Tales From Exit 22 by Al Batt

I was somewhere in downtown Iowa.

Things were as they are now, somewhere between good enough and it could be worse.

It was a small town. Small enough that men went to the town dump to do their shopping.

The talk in the barbershop was about a local wrestler who had such liquid moves that he had creamed cauliflower ears. We referred to him as a rassler.

This was back in the day when people went to the pictures as often as they went to see a movie. The discussion moved to Paul Newman’s 1967 classic film, “Cool Hand Luke.” Luke was placed on a prison chain gang for maliciously destroying municipal property by cutting the heads off of parking meters. Luke explained his actions, “Small town, not much to do in the evening.”

Luke’s final words were, “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”

There was no failure to communicate in that barbershop. Silence was as rare as a shopping cart with four good wheels.

On the first day of April one year, the proprietor of the town’s hardware store had glued a silver dollar securely to the floor. He cackled fiendishly as he watched guys bend over and attempt to pick up that coin. That coin was still there on this particular April Fool’s Day many years later. Attention spans were longer in those days.

The mayor admitted that the government could be a kidder. How else could he explain “temporary” taxes? They are pranks that never end.

A farmer claimed to have seen a hoop snake. The snake grasped its tail in its mouth and rolled like a wheel after its prey, a ground squirrel. It achieved great speed and had a highly venomous stinger located at the tip of its tail. The snake straightened out at the last second, striking its victim with its tail. He said that the only escape was to hide behind a tree. Then the tree would receive the deadly sting instead and die from the poison. He claimed that wherever you saw a dead tree, there was a hoop snake. That mythical hoop snake was fake news when fake news occurred only on April Fool’s Day.

April Fool’s Day is a one-time fee that you pay annually. The origin of April Fool’s Day is a mystery. Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. People who failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to Jan. 1 and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1 became the butt of jokes and hoaxes. These included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as “poisson d’avril” (April fish), symbolizing a young, easily caught fish or a gullible person. April Fools’ Day spread to Britain during the 18th century. In Scotland, it became a two-day event, starting with “hunting the gowk,” which sent people on phony errands. The gowk was a cuckoo bird, a symbol for fool. The following day was Tailie Day, which involved pranks played on people’s backsides, such as pinning fake tails or “kick me” signs on them.

Emily Dickinson wrote, “To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations.” That may be so, but we had time for a mischievous trick, practical joke, prank, shenanigan or monkeyshine in those days because no one had to spend time worrying about identity theft. Good ideas have many parents. Bad ideas have older boys who provide a verbal catalog of past trickery to be used on April Fool’s Day or Halloween. Halloween tricks required more heavy lifting what with the moving of outhouses in the hopes of making someone ripe for the Happy Academy. Older boys were quintessential pranksters; at least in their stories. There was always something simmering on the back of their stoves. They were always in a hurry to make mistakes.

This past April Fool’s Day was uneventful as far as pranks go. There were so many people sneezing around me that I grew hoarse from saying, “Bless you,” and “Gesundheit.”

That might have been a good thing. Three sneezes in a row are supposed to bring good luck, unless you’re seated just ahead of the sneezer.

Take comfort in the knowledge that each and every one of us is a fool, not only on April 1, but all year.

Remember, you’re not just a fool. You’re a limited edition fool.

Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.