April 2. Drat!
Had this been an April 1 column I would have felt compelled to try to pull off a prank of some type. Maybe next year.
As a matter of fact, I do remember nailing this very newspaper with an April Fool’s joke about 35 years ago. The prank took me three days on the radio to pull off, so it might be a bit difficult to cram it into one short column. But here goes:
Back in the 1970s there was quite a controversy in California about fishermen catching dolphins in their nets. The environmentalists were going nuts. On day one of my little hoax I had a friend call my show saying that they were calling from Southern California. The “caller” told me that she’d just heard reports of dolphins off the coast of Southern California making retaliatory strikes against fishermen. The dolphins were leaping onto the decks of fishing boats and finning the crews to death. This was discovered when one crew member managed to shinny up the mast before the dolphins left and the boat crashed on the rocks. Dolphins, you see, can’t shinny. I thanked the caller, then told my audience that I thought it was a bunch of hooey and we wouldn’t pay it any more attention.
Moving on to day two, and another planted caller. This stooge told me that she was married to a Coast Guardsman working out of Newport Beach, Calif. She had heard my show the day before, and she wanted me to know that her husband had told her that he had worked a case that day involving a fishing boat full of dead fishermen discovered floating offshore. The fishermen appeared to have died from multiple stab wounds. About 10 minutes later another stooge phoned to remind me of the call I had received the day before about dolphins boarding fishing boats. I then sought out an expert on dolphins in Southern California, who turned out to be another friend waiting by the phone in the next room. We introduced him as Harvey Siegel, an oceanographer. I managed to coax Mr. Siegel into admitting that a couple of dolphins being trained for naval warfare at the Coronado Naval Base near San Diego had escaped. These dolphins were now suspected in the attacks on fishing boats off the California coast.
But before we move on to day three, you have to remember that this was the late 1970s. There were three basic broadcast TV channels, no cable news channels, no Internet, no e-mails and no Twitter. Let’s just say it wasn’t the day of instant and 24-hour news. There just really wasn’t any way for my listeners to make a determination as to whether or not I was telling the truth. They could call a Southern California newspaper and ask about the story, but a denial from that newspaper might only mean that I had sources the newspaper did not. Besides, it was only March 31.
Day three, April Fools’ Day. Our oceanographer friend called the show in its early moments with urgent news. The dolphins had boarded a nuclear submarine at the Navy base, had taken the submarine off the coast of San Diego, and were threatening to launch a nuclear strike against San Diego unless the fishermen pulled in their nets for good. After about 30 minutes of fun and panic with the callers, we all yelled “April Fools!” and sat back with smug grins on our faces.
The story, it turns out, wasn’t quite over. It seems that this intrepid newspaper was following up on the story. They already had a reporter and a photographer on a plane for San Diego when I revealed the hoax.
Let’s just say that somebody got a nice vacation trip out of this, and my radio station refused, after repeated requests, to cover the tab.
Listen to Neal Boortz live from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekdays on AM 750 and now 95.5FM News/Talk WSB.
His column appears every Saturday. For more Boortz, go to boortz.com
