Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

No Jokes For This April Fool's

After being asked by several people about this year's April Fool's story, I have decided to write and say there won't be one.

Hopefully, this won't be a disappointment to many people, but after the results of last two years, it seems like a good idea at this time.

Remember two years ago when the April Fool's story concerned the proposed rebuilding of the Clark County Courthouse.

The proposed designs ranged from the White House to the Taj Mahal and the Starship USS Enterprise. All designs were submitted by the Scandinavian architect A.P. Rilfools.

There were those in the county who believed the quorum court would entertain such delusions of grandeur and spend tax money on such a fiasco.

Last year, if you'll recall, the story concerned an unidentified flying object (UFO) being spotted regularly in the skies over Gurdon.

The story went into minute detail on the positive and beneficial effects the UFO was having in the area.

Those effects included people cleaning up their lawns, painting their houses, planting gardens, being nicer and being warmer.

The article followed the progress of the UFO across the skies as it came up in the east early in the morning and traveled slowly on a westerly path throughout the day.

And, yes, there were those who didn't realize the UFO was nothing more than the sun on an early spring day.

We don't want to go into April Fool's Day article's I've written for other publications in other areas. It suffices to say more people who live south of Clark County fell hard for last year's piece about an asteroid.

This, in large part, is what has prompted the lack of an April Fool's Day story this year people believing the articles to be true and not knowing they are fictional works of a humorous nature.

However, I did have some good ideas for an April Fool's story this year, but had to reject them as they would likely have caused a great deal of trouble for everyone.

One of the ideas involved having Gurdon and South Clark County secede from the rest of the county and form an entirely new one.

The state's 76th county would, as the idea went, enter a new name into Arkansas history Cabe County, named for the benefactors of the area.

To prevent military invasion from the north and south, Cabe County was prepared to barricade its borders and charge those going through tolls to help generate revenue.

Eventually, the new county would, as the concept went, seek statehood so it could get more federal money, and when this was rejected, it would secede from the state and become an independent nation, declare war on the US and seek American aid for rebuilding afterward.

This was one idea anyway. It would have been considerably more in depth and detailed had I decided to write it.

The other notion hit a wee bit too close to home for comfort. It dealt with the Y2K situation.

As we all know, there are those unscrupulous people who have been capitalizing on the fear of the coming century and the year 2000 in particular.

The problems with computer systems reverting their internal calendars back to 1900 instead of moving forward to 2000 has been well documented.

Well, my idea was to play on these fears and return to a time less pleasant in recent American history the fear of Soviet nuclear warheads being used against us.

Hey, it was to be a work of fiction and normally more believable than the truth, especially if it's well written.

The story line for this scenario went something like this. First, the federal government would discover the Y2K problem would be worse then it first feared and try to keep this information from becoming public.

Next, some enterprising person would discover this deception and leak it to the national media. This would create massive panic (sounds like a movie plot, doesn't it).

People would be stocking up for the end times they fear would be just around the horizon as Y2K is so close.

There would be runs on banks rivaling those of the Great Depression of the 1930's, forcing many to go out of business. Grocery stores would be hit hard, with their shelves cleared of canned goods as people stocked up.

Locally, both banks would close after the runs, while the local grocer would, according to the story-line, be mobbed and the store vandalized by panicking residents.

The hardware stores would also be hit hard as people gathered guns and ammunition to defend themselves and hunt game.

It would be brother against brother in the fight for survival as people turned against one another in their paranoia.

Some would have bomb shelters dug and house their stores of food and water there.

All petrochemical products would be hoarded as well, with gasoline bringing premium prices while it could be legally obtained.

There would be black market salesmen emerge with gasoline and other petroleum products.

The story would have been more in-depth and detailed, finishing up with a last minute program being created to avert the disaster and the programmer killed.

Remember, this would have been an April Fool's joke, not a real story.

I was afraid, though, some people might believe it and panic. After the results of the last two years I have learned several things about being creative with April Fool's stories.

One of those things was P.T. Barnum was wrong, all the people can be fooled all the time if the one doing the fooling does the job right.

Another lesson is many people will believe anything they read no matter how absurd. This explains why supermarket tabloids are so popular, as are television talk shows such as Jerry Springer.

Because of this, I decided not to write an April Fool's Day story this year.

So, everyone can rest in the knowledge the news found in the Gurdon Times this week is all legitimate and really happened.

And, to go a step further, I've decided to give up writing fictional articles for the first day of April from now on.

APRIL FOOLS!