“You can call back when it rains in Iowa.”

Now that may sound like a classic co-ed brush-off, but it was delivered with a straight face. At least I think it was straight. I couldn’t really tell, because the face was in Iowa.

I do know this, however: the face belonged to a woman in Edgewood, Iowa, who answered the phone at CropMate, a business that distributes fertilizer, weed inhibitors, and other agricultural products to the good farmers of the Greater Edgewood area. She has a sing-song Midwestern lilt, was too busy to talk, and could not get me tickets to the Peking Acrobats at WCU.

No matter, because the Peking Acrobats have come and gone. Before they did, however, lots of local folks were calling up CropMate searching for tickets. A press release for the event, distributed by Western Carolina University’s Office of Public Relations, advised interested parties to call 1-877-WCU-FEST for tickets. Problem is, the toll-free number for the Ramsey Center is 1-866-WCU-FEST. Those dialing the 877 number got a hold of CropMate.

“Oh yeah, we got a bunch of calls for them tickets,” the woman on the other end of the line said when I called to inquire. Would she have time to talk about it?

“When it rains,” she said. Evidently fertilizer sales were brisk. “I know you probably can’t tell when it’s raining here, but you can call back when it rains in Iowa.” Then she hung up.

Undeterred, I looked up the forecast for Edgewood. No rain until next week, and my column was already overdue. (She must have known.) I’d have to do without her. I tried to find out what they were growing in Edgewood — one assumes it is corn, although it could be soybeans — but a half-hearted Google expedition failed to deliver the goods. Instead, I found a cheery snapshot of Megan Wiemold, the Edgewood cowgirl who won the Miss Rodeo Iowa crown in 2004, for which the town is justifiably proud.

As it turns out, the phone number misprint wasn’t WCU’s only gaffe in the matter: an e-mailed correction suggested that stymied ticket-buyers were reaching a “none-too-happy rancher in Montana.” Rancher, farmer; Montana, Iowa. It’s all the same to us down here in the hills.

Still, we all make mistakes, and the folks at WCU’s Public Information Department can take solace in the fact that they’ve sent only the second-most amusing correction I’ve seen in the last year. Far better was the e-mail that came from another local source, who shall remain nameless in the interest of discretion. That correction, which was sent when a company e-mail was accidentally sent out to a media distribution list, contained the following mea culpa (and I quote):

Please accept my apologies for any incontinence.

Apology accepted.

(Jay Hardwig is a writer and teacher. He can be reached at smardwig@charter.net)