April Fools?

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Monday Musings on This ‘N That

Did you let someone get an “April Fools” joke on you yesterday? I didn’t and can’t believe I didn’t try to get one on anybody else. I’m not even sure the very young among us even know what I’m writing about. But for those who do know, please let me tell you a true story. It was a cruel, cruel joke to pull on someone, considering the circumstances.

I was in the 5^th grade, living in Tennessee. Oak Ridge, Tennessee (the Atomic City, some called it) was just beginning to bloom. Of course the government built the plant buildings first. As men and women came from all over the region to work at Oak Ridge, there were no living quarters. Everyone commuted from near and far.

When they began to build homes they were assigned to the employees according to how long they had worked there and the size of their family. My uncle got the tenth house they offered. Then when Daddy later went to work in Oak Ridge, we moved in with them in their two bedroom house: three in my family, three in theirs.

My uncle and Daddy worked different shifts. One snowy April 1^st morning, my uncle had just gotten to sleep when Daddy had to go to work. Their cars were parked along the curb. So this was the April Fools joke Daddy played on my uncle:

He bundled up to go out into the cold and go to work. Before he left the house, he had asked my aunt to wake my uncle and tell him Daddy’s car wouldn’t start; would he please come out and give him a push off with his own car.

Daddy sat in the driver’s seat of his car and my uncle got into his car, started it, and eased his front bumper up to Daddy’s car’s back bumper. Just as he started to push Daddy’s car, Daddy stepped on the accelerator and sped down the street. My uncle was a mild-mannered man, but he did love a joke. So he took it good heartedly. When he came into the house, his wife said she had a message for him from his brother—my daddy—April Fools!!

Hope you didn’t get tricked yesterday. And you surely are too good to have pulled a cruel joke on some one. You really didn’t, did you?