Newsletter for alumni of The Abbey School,
Mt. St. Benedict, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.
Caracas, 16 of
January 2016 No. 741
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Dear Friends,
Here is the first part of your emails on
the activities at school.
Subject: Abbey School - Extra Curricular Activities Memories
TO BE CONTINUED IN CIRCULAR No 746
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Glen Mckoy <mckoy43glen@hotmail.com>
09/02/15 at 4:08 AM
Dear Sir Anthony,
Thank you for your
email.
We are on Facebook,
that is a common site now, about 109 brothers are on that site.
The Circular are
not sent out as before, you must go to the Mount Blog now to see the circular,
I am cc.ing Sir Don
to introduce you to the Blog & I will cc. Sir Kazim to add you to the
facebook site.
I do send out
emails most of the time, however I have been busy with life, as you know, and
the family is very important you must not sacrifice there,
I can tell you from
experience ha! ha!
Take care and I
must thank you for your support.
Have a good day,
best regards
Cheers my brother,
Glen.
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Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2015 12:50:58 +0000
From: anthonyali44@yahoo.com
Hello Glen,
Hope all’s well
with you and yours.
Not sure if it’s my
email or a glitch but I have stopped getting emails and Abbey school news, I
used to and enjoyed get news of what’s happened with past students and also
what’s happening on the mount.
Sorry that I have
not been able to participate in past activities, mostly because of my work
schedule and occasionally little time I get with my family life.
I would really like
to still be part of the Abbey boy's alumni, and try to get more involved in
activities with the Abbey past students.
Can you kindly
please keep me updated on Abbey alumni information.
Thank you
Cheers
Anthony Mark Ali, Remote offshore EMT/P,FF,EMS/AHA
Instructor.
868-794-8406 cell
954-306-1188 us#
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On Monday, June 22, 2015 1:58 AM,
Glen Mckoy <mckoy43glen@hotmail.com> wrote:
Dear Sirs,
Brothers, Friends & Fellow Knights,
So wonderful to
hear the stories from the horses mouths, absolutely amazing little brats we
were ha! ha!
However, these
stories rekindle our joys as boys.
Thank You for
sharing & keeping this fire burning.
Long Live The Abbey
School, Mount Saint Benedict - Alumni- Association - Old Boys Club &
Historical Society of Caribbean History.
Thank you. Sir
Keith Allen on your feedback our on dear Fr. Cuthbert, good to hear he is back
on the Mount, however still weak. Keep us informed.
May The Lord Bless
Us All –
Long Live Our Realm
– ours Faithfully
Glen McKoy.
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From: idmitch@anguillanet.com
Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2015 19:13:53 -0400
Hello, Bernard,
How very good to
hear from you after more than 50 years!! I remember you well.
You were always the
no-nonsense type whom I cannot imagine anyone would want to “sanpat” or
“hedge”, far less “toothpaste”.
I occasionally
searched for you on Google, but got lots of French or Spanish pages which I
could not understand.
Please tell
Ladislao what you have been doing with yourself over the past 50 years.
He wants only 50
words (or more, if you can) to publish in his Circulars.
I shall add you to
the list of Old Boys I occasionally send a reminder about Ladislao’s Circulars
which he produces each week for the alumni of MSB.
They go up on the
internet as a blog, usually on a Saturday or a Sunday, and there are 13 years’
worth of them here: http://abbeyschool2015circulars.blogspot.com/ .
You can access the
previous years by going to the “Links” in the right-hand column.
Keep well.
Don
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From: Bernardo Fontaine
Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2015 6:44 PM
Well, Mount
companions,
Very interesting
torture methods.
I do not remember
them or maybe I was so innocent that I do not recall.
However I recall
father Eugene sparking with a wood stick to Castells, Zeven, myself and others.
Joe and Baby Joe
were there, also Piton and Joel Blandin.
Regards
Bernard Fontaine
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On Jun 21, 2015, at 8:27 AM, Don Mitchell <idmitch@anguillanet.com> wrote:
Hi, Attila,
I do remember
“toothpasting”. It was not as popular a form of torture as “hedging” and
“sanpatting” during my time (1955-1964). The way it worked, was you squeezed a
mass of toothpaste into your enemy’s bed between the bottom sheet and the cover
sheet. I never did it to anyone, nor did anyone ever do it to me, so I am
not familiar with the finer details of the procedure. Indeed, in my decade-long
stay at Mount, I only ever recall it being done once or twice in my dorm.
“Hedging” involved
four or more boys holding the arms and legs of the victim and swinging him back
and forth until just the right momentum had been developed to cast him up onto
the top of the Bougainvillea hedge that ran along the south edge of the
driveway into the School. The skill was in ensuring the victim was not thrown so
hard that he was projected over the hedge and risked rolling down the steep
hillside on the other side of the perpetrators. Now should he be thrown so
short that he slammed into the prickled branches and bounced back onto the
concrete in front of the gang. It had to be done just right so that he perched
for several agonising minutes on the very top of the hedge, and slowly and
painfully wriggled himself back down to the ground. I was both a victim and a
perpetrator in several of these activities.
“Sanpatting”
involved several boys, the more the merrier, surrounding some unfortunate
victim and slapping him on the back of his head repeatedly until he either
broke down in tears or charged into the crowd with fists flailing, either of
which results would bring the proceedings to an end.
I am sure there
were more varieties of torture sessions we inflicted on each other, but they
slip past me and recede into the dark abyss of my Memories of the Mount. None
were as cruel as the ones devised by the Monks. I recall being made to kneel in
the corner of the “football boot shoe room” in the Small Boys’ Dorm for an hour
at a time if you were caught talking after lights out. I also recall being made to kneel out in the
hot sun on the asphalt driveway with both arms extended holding a heavy
dictionary in each, if you were caught talking in class. Other Monkish torture
methods have been mentioned by others, so I won’t repeat them.
Keep well.
Don
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From: gyuris
Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2015 8:00 AM
Hi Bandit!
Well, actually we
didn't HAVE a scooter, ...
It was the priests
that had a few scooters in the motorpool and on occasion I borrowed them
without asking, ... and at great peril to my continued stay at the Mount.
But I had a crush
on one of the girls at the St. Josephs girls’ academy down the hill and I had
to go by her dorm window to at least to see her.
It never occurred
to me to realize that if the nuns there ever caught us communicating, they
would report me to the priests at the Mount that I was on a scooter, and after
hours no less, and that would be the end of my days at the Mount.
When young and in
love one does not think ( or care) about these things.
What is exactly
"Toothpasting" guys" ?
What did you do?
Attila Gyuris
1964-1969
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On Jun 20, 2015, at 12:21 PM,
david Decastro <calypsobandit@live.com> wrote:
Hi guys,
In reading that you
guys had a motor scooter and could ride it down the hill IN THE NIGHT, amazing.
I got a cut ass for
talking to a girl from the village one afternoon near the play field .
Father Ildephonse
saw us with a spy glass from the mount.
You guys had it
nice.
Also you must hear
this story: one day in father Leo class somebody released a very stink FART.
He went ape and
insisted that the nasty culprit stand up and admit-WELL WHO THE HELL GO DO
THAT???
NOBODY, he got so
angry he said he would not teach for the week so he came every day said open
your Latin book and teach yourself you nasty boys, so that's what we did.
They were on our
ass for every small thing. That was the
way it was, a series of endless cut ass.
I even got one the
MORNING I was to go home for end of term in my pyjama for tooth pasting guys.
Now, that was the
way it was
YOU LITTLE SUCKS
(HA-HA-HA) "BANDIT"
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From: gyuris@yahoo.com
Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2015 23:28:57 -0500
Hello Jan:
- GREAT memories. I
can relate to all of them. Amazingly, that clandestine introduction to the
motor scooters you gave me and, after you left, the thrill of my subsequent
night rides down the hill to town, were probably instrumental in my lifelong
love affair with motorcycles to this day. Especially long distance adventure
travel riding. Thanks for showing me the ropes, even if it was on a stolen
italian scooter! ...
You know, after I
got out of the Mount, I never stopped riding after that, I always had a
motorcycle of one kind or another, probably owned about 15 different
motorcycles in total including a Triumph Bonneville and a Harley Davidson Road
King ... and almost 40 years later, I still ride my current BMW GS everyday
even today, ...
As you probably
know, In 2012 I completed a long distance adventure ride of two months from the
US to Ecuador. I intend to continue the trip to south to the Patagonias and
back after I finally really retire from professional flying.
- By the way, that
movement is called "flicking your wrist". It is a typically
Venezuelan gesture to indicate "there is trouble".
- I think you
introduced me to that Polish piano teacher too. I forget his name but he was a
very nice guy. He even took me and another one of his piano students ( it might
have been Lindsay Moffat, I don't remember for sure) to a classical piano
concert in Port of Spain one time! And I also got some free piano lessons from
Lindsay Moffat too. I remember It was always a race for the piano among the
piano students to get the key to Bennet's Hall to go practice piano after
lunch. I think that was one of the reasons I finally stopped my piano lessons.
I could not get access to the damn piano to practice often enough.
Anyway, I took
piano lessons from this Polish teacher for about 2 years I think, then I
switched into playing guitars. Stanley Achong was my first guitar teacher and
the lessons were in the staircase. He would charge me 25 cents per hour, on
credit. I still owe him for some of those lessons!
- You have a great
memory for names, yes it was Arthur Cumberbatch ("Atta") who was the
"hand flute" virtuoso. He was really great at it. He would practice for
hours.
- I also devoured
the Biggles books at the school library. I loved to read all the books about
his flying adventures in squadron 266 during WW I, flying his Sopwith Camel
against the " Huns" (the Germans).
I remember that Fr
Augustine, the librarian, was very lax and sporadic with opening the library
for us. The library hours for borrowing books were usually a short period after
lunch. Days would go by and he couldn't be bothered to come open it because he
"got busy" with something else and he just would not show up, ... and
the line of waiting boys would go away dejected after waiting for their entire
lunch break, hoping against hope that he would show up to open it.
- Now that I
remember, and after you mentioned a few, it was amazing how much petty abuse we
had to endure from some of those priests ... Real petty tyrant nutcases, some
of them...
Banning guitar
playing because "it bothered their nap time". Caning everybody until
someone confessed simply because one of the boys made a noise, ... how
nazi-like! Reminds me of the Gestapo tactics in villages to flush out who
were the members of the resistance. Not allowing to go to the toilet to pee!
...
All these things
seem like an outrage by today’s standards... I had forgotten about these
abuses, but I guess we all suffered through them at one point or another...
Regards,
Attila Gyuris
1964-1969
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TO
BE CONTINUED IN CIRCULAR 746
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EDITED
by LadislaoKertesz
Send
information to: kertesz11@yahoo.com,
if you would like to be in the circular’s mailing list or any old boy that you
would like to include.
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Photos:
Bandit p72x p73 The Early Times
13LM9484LMESCO, Two muscle men Luciano and Salvador
13AM0152AMOGMO, Alfredo y Gonzalo Montiel and wifes
04TM0010TMEWFE, Timothy Mew and wife
