Fallout

A friend of mine posted that he hates 'April's Fool's' jokes. He got me thinking, and sometimes, you know, those practical jokes can backfire on you ....

One year, my hometown was going through a bad time. The local coal mine, where quite a lot of people worked, had been cutting production and laying people off, more and more as the months went by. The community was getting worried; scuttlebutt was that the mine was closing, and everybody was unsure just how bad things would get.

Then one day in our local paper, headlines announced that the coal mine owners had been bought out by a new concern, who planned to re-open the mine, shinking new shafts and creating thousands of new jobs!

You guessed it; the date on the paper was April 1, and when people discovered the whole thing was just a hoax -- hoo, boy, were they mad!! But when Mid-Illinois farmers get angry, they don't just blow their top; they sublimate the feeling, and find ways to make your life extremely uncomfortable.

And so, in this case, within a very few months afterward, the editor/publisher responsible for the April Fools headlines announced that, due to personal concerns, he was stepping down as head of the paper ....

I'll leave you to draw your own moral conclusions. ;)