The Great Typo Hunt_ Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time - Jeff Deck [35]
* There already exists a cottage industry for this in websites such as Engrish.com.
8 | Davy Jones Isn’t a Biblical Figure
March 20, 2008 (Lafayette, LA, to Galveston, TX)
Plans cast aside like naughty apostrophes plucked from plural nouns, our Young Adventurers tack southward. Controversy, FLAME, and government regulations abound; truly, everything is Bigger in Texas.
“Those drivers’ll kill you,” the hostel clerk had said. “They will run you right off the road in Houston, swear to God.”
Benjamin and I had shivered, as if we were huddled by a campfire listening to the grisly tale of the Halberd-Wielding Hitchhiker instead of baking in the midmorning Louisiana heat. The clerk shed her identity as front-desk guardian of the Blue Moon, Lafayette’s preeminent hostel-slash-honky-tonk, and embraced her camp-counselor role, leaning toward us with a darkening brow. She described to us six lanes’ worth of unadulterated fear, populated exclusively by motorists whose driving education had been paid for by the blood of pedestrians. “So when you see that Houston skyline in the distance, watch out.” Her eyes grew dim with remembered horrors.
We checked out and did not look back at the Ancient Mariner of the bayou. As we approached the Texas border, the de facto boundary in my mind between familiar East and the alien territories of the West, we considered heeding the warning of the desk clerk and bypassing Houston. My U.S. guidebook confirmed her dire words about the city: “Visitors should be prepared … to get lost more than once.” I pictured a frenzy of glittering windshields in the heat, death-machines caroming at my poor girl with a conscious intent to murder. Benjamin recalled hearing a tale once of Houston drivers moving bumper to bumper on the highway—at seventy miles per hour.
When we pulled over to investigate one of the Waffle Houses, which had become a regular fixture of the Southern terrain, we discussed it over hash browns. Did we dare veer from my carefully prepared itinerary to avoid down-home Southern vehicular manslaughter? Benjamin unfurled his trusty map, and our eyes simultaneously landed on an alternative destination: Galveston. He confessed to a fascination with the town. I agreed, remembering details from my hostel guide. “A beach resort,” I said brightly, “an island beach resort … in Texas! Imagine that! We could even go for a swim.”
He fixed me with a peculiar glance. That hadn’t been what he’d meant. Having read Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson, about the deadly hurricane that struck Galveston in 1900, Benjamin couldn’t understand its continued existence as a city. “Larson explains in the book that Galveston Bay’s features serve to effectively maximize the damage of hurricanes’ storm surges. I sort of assumed, when I finished reading the book, that everyone had given up on it. Packed up and left.”
Apparently not. Two weeks into the trek around the country, we strayed from my original course thanks to Benjamin’s curiosity, my desire for an ocean dip, and the clerk’s terror-inducing warnings. We parted ways with I-10, taking a jaunt south to the lustrous Gulf of Mexico, which we would hug for almost thirty miles until eventually confronting a pier. Partway through this stretch of sunny, quiet coast, we made an heinous discovery. I immediately pulled over to the side of the road and Benjamin and I walked back to examine the object that had so affronted us—not through its existence alone, but also the fell undercurrents that, at least to Benjamin, it implied.
Thus Canal City becomes ANAL CITY.
“Well!” Benjamin said, his eyes popping even more than was customary. “We are in trouble.”
I frowned. “It’s too bad that the juvenile delinquents of the Bolivar Peninsula don’t have anything better to do, but I don’t see how that means