Adele Ferguson - Oct. 29, 2009

SO the Balloon Boy was a hoax.

We were all taken for a ride instead of a 6-year old kid who blew the whistle on his folks because he didn’t know any better and came up with the truth instead of a lie. Actually, I wasn’t one of those glued to the television set. I was doing something else and only caught up with the story shortly before the balloon came down.

I must admit that my first thought was where’s Charlton Heston when you need him? Remember one of those airport movies where a helicopter dropped him off on a disabled plane with no able pilot on board and a load of passengers? He saved the day, of course.

But he’s gone now so little Falcon would have been on his own if he had been on board instead of being hid out by his parents until it was feasible for him to reappear.

DON’T BLAME the media for falling for it. I’ve been hoaxed a few times myself. Once my editor sent me out to interview a woman who told police she had been kidnapped in a grocery store parking lot but managed to escape. She was understandably upset as I listened to her story while her husband paced in the living room, face grim. It was an interesting story about the kidnapper hiding in the back of her car and how scared she was when he threatened her, etc. It made the front page, of course, and was the talk of the town as people worried about a kidnapper on the loose.

A couple of days later, we got a call from somebody on a newspaper in another state, I forget which one, telling us we’d been had. The woman had pulled this before a couple of times, in neither case was she kidnapped but got her name and picture in the papers.

I double checked, found that was the truth and wrote another story exposing her and her husband who had a high civilian position in the Navy and never said a word though he knew she was lying. Every time I wrote about it after that I mentioned him and his job until he called and asked why I was picking on him.

Because, I said, you stood right there and let her tell me a bunch of crap that you knew wasn’t true and which resulted in my newspaper printing a lie that scared the day lights out of a lot of people who worry about such things. I never heard from him again.

ANOTHER time a local dentist I think it was called and asked me if I would write his engagement story. I could have said no, I’m not in that department but he was a good news source so I agreed to come to his office to get her picture and the information.

It was some time later I heard that he had told fellow guests at a cocktail party how he had fooled me. It seems he was having an affair with the wife of a prominent businessman in town who was threatening to go public with an alienation of affections lawsuit.

The dentist figured he could allay suspicion of the affair by announcing his engagement. I never did know whose picture he used of the fiancee who lived in Las Vegas. Eventually the businessman divorced his wife, and she married the dentist.

Last story. A caller one day told me he was a high school student thinking about going into journalism and could he ask me some questions. I said sure and we talked awhile.

It was later I learned that he had been put up to calling me by a teacher. Our conversation was being beamed to a whole classroom and was taped, which is against the law without permission of both parties. I wrote about it and the teacher apologized and said there was no tape but I got calls from people who said she played it at a cocktail party. I hadn’t said anything to be ashamed of although I would have handled it differently if I had known I was speaking to a whole bunch of students, not just one.

Anyway, don’t feel used for being hoaxed, there’ll be another one along in no time.

(ADELE FERGUSON can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)