Do you ever feel that more is going on than meets the eye? I get the feeling all the time, but I try to keep it at bay, as these are the things of which conspiracy theories are made.
But in some cases, as we have seen in history, more truly IS going on behind those scenes. Take Nixon and his hidden tapes at Watergate. Or Operation Snow White, when the Church of Scientology assembled an estimated 5,000 of their Church members, as covert agents, to infiltrate 136 government agencies. Their mission was to remove unfavorable records about Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, as they didn’t want anything bad about them on record.
Sometimes, these things do come true.
And then there are Cracker Jacks.
Oh, sure, they seem harmless enough. We all know the Cracker Jack as an American brand of snack food. Its yummy combination consists of molasses-flavored, caramel-coated popcorn and peanuts. For a long time, it was known for having that great little prize inside.
And the Cracker Jack slogan has us all saying, “The More You Eat The More You Want.” There are food historians in this world, you know. Some of them say it is the first junk food.
There is some disagreement over how it all started. There were a couple of different recipes floating around Chicago around 1870. But it wasn’t until 1896 that Frederick and Louis Rueckheim, brothers, German immigrants, produced and registered the first lot of Cracker Jacks, along with that famous tagline about eating more, wanting more.
I would like to point out that also in 1896, the Dow Jones index began with an average of 12 industrial stocks. It closed at 40.94. An interesting coincidence? The more you eat, the more you want? It seems sticky to me.
Oh, but wait, there truly is more. The Cracker Jack went merrily along for almost two decades. Then on this very date, in 1913, they started putting those special prizes inside every box.
Also, in 1913, the US postal service began parcel deliveries. So it wasn’t long until people thought it would be okay to mail their children. Yes, the first one was a cute little four-year-old girl named Charlotte May Pierstorff. Her parents put a bunch of stamps on her coat and dropped her in the mail. She went sent as a parcel package, by train, from Grangeville, Idaho, to her grandparents’ house 73 miles away. You see, she was under the 50-pound parcel weight limit.
It didn’t stop there. A lot of people mailed their kids if they were under 50 pounds. A ten-month-old baby boy, the child of Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Beauge from Batavia, Ohio, went too. Ten months old. He was posted for the cost of 15c in stamps. However, I should note that his parents insured him for fifty dollars. I don’t know what the charge was for the insurance.
A secret prize at the bottom of the box? Oh, who knows.
Regardless, the US postal service eventually tried to shut the practice down. They had to officially issue a directive that no humans were to be sent by mail, but it took them until 1920 to put an end to this. That was about the same time that Sailor Jack and his dog Bingo were registered trademarks of the Cracker Jack Company.
Oh, but the big one is yet to come. Cracker Jacks were tasty no doubt, but kids mostly wanted the toy inside. It was magical. It was mysterious. It was an ongoing hallmark of tradition in youthful lives across America. A symbol of optimism, that in the midst of the “expected” there was a great prize to be had if only we would look.
But then came the sad decision. The saddest day. In 2016, Frito-Lay, the owner of Cracker Jacks, announced that the prizes would no longer be provided. That was also the year that President Donald Trump was elected.
And those are the Cracker Jack annals of our American History. Of course, none of this is connected. But don’t tell QAnon.
As always, the more you eat, the more you want.
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“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”
― Winston S. Churchill
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“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.”
― Michael Crichton
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“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses
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Save some money, mail a kid. Have a Cracker Jack.
