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<p align="center"><b><font face="Arial" size="3"><br>
</font></b><font face="Arial" size="2"><img border="0" src="photos/art42.jpg" width="156" height="205" align="left"></font><b><font color="#990000" face="Arial" size="4"> Historical
Perspectives</font></b></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">In an effort to
try to provide some context about Spratling's world in Taxco
during the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, we are providing mini
accounts written by people who knew Bill Spratling or who
were actually a part of the "Taxco world" of that
time. The drawing on the left is one Spratling did in
1929 and is entitled "Taxco and its Parroquia"</font></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p align="center"><b><font face="Arial" size="3">Wings</font></b></p>
<p align="center"><b><font face="Arial" size="2">by Verónica
Albin</font></b></p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">"It's a
pterodactyl with a fat hiny, Mommy" shouted my four
year-old Axel when I told him that the 1930's Cessna on the
photograph was called the 'Pájaro nalgón.' His
paternal great-grandfather, Moisés Sáenz, stood proudly next
to it wearing his aviator hat. When 20 years later my
son and daughter asked to see the photograph again, my father
responded that it was long discarded in one of my mother's
'nesting impulses.'</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">"What is it
with wings and this family?" my children asked me
later. I said I had no idea what they were talking
about. "Cessnas, nesting-impulses, and bats, for
God's sake! come on, Mom, this is totally weird."</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">I hadn't realized
that as my children grew up they were regaled with stories -
pretty ordinary ones as far as I was concerned - about the
days I had spent as a child at my parents' beach house <i>Quinta
los murciélagos. </i>It was then that I figured out for
the first time that <i>Los murciélagos</i>, the 'Bat Villa' -
that haven on the water on the coast of Guerrero - was seen by
all but us who dwelled in it, as a ship of fools. And it
was in such a ship, not surprisingly, that Bill Spratling and
his Cessna occasionally came to roost.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">My Grandpa, my
Dad, and Bill used their Cessnas to scare the living daylights
out of anyone who climbed on board, but Robin and Felicity
Thomas used theirs as a business: they flew dead Americans for
a living. Their company <i>Sarcófagos Aéreos, S.A. </i>prospered
during the high seasons and tides, and floundered during the
low. I have no idea how they landed at our beach house
in Acapulco in the late 50s, but they did. After all, it
was common for strange birds to land and take-off from the Bat
Villa all the time.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">The house got its
name from the hundreds of bats that flew in at dusk from <i>La
Roqueta</i>, a beautiful island right across the channel
connecting the Acapulco Bay to Boca Chica and Boca Grande, the
two main gateways to the Pacific Ocean. The bats would
glide in at dusk and hang up-side-down from the wooden beams
of the Quinta to spend the night; they would depart at
dawn. So did the French engineer named Michel Kuhn - who
chose as his perch the master beam across the living room -
and whom we, the children, feared because he dined on our fish
bait decades before sushi was fashionable.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">Phyllias LaLanne
showed great contempt for the French engineer perched on the
master beam. Unlike the 'Frog,' as he called him under
his breath, Phylllias was a vegetarian who consumed only
cucurbits, having learned the great virtues of this diet
during his time in India as an officer in the Raj. He
supplemented his diet of watermelon rinds with an English
fortifier called Whitavim that, when mixed with Gin, had a
much more nourishing effect - pour me equal parts, sweet
child. He, too, refused a bedroom, and preferred to show
his mettle by camping out in our gardens sheltered by an
'excellent' standard-issue pre-partition British government
tent. He was, of course, a naturalist shaped and molded
by Darwinian shoes. As such, he would wake up at dawn,
dress in his white army uniform and Saharakopf, and lacking a
bugle, would blow on a conch-shell to wake up the
children. With sleep on our eyes - but with smiles the
size of corn-on-the-cob - we would follow our pied piper of
Guerrero to harvest the ripest mangoes, persimmons, almonds,
and papayas from the orchard. Afternoons were joyfully
spent stringing and hanging the ripened fruits from the wooden
beams throughout the old house for the bats to break their
fast at dawn.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">But splendid
breakfasts were not only reserved for those winged
creatures. There was another strange bird that often
flew to Bat Villa on his Cessna. He came to us with
buckets full of fresh frogs for a delightful meal for
all. "Bonifacia, buona faccia, bella faz, bello
rostro, beautiful-faced woman! I am here! Where
art thou?" he would shout in order to have Bonifacia Nava,
the cook, come out and shower Tata Beel with hugs and
kisses. And so, with a muddy splash, would land Bill
Spratling at <i>Los murciélagos</i>.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">"You are NOT
taking the children up for a spin" my Mom cried
adamantly. "Bill," she earnestly pronounced,
"I made my husband give up his Cessna when I got
pregnant. After I had my first child I trusted you and
flew with you at the wheel, or stern, or cockpit, or whatever
the blasted thing is called, to go see that turquoise mask in
the mountains...and you purposefully flew the damn bird
up-side-down, like the bats on the beams at <i>Los
murciélagos</i>, and I peed in my pants. The children
stay put. I stay put. My husband stays put.
You go on and kill yourself over the Roqueta if you so damn
please, but you are not taking any of us with you."</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">"Right you
are, deah Jacqueline," Phyllias rallied in my Mom's
support. "Theeze Ahmehricans are nought to be
trustid. The only claim to fame William has is that he
is willing to eat frogs. God help us; he is no different
from the Frog on the beam eating the children's bait. We
ought to teach this William chap the difference between a
'frog' with a lowercase 'f' and one with an uppercase
'F.' If he were to dine on the uppercase ones, he would
then, perhaps, join the ranks of civilized man. Good
thing is, my dear, should anything happen, there's always
England to rely upon. Robin and Felicity will give their
best in the name of the Crown to ensure a dignified transport
and I - in the name of the British government - promise to
give all those who perish at the hands of this barbarian, and
even the barbarian himself if he insists on defying the laws
of nature, an honorable burial, in the full glory of the
British tradition. Hail, hail. 'Nough said, my
deah."</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">The phone rang on
a gray afternoon at my parents' Mexico City home. I must
have been about five or six, so I don't know who it was that
called. All I remember is my mother hanging up, in
tears, and calling my father at work. "That
fool," my mother said, "he took off from Iguala and
crashed somewhere in the Sierra. Not a trace of him or
the plane." And I wept, and my mother mourned, and
the bells of Santa Prisca tolled, and then Bill strolled back
into Taxco a month later, torn and tattered, but whole.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">But my mother was
wrong. It was not the skies who were to claim Spratling,
but a felled tree on the road. On August 7, 1967 the
bells of Santa Prisca finally tolled for Bill. At the
funeral, '<i>la muda,'</i> an Indian woman from Iguala who
sold pre-Columbian art both to Bill and my parents, took my
hand and my mother's and placed them on Bill's feet. She
then said "para que tenga buen camino" so he may
have an easy road ahead. Phyllias had passed on and
could not say his farewells to 'that William chap,' and Robin
and Felicity were not there to ensure a 'dignified transport,'
but we all knew that Bill's spirit and legacy had wings of
their own and soared without the need of a Cessna. I
miss the rascal.</font></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p align="center"><font face="Arial" size="2"><font size="3"><b>A Table in Taxco <br>
</b></font><b>
by Verónica Sáenz</b></font><b><font face="Arial" size="2">
Albin</font></b></p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2">Amidst the fires of Don Guillermo's
workshop stumbled a boy with eyes the color of tamarind seeds
who dreamed of ladling <i>caldos and pipianes</i>, not streams
of liquid silver, into a myriad beautiful molds. But it wasn't
so much that Toño wanted to become a cook, as much
as Rancho Viejo wanted to become a kitchen. </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2">The orchard's narrow paths were
pungent with the perfumes of citrus; the trees pregnant with
soursop, mango, and guava; the fruit of the tamarind trees
fell into the frog ponds as if ready to be steeped for a refreshing drink; delicious purslane filled the cracks of
the reservoir; huauhzontle and rosemaries hugged the masonry
walls of the old house, and as the banana and plantain trees
yielded their fruit, their leaves, fresh and pliant, were
ready for making tamales. All of Rancho Viejo was begging
for a cook and Toño heard its call.</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2">Early one morning Toño
found me playing by the frog pond. "Don Guillermo,"
he whispered while pointing his index finger to his temple
and moving it in circles as we sipped our freshly squeezed<i>
jugo de lima, "está un poco loco</i>. He has this
crazy idea and wants me to cook those frogs for lunch."
And so it was that I had my first of many gourmet meals at
Bill's table: Frog legs à la Toño and "airbread,"
or <i>pan de puro aire</i>, as Toño would call Bill's
sinful popovers, to soak up the <i>cuisses de grenouille's</i>
garlicky Provençal sauce.</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2">Bill's table out on the porch
was nothing if not humble. It was pockmarked, rickety, and
a little unsteady. It was the sort of table one sees in Mexico
all the time: downright ordinary. It was rectangular and sat
a maximum of 8 people on equally unpretentious (and uncomfortable)
chairs. </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2">Then one day, some twenty years
after Bill's death, I was preparing a talk on contemporary
Mexican painters for an art history class when in the slide
library at the university I came across
a photograph of David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera and André
Breton. I checked it
out along with several other slides depicting the work of
Mexico's great muralists and painters. When I gave my talk
and saw the slide blown up, I started stuttering. There they
were, these three great men, sitting at the pockmarked, rickety
and unsteady table I knew so well and had taken for granted.
I realized immediately that I was but a child when I knew
Bill, and obviously could not tell an ordinary table from
the extraordinary one that he had set out on his porch at
Rancho Viejo. </font><br>
</p>
<hr>
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<p align="center"><font face="Arial" size="1"><strong>© Copyright
1999-2003 - Phyllis Goddard - All Rights Reserved</strong></font>
</td>
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<td><b><font size="2" face="Arial">
<p align="center">| <a href="#top">Top of Page</a> |
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