It's here! The most tricked-up day of the year

By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hal Lewis, better known as Honolulu disc jockey J. Akuhead Pupule, once tricked crowds into showing up for an April Fool's Day parade that never happened. Advertiser library photo • May 10, 1949

On an April 1 morning more than 50 years ago, Ling returned to his Hobron Lane home wet and shivering after a long night of fishing off Ala Moana Beach Park.

Betty Ling, still in bed, heard her husband come in praising the "fresh, fat, silver mullet" he'd caught. He left the fish lying on newspaper on the kitchen table and went outside to shower. And that's when Betty struck.

"With the day's date on my mind, I swiftly pushed the mullet into the back of the refrigerator, behind a brown paper bag," Betty Ling wrote The Advertiser, responding to a call for April Fool's tales. "Then I went into the bedroom to wait for the call."

Sure enough, Ah Seong noticed the fish missing and wanted to know where the heck it went.

"We had a big tomcat named Bingo who came in and out of the house at will," Betty wrote. "'Honey,' I said, 'I saw Bingo kind of running out the door. I think he was carrying something.' "

Ah Seong took to the yard, shaking the bushes and parting the hedges looking for the rogue cat, with his wife and three young daughters looking on.

April Fool!

Betty returned the fish to the table unscathed and let her husband, ahem, off the hook. Ah Seong didn't find the joke particularly funny.

"But I could sense his relief," wrote Betty. "For the rest of the day, however, whenever poor Bingo came into the kitchen, my husband gave him a sidelong glance, which I can only describe as stink-eye."

Papal-inspired bull

Indeed, nothing brings out the inner imp in all of us quite like April Fool's day. It's a day when even the most staid and stolid are given license to cut loose with a little creative mischief.

April Fool's Day dates back to 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII ordered the Julian calendar, which began on March 25, to be replaced by the Gregorian one, which begins on January 1.

Because March 25 fell in a holy week, followers of the Julian calendar typically celebrated the New Year on April 1. According to legend, French peasants would pay pretend New Year's visits to their friends and neighbors on April 1, trying to lure them into thinking it was still the proper day for celebration. Those who bit were called April Fools.

In fact, Betty Ling's fish trick might still go over well in France, where poisson d'Avril (April Fish) is still observed.

As part of their tradition, French children will tape a picture of a fish to the back of an unsuspecting chum, shouting "poisson d'Avril" when their prank is discovered.

Speaking of April Fools and poissons, in its April 1985 edition, Discover magazine reported that the curiously named wildlife biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had discovered a new species in Antarctica called the hotheaded naked ice borer. In the article, Pazzo theorized that the strange beasts — who reportedly hunted penguins by melting the ice beneath them with their burning hot heads — were responsible for the disappearance of an explorer named Philippe Poisson in the 1800s. Got that?

The same month, Sports Illustrated introduced the sporting world to one of the most exciting, intriguing and, sadly, fictional athletes of modern times: Sidd Finch.

Author George Plimpton wrote "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch" about a New York Mets rookie who developed a 168-mph fastball while studying under the great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa in a monastery in Tibet.

Akuhead's greatest hit

Thanks to e-mail and the Internet, some April Fool pranks live on long after the day is done.

Five years after an elaborate hoax, some people still believe the Taco Bell Corp. tried to buy the Liberty Bell, intending to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell.

Some also still believe that the Alabama Legislature really did attempt to change the value of pi from 3.14 to the "biblical" value of 3.0.

Hawai'i was home to one of the most notorious April Fool pranksters around.

Longtime Hawai'i residents remember local radio icon Hal "J. Akuhead Pupule" Lewis and the whopper of an April Fool trick he played on thousands of radio listeners in 1983.

Lewis, at one time the highest-paid disc jockey in the world, spent a week hyping a big Easter parade from Ala Moana Park through Waikiki to Kapi'olani Park. The event was to feature "Magnum P.I." star Tom Selleck, members of the "Hill Street Blues" cast and costumed Easter bunnies.

Thousands reportedly lined the streets as Lewis faked a broadcast from the parade, with help from "color commentators" Emme Tomimbang and Michael W. Perry.

In the end, some laughed with Lewis, some wanted his head. After hundreds of complaint calls to the station, Lewis — whose previous gags included an announcement that officials were suspending federal income taxes for Island residents and erroneous time announcements meant to alarm early-morning risers — apologized for the gag.

Say what?

April Fool gags don't have to be elaborate, as Advertiser readers well know. Zabia Dolle once asked a aide at her gynecologist's office if the results of her prostate exam were ready yet (the young woman didn't get it). Pamela Christle's co-workers at Long John Silver's once tricked her into wasting 14 buckets of water taking care of the artificial plants. And Melvin Gonzales and his friends used to put fake money in a wallet and yank it away with a piece of attached string when people would try to pick it up.

Still, some people take their trickery very, very seriously.

"We usually start planning around January," said Pamela Shepard Ferreira of Honolulu, who teams up with her sister and two brothers each year for a little parental payback.

"Our parents used to hide our Christmas presents and Easter baskets," Ferreira said. "Sometime we wouldn't find our baskets until days later. So they kind of started it."

Ten years ago, the siblings targeted their father's recently purchased dream car, a Cadillac, for their annual prank. The sisters, who were living in Utah, scanned Consumer Reports Digest and found a recall for alternators that caught on fire. They got a business card and an official envelope from a Cadillac salesman and faked a letterhead to create an authentic-looking notice that they forwarded to their brothers in Florida.

The brothers then drove to the town where their father bought the car to send the letter so that it would have the proper postmark.

Ferreira's father took the bait and promptly scheduled a replacement for his defective dream car.

Ferreira let her parents off the hook before the car went in.

"My father did not want to believe me at first, but he finally had to admit that we had got him good," she said.

Of course, even the best choreographed pranks can backfire.

Retired Chicago high school teacher Barbara Feather, now a Honolulu resident, recalls one April Fool's Day when her freshman class came in early wearing baby attire — "including bonnets and binkies" — and sat with their desks turned away from the door. When the door opened, they let loose a dozen wind-up mice, which scattered across the floor.

The only problem was Feather had taken the first and only sick day of her career that day. Her replacement, the person who actually walked through the door, "turned out to be the meanest and crabbiest old teacher in the school," Feather wrote in a letter to The Advertiser.

"Her stern demeanor as she faced the kids led me to wonder whether the fright that the students had experienced made any of my precious darlings wish they'd included diapers as part of their baby attire."

Reach Michael Tsai at 535-2461 or mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.