RE: 1967-1969 year group

2013-DEC-06-1153Hrs

Dear Erroll:

I want to say some things about the 1967-1969 year group to which I belonged. I have seen some history of other groups. This will just be some remembrances I have, and some reflection. Written as they come to mind.

First Week

The first morning at Mausica and for the first time in my life, I experienced having amenities such as flush toilet and an indoor shower. I was 20.

They dropped me off at the college, about 3.00 pm that Sunday.  By 4.00 I was to be given a new nick-name which has stuck for 46 years. By 5.30 there was violence in the dining hall. One of our first year men was beaten by men from two tables. Soon he was on his way to the hospital with a nasty gash in the head. Mirrors lay broken on the ground. It was not a fair fight. The fresher had refused to bring food to a second year he had known before.

Later that evening I saw Irma Clarke in the corridor, and she told a small group of us not to worry, since "no one died last year". I was shaken by this.

With the melee in the dining room properly sanitized, we found our mattresses  missing on return to our rooms. By the morning we were awaiting the Mausican sunrise.

Errol Jones and Kenneth Bobb came in about three days late. some of us freshers were asked (told) to be involved in welcoming them. KB lost a glorious flat-top, that he might have nurtured for a year to our scissors.  When confronted, in the hall outside of the auditorium, Jonesey, about 6' 4'' tall, and chiseled, cautioned  with some resolve "Gentlemen, I clout very hard". To a man, we all walked away.

The Joe announced that later in the week Nicolin Redman would be arriving. It was clear that this was La Reine.

Memorable during the initiation was that my roommate Selwyn Bethelmy walked down the line of male freshers and served each a spoonful of a very bitter concoction that included gum of aloes).

In the first week several of us first years tried out for the football team, having been given a special dispensation so we could practice during initiation. Second years who were survivors of the team that had been depleted by the last graduation included Dalton Taitt, Frederick Beckles (deceased), Darnley Gittens (Captain), Carlsbury Gonzales, Joe Ragoonanansingh, Efebo Wilkinson (Goal-Keeper), Gerry Hernandez, Kent Rennie, and Phillip Kendall (deceased). First years who made the team that week were Nazir Khan, Dave Didier, Gregory Byrne, Roy Jagroopsingh (Deceased) Horatio Hospedales (deceased), Kelvin Newton, Albert Ho Sing Loy, and yours truly.

MSC

Our group began to organize itself. We soon elected members of the MSC. As I remember it, Noel Duncan was President, Yvonne FitzAndrews Minister of Finance, Ormon Fournilier, Minister of Entertainment, Nazir Khan, Minister of Sports, Deodath Ojah Maharaj, Minister of Information???. (No disrespect here....I have forgotten what this ministry was). Ojah was a Havenite.

Settling in

As we settled into dorm life, raiding the orange field across the road, and the sugar cane field behind the Villa became standard activities. Django (Udho Rambaran) gets the prize for moving the most oranges per night. Harrison Joseph, Harry Joe's son, pretended to be a watchman one night, and frightened the wits out of a group from Mayfair led by Gregory "Scateback" Byrnes, one of the brightest Mausicans in my time. As he sung in the calypso he made about this, others who were with him that night were Allisford Phillips, and Wray McBurnie.

Arrests for liming

Liming in town on Saturday mornings became a habit for some, especially after payday. One Saturday, a group of our first years, joined some second years including Rodney Foster on a lime in town. Typically the lime would come after men had bought Banlons and Clarks.  Police held several of them that day. Rodney has written about how they all got away, what with the magistrate bowing to the lawyer Lionel Jones who Fitzy had gotten for them. Lionel Jones happened to have been the former head of the magistracy.

Choir

Choir became a big part of the campus life of most of us. Some like myself joined both the on-campus choir, and the alumni choir (folk). The folk choir  connected us with the great Mausicans of the past, especially pioneers. Elmo Phillips, Bertie Fraser, Felix Edinborough, Alfred Wafe, Desmond Waithe, Pat Allum, Junior Howell, Ronnie Wilkinson, Paddy, Gregory Wallace, Dum Dum, Eulalie, Trevor Davis, Angelo Cato, Donald Walker, Earl Carnavon, Mennen Walker, Judy Joeseph, Francois Balfour. Then there were the great characters, Ken Marshall, Carver Scobie, Jorsling Peters.

We found ourselves all with books cramming backstage at Queens Hall one evening, the finals of the music festival coinciding with end of term exams. Clang, Clang, Clang fell flat.

We made the tapes for a long playing folk record one night in the auditorium. When they played it back the technicians found that it was infiltrated by Mausica frogs. We had to do the whole thing over.

The choir went to Jamaica with Fitzy and the Cuff and stayed near the Mona campus. We saw Bunny Grant the famous Jamaican light weight contender beat an opponent while the crowd shouted "Thump him Bunny". it was festival song time in Jamaica while we were there, and the hit was Boom Shakalaka by Hopeton Lewis. We brought back records of this song, which was not known in Trinidad.

Some of from the year group also went to Grenada, Martinique, Guadaloupe, Suriname, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico with the choir.  In Grenada, there was the famous "Billingsgate affair" in which Gregory Wallace was the star. Billingsgate was a fish market as remembered by Fitzy from his time in England, known for the prevalence of swearing.

The Puerto Rico trip was a clandestine one made in defiance of Fitzy. Some of us joined with Cyril St Louis' dance troupe, providing the folk singing. We stayed at a an army base. The trip was a complete disaster Nothing went well. No one there knew about the event at which we were supposed to perform. The final evening we went to the baseball stadium and there were 50 people in it. A major shower of rain flooded the bull pen when we had our suit-cases. So everything was drenched. We tried to sing some Spanish and the crowd nearly died laughing at our Damele betun...ay mi tio. They kept mocking our mi tio, mi tio. No place to hide.

The flight back was turbulent due to untoward weather, and Bernice Placide, who was afraid of flying then, could not be controlled and provided some more drama.

In one of the performances of Village Bachanal at Queen's Hall the show  followed the great Mahalia Jackson, she accompanied just by an organist and pianist. It must have been 1970, Ms. Jackson being brought down by Eric Willimas to give free concerts in Woodford Square.

What I remember about that performance of Village Bacchanal was that inexplicably during the show, in which there was some leeway for improvisation, d Kenneth Bobb (deceased)  pushed Claudette Bethelmy so hard from the back that she was propelled forward, her face coming into contact with the Queens Hall stage, certainly causing injury. In the melee that was village bacchanal, it was not easy for the audience to pick this up as something unscripted. I am not sure what got into KB then. But that kind of thing was not beyond him.

One of the by-products of contact with early Mausicans through the alumni choir was that some of them (Elmo, Ronnie, Trevor, Felix and Alfred) had gone on to UWI almost straight from Mausica.  They also revealed that the teachers' diploma could get you into UWI if you did not have A" Levels. That was a turning point for me. I did not have A Levels. I enrolled at UWI first chance I got, taking evening classes. This was 1970. I counted about 20 Mausicans in the economics class that year. We could take over infinity (the campus bar), and often did.

Tables and groups.

Table membership was a big part of Mausica social life. When we got there in 67, the top table we met was  the Red Guards. On it were Kent Rennie ( Minister of Entertainment), Rodney Foster, Carlsbury Gonzales, Andrew Miguel, Mike Murrel, probably Horse (Leslie Greenidge) plus others. There were other top tables included the one where Efebo sat, plus the one with Dalton Taitt, Ralph Precilla and others.

It is my view that Glory Guys became the top table in our year group. On it were Noel Duncan ( President of the student body),  Orman Fournilier ( Minister of Entertainment, Kennth Bobb, who was resident Pianist, Wray McBurnie, Clyde Maurice, Alisford Philips (resident bassist), Gregory Byrne, and yours truly. We ran events, especially the fetes. Sometimes we threw frogs during dinner. We had noisy wooden sappats which we occasionally wore to dinner along with thick blue fireman-type long sleeved jerseys marked "Glory Guys".

Among the second years there was a female group about which I should comment because they were so completely dominant. It was led by Irma Clarke, and included Heather Johnson, Annette Alleyne, Cheryl Morong, Linda Heywood, and Annette Riley (deceased).  This group of second years, when together, were quite intimidating. They were ahead of the times in favouring wigs. When they came up for dinner, you looked on in awe as they swept by.

The Pudding

During one of our formal dinners, for which the auditorium and lecture hall became one there was a pudding ceremony, that Fitzy had brought from England. The tallest men in the college carried the flaming pudding over their shoulders and had to walk in procession among the seated tables. As I recall, the bearers were Raymond Mendez, Errol Jones, Noel Duncan, and Frank Stanisclaus. The heat of the pudding unnerved one of the bearers, and it moved off center, disrupting the balance and falling on Cheryl Gittens. This became Pearl Mulrain's signature calypso.

Grell cup

Our first Grell cup and Davis Charles of the Villa flat brings in linen etc from home. Chenille bedspread and so on. Flowers. Fancy mats. So the villa flat gets to be the bomb room. A sign is put up by somebody with a bald head, and placed just outside of the auditorium, and it says "Fair Haven-Campus Donkey"!! That kind of thing does not go down well. So we decided to live up to this, and the room of Sto and yours truly was designated a garbage heap. Hostel members are invited to throw their stuff in it. Cane  peeling, orange skin from the night's take. We left the door open so fellow hostel members could dump their stuff. No one must insult us thus.

The Mayfair flood

Some time in our first year someone, apparently from Haven, turned on the tap in Mayfair's washroom and placed a stop cork in the tub. The result was a flood on the ground floor there, that wreaked havoc. The bad boy in the hostel was Beck, and he decided to come over to haven to find out who had done that, and he had a cutlass. We shuttered up. No one was to go outside. It had cooled off by the next day.

Calypso

Efebo Wilkinson won the crown in 1968 with "Play Mas" and "Mausica". Second was Gregory Byrne, with "Watchman" plus one, and third yours truly the Lord Scrathcie with "The change and "Grell cup". The D'Abadie people could not get enough of my song "the change" for which I have issued an apology in retrospect.

Notable for me was Pearl Mulrain's "the Pudding tumble down". She may have tied for one of the prizes. The next year, 1969, the crown was taken by yours truly. I regrettably do not recall the runners up.

Ole Mas

Ole mas for our year group was memorable. I will recall what for me was the funniest portrayal, and it was by Dave Didier's. The caption was "Acting warden--taking a peep into every thing". The unfortunate object of this was Roland Maunday, who indeed in a short tenure as acting Warden, made what many felt were too many intrusive trips down to the hostels. What made this poignant was that like me, Dave was one of Maunday's IA boys, and had to face him in the shop during the week after.

Departure of Harry Joe--ascent of Osbourne

Sadly, at the beginning of our second year Harry Joe retired, and was replaced by Bunny Osbourne who came in from the Ministry. He did not like the place, and rumour was that he was sent in to close it down. On his first morning in the assembly he said to us from the venerable lecturn "Mauseeca Stinks!!" He meant this literally as well as figuratively. Now we had become accustomed occasionally to the smell of fowl tootoo in the Kirkendale vicinity, but Bunny had a more general sense of the stinkage. He then complained that the place had too many stray dogs. This gave me my winning calypso. He had come to fix the place.

Roland Maunday had taken our tutorial to Mayaro for a weekend. Good group...Ken Parmasad a tutorial member lived near to the beach and we visited his home. He took us to the home of Edwin Hingwan famous artist who worked from a wheel chair with the brush propped against his hands by a device. That Sunday afternoon Fanny Roopchand joined the group on the beach and she reported that Osbourne had announced at the faculty that he was going to do something about yours truly on the Monday.

Indeed the next day he sent to call me from class in the hall. By the time I got to the door of the staff room, a delegation had gathered inclusive of Gwendoline Williams, Yvonne Fitz-Andrews, and about 10 others. He called me inside of the staff room, but had gotten cold feet. He asked me what could he do to quell the untoward sentiments students seemed to hold where he was concerned. It was not for me to help him with that. I told him that perhaps he could come down and teach like the Joe used to. But he had deeper problems than this. Harry Joe had started the place, and was god. He was not Harry Joe, could never be. Sorry to say. No disrespect intended. He also did not like the place, and Mausicans are not stupid. We could read.

New Faculty

In our time we got new faculty in Linda Romain (History) and Sandra Pouchet (English). We welcomed this injection of youth. Both were top class, and respected for that. Both were scholarlry in approach. It was my first real exposure to local history. I enjoyed reading that history, and the classes. I think we adopted the two Romain boys as Mausica mascots. From this distance, decades removed, I think I can say that there were occasional comments about the walk of one, and the skirts of the other.

Tragedy and sadness

Some time in our first year, Cassian Lopez, a quiet student, suddenly shut off from the world. He started missing weeks at a time. Would come in for a spell then leave again. No talking. He did not take exams. This went on like that till we graduated. We graduated without him. On the Sunday evening before school opened the next term, when the 67-69 group would have been preparing to enter the world of work the next day, the news came on the national media that he had drowned on the North east Coast.

Early in our second year one Sunday morning we got the news on the radio that there was an accident at the Piarco roundabout in which there were Mausica fatalities. We lost Horatio Hospedales and Cheryl Gittens in this. The warden and Cuffie were abroad with a segment of the choir and missed the grieving.

Pearl Khan, a girl of extraordinary beauty and stateliness abruptly left the college in the middle of her studies. She got married, and sadly, was to commit suicide not long after. In my view, she should be listed among the Mausicans. I do not see her name. She belongs to 67-69. She was one of us.

Postscript

I was among those who did a third year at Mausica. it was not the same as the first two, though the repertoire of Mausicans I now know personally expanded greatly because of this. I lived off campus. The people I used to know as first years were now second years, and I had enough sense not to get in their way, knowing what it means to be a second year.

Theodore Lewis

1967-1969 (plus 1970-71)

Lord Scratchie

Theodore Lewis 69