One of the joys of spring at the Big River office used to be slipping a phony story into the April “River News.” We phased out the practice after we changed to a bimonthly, because it didn’t seem fair to pull an April Fools prank in early March.
We have revived a few of our favorites here. Part of the fun was making up pseudo-news stories, but we also enjoyed the incredulous phone calls we sometimes got. Several humor-deprived people cancelled their subscriptions over the “What a Croc” short. (We wondered if they had gone out and bought yellow boating outfits for their whole family.) We heard that realtors in the Savanna area got a few calls from readers looking for hobbit houses. And several professionals confessed later that they had told many people about the schools of tunas in Memphis.
We always sprinkled the pieces with clues, including Pool 23, nail tows and jargon-enamored agency spokesmen.
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APRIL 1999
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APRIL 1998 Winona County moved its courthouse onto 32,008 barrels and tied it up to Latsch Island to make room to expand the county jail. The Minnesota DNR had opposed the move, but granted a permit for the relocation in early March. |
APRIL 2004
People are already showing interest in the prototype two-and three-bedroom units at Savanna Shire.
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APRIL 2000
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APRIL 2001
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APRIL 2002
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Uncorrected River
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Straightened River
All April Foolishness Copyright Big River Magazine 2013 |
Down the
Mississippi: People taking all kinds of trips down the river
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Repairing Driftless Area Fields and Streams (pdf) The Driftless Area — spanning the river in southwest Wisconsin, northwest Illinois, northeast Iowa and southeast Minnesota — contains hundreds of miles of trout streams fed by clear, 50-degree groundwater and springs emanating from the limestone-dominated bedrock. Countless cold-water streams meander through Driftless Area valleys.
Sand Dollars — Mining Frac Sand in the River Valley (pdf)
July-August 2011
Summer of Weeds
Nov-Dec 2010
The Almost-Built Canal: Linking Lake Superior to the Mississippi (pdf)
March-April 2010
Flood Run also PDF
March-April 2010
The Day WWII Came
to Lake Pepin
November-December 2007
Iceboating
on the Mississippi
January-February 2007
Look
down on the river
Overlooks, lookouts, precipices and blufftop peaks
An Otter
Kind of Critter
River
Book Reviews
Bridges
over the Mississippi
Hand-Carved
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