DEBBIE ELLIOTT, host: And now your comments. We got several e-mails about Howard Berkes' Father's Day essay on the Cub Scout ritual of the Pinewood Derby. It's a high-pressure event where scouts race model cars they or, more likely, their parents have fashioned out of wood.</s>DEBBIE ELLIOTT, host: Listener Irene Jones(ph) wrote that when her son was a Cub Scout entering the Pinewood Derby, she tried to stay as far away as possible, quote, "only hissing at my husband from the sidelines, Let him do it." She writes, No ears are deafer than those of a father working on a Pinewood Derby car.</s>DEBBIE ELLIOTT, host: Listener Alan Shearer(ph) of Decatur, Illinois, wrote in to correct something he heard in my interview last week with Ben Barnes, the former lieutenant government of Texas. Barnes stated that if John F. Kennedy had not won Texas in the 1960 election, Richard Nixon would have won the presidency instead.</s>DEBBIE ELLIOTT, host: Mr. Shearer writes, Had Texas' 24 electoral votes gone for Nixon, Kennedy would still have won, 279 to 243. He went on to say, People in my home state, Illinois, make the same mistake. They say if not for Mayor Daley's, quote, "Democratic machine generated voter fraud," Kennedy would not have won the presidency. Wrong again.</s>DEBBIE ELLIOTT, host: If you think we're wrong, or right, write to us at NPR.org. Click on Contact Us, select WEEKEND ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, please include a phone number, tell us where you're from, and how to pronounce your name.
Debbie Elliott reads from listeners' letters on the Scouting tradition of the Pinewood Derby, and the 1960 presidential election.