I did a rod? Really?

One of the drawbacks to editing is that you are always telling people where they are wrong.  From the simplest misspelling to a major fact, the whole job is looking for mistakes, particularly at newspapers. 

People don't like to be told they are wrong.  Sometimes you just get tired of telling people that and facing from many an argument about it. It gets old.  I am guilty of losing the edge to do that and reached a point where I would let some errors go if it didn't hurt the story rather than walk over and tell someone this or that was wrong.

One I have regretted and it still bothers me.  A fellow at the last paper where I worked wrote a story that involved the Iditarod race and in particular some of the history of the gold rush in Iditarod itself.

He described one of the original discoverers reaching the head of navigation on the Iditarod River, sticking a pole in the water and declaring it deep enough by saying "I did a rod," meaning a measure of depth.  

Now, first of all a rod is a measure of horizontal distance, not depth. Do you know the story of Mark Twain? No self respecting sailor would say that, but some leeway can be given to a man who was a miner and not a navigator.  Secondly a rod is five and a half yards, a measurement usually used by surveyors as it is a fortieth of 220 yards and a fourth of 22 yards, the two nominal side lengths of a perfect acre.

But, mostly, in my own research for two books about the Iditarod and the research of several other more credible historians, the word is anglicized from an Ingalic Indian word "haiditarod," meaning a distant place.  That group of Natives traveled from their villages on the Yukon River, some distance inland to hunt caribou.  That is why it is a distant place.

I suppose I was weary that day, and tired of arguments over trivial mistakes, but I was also not going to give this particular writer the benefit of my research, especially as he apparently made no effort to check the fact on his own.  I let it go.

So, to the folks who may have read that story and passed on that description, I apologize sincerely.  I took his mistake and made it mine as well. None of them will read this but at least it is an effort to set the record straight.