Newspaper pranks on April Fools’ Day are as numerous as strands of pasta on a spaghetti tree, almost as old as journalism itself. A bit of research on this subject will have you chuckling over news stories on draining clouds for powdered water, how to leash your pet lobster for a stroll in the park, and the day the Pittsburgh Pirates moved to Titusville. The Harvard Lampoon has long been a bastion of “undergraduate humor,” and after World War II Mad Magazine set a new standard for lowbrow humor that entertained teens across the nation for years. As models of parody, both have been influential.
Student journalists at New Rochelle High School have participated in the tradition of All Fools’ Day hijinks, and there are two wonderful (or silly) examples of this in the Library Archive. Residents of New Rochelle remember its long-lived newspaper The Standard-Star published from 1923 to 1998. High school students themselves still produce the Huguenot Herald, a school publication now online whose name recalls the founding of the city by the French Huguenots. Each of these newspapers has been parodied in All Fools’ Day spoofs as “Stranded Scar” and “Hug Me Not, Harold.”
Excerpt from Stranded Scar, 1947
Stranded Scar appeared on April 1, 1947. Its banner headline announced “NRHS Will Become Boy’s School in September.” Along with loopy stories about rheumatism in Ford automobiles and the Insect Suffrage Society, complaints about the quality of food served in the high school cafeteria were abundant, as in the story on the oyster-eating frenzy of the Rhinoceros and Circular Clubs. It’s possible that Stranded Scar was repeated in subsequent years.
Hug Me Not, Harold was published in 1952. Again, the lead article revealed a jaded expression about the fate of the high school: “NRHS to Flee Fires by Move into Lakes.” Sixteen years later, this idea tragically came to pass when the high school was destroyed by the work of an arsonist. A concert notice for Happy Harry Haigh and his Heavenly Hepcats offered a manic preview of musical repertoire: “The Teachers Are Earning More Money,” “Overture to the Underworld,” and the finale of “Tsaishdotlekbuslkrjsky’s 10th Symphony (his 6th and 4th combined).” One immediately thinks of PDQ Bach’s “Fanfare for the Common Cold” and the musical shenanigans of Spike Jones.
Excerpt from Hug Me Not, Harold, 1952
There are at least two historical lessons in this April Fools’ Day tomfoolery. The first is that we are attracted to eccentricity through humor, and this leads to an appreciation of intellectual diversity, or so we would hope. The second is that student journalists are not spouting empty foolishness as much as they are exercising their imaginations, and imagination is always the secret ingredient for accomplishment and success. Most everyone likes to pull a prank on April Fools’ Day, but no one likes to get pranked. So be careful (but irreverent) on April First this year and every year. And keep in mind the sage remark for dispelling the blues from the novelist Vladimir Nabokov – a good laugh is the best pesticide.
April 1, 2021 / David Rose / NRPL Archive