INTRODUCTION

• 12, 18, 2021
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CRACKER JACKS

Jack Ratliff

Definition 1. Cracker Jacks: a caramel covered popcorn and peanuts confection sold in colorful boxes, often at ballparks.

Definition 2. Crackerjack: A person or thing of marked excellence, e. g., a crackerjack shortstop.

Definition 3. Cracker Jack: A South Georgia redneck (a “cracker”) named Jack.

INTRODUCTION

In recent years the writing world has developed a category called “creative non-fiction.”  Problem is, best I can tell, there is no agreement on a definition.  I think Lytton Strachey may have originated the approach in his 1918 historical account, “Eminent Victorians.”  In that breakthrough history (or “history” as his critics would prefer) he often wrote down precise details of conversations that he could not have known about. The principals were often dead by the time he wrote but, nevertheless he recounted in elaborate detail word-for-word conversations that no one but the deceased could have known about.  He was heavily criticized, in part, because he skewered the pretenses of the eminent Victorians in question, but also because he made up stuff. It may be the case that Strachey actually invented creative non-fiction.  If he did, Hunter Thompson was a quick adapter.  In his “gonzo journalism” the reader never knows whether he’s reading fact or fiction.  This is especially true in his writings about Richard Nixon.  I find this kind of faux journalism very frustrating. Tim O’Brien, who wrote the fine and enormously successful book about Vietnam, The Things They Carried, would never say what was fact and what was not.  Some of his stories are purely factual; others are, it seems, purely fictional.  He gives himself and his compadres fictitious names at times; at times he uses real names.  The part about him hiding out in Canada and consulting a wizened wise man, have been shown to be pure fiction, as I understand it.  At the other end of this spectrum are the stories—often called romans a clef— offered as fiction that borrow obviously from real events in the author’s life.

Back to the question of what creative non-fiction is. Some take the view that if you add or change anything, anything at all, that you are not able to document or recall specifically, you are over the line into fiction.  Another view is that, if you make the conversations or weather or costumes consistent with the real facts and with the character of the subject, you are not in fiction but creative non-fiction.  And finally, there is the view—perhaps the result of our post-factual political world—that anything spun off of a factual basis is still creative non-fiction.

Well, who cares?  Publishers do.  Reviewers do.  But I’m not sure anyone else is much interested.

Many of the stories that follow are all based, to one degree or another, on my own real-world experiences. In some instances, I’ve embellished the original facts or used composites of people I’ve known.  I’ve supplied dialogue and scene details that now lost in the mists of time. I’ve changed some time sequences. The childhood years in this mix are purely factual—call them memoirs–as best I can make them.  The later stories are served by more embellishment.  As it is in total fictions, some supporting characters are composites.

I offer my take on the usual disclaimer:  The characters in these stories are purely creations of the writer’s imagination, except when they’re not.  Names and places have been changed to protect the innocent and, sometimes, to protect the guilty.

The greatest example of pure fiction, in my mind, is the usual author’s disclaimer that any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.  The disclaimer is usually a fiction itself, a flimsy bulwark against libel lawsuits.

These efforts borrow a bit from recollections contained in Tom, Bess and Fate, published earlier.

JUST OFF THE SHIP

It was 1958. I was fresh off the destroyer Samuel N. Moore and looking forward to my new assignment—Basic Underwater Demolition-SEAL (BUD/S) training.  I was on my way to becoming a frogman.  That is, if I could get through the training, which had been described as the toughest physical test in all the military. So, I was both excited and anxious about what was to come as I took the short trip from the mainland to my new duty station.

My first view of Coronado Island was from inside a gray 1952 DeSoto parked on the open deck of a ferryboat. As the big clumsy ferry moved out of San Diego across the bay, a fresh sea breeze was stirring. I could see, from my place behind the steering wheel, fervid activity—small sailboats, speedboats, pleasure craft, garbage scows, haze-gray destroyers, and the occasional fishing boat with its nets hung out like the Monday wash.

The ferry bumped onto the landing at Coronado and I clanked across the gangway onto a quiet boulevard. Palm trees lined each side, spindly tan stalks with eruptions of green at the top. I was to learn in my time there that during a big windstorm those palms look like Watusis throwing their big hair back and forth.

Coronado Village has an almost too-cute look about it—neat little shops and restaurants on both sides of the street, large boulevard medians separating lanes of leisurely traffic. A lot of retired Navy admirals and captains live here in miniature homes with freshly painted flower boxes, manicured lawns, and Spanish tile roofs.

Somebody once said of Walt Disney that at Disneyland he had preserved the American way of life by embalming it in marmalade. You could say that about Coronado. But in spite of its oversaturated cuteness, the town back then offered a peaceful haven, protected from the mainland by the slow ferry. In a few years, a big concrete bridge would be built across the bay to connect the island to San Diego and Coronado’s remote charm would be dimmed. Ugly high-rise condos blocked the ocean view.  But back when I arrived, it was a Norman Rockwell kind of place. Only with palm trees.

As you leave the ferry and head into town, the Hotel Del Coronado looms up on your right, bristling with towers and cupolas and conical fairy-tale rooftops. Some Like it Hot was filmed here with Billy Wilder directing Marilyn Monroe.  He finished the movie and then declared that he was too old and too rich to ever work with her again. Later on, another crew filmed a scene from The Graduate here: our hero Benjamin in the lobby nervously trying to get a room for his liaison with Mrs. Robinson. I didn’t know then that the Hotel Del would be a critical part of my efforts to get through the training.

As you turn south from Orange Avenue onto Silver Strand Boulevard and continue down the spit of land called the Strand, the Pacific is on your right.  On your left is the yacht basin, where tiny sailboats flit around like mayflies.

Travel another mile or so south and on your right near the water you see a gray concrete bunker of a building surrounded by razor wire — headquarters for Underwater Demolition Teams 11 and 12–soon to be home to the new SEAL Teams. On your left, across from the UDT headquarters, is a gate with a huge military sign saying U.S. Naval Amphibious Base, Coronado, California — the NavPhib base. Spit-and-polish Marine sentries flank the gate. The duty marine throws you a snappy salute, or more accurately, throws your uniform a snappy salute. Inside you find a few patches of grass and a small grove of palm trees, but the base is mostly asphalt and squat wooden buildings. They look like military buildings the world over—freshly painted, neatly numbered, unimaginative and sad. No matter how long the buildings have been there, they look temporary, as if someone might come in tomorrow, strike the set, and carry off the lumber. If you came back a day later, all you would find would be faded outlines on the ground and a few paper cups blowing around.