On Monday, April 1, 2019, the Fillmore County Journal celebrated April Fools’ Day with a few little surprises for readers.
Our front page lead story was about Nels Isaacson and his Jesse James Gang gold discovery at Mystery Cave. Reporter Rich Wicks deserves all the credit on this one. He’s an outstanding storyteller; both fiction and non-fiction. So, in case you were wondering, that story was not true, but sure created a lot of conversation.
Then, on the Social Scenes page, there was an ad for Just Falafs (pronounced Fa Laughs), a restaurant in Fillmore with a new kind of menu. For those of our readers hankering for a Walleye Smoothie, unfortunately, this restaurant did not open their doors. As a matter of fact, I don’t think they even had any doors, or a roof.
As one man said when he called our office, “This restaurant in Fillmore sounds kind of fishy. I think it might be a scam.” While it wasn’t a scam, it was an April Fools’ Day joke.
Last but not least was poor Lucky, the skunk-chasing lost dog presented in the classifieds section. If you find Lucky, please call Robert. Any Robert.
Lucky is an April Fools’ Day survivor. So, if he really does exist, I’m sure he’s doing just fine. He probably just needs a bath. If he exists.
Reader response
When we were plotting and planning this April Fools’ Day edition, our team kept telling me we were going to receive a lot of phone calls. And, they jokingly said, “You are taking all of the phone calls when they come in!”
We received phone calls and e-mails at the office. And, many of our employees received text messages from friends and relatives. Some people were questioning if this was true, and others were thanking us for having a little fun on April Fools’ Day.
Word must have traveled pretty fast about the gold bars discovered by Nels and Otis (the dog). Right away, on Monday we received a call from a reporter with the Times-Republican newspaper in Corydon, Iowa. She was contacting us because someone from Fillmore County called a friend in Corydon, Iowa, to let them know there was a story about some gold bars stolen from the bank in Corydon by the Jesse James Gang that were discovered in the Mystery Cave area.
We had to tell the reporter that this story was a tall tale we published as part of an April Fools’ Day edition.
Who knows how far this story traveled?
Our next April
Fools’ Day edition
We haven’t pulled together an April Fools’ Day special edition like this since April 1, 2013. And, typically, our Monday newspaper publishing date doesn’t fall on April 1 but once every few years. It’s been 312 issues since our last hurrah. And, we’ll have to wait until April 1, 2024, to have some fun again. Hopefully, that will give everyone enough time to forget about this little game we played.
In the meantime, we’ll have to come up with something bigger and better for our next April Fools’ Day edition. We are always open to suggestions, and we know we have some very creative readers who could lend us their ideas.
We appreciate how our readers have such a wonderful sense of humor.
And, we promise to our readers that now that April Fools’ Day has passed, you won’t see any more “fake news” or “fake ads.” We are back to no more funny business.
Until next time.