Damon Point, home of the streaked homed lady

Kirk Ericson | May 19, 20220

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I spent the summer of my 19th year working outside the northern Washington town of Republic on a cattle and alfalfa ranch along the Sanpoil River, a river that drains into the Columbia. It was there that the ranch owner, Stephen Konz, told me one sunny day to build a ladder, with rungs 12 inches apart.

When I finished the ladder, a couple of the rungs were 12 inches apart, but other rungs were more and less than 12 inches apart. Rung uniformity matters in ladders, as it turns out. Mr. Konz was a patient man, so when he looked at that misbegotten ladder lying on the foundation of the log house we were building, he shook his head and quietly asked me, "Did you hear me when I said the rungs need to be 12 inches apart?"

I mumbled something, then dismantled the ladder and got it right the second time. The lesson I might have taken from that episode wasn't how to build a ladder, but that you should remain humbled by your mistakes, especially if you're feeling superior about somebody else's mistake. And be patient like Mr. Konz.

That brings us to this: I saw the worst-spelled and punctuated sign of my life last weekend, and this life has spent a lifetime checking signs for errors. This sign was such a load of gibberish that I dreamed up a new reality TV show on the spot: "Punk'd: Copy Editing Edition."

The sign stood at the entrance to Damon Point, a spit that cuts into Grays Harbor about 4 miles south of Ocean Shores. It's a lovely spot.

You can see the Damon Point sign to the right, but here's the text if you can't read it:

"Damon Point is part of the 2.6 million acres of state-owned aquatic lands managed by the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR). This beautiful sand spit provides recreational access for beach walking, surfing, beach combing, and other km impact uses Damon Point provides critical habitat for shorebirds and the streaked homed lady whkh is listed as Threatened' under the federal Endangered 5peces Act To protect are species' habitat dogs are allowed only in approved areas For more detailed information on Damon Point visit the Coastal Interpretive Center (see map)."

The first time I read the sign, I stopped at "km" and looked for an index that would suggest what it meant. Then I noticed a lack of periods. I continued, and that's where we encounter the "streaked homed lady," which was a valiant attempt at "streaked horned lark." The "whkh" is a vowelless mash of the word "which," but my favorite was having the first letter of the word "Species" be the number 5.

I had to act. A lot of tourists from out of state visit Damon Point and when they see something like this, they might think they blinked and got transported to Texas or Idaho some other state where correct spelling and punctuation are considered elitist. Washington's honor must be upheld.

I called Kenny Ocker, a Department of Natural Resources employee I worked with several years ago at The News Tribune in Tacoma. I hadn't talked to Kenny since February 2019, and I've missed being around him. The speed that Kenny could retrieve obscure facts from his brain, and the vastness of his stash of worthless knowledge, was something to behold.

"How do you know that?" I'd often ask him after he spoke some random fact. Then he'd explain exactly how he knew that.

After we caught up a bit, I sent Kenny the picture I took of the offending sign. He stopped at "km."

"Read on. It gets worse," I said.

Kenny said he knew what likely happened. He noted that the screws on the corners meant it was a replacement sign and the logo in the upper-right corner dated the original sign as far back as 2016. He later sent me an email:

"It looks like what happened to the sign was that it was recreated off the original PDF, and then someone used Adobe Acrobat to edit the text using the feature that automatically detects characters in documents," Kenny wrote. "That function did not work properly, which rendered some characters incorrectly - turning an uppercase S into a numeral 5, or a lowercase I and C into a lowercase K - and unfortunately, the mistakes that ensued did not get caught before the replacement sign was put up."

Kenny's on this. He said a new sign has been ordered, so hurry if you want to see the worst-spelled sign in your lifetime.