The Great Typo Hunt_ Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time - Jeff Deck [18]
TYPO TRIP TALLY
Total found: 16
Total corrected: 9
* Maybe that’s for the best. In 1890, President Benjamin Harrison formed the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, to regulate the names for the astonishing number of cities, towns, and natural features that America had come to encompass. They decided that the less punctuation, the better, particularly in place names containing a possessive. So they went and blasted the apostrophe out of Pike’s Peak, making it Pikes Peak, and so on. The policy remains to this day, with only a few exceptions being granted by federal largesse (and, here and there, rebellious communities such as the Fells Point neighborhood in Baltimore—its residents insist on Fell’s).
5 | Maladies
March 11–12, 2008 (Kill Devil Hills, NC, to Myrtle Beach, SC)
In which our Heroes suffer numerous Trials against their spirits, plans, and digestive abilities in their inexorable Quest across desolate beaches, cold woodlands, and ferryless harbors.
Another burst of cold wind blew across the beach in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. I recognized that the sand wasn’t flying in our eyes, but that was about the sum of our blessings. The afternoon had yielded a fairly lousy hunt—not from hesitancy on our part, but because we didn’t know where to go. As Benjamin tromped over to a far sign, the sole bit of text on the beach, I examined the magazine I’d picked up at the only place open for business this early in the season. The cover promised suggestions for outdoor “activites”. Benjamin returned shaking his head. “Some notice about which parts of the beach are unsafe for swimming due to sewage.” Disturbing, but grammatically clean.
Our nose for fertile typo ground was proving to be stuffy indeed. We had entertained thoughts of a thriving boardwalk along the beach. Instead we found ourselves plodding along frigid white sands, gazing in both directions down an empty shore.
Benjamin pointed out that we’d found a couple of fascinating historical typos earlier that day at the Wright Brothers National Memorial. The fathers of modern aviation had tried their hand at a newspaper, and one front page showed why their talents lay skyward instead—they’d spelled the name of their own paper wrong! Another exhibit specifically called attention to a typo. A telegram about their initial flight success had misreported the duration as a mere fifty-seven seconds rather than the full fifty-nine (not to mention calling Orville “Orevelle”). While Benjamin found this intriguing, to me it meant the League had arrived a hundred years too late on the scene of a devastating offense.
“Sorry, man,” I said. “I suck.”
“It can’t be helped. Nothing’s open,” he said as we wandered by the gray waters of the Atlantic.
Yet the typos were out there, somewhere. The town slumbered in seeming peace, but knowing what I knew, I could find no such respite. I had chosen to come here on the hunt, and I had gotten it wrong. A mere three typos had been found, and none corrected. Benjamin, a numbers guy at base, would be crushed once he realized we’d dropped under the fifty percent mark of mistakes corrected versus found. We headed to a campground, where a new problem would elicit his regret with mightier force.
It was a decent enough clearing in the woods, but it appeared deserted. We selected one of the little sites facing a pond, and then found no one to take our payment at the office, which stood as abandoned as the rest of the grounds. During the off-season, campers were on the honor system to drop an envelope with the proper amount into a slot. We didn’t have cash, but we had to go grab some hot dogs to make over a fire anyway, so we could