Typo Hunt Across America

Galveston, TX

Reporting to you live from the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant, where we are feeding off the wi-fi of a nearby hotel. I tell you, TEAL’s exploits are the very essence of elegance. There are no two classier fellows right now on the island of Galveston than those currently sitting in a compact in the dark, the eerie glow of computer screens bathing their hairy cheeks.

We got to meet some Lafayette locals last night while cashing in our free drink coupons. The exact contents of the conversation that ensued will be better saved for a separate volume, but suffice it to say that these “Yankee boys” got plenty of free entertainment. During this Crown-Royal-splashed exchange, a hand appeared in the window above our heads and feebly attempted to close it. As our room was adjacent to the hostel’s bar, we deduced that the large, shaggy-haired German that we were bunking with had decided to go to sleep. It was around nine-thirty.

Given this early retiring, I fully expected our friend to be up with the sun. However, when I woke up around half past eight, he was still there, snoring away. All right, I thought, he had an arduous day of hanging around the hostel and checking his e-mail on their computer, so don’t make any noise to wake the poor guy up. We tiptoed around getting ready and trying to get our stuff together without waking the dozing giant. We let out a quiet hurrah on his behalf when he achieved the impressive feat of sleeping for twelve hours straight, but then we started to worry for his health. Finally he rousted himself, just as we were preparing to check out… and he asked the woman at the counter if he could check out at noon instead. He returned to his bunk, pulled the sheets over his head, and for all I know may be slumbering still.

Today we would cross into Texas, ignoring the locals’ plea to stay in Lafayette ’til the weekend for the music festival. We had to move on; such is the burdensome charge of our organization’s mission. Our journey having been delayed somewhat by tiptoeing around the eternally sleeping German, as well as a brief and fumbling interview I did over the phone, we didn’t hit the road until after eleven, and we had a trek of a few hours ahead of us. The land became flatter and drier as we approached the Texas border. We stopped soon after crossing and ate at a Waffle House, where we contemplated changing our Houston-bound plans after hearing a hostel clerk’s warning about the oft-murderous intentions of Houston drivers (an impression confirmed by my guidebook, which cited “heavy road traffic” and mentioned that “visitors should be prepared … to get lost more than once”).

So we decided that Galveston might be a more agreeable destination on the way to Austin than Houston, and we changed course. My hostel book mentioned that there was a pleasant place to stay on that island, right on the beach. After driving for some time, I received notice from Authority that we’d be coming up on a ferry portion of the trip. Instantly I became wary, recalling the last time that the capricious spirit within my GPS had tried to direct us onto a ferry, in North Carolina. Then we saw signs that indicated this ferry was actually in operation, and relaxed. We brought Callie onto the great ship plying the waters of Galveston Bay. The ride across was free, but I am sure my readers are aware of the caveats that often accompany free services. In this case the hidden snag consisted of waiting on the ferry, after we’d arrived at Galveston, for nigh on twenty minutes before they let us off. A niggling complaint, perhaps, but the delay just added to the general retardation of our schedule. By the time we hit the beach, it was already almost 5:30 pm. By the time we started on our typo-hunting in earnest, it was past seven.

Wait, Jeff. Wait. Wait. They have to know. I understand your hesitation in addressing this directly, but you owe it to your devoted readers to address the whole truth of the matter here. Fine, you don’t want to talk about it? I will. This is Benjamin, and I am hereby commandeering this entry.

Before operators/operator’s, before renourshment/renourishment, en route to the aforementioned free ferry, we two discovered evidence of foul play perpetrated by another league. No one would have believed in the first years of the twenty-first century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet–no, that’s not right. Few of you would have suspected that many of the errors you stumble upon are not mere accidents but intentional changes to text that was originally quite correct, whole, and complete. I didn’t believe it at first either, but after joining TEAL, I eventually discovered that the typos we encountered could not all be attributed to slip-ups and America’s increasing lack of grammatical attentiveness. No, something sinister is at work here: another force, another league, and they are known only by the acronym FLAME (Fiendish League for Advancing Mistakes in English, or, as they write it, Feindish Leege 4 Addvancen Missteaks n Englesh). Before you snicker or, worse yet, ask if FLAME isn’t just an interesting side-plot that could give the sidekick something to write about, attend to the evidence at hand.

As you can see, the strategic removal of a single letter from an otherwise sturdy sign produces a crudely humorous effect. Mind that you follow every little ordinance and sign posting in this little hamlet, lest you be fined, chewed out, sued, or jailed for, say, parking fourteen feet, eleven and three-quarters inches from a fire hydrant! This could only be the work of the nefarious FLAME, whose changes are often more subtle; this time, though, they gave themselves away when the temptation for committing such cleverly amusing orthographic vandalism became too great.

There. Now that I’ve alerted you to be on the lookout for FLAME and their agents of destruction, I should return you to…where…did Jeff go? Fine, I commandeered it; I ought to finish. Incidentally, the letter C played tricks on us again later this very day. As Jeff and I continued our wanderings, Jeff spied a sign across the street.

He read it aloud, putting particular emphasis upon the fact that they’d only take a single application, an emphasis I failed to note. Instead, I looked up to see what he’d found now and said, “Oh yeah, it’s missing a C.” Before he could chide me for spelling applications as applicationc, he did a double-take that amused a number of rubbernecking drivers fascinated by the sight of real live pedestrians on Galveston Island. Shocked to sudden silence, Jeff turned and looked into my eyes with a look of absolute justice. I’m not claiming that makes sense; nonetheless, that was the look he gave me. We dashed across the street. How we managed waiting for the light to change, I don’t recall. The place was swarming with kids from some inexplicable field trip. We battled our way through the narrow aisles, occasionally elbowing preteens or tossing small children into displays of pot smoking alligator soap dishes. Finally, we found a sales representative, lodged between shirts and a display of mugs she was refilling with absentminded care. We explained the situation to her, and she, predictably, informed us that we’d need to speak to a manager. “He’s up front,” she said, as if being helpful, and turned away so as not to give us the impression that she’d try anything crazy, like escorting us to him. There was only one employee up front. He was running the register, so I asked him, wondering if his working here was a violation of child labor law, if I could speak to the manager. “Yeah,” he said, and then clarified, “that’s me.”

In need of an immediate reassessment of how old I and everything around me are, I fumbled. Jeff stepped up and informed him of our unfortunate discovery outside. He knew. He claimed that he’d fix it, but when pressed it turned out that he wouldn’t fix it because it wasn’t an oversight at all, but a lack of letter C’s for the marquee. They’d run out. Recognizing the futility inherent in seeking out a large, black C that could be affixed properly and expected to remain in place, we produced competing sighs and turned around to head back to our motel. They say the grass is always greener on the other side. For us, having crossed the road, the golf green was never grassier than the abandoned miniature golf place we passed on our return trip. We spotted it at the same time.

“You going to use white out?” I asked.

“Yes.”

The letters were fairly big. “Could be a lot of white out.” Then I thought about it and realized, wow, really a lot. “Does that also need…”

“Yes,” Jeff repeated. “Davy Jones isn’t a biblical figure.”

“You’re gonna use a lot of white out.” He did, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I became more worried, as he worked, about the fact that we were surrounded by road and there had been a cop only a block away. What if they mistook us for vandals and hauled us away in spite of all our claims to the contrary? Either no policemen happened by in those excruciating minutes or else the whole world really had ceased to care about an overgrown mini-golf course in the off season. Even if no one ever set foot or golf club here again, we were proud to have made the correction, for the error had been visible for all to see (or at least for all in the rightmost northbound lane to see).

“Not bad for a day’s work,” I said.

“Yeah, and you can shove it,” he replied. Well, no he didn’t, but I’m feeling like making him sound like a jerk since he left me here to finish his entry.

Totals
Typos Found: 57
Typos Corrected: 31

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 10:39 pm and is filed under Texas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.