Baseball season is upon us again. Strikes, balls, the designated hitter, the grand slam, and Cracker Jack. I brought up Cracker Jack the other day with the boys, most figured it doesn't exist anymore but I know it does. In 2004 the evil empire known as the NY Yankees tried to replace Cracker Jack with the Milli Vanilli of the snack world, Crunch n' Munch. Cracker Jack was back in a matter of weeks due to public outcry.
Everyone of a certain generation has their own memories of Cracker Jack. As a boy, I always toted a box around. Most greetings would go as follows.
"Hi Jack, whatcha doing?" (I was called Jack back then.)
"Nothin', Cracker Jack?" I would hold the box out as some type of offering. I often thought that the Three Wise Men must have shared boxes as they rode their camels towards Bethlehem. That is what Cracker Jack was about, the sharing. I never knew anyone that hogged a box to themselves. It was the hooka pipe to the league of networking children. It was our emergency provision as we set out wide eyed into the world of wonder.
It is a key scene in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" were Holly's husband gives Paul the ring from his Cracker Jack box. Paul and Holly go to Tiffany's to buy a gift, but with their tight budget, they decide to engrave the ring instead. The salesman is pleased to learn they still include prizes in the box saying "it gives one a feeling of solidarity, almost of continuity with the past, that sort of thing." And who can forget Alfalfa in "The Little Rascals" saying to Darla as he gave her a ring, "I had to eat six boxes of Cracker Jack to find that." Even John Steinbeck thought it was important enough to make it a central plot in "The Grapes of Wrath."
Now people don't even know if it exist, a pretty sad statement. You can't help but wonder if the world would be a different place if George W. just offered Osama some Cracker Jack.
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