I'm sorry. Barbara, you could not be more wrong. You simply have your veins and arteries mixed up. Those veins you speak of are already heading back to your heart as un-oxygenated blood, which means they are supposed to be very much the color of dark blue. Arteries on the other hand, can only be seen at a few places like your eye ball and nut sack. It's simple logistics. Number nine obviously means the size of the coal or the coal seam from which it was extracted as referenced in the song "sixteen ton." ;-)