Bob Mount: Wilkie victim of my slip of the pen

Bob Mount
Columnist
Published: October 7, 2008

I have been writing columns for this newspaper since January 1992. I recall on at least two occasions I have committed a lapsus calumi, a ‘slip of the pen,’ and recently, I experienced a lapsis mindis, a ‘slip of the mind,’ while writing a column.
I wrote that Franklin Roosevelt’s Republican opponent for the Presidency in 1932 was Wendell Wilkie. Herbert Hoover was Roosevelt’s opponent in the 1932 race; Wilkie ran against FDR in 1940.

I anticipated that one or more of my readers would take me to task in a letter or letters to the editor for my lapsus, but so far none has. Those who noticed it may have forgiven me because of their realization that people of my age, nearly 77, are likely to be forgetful.

Also, in my last column I stated that I was unclear about Barack Obama’s position on abortion, specifically about whether he approves of allowing “born alive” fetuses to be killed. A friend sent me two detailed objective analyses on the subject from a Web site ‘factcheck.org,’ which I read but which left me with uncertainties about precisely where he stands on the subject or where he stood on it as an Illinois senator. Readers of the factcheck articles can decide for themselves.

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Nearly every day for nearly a month now, I am reminded of the country song which begins, “It ain’t gonna rain no more no more, it ain’t gonna rain no more. How in the heck can I wash my neck if it ain’t gonna rain no more?” Seems to me like parts of Opelika and the malls in Auburn with their asphalt covered parking lots have been getting substantial rainfall, as have Loachapoka and Tuskegee. But the only precipitation that has fallen on my property lately has been insufficient to settle the dust on the dirt road close to my house.

Twenty-five years ago I was complaining to a now deceased long- term resident about the droughty weather that seemed to plague our area of the country. He said “Bob, you might as well get used to it. It seldom rains in Bee Hive.”

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Auburn football fans complaining about the coaches and the team’s performance are too young or weren’t even born to remember or be aware of what it was like in 1950, the year I enrolled at Auburn. Our first game was a Cramton Bowl in Montgomery. We lost to Wofford and proceeded to lose every game thereafter.

In seven of those we were scoreless. Alabama beat us 34-0. Gordon Persons, an Auburn graduate, was running for governor and said, “If elected, my first act will be to fire Earl Brown from his coaching position at Auburn.”

He was elected, and Brown immediately resigned. Shug Jordan was hired, and things got progressively better.

Bob Mount is emeritus professor of zoology and entomology at Auburn University and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.