It must have been—NUMBERS
Posted: 14/09/2007 - 11:27 AM
Author: Colin
The Belize Times’ Think About It columnist is one of my favorite reads of the week. The author is very knowledgeable, and writes entertainingly. The author is a big PUP, but he (the author likes women shapes so he’s a “he”) seldom abuses anonymity to throw heavy stones of the personal kind at Red ghosts. But sometimes the writer trips out on pet peeves.
One such is the annual barrage at the Battle of St. George’s Caye. When it comes to the Battle, Think About It doesn’t ever think about it. Instead he plays follow the leader, bites the bait, swallows it whole like shark, and runs with it hook, line and sinker. I feel the writer deserves a little cuff with a pokono boy stick alongside the coconut to help him get off his wild trip, and get on board the good ship Tickler.
I really hope you can handle the hard truth, Think About It. Here goes: Once upon a time it was said that RH Mr. George Price wanted to obliterate the Tenth because he had a problem with colored people. Yap.
In Mr. Assad Shoman’s Thirteen Chapters of a History of Belizehe wrote: In the 1950s the People’s United Party sought to downplay the battle and use the celebrations to build a spirit of nationalism, eschewing references to St. George’s Caye on the 10th, which they re-named “National Day”…Price was attacked for having called the battle a “myth”, although he questioned the myth, not the historical event’s occurrence. But the party withdrew from that position in the face of charges that it was discriminating against Creoles by diminishing the significance of the battle.
Now rumors abound (from Red Zones) that H. George Price used to (when ih mi een a ih prime) bon candle, black ones, yep, and that he went to church every morning to pray that his enemies got their just desserts. There are stories that H. GP is a mystic man. Hey, some very big, smart people actually study their horoscopes da maanin, yu know! They say that Hitler plotted his attacks to wipe out nations in alliance with the stars. I think that former US President, the popular R. Reagan, couldn’t get out of bed (well, not exactly) without knowing what the stars were saying about him. Many, many religious leaders study the numbers game.
Hey, it’s not all yerri soh. There is the written word to guide us. Stories abound about H. George Price’s fascination with the numbers mystics. He didn’t choose September 21 as Independence Day for Belize by pulling it out of a hat!
Now, to the sense. There is a story that Mr. Price almost lost his life on September 10, 1931. Would you be surprised if a man who studies numbers was influenced to thinking that 10/9 was imbued with evil?
Reading maketh a full man. I read in the Belize Times, dated September 9, 2007, this story by Dr. Oliver Ottley, District Superintendent, Emeritus, of the Church of the Nazarene re- the 1931 hurricane. Dr. Ottley wrote: I remember my old grandfather, having lost two sons and a daughter, not to mention other relatives, did not want to even hear the old patriotic march, “ It Was the Tenth Day of September.” He would weep at the very mention of that hurricane and by association The Tenth of September, “Centenary”, as it had been called since 1898. Dr. Ottley continued: During those days someone wrote a sad song depicting that disaster. It began with these lines:
The Tenth Day of September
So dreadful to remember
The hurricane that struck
Belize Honduras on the main. (sic, as I remember it)
Really, I have often wondered if the storm crashing down on that date didn’t influence Mr. Price’s decision to do away with the Tenth. That excerpt from Dr. Ottley’s piece strengthens this idea. If Mr. Price had concluded that 10/9 was an evil day because of the terrible thing that had happened, how then does one explain his choosing that same day for National Day? I think the dots here are easy as A-B-C. National Day would have been owned lock, stock and barrel by the Blue House, therefore it would have been no cost to move it to September 21, which they eventually did.
Braa, Think About It, I think you got suckered, bamboozled by your leader’s numbers game. Superstition. Now please to stop writing twists, spins, and contortions about an important moment in our history. Eat some nice humble pie.
Hey, I love numbers myself. But I don’t study those horoscopes and those mystics too much. Still, if I had gone through ’31 hurricane on September 10 I might have wondered about significance. I guess it must have been…numbers. It must have been real easy for H. George Price to say that day was ominous.
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