The news is generally a serious affair.

The benefit to this space? I don’t have to be quite so serious.

In the next installment of “Digging Through The Archives,” I found an April Fool’s Joke “we” did back in 1973.

I understand that political correctness wasn’t really a thing in the ’70s but I can’t help but wonder if this seemed borderline at the time.

REMEMBER, THIS WAS AN APRIL FOOL’S JOKE. DON’T CALL THE CORPS OF ENGINEERS OR STATE POLICE. IT WAS A JOKE THEN. IT’S A JOKE NOW.

With that disclaimer aside, and without further ado, our April Fool’s joke in 1973 (with my comments in italics).

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Warren County’s Kinzua Dam, which performed so nobly during the Tropical Storm Agnes downpour of June 1972, has been chosen as the pilot project in a dramatically new federal program with extensive social implications.

The Minority Relocation Committee, a subcommittee of the long-range federal Land Denudation Authority, announced that the dam, its work completed, would be torn down over the next ten years, and its huge concrete monoliths would be stored atop the overlook in the Seneca Power Project reservoir.

Minority Relocation Committee? Ok… though I like how they jumped right into the gist of the story – hauling the dam up the side of the mountain and stowing it in the power reservoir. Totally practical.

When the Kinzua Dam and many other such projects in the country were still in the planning stage, projections were made to determine what the maximum storage capacity should be. Researching historical records of weather patterns and river flow, plus studying the effect of water accumulation in existing years yielded the data needed to construct the dam to the sufficient size to handle massive floods.

The hurricane and resultant floods of 1972 were the worst on records, and engineers have announced that the severity of this deluge was such as would only be expected to occur once in every 100 years.

I can see a lot of people biting on this. “Because Agnes was a one-in-one hundred year flood, it won’t happen again for at least 90 years!” I read that the feds are actually getting away from describing floods this way… and I think I know (gullible people) why.

“Since we have had our 100-year flood, the Minority Relocation Committee concluded that the dam, while an attractive tourist attraction, could best be utilized to put people to work in view of mounting chronic unemployment,” said Liddy W. McCord of the committee. The committee noted statistics which shows a dramatic improvement in Warren County’s unemployment profile during the years the eight-year-old dam was under construction.

In 2017, I’m sure the “Liddy W. McCord” citation doesn’t really stick out. In 1973, it certainly would have. G. Gordon Liddy was the chief operative of the Plumbers, the entity established in the Nixon White House to quash leaks. James McCord was one of the Watergate burglars. If you fell for the “hauling the dam up the mountain” idea and the Watergate reference in 1973, then clearly staff at the time could write whatever they wanted… and you’d probably bite. And, as it turns out, they did…

In conjunction with the Economic Opportunity Council, the Youth Opportunity Council, the Full Employment Council and the Department of Labor, statistical studies were undertaken to determine how best to duplicate this unemployment profile.

The proposal:

The Army Corps of Engineers is to supervise the temporary dismantling of the Kinzua Dam;

The labor for such dismantling, and the huge job of carving out a clearcut runway up the sheer face of the abutting mountainside to the Seneca Power Project reservoir atop the mountain for the storage of the monoliths, is to come exclusively from unemployed and welfare recipients;

Yes! Reducing unemployment!

When the water has been drained off the land, the workers can then build roads and modular housing in several sites along the Kinzua Valley. The modular type of housing was chosen so that, when the dam is rebuilt in 80 years to be ready for the next 100-year flood, the housing can be relocated, using another segment of the unemployed work force, without undue damage;

Because we have control over when the next flood will happen, we’ll just move houses out of the way when the time comes. Incredibly reasonable…

When the reservoir, encompassing 12,080 square acres, is drained, the resultant land, already cleared of brush before the dam was built, should be among the best farmland in the nation due to the massive buildup of topsoil siltation from the Olean area during the last flood. It will, accordingly, make ideal valley pasture and corn crop land, tying in nicely with the administration’s efforts to alleviate the rising food prices.

Now this very well may be true. Except for, you know, MILLIONS OF GALLONS OF WATER.

Wherever possible, efforts will be made to allow former property owners to purchase, at preferential prices, the same land sites they vacated. The cost of these sites will be directly related to the buyer’s ability to pay, but in no case will be more than the land was considered to be worth when the valley was flooded the first time.

Political correctness aside, this is where the joke seems borderline to me. As much controversy as surrounded the dam and the land that had to be taken less than a decade earlier, I can’t help but wonder if there was a lone staffer in the newsroom who, at one point, thought “Too soon.”

A private developer is reported by high government sources to have already submitted a bid to the government for a contract to buy any land left unclaimed.

Awarding this contract is pending the final decision to go ahead on the project, which must await action by the full Land Denudation Authority.

For the record, “denudation” actually is a word.

Since the project will take several years, members of recreational groups have been told that their boating and camping privileges will be only gradually withdrawn.

The Authority has already contracted with the Penn Central Railroad to bring a gigantic crane, normally used in mammoth strip mining operations in West Virginia, to the site. The crane has been transported at night so as not to disrupt traffic, and is presently in a holding position, dwarfing the dam with its bulk, on the east bank of the river below the monoliths. It is reportedly becoming a tourist attraction already.

The earthen part of the structure will be left intact and buttressed against the river’s flow, with a local developer expressing interest in using the northern slope as a ski area, including the construction of an Olympic-size ski jump, as the proper angle is already pretty much in place.

Now this sounds like a development idea I can support.

A target date of Sept. 1, 1973, has been set for the start of demolition, with a full four years’ work planned before the 1977 completion of the project and reclamation of the land.

The Seneca Indians, who own much of the land on one side of the reservoir, are reported in agreement with the proposal. One authority claimed that the date was well-chosen as it coincides with an ancient holiday, “lirpa loof.”

If people were still reading this story to this point assuming it was true, then the fake holiday “lirpa loof” definitely wasn’t going to tip them off. If they were still reading this far, becoming enraged at the idea, then there’s nothing we could have done to help them.

He offered the following explanation: the statement is attributed by some to Cornplanter, by others to George Washington. At any rate, it supposedly took place in a conference between the two leaders of nations after the treaty setting aside lands for their use was signed. After the particularly hard winter that followed the treaty, the Indians welcomed the spring and the chief said that, at the end of a productive summer, they would celebrate the signing as “lirpa loof.”

Translated loosely, he said, the phrase means “place where turkeys and sap run freely in the spring.”

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The inset advertisement…

“Ladies and gentlemen, pending legal action in Washington and Harrisburg, I will offer for sale all unclaimed lands in the dried out Kinzua/Allegheny Valley.

To get your name on the mailing list for information, as it is made available to me, and to be put on the “right of first refusal” buyers list, mail this coupon today: Industrial and institutional inquiries welcome.

Send inquiries to Box 188, c/o this Newspaper

John P. Siltman

River Bottom Estates

… land from the lake…”

“Siltman?” Seriously?

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In the following days paper, we ran a short story under the headline “Most readers saw through spoof: Kinzua Dam story was April Fool.”

“By now, most of you know it. The Saturday story on the projected demolition of the Kinzua Dam was our April Fool contribution for 1973.

Your response was overwhelming – over 100 calls to the harried circulation department and sleepy staffers Saturday morning alone. And the reaction seems to have been split evenly between the three emotions of amusement, confusion and irritation.

The clue in the story, of course, was the mention of the Indian holiday “Lirpa Loof.” Those readers who caught it and spelled it backwards were mostly amused. Those who didn’t catch on were confused. And those who only read the headline or photo caption and glanced at the story were irritated.

We’ve had people sending telegrams to government officials, pestering the state police and Kinzua Dam offices, and in general stirring up a fuss. We do apologize to those we irritated, and hope they’ll take the story in the spirit of fun in which it was intended. And we’re delighted with the surprising number of astute readers whose sense of humor was pleased.

Our business is news, and we do take our obligation seriously. But this year, we just couldn’t resist trying our luck. We did have a few callers who actually thought dismantling the dam would be a good idea. For our part, we’re more than happy with its strong bulwark as a flood preventative and summer recreation spot.

And now we’ll be serious in our news stories from now on – at least through March 31, 1974.”

I can’t imagine whoever involved in these shenanigans didn’t consider what would happen if people thought this were true. I think I’m impressed that they had the… fortitude to go ahead with the story. I know I wouldn’t have. Regardless of how funny it might have been.

To the people who pulled the shenanigans, I salute you. The fact that you made an absolutely outlandish story believable to some people speaks to the incredible job you did breaking this news.

I can’t help but wonder how long it took to write…