Caracas, 6 July 2013 No. 609
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Friends,
A
little late during vacation period, but not forgetting you.
------------------------------------------------------
Re: MSB database
MSB Update - as of May 19, 2013
Don Mitchell <idmitch@anguillanet.com>
22 May
Hello,
Ladislao,
I just
realised you were not on this thread started by Tony.
It is
a wonderful story, fit to play a starring role in one of your Circulars.
Keep
well.
Don
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
From: Nigel
Boos
Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 8:00 AM
Subject: MSB Update - as of May 19, 2013
Tony,
I had
a good laugh at your 50 words. (BTW, I meant 50 words, NOT 50
paragraphs).
Man,
you were a menace!
Strange,
I always pictured you as this sweet angelic child who wouldn't hurt a flea.
Yikes!
Was I
mistaken!
Now,
I'm sorry that I can't include all these fabulous stories in the DB, but thanks
a million for sending them.
In the
meantime, please help me by summarizing and offering to the world whatever
you'd like to see on your epitaph.
If you
can't do that, my friend, I shall have to try myself, and you may not like the
result! (This is not a warning, but a gentle threat).
Have a
great day, Tony.
Nigel
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
On 2013-05-22, at 7:27 AM, vcl28@aol.com wrote:
Nigel,
Do you have a paypal account?
I would like to do both, send my story 50 words and a donation.
Here is my story. It was
two weeks before the GCE exams in 1964.
I was in Form 5 and to all intents and purposes classes had ceased, and
we were studying for the exams which would determine our future.
At that time the Form 5 and I think that the Form 4 boys were
occupying the first room of the refectory to the north in the new building up the
hill. Put another way for those who
don't remember where north is, it was on the furthest side of the building away
from the kitchen, and as was the custom my table was serving.
We were in a state of some euphoria. After all, this was the last couple of weeks
at the secluded Abbey School on top of the hill ... well two thirds or half way
up the hill anyway. After that, it was freedom!!
I was serving, and the time came to get more meat from the
kitchen. As I collected one of those
stainless steel plates at one of the tables one of the guys had made a joke,
and so when I approached the kitchen and the serving girl came to the kitchen
door I said to her, "The boys say that they don't mind the horse meat but
why can’t you take out the saddles"
Two hours later I was standing in Bo-Bo's office, he was fit to
be tied. He was actually babbling, and
after babbling for around 15 minutes, the only thing that penetrated my mind
was that I was being expelled and had to leave the Mount by 3 PM. I was not
even allowed to go into my cubicle in the dorm to gather and pack my
belongings. I had to pack in the yard. They got two or three of the boys to bring
down all of my stuff.
I had an aunt living in Trinidad at the time and I called her from
that phone which was in Bo-Bo's office which could be accessed from outside as
well as inside his office and I called my aunt who sent a taxi.
For the GCE Exams I had to leave Maraval in POS and take two or
three buses to get up to the Mount to do the exams. I missed several. I am a late developer. My school grades were never what one would
call impressive. At 23 years old I was
on fire with ambition and went to university and studied plant
physiology/agronomy since my family were in the sugar cane business and that is
what I wanted to do. But, at 17 I was a
mediocre, if not a bad student which was why I was sent to the Mount in the
first place since I was expelled from every school I had gone to here in
Guyana. And my father said, "Enough,
its boarding school for your little ass."
The first school I ever attended was St. Joseph's high school, it
was essentially a girls’ high school but they allowed boys in the lower classes
until the time came to enter high school.
Then the boys went to the St. Stanislaus college and the girls continued
on at St. Joseph's. We had already
finished the tests and I had passed the application for St. Stanislaus college
and had been accepted. So, on the last
week of school at St. Joseph's, it was the custom by rotation among the biggest
boys in the school, myself and another boy Jerome de Freitas were tasked with
opening the gates to the school which were one of those old time security gates
with a large 12 foot long 2x4 securing it. Anyway we decided that we would play a prank
and released the air out of nearly three dozen bicycles, so all the girls had
to push their bicycles home. The next
day Sister Mary Joseph the head mistress and this large gentleman from the
government school next door, who had what looked like a stalk of sugar cane in
his hand, came into our class and threatened de Freitas and myself with a good
caning before everyone in the school. The
next day in the assembly hall, we were trembling. I had up to that time never seen such a huge
mother than this chap who was going to cane me and de Freitas. Anyway we cried and begged etc. and we
escaped the trashing but we left St Joseph's under a very dark cloud indeed.
At Saint Stanislaus College I didn't do much better. Ferilas [I hope that I spelled that one right
the lord knows that I had received enough of them] was the preferred method of
meting out punishment for any transgression at Saints. The ferilas were delivered into the palm of
the hand with what looked like the 2 inch thick leather sole of some one's size
13 shoe. Every morning Monday to Friday
at 9 AM, a prefect would pass from class to class sharing out the list of
persons to be chastised on that day. The
teacher in the form I was in did not even have to look at the list. She used to point to me and say Vieira, and
then she would look at the list to see who else was going to get it that
DAY.
Of course that could not continue and since my family held some
importance in the country among the Catholics they did not actually expel me
and throw me out on the road, but they called in my father and told him that
they would be very happy indeed, if he could assist them by finding some other
school for me to persecute.
So I went to the first non-Catholic school I ever attended,
Central High School and was expelled for throwing squibs in the girls’ toilet. To this day I have no idea how they found out
that it was me who did this despicable act, and had the girls running out of
the toilets in various stages of undress. My cousin Roland da Silva also a reprobate and
an old Mount boy had done much the same thing with similar results.
That was when my father pronounced those faithful words, “It’s
the Boarding School for your little ass." It was like a sentence to the electric chair
the way he said it.
In retrospect, I remember two things with some distaste
1. I
was a young Guyanese boy in a strange country/island. They had no right to just throw me out on the
road and literally off their mountain in that manner. They should have allowed me to finish the GCE
exams resident in the college since with all that travelling and the inevitable
emotional reaction I did not do well in GCE and had to do it all over again
here in Guyana through private tuition the next year. They could not stop me from going to the
college to do the GCE exams since I had already paid for it and
2. I
thought that this was a complete overreaction by Bo-Bo to what was in fact
intended to be just a joke. Not perhaps
a very tasteful one, but not said in malice either. I guess he did not get it.
Today I realize that I was taking advantage of my family's
position to wreak havoc in all of the schools here in Guyana, and apart from the
sad way I had to leave the Mount, for the first time in my life I was left on
my own to fend for myself and it taught me some very valuable lessons about
independence. I was still not the
greatest student in the school, but I was not the worst either. I remember that there was a list of rules
which are not to be broken. This list
was posted on the wall outside of and opposite to, the principal and Dean's
offices. Brendon Gurley, Ed Lloyd and
myself used to look at this list and decide which one/s we were going to break come
Saturday. In fact, most Saturdays we
used to get Sattoo [was that his name? I am talking about the native guy
(Carib?) who used to clean the compound] to bring up a quarter of Old Oak rum
with the weekly Anchor cigarettes, and we used to have picnics at the reservoir
up the hill from the college. We used to
build a fire and put breadfruit which abounded around the reservoir in it and
eat it when it was properly burnt. BBQ
breadfruit and rum. Just what the doctor
ordered for a 17 year old.
Finally, they even refused to allow me to attend the graduation
dance after the GCE examinations and I spent the entire evening outside looking
in since one of the boys had arranged for me to get a lift to and from the
dance with his girl and I had to wait until it was time for her to leave. I believe that it was Brendon Gurley, a life-long
friend. I was best man at his wedding
here in Guyana when he married a Guyanese girl. It was through this old boys club that I
learned he was killed in a motorcycle accident some years ago. Very sad.
David da Costa was also a good friend, and, especially, Eddy
Lloyd.
Tony
Vieira
---------------------------------------------------------------------------.
From: Don
Mitchell
Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 8:03 AM
Subject: MSB Update - as of May 19,
2013
Good
heavens, Tony.
What a
story!
I
think I remember the incident with the horse meat vaguely. The rest of
your adventures that year and earlier were concealed from us, and I never knew
you were sitting outside that dance. We held it in the refectory, and I
used to have a photo of us graduates sitting in the palm-frond decorated dining
room surrounding Bo-Bo. There must have been girls from St Joseph at some
point, but my mind is blank on that.
And, I
now know why you did not remember the nickname “James Bond” I told you about
some months ago. It was Terry John Vieira that we gave that nick-name to,
not you. As I recall, Terry John had the habit of constantly combing his
hair and inspecting himself in a mirror to make sure he looked sharp. In
about 1962 or 1963 the first Sean Connery Bond film had come out, and we were
impressed by how sharp he looked in all the scenes. Hence Terry John’s
nick name.
How is
Terry John? Whatever became of him?
I seem
to remember he left Mount in about 1963.
Don
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
Glen Mckoy <mckoy43glen@hotmail.com>
22 May
Dear
Tony,
Your
story is so wonderful, just great to read, I hope Laz puts it in the Circular.
Funny.
Cheers, Mi Amigo. For sharing, we Thank You,
Adios,
Glen.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
SECTION:
2014 REUNION Part 2
I am
glad to inform you that Don Mitchell is going to be available to do the task of
putting in order the plans for the Reunion 2014.
My
personal suggestions are:
This
event seems far away, but by the way wind blows, maybe we should put the
arrangements into hands of professionals. This would create accountability as
to actions requested or taken.
So I
propose that we hire an individual or company to take over the arrangement of
the reunion, with a specific agenda.
This way
it should clear the road for a positive action and free the time for those that
have limited time.
Since
the directorate of the association are the trusted guides to accomplish this, I
would remind all readers that we are called to cooperate with the Board of
ASAA.
I
propose that those interested in the event, should prepare a worklist
indicating the preferences as to what each of us would like to see done, or be
part off in this Reunion.
This
list could be published in this Newsletter, for general knowledge.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
Ladislao
Kertesz at kertesz11@yahoo.com,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Photos:
MSBAP00MOUNTINSIDE6512, front cover issue
No.9
13LK7424LKEGIW, George Iwaszkiewicz and
Ladislao Kertesz in Bogota
47733LK11FACEBOOK, Fr.Benedict funeral
03LK0001PAX, Business card from the PAX
guest house
