Newsletter for past alumni of The Abbey School, Mt. St. Benedict, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.
Caracas, 11 October 2008 No. 362
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Friends,
Now a little on SCOUTING.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Re: Pictures from the Mount 2
Rafael EcheverrÃa
Monday, July 7, 2008 8:26:32 AM
YES !!!! ...... What Jan says is correct !!! ...
I was also wondering was Big Joe doing in that picture of 1969 since he left Mount before I did and I left in 1967 ??? ...
And yes ! .. it was the first time I see Cutty in scout's uniform ... incredible !!! ...
As I said ... the pictures are real jewels
Attila ! ... Thanks !
-----------------------------------------------------------------------.
On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 5:25 AM,
Jan Koenraadt <jankoenraadt@casema.nl> wrote:
Dear Attila,
I am very amazed with your scout- and tug-of-war-pictures.
These are the jewels of all the old pictures to me.
In my scout group we did not make such complicated structures, only the tripod or quadropod with one or two floors.
I wonder if you people gave the strength any thought at that time if all the scouts would go into the tree houses together?
In fact only two bamboo beams are holding the whole floor, ha ha.
My job is to ask building permits for houses at the county.
I don't think I would get one with this structure for so many people.
So many memories the picture brings back, tying all those nuts with rope, bowline, clove hitch, whatever.
And Father Cuthbert in scouting uniform, never seen before!
In the tug-of-war picture I only recognise you.
In the scout picture the guy with the shades is Big Joe Azar to me.
But I don't understand, what he is doing with the MSB-scouting in 1969 as he graduated long before that maybe 1966 or so.
Also the boy with black hair, first above Fr. Cuthbert, to me that is Larry Thomas, older brother of Richard Thomas.
He must have graduated in summer 1967, so what is he doing with MSB-scouting in 1969?
Or I am mistaken, or he stayed at the Mount to do his A-level or something.
If you count from bottom to top, #8 is umistaken Peter Quesnel, #10 is Richard Knox.
He was in my class in June 1965, and probably failed one exam after I left.
The faces get vague higher up, I wouldn't have recognised you I think.
But you are hanging out most in the air . . .
Thanks for the pictures, I enjoy them!
Greetings Jan Koenraadt
----- Original Message ------------------------------------------------------------
From: Attila GYURIS
Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2008 7:27 AM
Subject: Pictures from the Mount 2
Caura River Scout camp - Tree House, sometime in 1969.
Many familiar faces there. I am sitting on top of the tree in front of the top tree house with the cowboy hat and the lamp hanging.
There are Fr. Cuthbert, Big Joe Azar, Oscar Cantore, Peter Quesnel, McCartney (the first in the bottom), above him is the the elder of the Roquefort brothers, Richard Knox half way up, John Pugh is sitting on the branch on the right side of the top tree house with the bush hat.
If anybody can fill in more names, please do so.
Attila Gyuris
(Need the photo, ed.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
Re: Pictures from the Mount 2 - CAURA RIVER SCOUT CAMP
Attila GYURIS
Monday, July 7, 2008 8:52:40 PM
Caura River Scout Camp 1969.jpg (487KB)
Jan:
You are welcome.
Glad you enjoyed them.
If I run across any more old MSB photos I will continue to send them.
To be sure, I am not 100% positive of the year of the picture.
It could have been taken sometime in 1968.
But I am sure it was taken in one of those two years.
Not before and not after.
I guess it was a good thing we didn' t have to worry about getting any building permits for those two structures !!! Hahaha
As one engineer to another, and between us, I admit I was in charge of building the tree houses.
We had a lot of fun building it.
And they were good tree houses as far as tree houses go.
It was something different to do from the usual Quadrapod structures that we always built.
I had really wanted to build this instead, so I asked Cutty and he gave his OK.
Actually, if I remember correctly, both tree houses were quite strong.
The proof was that nobody got hurt.
And some of us spent the night camping up there.
If you look at the top tree house, the floor was supported by two strong bamboo beams joining in an apex (stronger).
The third, (base) support beam in the rear was incredibly strong stuff too.
The floor area was done with whole (not split) bamboos.
Also, the wall had two more strong horizontal support beams, so the floor beams didn't have that much to support, except the floor platform and the human load upon it.
The bottom tree house was supported by the two parallel tree branches, so that wasn't going anywhere.
Believe me, we tested it well before getting inside.
It was stronger than a brick shithouse and much more flexible.
Also it was quite small inside, as it could fit only maybe 4 boys maximum, so overload was not really a problem.
Remember that the good thing about the green bamboo that we used is that it doesn't fail suddenly.
It is very flexible but incredibly strong & lightweight at the same time.
And flexibility is a good thing.
When it starts to overload, it starts to bend a lot first, so there is plenty of warning before any catastrophic failure occurs.
For these reasons, to me, this bamboo is the perfect natural structural construction material.
They use it for building some incredible scaffolding in India and SE Asia high-rise buildings.
Like this: http://pixdaus.com/single.php?id=25402
OK... enough of the engineering stuff...
Jan: perhaps, with your computer skills you could put numbers above the boys and start adding some names like we did in the other pictures.
To answer some of your questions:
Big Joe Azar was one of the Scoutmasters and he was helping helping Cutty.
Carlos Dvorak was another one of those Scoutmaster helping out Cutty.
He would come up for the Saturday morning Scout meetings and would attend camps with us.
Yes I think the guy above Cutty's head is Larry Thomas.
I don't remember what he was still doing there.
Probably the same thing as Big Joe Azar.
Larry was not there for A-Levels.
There were no more A-Level classes at the Mount after 1967.
Form 5 "O" levels was the highest class you could take.
Richard Knox must have failed more than one class because he was taking Form 5 "O" Levels with me in 1969.
Cheers,
Attila Gyuris
MSB 1964-1969
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------.
Re: Pictures from the Mount 2 - CAURA RIVER SCOUT CAMP
Nigel Boos
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 7:13:22 AM
I'd like to comment on this fabulous picture and say this, that the 2nd MSB Scout Troop, well-known for its wonderful, entrepreneurial talents and adventurous spirit, has once again shown what it can do / did do, and you guys have upheld and maintained the high quality of great bamboo engineering which we had become accustomed to regard as typical of our boys.
Well done, everyone, and thanks for the great photograph. I'm glad it was recorded for posterity.
Wonder who took the picture . . . . . . .
Nigel
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------.
Re: Pictures from the Mount 2 - CAURA RIVER SCOUT CAMP
Jan Koenraadt
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 8:27:15 PM
Dear Attila,
Yes you are right, if there were only three or four scouts in each tree house I trust the bamboo structure would hold.
Indeed bamboo is very strong in relation to its weight, and indeed green bamboo is very flexible and gives you warnings when the structure wants to fail.
In fact you separated the weight of the walls and roof from the floor.
So the floor beams should only hold the floor and the boys upon it.
I was only thinking if the whole bunch of boys in the picture would go in the treehouse, one or two floor beams might start to crack.
But I see you really did give the strength a thought at that time.
The picture of the bamboo skyscraper in China is incredible, but it works over there.
Amazing that it was all your idea to do something different for once instead of those quadropods that were usually built, Father Cuthbert is the man who you could successfully ask such a thing.
But then it is understandable that Big Joe and Larry Thomas and so were just helping out Father Cuthbert in scouting in their free time.
I will send you the pictures with numbers.
About Richard Knox, he was with me in the Form II picture made about June 1965.
We would have graduated in July 1968.
I think he failed one year and did his graduation in July 1969.
If you have any more pictures, please share them with all of us!
Much greetings from the other side of the world!
Jab Koenraadt
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
Re: Pictures from the Mount 2 - CAURA RIVER SCOUT CAMP
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 8:43:05 PM
I think it was Fr. " Vush " who took it.
He was the usual Mount photographer.
I had this picture with the tree houses, and a few others, tucked away in an old envelope.
I will scan the others and send them on.
You are right about the 2nd MSB Scout Troop being probably the best of its kind at the time in Trinidad.
We won several Scouting competitions, I think among them was the 1968 Chancellor's Flag competition in Chaguaramas.
There we competed against many other scout troops,
Each sent a selection of their best scouts and formed a patrol to represent them during the competition..
I remember what inspired me to join the Scout troop at MSB is when, as a small boy in Prep " A" (around 1964-1965), during a " Parents' day" demonstration on a Sunday,
The Scout Marching band came marching down from the Refectory and put on a heck of fine choreographed marching demonstration with plenty of loud martial music.
Then they changed clothes and joined the rest of the scout troop to built and completely set up TWO functioning 2-story green bamboo elevated Quadrapod camps with tents, sleeping quarters cooked dinner over an elevated campfire and had everything right there on the basketball court in front of the benches.
They even had a bamboo bridge and a rope pulley between the two Quadrapod structures.
They did this all in about 3 hours.
Then, after all parents and everybody else took a tour of the camp, they tore it all down in about an hour.
It was amazing for me to see the ingenuity and resourcefulness those boys displayed.
Most of all, they all seemed to have such a great time doing all these things.
Right then and there I decided I wanted in on that.
I also joined the marching band and played the drums. I was a band member all the way until graduating from Form 5.
We had band practise with Fr.Cuthbert in charge up in the Refectory every Saturday morning, while everybody else was in the study hall.
It was a lot of fun and I never regretted it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
That is for now, till the next one
Photos:
52UN1390SCOUTS 1952, UNKNOWNS
58UN0001SCOUTSTRUMP, Lone trumpeter
XXUN0002SCOUTSBAND, Lots of UNKNOWNS
67JK0004Firstclassbadge, Continuation on the Jan´s booklet
No comments:
Post a Comment