WHEN THE COWS COME HOME

I admit that eventually we must all bow to the will of genetics, even if we aren’t common cattle. And when you come up against a human family like the Smith’s of Glastonbury, Connecticut, any argument of nature verses nurture seems almost pointless. Zephaniah Hollister Smith graduated an ordained minister from Yale, but he gave it up because he did not believe in mixing prophets with profits. Allegedly he excommunicated his entire congregation, and they returned the favor. Swinging to the other extreme Zephaniah then became a successful lawyer. His wife, Hannah Hadassah Hickock Smith was a linguist, a mathematician and a poet, all the more amazing an achievement since she lived in the second half of the 18th century when women were little more than chattel. The couple shared a fascination for astronomy, a passion for the abolition of slavery, and five girls.

 First there was Laurilla Aleroyia Smith, born in 1785, who painted portraits in her own studio on Main Street in Glastonbury. She also taught French in nearby Hartford. Then there was Hancy Zephina Smith, born in 1787. She was of a mechanical mind. She built her own boat, and invented a machine to shoe horses. Then there was Cyrinthia Scretuia Smith, born in 1788 with a green thumb. She raised fruit trees, grapes, strawberries, and grafted her own varieties of apple trees. In her free time she was also a scholar of Latin and Greek literature. But the real revolutionaries were the two youngest girls.

They told a story about Julia Evelina Smith (born in 1792.) While trapped during a long stage trip with a Chancellor and a professor, both from Yale, “Miss” Julia was insulted when the two men began an animated conversation in French, ignoring her completely. After listening for several minutes, Julia spoke up, saying “Excusez-moi, mais je comprends le français.” Without an acknowledgement of her presence, the two men immediately shifted their discussion to Latin, whereupon Julia interrupted again; “Excuse mihi , EGO quoque narro Latin.” The intellectuals were appalled at the continued interruption and shifted to Greek, and Julia responded with “Και κατανοώ επίσης ελληνική". Finally the Chancellor spoke to the lady directly, demanding, “Who the devil are you!?”

Julia also spoke Hebrew, and had been conducting her own study of both the Old and the New Testaments. You see, she had expected the world to end in December of 1843, and was determined to find it why it had not. Her younger sister, Abby Adassah Smith (born in 1797) was the quietest of the five, and much to everyone’s surprise (including herself) was perhaps the best public speaker of all. It seems a pity to point out that none of men in the area seemed to have been bright enough to garner any of the ladies’ interests in marriage.

It also seems a pity that of this entire family, all of them independently financially successful, intellectually powerful and culturally sophisticated, only the father, Zephaniah, was politically empowered. And when he died, on February 1, 1836, the richest, best educated family in central Connecticut, was no longer allowed to cast a single vote.

This oddity lay simmering beneath the surface until November of 1873. By now most of the female members of the Smith family had gone on to meet their maker, until only Julia, now aged 82, and Abby, now aged 77, were left to bear the Smith genetic code. It was then that the male officials of Glastonbury made the decision to raise the property tax assessment on the Smith farm by $100. The sisters would have no trouble meeting the obligation, but the increase bothered Abby, and she looked into it.

What she discovered was that in the entire town, only three properties had suffered the reassessment; the Smith farm, and the properties of two widows. Not a single male property owner had been reassessed. Abby was so incensed that she wrote a speech, which she delivered at the next town meeting. “…here, where liberty is so highly extolled and glorified by every man in it, one half of the inhabitants…are ruled over by the other half...All we ask of the town, is not to rule over them as they rule over us, but to be on an equality with them.”

Well, the male citizens at the meeting responded to the speech in the same way the Yale Chancellor and Professor in the coach had responded to Julia. They ignored the little lady. So, the sisters decided more radical action was required. They announced that until they received representation (the right to vote), they would no longer submit to any additional taxation. Oh, they paid their property taxes each year, and promptly, but they refused to pay the reassessment increase.

In response the tax collector, Mr. George C. Andrews, seized from the Smith farm seven cows. The bovines were almost pets of the Smith sisters -  named, Jessie, Daisy, Proxy, Minnie, Bessie, Whitey, and Lily. The cows were valued well beyond the $101.39 additional tax bill. So the determined sisters dispatched an agent to buy the beloved pets at auction, paying far in excess of the tax bill to save four of them. The remaining three were sold at auction, although I doubt they proved to be worth the price since none of the cows were willing to be milked unless Julia was present.

Meantime, the Springfield Massachusetts Republican newspaper reprinted Abby’s speech, and it was picked up and reprinted in newspapers nationwide. The story was even repeated in Europe. It was, wrote one newspaper, “A fit centennial celebration to the Boston Tea Party.”

In April Abby was denied time to speak again at the next town meeting. So she climbed on board a wagon out side and delivered her remarks from there, this time heard about equally by men and women. When tax time came around again, the sisters still refused to pay the additional assessment. This time Mr. Andrews seized 15 acres of Smith pasture, worth about $2,000. And this time he moved the location of the auction at the last minute, so the sisters could not even buy back their own land. The valuable property was bought by a male neighbor for less than $80.

In response the sisters sued Mr. Andrews in local court,  and they won. The court ordered the property (and the cows) returned to the sisters, and fined Mr. Andrews $10. The city appealed, and the case began the tortuous climb through the courts. In November of 1876, the old maids won at the Connecticut Supreme Court, and the city finally accepted it had been beaten by two lady spinsters.

Julia wrote an account of their adventure, “Abby Smith and her Cows”, published in 1877. That made the sisters famous, and they spoke at suffragette meetings until Julia’s death in 1878. Abby followed her in 1886. But women still could not vote in Connecticut until the 19th Amendment to the National Constitution was officially passed, in August of 1920. The Smith family home was finally made a National Historical Landmark, but not until 1974.

The story of  Julia and Abby Smith, and their cows,  ought to be considered by members of the modern Tea Party.  In the Smith case it was the right to vote that was denied by the government. While in the modern version of the tea party it is the obligation of citizens to support their government which is denied. The problem is, one is directly connected to the other. In the former case, it was brilliance of mind and spirit that drove the two ladies to protest and win. In the latter it seems it is arrogance and selfishness that fuels the protest, and in the long run it is doomed to lose. He - or she - who holds the purse strings, holds the power. And you can advocate the destruction of the political system for only so long, because if you succeed in destroying it, you lose.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Fifty-Six

The apparitions rose from the fen so coated with mud they appeared to be the earth itself. It was a few minutes before 9:00 a.m. on Sunday, 17 May, 1863, and the night chill was just melding into the heat of the day. The demoralized, exhausted rebels, crouching behind the cotton bales, had endured an hour of heavy cannons methodically dismantling their textile fortifications from almost point blank range. And then, abruptly, while the bombardment continued, a great host of shouting banshees materialized out of the clinging mire, teeth and steel blazing in the sunlight, almost on top of them. Reason evaporated. Logic dissolved. The outnumbered rebels ran for their lives.

The Big Black River should have made a strong defensive position. The west bank was 60 feet above the meandering river and the swampy east shore. The railroad was carried 150 feet above  the marshes and an oxbow lake on great stone supports, a bridge 1,250 feet long. Normally wagons and travelers on foot had to use a browbeaten ford, and then clamber up the steep slope. The 5 divisions of Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton's army of Mississippi could have easily held the west bank against Grant, at least for awhile. With a little stupidity on Grant's part, even the 3 divisions which had crossed Baker's Creek 2 days earlier might have resisted. But the broken parts of the army which had escaped the debacle at Champion Hill, stood no chance of stopping the victorious Yankee army less than 18 hours later. And then, General Pemberton made made this bad situation even worse.

Instead of defending the west bank, Pemberton had posted a third of the battered remnants of his army with their backs to the river – just a day after the same sin had led to disaster. Sent ahead late on the afternoon of Saturday,16 May the seemingly tireless Chief Engineer, Major Samuel Lockett, had conjured a defense across the boggy neck of the east bank of the Big Black river bend.

Cotton bales awaiting shipment at Bovina Station were brought by locomotive to the west bank and rolled down the shoulder of the railroad levee. Stacked several deep in a line across most the open face of the river bend they formed an instant fortification. With dirt thrown against them to dampen any sparks, it was the same defense which had worked so well at Fort Pemberton, in February. 

Then, in front of the main battle line, Lockett added a trick developed by the Roman Army 2,000 years earlier – abatis. These were tree branches driven into ground with their brittle arms facing the advancing Yankees. Like barbed wire a generation later, these abatis were intended to break up attacking formations.

Crossties were also brought forward from Bovina Station and dropped between the rails on the railroad bridge. Then dirt was scattered down,  making it usable for horse drawn wagons.  

But vividly aware of the disaster the day before, Lockett was determined to provide a second line of retreat. Close at hand was a small fleet of steamboats – the Dot, the Charm, the Paul Jones and the Bufort - which had plied the Big Black until the Yankees had captured Grand Gulf, at the river's mouth. Lockett had one of these, the Dot, brought south of the railroad bridge. Her engine was stripped and sent north on the river, and everything above her bottom deck was stripped off.  Anchored to both shores, she formed a second bridge, for the men, if not their equipment.

Major General John Steve's Bowen's battered division filed into the new “fortifications” after midnight.  Although they had suffered heavily at Champion Hill, they were confident with the defenses they found awaiting them. 

Brigadier General Francis Marion Cockrell brigade was south of the road, and 47 year old Brigadier General Martin Edwin Green's brigade at the northern end of the line. Sandwiched between them were the 3 regiments of impressed draftees from east Tennessee, under General John Crawford Vaughn. Most of the rebels to the southern rebellion had already drifted away from their units by this time. But Pemberton had little faith in those who remained. And the weary Tennesseans who collapsed behind the cotton walls in the dark morning hours of Sunday, 17 May, knew their bodies were being offered as a sacrifice in the forlorn hope that Major General Loring's wayward division would soon arrive to rejoin the army.

As usual, Lieutenant General Ulysses Simpson Grant was prepared for the next step. His army was just as tired as the rebels. The only difference was that his men had won. The Saturday night of 16 May, Grant let his men sleep where they were, atop the bloody hill.Alvin Hovey's 12^th division was too damaged by the day's butchery to move the next morning. Better to allow them a day of rest, to recover those separated in the chaos, those confused or wounded or frightened, to find their way back to their units. Better to let them bury their own dead. They would follow the next day. But the rest of the army would not wait a moment longer than was necessary.

In the pitch black of 3:30 A.M., Major General Alexander McClernand  (above) pushed his XIII corps west out of Edward's Depot.  Brigadier General Eugene Carr's 14^th division lead the way, with a skirmish line Colonel Charles Lippicot's 33^rd Illinois regiment sweeping both sides of the road ahead, collecting rebels who had collapsed and fallen asleep. Brigadier General Peter Joseph Osterhaus' 9^th division was next in line, with Andrew Jackson Smith's 10th division bringing up the rear. James McPherson's entire XVII Corps would follow up the same road, but would not be required to form up until well after dawn.

William Tecumseh Sherman's (above) XV Corps – consisting of Frederick Steele's 1^st division and James Tuttle's 3^rd divison - was just catching up with the army after occupying Jackson. 

They had turned north at the town of Bolton, crossed Baker's Creek and were already marching west to reach the Big Black River 11 miles upstream at Bridgeport.  Here Sherman expected to be rejoined by General Francis Blair's 2^nd division, before crossing the river on a pontoon bridge he had been dragging along since Raymond. This crossing would outflank the entire Big Black River line, should Pemberton have decided to defend the west bank. Luckily for Grant, Pemberton had made it easy for him.

The Yankees were confident and careful. Examining the cotton bale defenses, General Carr spread his men out south of the Bovina Road. The Prussian immigrant Osterhause formed his division into a battle line north of the road and into the woods on his right. And like a carpenter choosing his his tools, Peter reached out the perfect weapon for the situation – the 10 pound Parrott rifle.

They were the largest field artillery piece used in the war. Being formed from brittle cast iron they were relatively inexpensive. Once drilled and rifled, water was poured down the barrel while a red hot cast iron band was clamped around the breech (above, rear). This reinforcement increased the muzzle velocity to over 1,100 feet per second, giving them an effective range of 3,500 yards – over a mile.

But the 20 pound Parrott had 2 disadvantages. First the gun and carriage weighed over 2 and ½ tons, requiring 8 horses to pull and 10 crew members to manhandle. And secondly, 22 of the big Parrotts were engaged during the Battle of Antietam the previous September, and 3 of them had blown out their breeches, killing many of their crews. This tendency of the brittle metal to fail caused more than a little unease among the crew of the 1^st Battery of the Wisconsin Light Artillery, who had 6 of the behemoths in their care. But it was these guns that General Osterhause reached for on that Sunday morning, telling their commander, 25 year old Lieutenant Oscar F. Nutting, in his broken English, “I shows you a place where you gets a good chance at 'em”.

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GAMESMANSHIP

I think, maybe, if Wallace Wilkerson (above)  had known a little of the history of the game of cribbage, then William Baxter might have died of old age, instead of in his forties when two metal balls were forcibly inserted into his brain. Honestly, the scoring in cribbage is so complicated, it seems to have been invented by a card shark. Which it was. So a little information, and a little self awareness, might have saved Wallace himself from a very painful, and slow death. Maybe. But then, people are not their intellect, but their personalities. And Wallace's personality was that of a foul mouthed, short tempered alcoholic.  Not that dissimilar from the inventor of cribbage.

The charming and witty Sir John Suckling (above), who invented cribbage, quickly dissipated his substantial inheritance on gambling, wine, woman and poems.  He rebuilt it by investing in elaborate decks of secretly  marked playing cards.  Suckling sent these Trojan gifts to several of his wealthier landed gentry "friends", failing to point out the hidden indicators of course.  Then, when he later dropped by for a visit, his hosts invariably brought out his gifts for a friendly game of cribbage, with a friendly wager, of course.  And that was how John Suckling amassed his new fortune of twenty thousand pounds, even tho “no shopkeeper would trust him for sixpence.”

On 11 June, 1877 the 100 odd denizens of Homansville, Utah were living at 6,000 feet, up a canyon two miles north east of Eureka. That Monday afternoon there were nine or ten men talking, smoking and drinking in James Hightower's general store and saloon, mostly teamsters who carted potable water to the 120 mines in the surrounding Tintic Mountains. As the temperature struggled to take the chill off the air, and the water tanks at the wells were slowly re-filled, the primary entertainment was two men seated at a small table, playing cribbage.

Cribbage is usually played by just two, each dealt six cards. They retain four, their joint discard forming the “Crib”. The top card in the remaining deck is turned over, becoming the starter. . All face cards are worth ten points, the ace just one, and all other cards are worth their face value. The non-dealer begins by laying one of his cards atop the starter, while announcing the cumulative value of those two cards. Players alternate, adding the numerical value of the cards, up to thirty-one. Why thirty-one? Why not thirty - one? 

The popular William Baxter, who normally tended bar in Eureka, was seated on an upturned beer barrel, his cheek resting in his right palm as he was recovering from a previous night of drinking. He was a “pleasant and peaceable man” - when he was sober. Drunk,. he was  a violent bully, according to Wallace, and prone to pulling a gun to get his way, although he does not seem to have ever shot anyone. One of William's best customers in Eureka had been the tall, thin 43 year old Wallace Wilkerson, who now sat across the small table from him in Hightower's store . But William had previously pulled a gun on Wallace, and even insulted him by calling him a “California Mormon”. Or so said Wallace. And yet, here they were, playing  a game of cribbage. And Wallace was losing.

When a player cannot lay down a card without going over “31”, the opponent scores “1” point, called a go. Once all eight cards have been played, the dealer picks up the “crib”, and adds those points to his or her total.  After the score is recorded by moving pegs in a cribbage board, the deal then passes to the second player.

It is unclear why Baxter was in Homansville. Wallace was there to visit his brothers, who worked at the wells in the four year old town. None of Wilkerson's or Baxter's relatives were in James Hightower's establishment that Monday, and I don't think the witnesses had any influence upon the the events, which began when Baxter observed that Wallace had moved his peg in the cribbage board too many spaces.

Beyond the single point awarded for coming closest to reaching “31”, an additional point is awarded for hitting “31” exactly, and “2” for hitting “15” exactly. If a player lays down a card matching the suit of the previous card, they also call out, “That's “1” for the go, and “2” for a double.” If the next card by either player also follows suit, that player says, “That's “2” for a double and “3” for a triple.” A fourth matching suit card, even if played in the next “31” is called as a quad and counts for a total of “10” points. All of these are cumulative, as in “1” for the go, “2” for fifteen, “1” for the “31” and “2” for the double, etc.  Adding in the many sometimes obscure additional points that can be called out in the flush of the contest, almost always without a pencil and paper tally, makes the game quick, meteoric, exuberant, confusing and tension filled. In other words,  the scoring seems to have been designed by a card shark. The first player to reach 121 points is declared the winner. Why 121, I have no idea.  I do know that the first player to be shot and killed is the loser.

Hearing William's accusation about his misplaced peg, Wallace pushed his chair back from the table, stood up and claimed he was being cheated.  As Wallace started to take off his jacket, preparing for a fight, the unimpressed William Baxter merely said “Sit down, Wilkerson, and don't make a fool out of yourself.”  At that, Wallace drew a small pistol from his jacket and shot William in the face. The victim fell backward, against the flour bags.  Wallace strode through the black powder smoke and grabbed a hand full of William's hair,  lifting his head. Wallace pressed the gun's muzzle against William's right temple, and fired again, literally blowing William Baxter's brains out of his head. Then Wallace ran out of the store.

The inventor of cribbage, Sir John Suckling, should have died like a character from a Felding novel, an ancient retired reprobate, safely ensconced in his estates, surrounded by dutiful if not respectful servants. Instead, his mercenary morality finally drove him to plot too obvious a crime. Escaping just ahead of the authorities, Sir Suckling fled so quickly he had to leave his fortune behind. Within a few weeks he realized that life without his 'raison d art', his one true love, his money, was not worth living, and he self administered poison. He died alone in May of 1641 at 32 years of age, flat broke, vomiting away his life in a dingy Paris apartment. But, unfortunately for Wallace Wilkerson, before Suckling died, he invented cribbage.

Wallace Wilkerson was arrested and taken north to the village of Goshen, to avoid a lynching party. His defense was that William Baxter could have been carrying a gun. The only problem was, he wasn't. The only weapon found on the victim was a small pocket knife. Wallace seemed indifferent to the outcome of his November trial, but after his conviction he told Judge P. H. Emerson, “When I did the shooting I supposed my life was in danger.” He also claimed the witnesses had lied. Judge Emerson was no more impressed by the theatrics than Baxter had been, and ordered that Wallace was to be executed in December. At the time, the Territory of Utah had a choice in killing Wallace: he could be hung, shot or beheaded. Unfortunately for Wallace, the court chose the firing squad.

The results were delayed for over a year when Wallace's lawyers appealed his sentence to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying execution by firing squad was a cruel and unusual punishment, denied by the U.S. Constitution.. During his time in jail in Salt Lake City, Wallace was deemed to be “the most foul mouthed and profane man” in the prison.  In March of 1878 the Supreme Court held, by an unanimous vote, that death by a firing squad was  not a cruel or an unusual punishment.  So, at about noon on 16 May, 1879, Wallace was led into the yard behind the Provo, Utah county courthouse and jail (above).  Wallace was wearing a black suit, topped with his habitual white ten gallon hat, and smoking a cigar, donated by a sympathetic family member.  And he was swaggering, because he had been drinking since his long suffering wife Amilia had left him an hour earlier.

The sheriff led Wallace to a chair, set out away from the courthouse wall. Wallace insisted he not be tied to it, and he refused a blindfold, saying “I give you my word, I intend to die like a man, looking my executioners right in the eye.” Except he could not do that. Thirty feet away a barricade had been constructed, pierced by four rectangles, just large enough to accommodate the protruding rifle barrels. The gunmen were hidden from Wallace's drunken challenging stare.  But they had a clear view of him. Or thought  they did.

After the sentence was read, Wallace was asked if he had anything to say.  In a slurred speech, he assured the 20 men present within the yard that he bore them no ill will,  but insisted again that the witnesses at his trial had lied.  The sheriff pinned a three inch square piece of white paper above Wallace's heart, as a target, and then stepped aside.  Wallace called out, “Aim for my heart, Marshal!" The four riflemen aimed at the white target, and their commander quietly gave the order. Four men pulled the triggers, and three bullets raced toward Wallace Wilkerson's chest.

At the impact of the lead, Wallace jumped “five or six feet” from the chair, screaming in pain.  After staggering a step, Wallace shouted, "Oh, my God! My God! They've missed it!", as he pitched over, face first into the dirt.  Four doctors rushed to the condemned man's side.  Wallace was moaning in agony.  On examination the doctors found that one round had shattered Wallace's left arm, and the other two had pounded into Wallace's chest, all missing his heart. They now faced a quandary. What do you do if the condemned man survives the execution?  Do you minister his wounds? Do you shoot him again? While these discussions continued, Wallace lay in the dirt, moaning and writhing for almost 30 minutes.  Some timed his death throes at 27 minutes, others at twenty. Finally, Wallace did the right thing.  He died.

At last Wallace Wilkerson was as dead as William Baxter.  The only difference was that while the reprobate Wallace was solely and fully responsible for the death of William Baxter, the entire territory of Utah and its taxpayers, and the nine judges on the U.S. Supreme Court, were all responsible for the botched execution and slow painful death of Wallace Wilkerson.  The process of state sponsored death seems, at least in this case,  to have been designed by a drunken sadist. Or a card shark.

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APRIL FOOL

I don’t approve of practical jokes. I see nothing humorous in having my shoes set afire while I am  wearing them. And dribble glasses are not only not practical they are also not funny - especially on “April Fools Day”, when every glass is a dribble glass and every shoe is a potential combustion chamber. And it turns out that this celebration of sociopathic behavior was invented by the French, a nation without humorous inclinations since Moliere slipped on a banana peel in 1673. But the story of April Fool’s Day began over a century before that comedic-tragic event, when in 1564 King Charles IX decided to follow Pope Gregory’s suggestion and begin the calendar on January rather than April. Why the French originally celebrated New Years Day on April 1st, I have no idea.

Now, in the 16th century, France had only one road. It came out of Paris, turned left, looped all the way around the city and re-entered on the other side of town. This tragic design error,(the world’s first Traffic Circle) made communication with the majority of the nation difficult (and introduced the phrase “Out-of-the-Loop”), and when combined with the French telephone system - which was in no better shape in the 16th century than it is today - meant that a lot of peasants never got the King’s memo concerning the calendar adjustment.

So as they had every year, thousands of these ill-informed peasants journeyed to Paris during the last week of March and on what they thought was New Year’s Eve, gathered in Bastille Square to say bonjour to 1565 and watch the guillotine drop on 1566. In unison they gleefully chanted, “Cing, quartre, trios, deux, un” and…No guillotine. No satisfying plop of a head into the basket. No Champagne corks popping. No red faced Anderson Cooper, no naked Kathy Griffith. Instead of cheers and shouts of glee, mass ennui broke out among the masses. Now anyone who has experienced the Parisian version of “good manners” can imagine what came next; the locals mocked the bewildered peasants and made them feel like complete Americans,…ah, I mean,fools. But the way they did it makes the word “odd” seem inadequate.

For reasons beyond understanding the Parisians snuck up behind their confused country cousins, surreptitiously stuck a paper fish to the bumpkin’s backs and then shouted in a loud voice, “Poisson d’Avril!”, which translates as “April Fish!”, and then collapsed in raucous laughter and shouts of “tres bien.”

Why would they shout “April Fish!”? I have no idea. But, perhaps the first Parisian to label his victim an "April Fool” immediately received a mouth full of fist, while calling the victim an "April Fish” confused him just long enough so that the prankster could escape.

I have long thought that this uncharacteristic outbreak of French “humor” was actually inspired by Charles’ Italian Queen, Catherine de Medici, who was already famous throughout Europe for her gastronomical gags,  such as her duck a la cyanide with a hemlock sauce. Only a Medici could see the humor in humiliating the people who handled your food.

But however it started, the Parisians knew a good time when they saw it and they sent peasants on “fool’s errands”, and tricked peasants with “fool’s tales”, until every April 1st, France reverberated with gales of laughter and shouts of “Poisson d’Avril!”  Ah, good times. But eventually the Parisian bullies grew bored with taunting the unresponsive peasants and in 1572 they shifted their attentions to the Huguenots. But by then the tradition of humiliating people for your own amusement on the first day of April had become generally popular. And like Disco music and Special Federal Prosecutors, once invented such institutions have proven impossible to dis-invent.

This holiday for the humor-impaired spread around the globe with the new calendar like a fungus, infecting and evolving a little in each newly afflicted nation. The Germans added the “Kick Me” sign, and a second day which they called “Taily Day”, to further enjoy the frivolity of bruised buttocks. Ahh, those Germans.

In Portugal, today’s innocent victim is hit with flour, sometimes while it is still in the bag - the flour not the victim.  In Scotland the target is humiliatingly referred to as an “April Gawk” (?!), in England as a “Noodle” and in Canada as an “American.”  I would have expected mental health professionals to call for a stop to this public insanity but evidently they are too busy setting their patients’ shoes on fire.

Not even a war could snap the world out of this cruel insanity. In what may have been the first time a practical joke qualified as a war crime, on April 1, 1915 a French pilot buzzed the German trenches and dropped a huge bomb, which bounced. Four years later the citizens of Venice awoke on April 1, to discover their sidewalks littered with cow manure, the "gag" of a visiting Englishman, Horace de Vere Cole, with too much time on his hands and too much money in his pockets. But then what can you expect from a man who would honeymoon on April Fool's day? Bad humor moved into the electronic age in 1957 when BBC Television News broadcast a report about that year's successful and bountiful Swiss harvest of spaghetti.  On April Fool's Day in 1992, National Public Radio in the United States, broadcast the announcement that Richard Nixon was coming out of retirement to run again for President, under the slogan, "I didn't do anything wrong and I won't do it again."

Some years later, ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Company, carried a report that the nation was about to switch to "Metric Time". The next morning would begin at midnight, but each minute would be made up of 100 milidays, each hour of 100 centedays, and each day would consist of 20 decadays. It is alleged that  the following morning nobody in Australia showed up for work on time, but it is unclear if that was because the April Fools joke worked, or merely because everybody in Australia still had a hangover, mate  

Admit it; there is no defense against April Fool tomfoolery, except a preemptive strike. So button up your top button, zip up your pants, tie your shoes and look out for that cat. Load up your water gun, warm up your fart cushion and repeat after me; “Poison d’Avril, sucker!”

Funny, huh?

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