A C90 tape – The gift that keeps giving
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Among the morass of things I seem to hold on to with a grim determination I have a tape that was recorded on Christmas day 1976.
I’d been bought a Realistic (Tandy branded audio line, for those too young to remember when Tandy, or Radio Shack in the US, sold something other than mobile phones) and a C90 tape, as part of the gifting frenzy of the season.
On that tape, there are, from memory, since I really cannot bring myself to play it, voices of that long ago Christmas; my late Nan reciting the ‘Willow Pattern Poem’ for me to record, idle chit chat of the dinner table and present opening, featuring Nana, my parents, my esteemed elder brother and the girl who would become my first Sister in law, now also dead, and vast amount of giggling that accompanied our family gatherings. But the most important thing, for me; my late father, reciting from memory, this poem:
Out there, in timeless space
Dwells there another living race?
Does intelligence strive
In the battle to survive?
And what of us?
Will they say
We fought and won
The war of life
For all time to come?
It’s not a great poem; little more than doggerel in many ways. However, I can still quote it from memory 35 years later, so it has certain power and charm. I’ve never found the author, nor know if what dad recited was accurate, but the memory is what it is.
And whenever I look at the night sky, Orion standing proud in the vault of night over the Welsh hills that guard the marshlands near my home, or read something like this Huff-Po Pop. Sci. article “2 Billion Alien Earths Could Exist In Our Galaxy.” I’m suddenly 11 years old, with a tape deck that still smells of new electronics, listening to his father recite a poem that unleashed a vertiginous sense of wonder at a vast universe and our place in it.
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Found this website trying to find information on a Realistic branded c-90 tape, made in 1975 that has a recording of my dad playing with his band, The Tinkers Dam, in Providence Rhode Island. I was 2 when it was made, and it still sounds great. I have a whole box full of these things, I hope they are all in in the same shape, as they are only recently recovered. My dad passed away earlier this year. It’s like having him in the room…trouble is, he’s younger than me on these tapes!
Shit…now I feel sorry I don’t have any tapes from my old days…that sucks…I migrated to the US and left it all behind…sigh 🙁
LOL! Tee I’m sorry to hear about it.
Oh my. I wish I had read this a week ago because my husband just threw out several tapes. He didn’t have the recorder, didn’t know what was on them, and was just being an ass. I showed him this article and he apologized profusely. He’s back in my good graces. Thanks.
Wow! This post may have made me millionaire. I’ve got a whole damn drawer of these things. Thanks Hroth (etc.) 🙂
I think I’ve got several of them laying about in a hidden box or two. Perhaps a trip to the attic is in order.
Ah the Welsh hills and poetry.
To be born Welsh is to be born privileged.
Not with a silver spoon in your mouth,
but with music in your heart and
poetry in your soul.
SagaciousHillbilly
with Carmarthen roots.
I am English. I was born in Scunthorpe, a steel town whose other claim to fame is that it is the place of vice and iniquity that Jack Carter went back to, in search of the man who’d killed his brother, in the novel-noir ‘Jack’s Return Home’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack%27s_Return_Home)
I’d like to think I don’t lack poetry, however… 😀
I still have taped recordings of my kids, I should get them preserved.
That tape you treasure is truly a gift from the past. The technology is out there to able you to back it up. For your grandkids sake.
Holte, I long ago decided that, based on what lurks in my genes, I couldn’t, with clear conscience, hand the sword of Damocles on to the next generation. My father’s terrible end simply convinced me of the correctness of that assessment, and also confirmed my opinion that my probable end is best handled by strangers. Thus, I’d not adopt to hand some form of responsibility onto someone who cared about me.
Maybe a strange view, but I’m not likely to decide I suddenly pass my own eugenic standards.
Not a strange view at all, an admired one.
It’s not one I’ve found people sympathetic to.