Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 11, 1990 TAG: 9004110160
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Remember ol' Pluto's words as I confess to you some mistakes I've made. Needless to say, I'm not obligated to do this. There is ample shelter behind the shield of the First Amendment, which gives me the constitutional right to run roughshod over your life and reputation.
But I won't. I'll 'fess up.
Error: Apologies, first, go to the fine men and women who do not drive Roanoke County snowplows. I wrote two weeks ago about county snowplow drivers, not realizing that they do not exist - that employees of the commonwealth of Virginia do the plowing.
Commentary: This is a good system. It forces taxpayers in Virginia Beach, where it rarely snows, to finance plowing here on the outskirts of Appalachia.
My alibi: I can't believe people in Virginia Beach let us get away this this.
\ Error: Posthumous apologies to Thomas Jackson, "Stonewall" to his friends.
I reported his last words as: "Let us cross the river and sit in the shade of the trees."
Stonewall's final words were: "Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees."
Commentary: Leave it to a 1990 newspaperman to hack the flawless poetry of a man who died in 1863.
My alibi: The sun was in my eyes.
\ Error: I reported that Morganna, the woman with the 60-inch bust who makes her career kissing athletes on the playing field, was in her early 30s.
A local chap called to tell me she could not possibly be that young, that he had seen her striptease act at a bar in Charlotte during the early 1970s.
Commentary: Morganna claims her chest began inflating when she was 9 years old and that she's been stripping for a living since her early teens. If that's so, she could be in her early 30s. She ain't saying.
My alibi: A 60-inch bust does not spring up overnight. These things take time. My only error may have been listening to this guy who travels to Charlotte to watch women strip.
\ Error: Apologies to dairy farmers, whom I maligned a couple of Sundays ago when I reported that these growers sow one type of corn that will yield ears full of kernels and another type that will produce thick stalks and foliage.
I'm wrong, and a couple of sharp-eyed farmers called me to tell me that.
Farmers grow corn. They harvest the ears and feed that to dairy cattle. The plants are shredded and stored in silos, where they ferment into silage, also for feed.
There aren't different types of corn, just different uses for it.
Commentary: Whaddaya want from me?
My alibi: I wrote that paragraph while under general anesthesia, moments after a frontal lobotomy. And it took a bad hop.
\ It is my policy to correct in print each of the errors I commit in print. It is also my policy to ridicule the person who brought my mistake to my attention.
Please let me know when I goof. I'll record your name and your Social Security number and I'll do a background check with the Internal Revenue Service.
Then we'll talk.
by CNB