APRIL FOOL’S DAY:Foolish behavior encouraged

Several readers of the this month’s edition of the Oasis Senior Center’s newsletter were stunned to learn that someone had been secretly growing marijuana in the center’s beloved rose garden.

Of course, they were all innocent victims of a well thought-out April Fool’s Day joke.

“We started this tradition a couple year’s ago of putting a fake article in our newsletter,” said recreation coordinator Marci Knapp.

“Last year, we told them we were going to have to share our classrooms with grade school children because a nearby public school had to be abandoned after they found toxic materials.”

The article included a photo of the garden ringed in caution tape, reporting that officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration had visited the scene and police had arrested the culprit based on DNA evidence linking him to the illegal plants.

Knapp said the center received several calls from readers who were shocked by the news, despite a caveat in the last sentence that indicated it was a hoax.

“It totally accomplished what it was supposed to,” said Oasis member Oakley Jordan.

“I read it and thought, ‘What in the world is going on here? I’m part of this organization, how could I not know about this?’”

The senior center group isn’t the only band of tricksters around Newport-Mesa.

Here are some other stunts that locals have pulled over the years:

Costa Mesa-based surfboard shaper Dan Taylor had to apologize profusely to his mother one April Fool’s Day after telling his parents he had been arrested for underage drinking.

He gave them a false phone number to call, and when they did, a friend answered, “Newport Beach Police Department.” After being “removed from his cell,” Taylor came to the phone and exclaimed, “April Fools!”

Corona del Mar High School Assistant Principal Jack Cusick recalled an April Fool’s Day stunt pulled by science teacher Brian Tulley two years ago.

Because April 1 fell on a Friday, Tulley thought it would be fun to organize an after-school meeting — because all teachers loathe Friday meetings — in Portable 21, and sure enough a large crowd roamed the campus in search of the nonexistent building.

“There was a sizeable number of people wandering around looking for a classroom that didn’t exist,” Cusick said.

Employees of the Memphis Group, owners of Costa Mesa’s Memphis Cafe and Detroit Bar, have long been playing jokes on founder and president Dan Bradley.

Each year on April Fool’s Day, a manager from one of his establishments calls Bradley to inform him of some sort of calamity, such as a fire or a waitress who goes berserk.

Though the plan never came to fruition, several employees intended to disable the satellite radio at the Santa Ana location last year, and instead play Lynyrd Skynyrd, Black Sabbath and other music Bradley cannot stand.

Another year, several of Bradley’s friends and employees got an early morning wake up call from the “Santa Ana Police Department” alleging that Bradley was in the restaurant by himself, drunk and naked.

Resident Detroit Bar disc jockey Danny Love told the “officer” to lock Bradley inside so he could sleep it off, but former bartender Gary Gomez got out of bed and was on his way to Santa Ana from his Long Beach home before the pranksters let him in on the joke.