Halloween, Ghosts and Cracker Jack

I may be the only person on the planet who doesn’t like Halloween. Not one single thing about it. Not the black and orange color scheme that take up several isles in the stores for weeks ahead of November 31th and is draped around neighborhood yards. Not the greedy little kids who when you say “take one” they take one handful. Not the costumes that way too many adults seem to think are fun to dress up in and scare the heck out of me when they show up at my door. Not the Zombie Walks held downtown that grows larger every year. Not the candy itself that puts me on a sugar binge that lasts until New Year’s Resolutions are made. Is there such a thing as a Halloween Grinch like there is for Christmas? Google has an answer: Yes, there is and my picture appeared when I did the search.

So why did I go to a lecture billed as Ghost Stories? They weren’t ordinary ghost stories. These were legends and spooky mysteries that center around iconic buildings in our downtown buildings. I’ve seen this speaker before and she's good, no matter the topic. She gave an entertaining account of all the tragic deaths of people in those buildings who supposedly wanted to hang around earth to haunt the places. Although I’m not fully vested in the premise of souls sticking around, I do think my husband’s did just that for a couple of weeks. Everything has a scientifically based explanation; that’s my story and I’m sticking to it to explain why my wedding kept falling off the bulletin board where I'd hung it on a pin.

When I was a kid I liked Halloween and there was one house around the corner from me that we always hit before the rest. The elderly couple who lived there gave out boxes of Cracker Jack and I still have the plastic prizes that came in those early boxes. I’ve added hundreds to my collection since then including a tin horse drawn wagon circa 1916 that I paid a small fortune to acquire. That’s a different story for a different day but in case you’re curious I still love the collection. When you collect anything you learn interesting facts. For example I learned about how the Cracker Jack’s waxed box was a pioneer in food packaging that revolutionized the food industry and I learned how baseball became connected to their product. The story behind the latter is that a vaudeville entertainer who’d never been to a ball game wrote a song on a train and that song---Take me out to the Ball Game---with its iconic line “buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack" was a godsend to the company’s sales. And before you ask, it didn’t come from any deal or compensation the entertainer got. 

Throughout 1914 and 1915 the company offered baseball cards in Cracker Jack boxes and a complete set today is worth over a $100,000. Needless to say, I don’t have a set or even a single card. If I did it would go up for sale so fast my nose would bleed. I do have several sets of the replica cards the company put in boxes (1991 through 1993) for their 100^th anniversary which aren’t worth enough to tempt me to sell---a set might buy me a nice steak dinner. I also don’t have any of the forerunners to the toys put in boxes in between 1910 and 1912 which were coupons that when you collected enough could be redeemed for things like silverware, watches and sewing machines. I wish I did. They are rarer than bunions on fresh water fish.

Oh, yes, I do have Halloween to thank with my obsession with Cracker Jack. That and the fact that in the early years of being with my husband we went to a lot of antique malls and flea markets where he often found pricey things to add to his collections and, as a joke, I decided to add to my childhood C.J. toys and wooden nickel collections which at the time I could pick up for under a buck a piece. It was a game we played that took the thrill of the hunt to a whole new level. As my knowledge grew and the years went by, of course, so did my willingness to pay more. In the meantime I had a lot fun teasing Don that I could spend two hours at a flea market, spend $1.00-$2.00 and have as much fun as his $100-$200 hunt.

So ya, I’m probably more attached to my Cracker Jack premiums than I should be and it does bother me that I’m at an age where I should let go. But most of those little toys represents good times spent with my soulmate and I still can’t let go of those memories attached. And what would I do if I downsized my entire life yet again to live a minimalist life-style for another five, ten or twenty years? Stare at the sterile walls wishing I could buy back my memory triggers? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust but in between I collected too much. ©