Vetnews | November 2024 24 « BACK TO CONTENTS Prof Gareth Bath remembers the rag float of Huis Onderstepoort. Time has always been in short supply for university students, and the list of activities and demands made on them is very long. This is especially true of students at The Veterinary Faculty – Onderstepoort where there seems to be a never-ending series of dreary lectures, compulsory practicals and lengthy swotting far into the night, interspersed with interminable tests and finally ending with terrifying examinations. All this has to somehow be fitted into the far more important activities of boozing, loafing about, playing sports and chasing potential partners. Add to this all the other crucial annual activities like the boat race, the car rally, intermedics and intervarsity – and especially the University Rag Week. In the sixties this event was always held in May, mercifully situated in a small gap between mini-tests and mid-year tests. At Onderstepoort, the newbie second years just marched along in the parade with whatever took their fancy, and in 1966 a bunch of us (Arthur, Glynn, Angus and me) somehow persuaded Jan le Roux to loan us a mobile mounted horse skeleton from Anatomy, on which we put an OP saddle blanket, saddle and bridle; we dragged it through the streets of Pretoria, how the little castor wheels survived the punishment was miraculous. Every year the thirdyear class was given the task of building the OP float for the Rag Procession. The float always had to be based on a theme chosen by some far-away rag committee. In 1965 it had been “Cinema Film Titles” and that year the OP float consisted of a huge Brahman bull approached from the rear by a white-coated vet brandishing a huge Burdizzo, ready to do the foul deed. The title? “Dr, No!!!” (The James Bond movie, if you don’t get it). Then in 1966, the theme was “Folk songs”. Our lot decided to capitalise on a recent plea by a dumb politician for the Nation to “be fruitful and multiply”. A large catapult launching a baby was built, with the caption reading “Vat jou goed en trek, Botha!”. Then came our turn. In 1967 the theme was “Radio programmes” – no TV in those days! After some discussion, the elected class float-building committee decided on the Springbok Radio programme “No Place to Hide”, only to continue the genesiological obsession of OP, it became “No Place to Ride”, so we would work on a double meaning. The basic plot: a shack built over the lorry cab, a tiny boar charging out of the open door at the back of the shack, trying to mount the car, driven by an enormous large white sow that took up all the space – hence no place to ride. Easy to visualise, not so easy to build in one week, especially since the lorry would only be available the Thursday, with the Rag Procession on Saturday morning. So all willing hands were put to work on different tasks, starting immediately after the end of lectures and going far into the night. Crucial to success was the provision of “brown sandwiches” for the teams. Austin Markus somehow persuaded SA Breweries to supply crates enough to see us through. There were other scavenging teams sent to beg, borrow and otherwise acquire metal for the frames, chicken wire netting, stacks of newspapers, cardboard, acrylic paint, thatch, tools and other necessities. Peet Delport could weld, so he became chief of construction of the sow, which was about 3 metres high. But welding went on far into the night, so he had to strike the start of the weld without the welding goggles, resulting in the most spectacular conjunctivitis ever seen. He always maintained that brown sandwiches had nothing to do with it. After piggy profiles were bent and welded, hoops to fit various levels were made. There were no small-scale models to work from, all done by eye so that often the frame had to be redone. Eventually, enough frames had been welded to take the wire netting, and another night flew by. The next day, glue made from flour, and somebody standing inside Miss Piggy with sheets of wet newspaper which had to be pressed through the wire mesh enough to contact a glue-laden moist newspaper sheet applied from outside. Suddenly it was midnight, and how to ensure the paper dried sprung up in some minds. We got a few heaters and plugged them into Peet’s industrial strength extension cord. Others, led by Cheryl, were busy making little Master Boar, galloping like mad, with the same problems on a smaller scale. Still, others were making the frame for the shack. The next (second last) night, some more paper was added, with heaters working overtime. New ideas emerged, like how about giving Miss Piggy a long row of pert udders and pink nipples covered by scanty bikinis that just might drop off? Reluctantly we decided that this would not pass the dreaded censors at the start of the Rag procession. But we painted Miss Piggy pink and made her ears move. What about her eyes? Jacky, Mits, Cherry and others made eyeballs out of tennis balls, complete with long eyelashes, that could open and close. They were operated on a long cord from within the belly. Nev and his gang were puzzling over poor little Master Pig, and how to give him the sexuality he so obviously required. How to get this past the censors? Bruce’s brilliant solution was to make a very large red corkscrew that could be attached at the appropriate place once we had passed the censors. Things were becoming desperate now, the truck arrived and one crew set about mounting the shack over the cab and another was getting the banners ready – on one side “NO PLACE TO RIDE”, on the other “WAS DAAR PLEK, DAN HET HY”. Frantic mixing of paints, luckily the new-fangled acrylics dried amazingly quickly. So undercoats were barely dry when the next coats were painted by exhausted teams, supported by brown sandwiches. To bed well past midnight. The final night arrived, the car, duly constructed around Miss Piggy by John and team, was nearly complete with wheels, tyres, mudguards and a Rolls-Royce grill – John thought we’d better make the intertwined RR a bit different, which I always thought was Huis Onderstepoort in the 1960s <<<23 Prof Gareth Bath
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