By Ben Olson
Reader Staff
It’s been five years since Editor-in-Chief Zach Hagadone almost broke the town.
In the history of the Sandpoint Reader, only one publication date has ever lined up perfectly with April Fool’s Day: April 1, 2021.
We’d been chomping at the bit for years to fill an April Fool’s edition with satirical stories (these, of course, were the days when satire was still alive and well).
I contributed a story called “Space aliens invade North Idaho to escape ‘galactic tyranny,’” but no one paid any attention to it after reading Hagadone’s piece titled, “Officials: Lake will be mostly dry in summer 2021.”
Written under the byline “Clayton Rau,” Hagadone wrote what I considered to be his most hilarious satire yet. The deadpan story began with the line: “Sandpoint residents are about to become reacquainted with the community’s namesake sandbar, as government officials prepare for a once-in-a-lifetime dramatic drawdown of Lake Pend Oreille this summer.”
He shared how government officials decided to drain the lake entirely, save for a small amount needed to power regional dams. The reason was to both “combat rampant aquatic weed growth, as well as implement a public health effort to tamp down summertime visitors amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.”
Reading over the story again, the ingredients are all perfectly established to point to this article being a satire. Instead of the Army Corps, Hagadone referenced the “U.S. Engineering Corps,” whose leader, “Col. Arnold Benedict,” complained about a so-called “Evergreen Sludge” that was “transplanted to northern Idaho by boaters primarily from Washington state.”
The sludge, Hagadone wrote, stemmed primarily from “pontoon boats purchased in the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene area since 2016.”
Then there was a water biologist named “Katherine Quagga-Smythe,” who said the Evergreen Sludge was stimulated by “loud music and powerful boat engines.”
When “Col. Benedict” said it wasn’t so much “draining the lake” as an opportunity to give the near- and mid-shore waters a ‘good scrub, like your toilet bowl,’ I thought no one in their right mind would believe this.
Hagadone then quoted from the “Center for Epidemiological Control” spokesperson, “William Hamhand,” and concluded with a quote from a “Karen Becks, owner of Alpine Mountain Cascade Moose Panhandle North Country Selkirk Tree Eagle Action Speed America Motor Sports,” about how the Long Bridge would be torn down and rebuilt from the bottom up to incorporate “six lanes … with two roundabouts and an emergency mid-span helipad for crash response.”
Hagadone even ended the article with “*April Fool’s!” but the damage had already been done. Almost immediately after we sent the paper to the printer and began enjoying our weekly libation at the 219 Lounge, our phones began ringing. A week later, they were still ringing. It seems a lot of our readers fell hook, line and sinker for the joke. They were not amused.
I can remember one specific lady who called and screamed every pejorative she could think of after we told her the article was a joke.
“How dare you?” she bellowed over the phone. “We own property on the lake. This is our summer. How dare you? This was not funny.”
It was, in fact, very funny to us. The best part of an April Fool’s joke is when it’s so well done that people actually fall for it.
I can still remember in 1996 when Taco Bell announced it was purchasing the Liberty Bell. They even spent $300,000 on full-page newspaper ads nationwide. The National Park Service eventually held a news conference to deny the reports and assure the public that the Liberty Bell wouldn’t be known as the “Taco Liberty Bell.”
Even after learning it was a joke, the public was pissed.
This year, with a publication date of April 2, we briefly discussed whether to include any April Fool’s content. Then, our shoulders hunched together, remembering the fury we unleashed in 2021 and decided, “They just aren’t ready for it again.”
In an age when every headline seems like it was written for The Onion, it’s kind of difficult to pull one over on people.
Long ago, when former President George W. Bush was the patron saint of fools occupying the White House (my, how far we’ve come), he was famous for issuing so-called “Bushisms,” which were nonsensical gaffes. One I still chuckle at is when he said, “There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, ‘Fool me once, shame on… shame on you. Fool me… you can’t get fooled again.’”
The saddest part for me was finally giving in and writing a disclaimer at the top of the web version of Hagadone’s article in all caps: “FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NO ABILITY TO DETECT A JOKE, OR WHO CANNOT READ PAST A HEADLINE, THIS IS AN APRIL FOOL’S ARTICLE …”
Maybe someday we’ll try our hand at April Fool’s articles again, but how could we possibly top that one?
