Parades

From letter dated April 25, 1954

The parade on the Queen’s Birthday was, for Belize, magnificent!

Two things made it distinctly different from any other parade I’ve ever seen: 1) it began on time; and 2) the quite enormous crowd was completely orderly and at no point pressed forward beyond the line loosely established by the police.

When we arrived, the entire parade was lined up in front of the Governor’s stand. His Excellency made a formal review, walking past each row, immaculate in his white uniform with a helmet topped by an enormous, waving white plume.

After the review, the Governor made a short speech in honor of the Queen and the soldiers gave a triple “Hip, hip, hurrah,” taking off their caps. (You should have seen the Police trying to get their helmets back on quickly and correctly without losing grip on their guns.)

Next was a rifle salute to Her Majesty, with the Infantry, Home Guard, and Police firing together. The first two volleys were perfectly synchronized but on the third, one of the Police beat the signal. Gradually the rest of the bunch fired and the final salute sounded like a nest of machine guns rather than a volley of rifles.

In the parade were our resident battalion of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry; the Police in tight black trousers, beautifully fitted white tunics, and white helmets; the police band in the same uniforms; the Home Guard, dressed in khaki uniforms and strutting even more impressively than the Cornishmen; the Firemen, with their trousers tucked rakishly into shiny black books; several troupes each of Boy Scouts, Sea Scouts, and Girl Guides; and a group of uniformed Red Cross women, led by a Red Cross man whose shouted commands to his marching females were the loudest, most military, most clipped, and most masterful of the entire procession.

 

From letter dated May 10, 1954

One of the children’s favorite occupations is watching the “parade” on Mondays and Thursdays when the Home Guard train at the barracks a block away. Last week was particularly exciting because, in addition to the regular drills, the Police had a review and parade on Friday afternoon. Alex had been telling me about it but did not know what the parade was…he just knew that Sonia had told him she was going to come back early after their naps so that they would be sure to be there on time.

The Governor was to present medals to the police; when someone mentioned the word medals, Alex mistook it for metals. Just as they left that afternoon, I discovered that Alex was expecting to see Knights in Shining Armor. I had to do a quick job of explaining and pacifying, because he was terribly disappointed. He enjoyed it, though, because the police always look impressive in their sparking white uniforms.

Then Saturday the children went to another “parade,” though they didn’t know what it was. Sonia and the McNabb’s nursemaid Ella took our two and Colleen McNabb to watch because they thought the children would enjoy it. It was a huge funeral. An elderly nurse from the Belize Hospital had died and, since she was much loved here and a very active member of her lodge, they really had a wing-ding send-off for her!

The police band played a funeral march; there were mounted police and literally hundreds of men and women in lodge uniforms. The women wore white dresses with blue belts and wide blue ribbons on their white hats. Children were in similar white and blue outfits. Men wore black suits with variously colored things that were a cross between a stole and a waistcoat, along with medals, ribbons, sashes, etc.

The hearse was drawn by two horses with flowing manes. The hearse itself was a glass box mounted in wrought-iron with black plumes floating high above each corner post, and a bronze casket covered with flowers within. (Alex was very much impressed with that, but had absolutely no idea what was in it.)

 

And in case you’re wondering how we like living in the house, with luck I’ll live long enough to find out. This is the sixth weekend that we “couldn’t fail” to get in! There’s every reason to believe that we will spend tomorrow night there…but I’ll believe it when I see it.

They have been finishing the floors over the weekend; Bucher blew his top Friday and we got some action. However, there still is the long wait between sanding, caulking, and the different coats of oil or whatever they use on the floors.

Half our stuff is piled in the kitchen and the rest has been riding around town all weekend locked in the back of the car. I got it out of the stores that had been holding my purchases since Easter because we hoped to move in last Saturday.

And even when we do get in, we will have carpenters under foot indefinitely while they build kitchen cabinets, the divider between living room and dining room, screening (they put screens in the living room and left the rest of the house unscreened!), and picketing under the house (the houses are on stilts, and white pickets enclose the carport and underneath mess and also make a cool place for the children to play), and then finish the fence. You have to have a high fence around your entire yard because there is so much petty thievery.