April Fools

It was in the mid 1990’s.

Denise and I were co-hosting The Morning Wake Up Show on 101.3, The Light FM.

It wasn’t bright lights - big city, but we were having fun back when radio was generally-speaking, more fun.

A week or so prior to April 1st, we noticed the town of Milford was getting a new water tower.

Not exactly big news, but in a town where teens gather to step on crickets at the post office for fun…it was noteworthy.

I’m not sure how it all came together, but Denise and I decided it would be fun to pretend that we were doing our morning show “live” from inside the water tower on April 1st.

Our engineer hooked up a reverb unit so that whenever we turned on the mic’s that morning, it echoed and sounded like we were…well, inside a water tower.

We told our listeners that the water tower was mostly empty, and the city had invited us in for a tour before they filled it with water.

We had a recording of water droplets that we played now and then just for fun, and we pre-recorded car horns honking from a distance. We asked our listeners to drive by the water tower and honk their horns because we could hear them…and then I’d play the horn sfx and we’d thank the listeners who were honking.

Around mid-morning, my friend Tony stopped by and we interviewed him as he pretended to be a city water tower expert. We asked him all kinds of questions, and he just made up the answers on the spot. It was very convincing.

Around that same time we also announced that because the new water tower was about to go online, water pressure in Milford was a bit sketchy. We suggested that people who lived on the north side of town should flush their toilets only during odd hours all day, and listeners on the south side of town could flush during even hours.

Somebody from City Hall called our switchboard after a bit to ask what was going on because people were calling them and asking them when they were supposed to flush.

The funniest part for us was when our break room vendor came walking down the hall with a fresh supply of soda and candy bars and he saw Denise and me in the studio. He froze and his jaw dropped and he busted up laughing.

He said he had just driven by the water tower to honk at us.

We played it straight all the way through the show, and as we started the last song we just said, “Happy April Fools Day, we’ll see you tomorrow.”

For years. And I mean decades, people would randomly mention, “That time you guys did your show from the water tower!”

We’d just nod and smile.