled,
"Bobby, France!"
She even called up her neighbor, Dolores Schmidt, to tell her that the German ship was on even though Mrs. Schmidt was Polish. It was an exhausting four days, but we got through it. I missed the Price is Right and reruns of The Andy Griffith Show while my mother painstakingly recorded the entire epic event. She filled all six tapes with what my father secretly described as "the most boring shit ever recorded." My mother hand wrote the labels on each tape in her exquisite penmanship, identifying the day and date, then arranged each tape in the bookcase adjacent to a set of World Book encyclopedias. And there they remained for the next quarter century.
Whenever someone came across the six VCR tapes neatly lined up on the shelf, my mother would say,
"Those are my tall ship tapes."
This was usually followed with polite inquiry. My mother often explained the content of the tapes in great detail then followed with the declaration,
"They're worth money, you know."
A few years later we bought a boombox for my father on his fiftieth birthday. It picked up AM and FM radio as well as played cassette tapes. My father enjoyed everything from jazz to rock and roll. His favorite band was the Beatles. He took his boombox everywhere he went. On the weekends he stretched an extension cord across the lawn so he could listen to music while he puttered around his vegetable garden. One day he asked me if his boombox could record a radio station on the cassette deck. I took a look at the many knobs and levers. As I scrutinized the controls, I noticed that his boombox was a little banged up. One of the speaker grills was cracked and a knob was missing."What have you been doing with this thing?" I asked.
"Oh, it fell off the seat on the way to work," he answered.
The missing knob was for the selection of the tape type with options for,
- Fe2 O3
- Cr O2
- Fe3 O4
- Metal
I wasn't sure what to set the tape selection to. Best I could tell it was positioned on the first compound and without a knob I recommended we skip the chemistry lesson and leave it where it was. I found the source selection for the cassette and set it to "Radio," popped in a tape then pushed the record button. When I demonstrated that the cassette contained the music played on the radio, my father exclaimed,
"Great! WPRO is playing the Beatles all day on Saturday. I'm gonna tape it."
My father purchased a block of ten 90 minute cassette tapes. Being doubled sided he had at his disposal 30 hours of recording time. On Saturday morning when the Beatles marathon commenced, my father was poised with his boombox and stack of cassette tapes. He painstakingly paused the recording between songs. He wrote down each title and counter number for ease of recall. As the day wore on my father manned his station filling up cassette after cassette with the entire Beatles discography. He burned A Hards Day Night, Help!, The White Album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, hours and hours of music.
"How did it go?" I asked.
"Go ahead. Ask me any Beatles song," my dad proffered.
"Ok, Norwegian Wood."
My father pulled out his logbook and flipped through the pages. He ran his finger down the list of hastily scrawled titles which he ripped from the radio royalty free. He tapped his finger when he found the title, tape and counter numbers. After he exchanged the cassettes and reset the counter, he proceeded to fast forwarded to the target tape position. As the numbers rolled into the desired integers on the counter, he pushed the play button. Sure enough the familiar melody burst forward from the speakers, but that's not all he recorded. He also picked up the disk jockey blathering about a summertime sale on lawn chairs at Sears before the recording gave way to the lyrics.
"Alright!" my father exclaimed triumphantly as the song wound to a close.
And when I awoke
I was alone, this bird had flown
So I lit a fire
The deejay's voice interjected to inform us that Jake Kaplan Auto Group's blowout end of summer sale was underway.
"Everything must go to make room for new inventory!" the baritone voice boomed.
Isn't it good, Norwegian Wood?
"Go ahead. Ask me another," my dad commanded.
"Are they all like that one?" I inquired.
"Yeah, the audio is great!" my father offered, "Ask another."
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."
Picture yourself in a boat on a river
"Barry's, Barry's, Barry's, the video dance club in Warwick, now with six dance floors..."
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
"Nickel beers on Thursday nights!"
Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile
The girl with kaleidoscope eyes
"There's still time to get your Fudgie the Whale at your participating Carvel ice cream dealer."
My father smiled broadly as he patted his boombox. He wasn’t merely happy. He was proud. He could barely contain the intense satisfaction he felt for pulling off the heist of a lifetime. Forget the time he claimed the family cat as a dependent on his taxes, or when we sat through Star Wars twice in the theaters. He had just acquired hours upon hours of Beatles music for the magical mystery price of zippo. Unlike my mother my father actually played his tapes. He played them in the house. He played them outside. He played them in the garden. He took his collection and boombox to the factory where he work as a silversmith. Having trouble toting the many cassettes and boombox, my dad repurposed a plastic bag he used to transport his apron to and from his place of work. He tossed all the cassettes into the bag and was good to go. When I saw the tapes all free floating in the bag, I noticed a brown film on the inside of the satchel.
"What's that powder in the bag?" I asked.
My father snatched the plastic sack and peered into the opening. He wiped up some of the powder on his fingers.
"Pumice," he answered.
"Pumice?"
"You don't know what pumice is?" my father said with astonishment.
Now, I was pretty sure that pumice was a type of lava rock. I just wasn't sure why my father hadn't noticed that he had an abrasive powder inside the bag he used to carry his magnetically recorded pilfered music collection.
"You might not want to keep your tapes in a bag of pumice," I advised.
Dismissing my suggestion, my dad asked,
"The thing with the missing knob, what's that for again?"
"The tape type."
"What should it be set on?"
I really didn't know all that much about magnetic tape coatings, but I didn't think that was the real issue. Forget chemistry. The bigger problem was more likely to be geology.
"Set it to pumice," I said.
My father expanded his recording activities to include scheduled tapings of television shows via the VCR. Back then you had to enter start and end days and times through a cumbersome interface on the front of the unit. Mess up one AM/PM designation and you either got nothing or eight hours of a Public Broadcasting Service telethon. The aerial on the roof was also attached to a motorized unit that rotated the antenna when a dial was turned to a new compass heading on a box atop the TV. Forget to rotate the antenna and instead of recording Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, you got an hour of static.
My father taped a host of shows and movies on extended play. Often he wasn't exactly sure how much tape he had left so when he recorded a movie, sometimes the tape ran out prior to the ending. His note and counter method of finding a recording, successfully employed with his Beatles pumice anthology, often resulted in taping over the finale of the preceding show. I urged my father to set the VCR to SP which shortened the tape duration to two hours, affording enough space for a few shows or one movie. It was much easier to locate the media he recorded with less entries on the tape. He numbered the videocassettes, then kept a list of what was on each in a notepad.
The system worked well for years. The incidents of cropped conclusions were dramatically reduced. Although he rarely saved a recording for very long, preferring to overrun his collection of tapes weekly, he did find that the number of videocassettes he managed started to grow, especially when he replaced the antenna with cable. With a hundred channels of unfettered televised bonanza flooding through the coaxial pipe, my father had no choice but to purchase more videocassette tapes. There is only so much time in the day, and my dad recorded much more than he could ever watch.
My father was a consummate fan of The West Wing, starring Martin Sheen as President Josiah Bartlet, Phd. He referred to the series as "adult TV" which is a little like describing comic books as "literature." Written by Alan Sorkin, the series employed the "walk and talk" to make the White House appear like a buzz of activity since a show chronicling government employees sitting in meetings would be both overtly boring and intrinsically uneventful. Most public servants saunter into their 9 o'clock meeting fifteen minutes late with their third danish in hand as they dribble their fourth cup of coffee onto the office carpet. I also pointed out to my father that the West Wing of the White House is not as large as depicted on the show and is certainly not as dark. The poorly lit set used on the series helped portray an air of intrigue. I've been in the West Wing, and I can say for certain that it is well lit.
One evening, my father was in a bind. His favorite show was on that night, and he was out of tapes. I assumed he looked through his collection with the intent on recording over the tape containing the material that least interested him. I was certain that's what he had done as I saw the VCR spring to life at the proper hour to capture the gripping drama chronicling the braintrust of our society making important decisions like how big of a tax break they should give toy wooden arrow makers. The steady stream of recording bliss continued over the coming years until the day arrived when my mother rediscovered her collection of six tall ship tapes neatly arranged on the bookshelf. As she slipped the first tape into the slot on the VCR, she reminded us all,
"These are worth money, you know."
The familiar scene of the tall ships under sail slipping beneath the Newport Bridge faded into focus. My father sat in his chair with the newspaper unfurled blocking his view of the television. My mother swooned,
"Oh look Raymond. Brazil."
I could recite the order of the countries for the first five minutes of the first tall ship tape as that is the only tape and duration my mother viewed throughout the remainder of the 70's. Ignoring the tapes for two decades, my mother now oddly displayed the same enthusiasm she exhibited when the event unfolded in technicolor years earlier. Her commentary continued,
"Oh my. Look at that one..."
"Romania," I interjected.
"How did you know that?' my mother asked, certain that middle school Catholic education couldn't have imparted knowledge of the Romanian flag.
"I watch those tapes all the time."
"Oh yeah, then what is the next ship?"
"Portugal."
When the Portuguese flag appeared on the television, my mother was astonished.
"Why don't you watch one of the other tapes before you wear out the first five minutes of that one," I suggested.
My father stirred uneasily as my mother retrieved another tape from the bookcase. As she exchanged the tapes in the deck, she reminded all of us,
"These are worth money, you know."
More legendary sailing vessels appeared on the television. My mother was riveted to the screen, mouth agape as she solemnly shook her head in a combination of disbelief and anticipation. She knew that she had captured in its entirety a historic, majestic bygone era that future generations will cherish with envy. An endless parade of square rigged sailing vessels gliding up and down the bay filled the television screen. And it was all worth money.
My father rattled his newspaper. I looked to him curiously then to my mother. She was focusing on my dad who hid behind a black and white paper shield. My mother looked to the television. The steel-hulled Argentinian schooling vessel, Libertad, was unfurling its sails. Her gaze returned to my father. Later in life I would recall this scene with more mature eyes which at the time were incapable of recording my mother's sixth sense, developed after four decades of marriage to the same man. She announced,
"Let's watch another tape," then she turned to me and added, "Shall we?"
She moved towards the bookcase. My father brought his hands together to advance the page of his newspaper, a gesture which made me think of a butterfly, strangely. My mother ran her fingers over the five remaining tapes on the shelf in the bookcase. She stopped on the one which was second to the end. It was number five of the series.
"This looks like a good one," she declared.
After ejecting the tape, she inserted another. I distinctly recall seeing the label disappear behind the door to the slot of the VCR,
"Tall Ships - Thursday, July 1, 1976 #5"
The television screen was black. My mother watched intently. Gone was the glee. Instead her pursed lips and stern gazed betrayed her resolve. I first heard the orchestral strings playing a familiar tune which I just couldn't quite place. Was it God Bless America? No. Bach maybe? I couldn't tell. Then the Presidential Seal appeared. For the briefest moment I thought my mother had captured a patriotic, bicentennial speech by Gerald Ford, the only president no one ever voted for, but the seal was quickly replaced by three words that flashed momentarily through white and yellow shimmering graphics. My father folded up his paper and began to rise while Rob Lowe's concerned face appeared on the television. My mother went through the entire cast line up. When the helicopter appeared followed by Martin Sheens's upward gazing face looking a little like Thomas Jefferson on Mount Rushmore, I turned to my father and blurted,
"You taped West Wing over the tall ships?"
My father was busted. In hindsight, it was bound to happen. With his recordings piling up, stuck without a blank tape on the night of his favorite show and not wanting to overwrite any of his recent recordings, my dad did what any cornered silverback would do. I thought of the scene in the 1959 movie Journey to the Center of the Earth when Hans caught the antagonist Count Saknussemm eating his pet duck. The Count said,
"I needed food so I took it."
And that's what my dad had done. He took it. My mother was furious. My dad explained that he had inadvertently put one of his tapes on the shelf for safekeeping. He was sure her fifth tall ship tape was among his videocassettes. My mother ejected the tape cutting off Martin Sheen's rant on the sanctity of each citizen's duty to cast a vote. She read the label which was in her own handwriting. My father shifted his story from a case of mistaken identity to accidental premeditated overwriting. He erringly recorded over my mother's tape. She wasn't buying that defense either so my father did the only thing a defendant presented with overwhelming evidence of guilt could do. He blamed me. Now that might have worked back in the day, but now that I was no longer the omega of our little troupe, I wasn't going to take the rap. Left with no other options to squirm out of the predicament, he fell on his own sword and confessed. The last time I saw my mother that mad at my father she caught him cheating at Scrabble.
My dad tried to make light of the situation by appealing to my mother's logical side which if was anywhere to be found was playing solitaire somewhere in the depths of her soul. He reasoned that no one ever viewed any of the tapes over the past twenty years. He explained that cross magnetization likely rendered the recordings unviewable which I found both compelling and impressive. He noted that the shelf life of the tapes had expired years ago. My mother handed the tape to my father then turned about revealing a broad smile. She left the room with a chuckle, leaving my father and I puzzled.
Apparently, the six tapes on the bookshelf caused my mother a certain amount of anxiety. She knew she was never going to watch all 48 hours of those fucking tall ships gliding about Narragansett Bay. In all those years she had viewed only five minutes of the first tape maybe four times. Even she thought they were boring. Now that the set was incomplete, she was finally free. A few days later the tapes disappeared from the shelf in the bookcase. The only one that survived was the dubious tall ship tape #5 which my father commandeered for his recording scheme. Eventually, it wore out.
As the years passed, I was certain that my mother's tall ship tapes ended up in a landfill somewhere in Rhode Island, but the truth is she never threw anything out. Most of my mother's belongings were spirited off by a friend of hers who after my father passed convinced my mother to make her the executor of her will. When my mother died, I was allowed to retrieve a few items from my childhood home. I took my wedding picture that was tucked in the back of a closet. I also got a framed collage of my sisters and me as children. I retrieved a bowl that a local artist made which I gave my mother on her sixtieth birthday. I was required to document everything I removed from the house I grew up in. When I emailed the information to my mother's friend, she didn't waste the opportunity to tap the animosity that had hardened on the surface of my family. She emailed me with,
"I find it astonishing that you are interested in family heirlooms."
I thought of responding with,
"That's funny. I was going to say the same about you."
But I didn't. Instead I answered,
"Enjoy the tall ship tapes. They're worth money, you know."
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