Just in case you are not certain how quickly news travels in Peabody, get this. As many of you may have noticed, we had a bit of a publishing snafu in the past edition of the newspaper. Twice we ran the same story about bowling leagues forming at Peabody Lanes … on the front page! You have no idea how much people in this business just hate it when things like that happen. Really, you don’t.

However, we all know it happens. No one does it on purpose and we can usually trace it all back to a lack of communication when we err like we did this past week. Since I have only a vague idea of what happened I am going to share with you a different angle to the bowling story error.

I learned of the front page error when I went to Marion Wednesday morning and picked up the papers for mailing and distribution. After dropping some at the post office and sorting the others for distribution to various vendors here and in Florence, I made deliveries to the Peabody schools, the city building, the subscribers at Peabody Care Center, and the retail vendors downtown.

About an hour later, I was ready to head to the last delivery spots in Florence. I decided first to drop a newspaper off at Peabody Farm Service for Dick Alcorn. He and Tim Peterson own the bowling alley. I imagined it would be quite a surprise for him to see the extent of the coverage he and Tim had for what was supposed to a single brief story to encourage local bowlers to sign up soon to be involved in league bowling.

While he had not seen the paper, he already knew of the error. Someone had called to tell him before I even made the rounds and got papers to all of our vendors. Wow. Someone has way too much free time and too few really interesting things to talk about!

At least the report Dick received was correct — we messed up and Peabody Lanes got an advertising bonanza. Actually, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer pair of business owners.

There is no point in being too unhappy about the whole thing. In the grand scheme of things, what does it really matter? Did we mess up and embarrass ourselves? Yeah, we did. Will we try harder next week? We always do! Beyond that, I just don’t know what else to say.

— SUSAN MARSHALL