
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 30, 1990                   TAG: 9007300207
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE WRITER'S MORTAL FACE IS VERY RED

It isn't often that I am put in this position, so forgive me if I appear ill-at-ease or awkward.

I have erred and I want to right my wrongs, particularly since I have finally figured out who to blame.

In order to maintain my high standing in the community and within this newspaper, in order to keep absolutely unbesmirched my stellar reputation, I must from time to time acknowledge my own mortality.

I screwed up, OK? Get off my back.

The first goof came on July 10. I was writing about birds - emus, mostly, but also about a Moluccan cockatoo, which is a rare bird indeed.

I knew that I would have trouble with this one, so I asked experts at the Mill Mountain Zoo several times: Is this a cockaTOO? Or is this bird a cockaTIEL?

A cockaTOO, said they.

TOO, I chanted, a mantra reminder, as I drove down from Mill Mountain. TOO. TOO. Cockatoo. Cockatoo. Cockatoo, too, too. Pedestrians mistook me for a freight train, and they bounded off Walnut Avenue to make way. Choo choo choo cockatoo too too.

And then I sat down and wrote a story about birds - emus, mostly.

The final score: CockaTOO, three mentions. CockaTIEL, one mention, plus the caption beneath the photo. All in the same story. Incredible.

Hard as I tried not to confuse this one, I tried too hard, thought about it too much, stepped up to the plate and choked.

I have learned two important lessons here.

First, I will never try hard again, at anything.

And second, a cockaTOO, which is at the ZOO, is large. A cockaTIEL, which is no big DEAL, is small.

The second error came just a week ago in a story about afterburners, the U.S. Air Force and the boorish Roanoke Regional Airport Commission. I retold the story of how an F-15 visited our fair city from the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, N.C.

Lazily, I accepted the spelling of "Seymore" from an airport commission document, and figured it was just an odd way to spell an Air Force base. It's a weird name for an airport, so who was I - tired and not terribly ambitious at the time - to question the spelling?

Hi, my name is Sid Jones. I'm an Air Force base. And you?

Misspelled the word twice in my column, but an alert caller prompted me to look up the Air Force base's official name and to realize my error.

Allow me to assure you that the airport employee - and this person is not one of the airport-official names you frequently read in the newspaper - has been taken to task and berated by me. One more mistake that causes me embarrassment and this person is gone, fired, sacked, adios.

Also in this ill-fated F-15 column, I described Goldsboro as 250 air miles south of Roanoke. The anal-retentive caller who alerted me to my misspelling also left word that Goldsboro is southEAST of Roanoke, and indeed it is.

Big deal.

That's not an error.

That's picayune.

by CNB