First the Boat, then The Captain

As sad as tale as the demise of the New Dawn, I think today's news just may be even sadder.

No, I'm not shuffling off to Davey Jones' Locker.  You'll have to decide if that's the good news, or the bad.  The real news is perhaps, even worse.

As children, we all grew up being regaled with heroic tales of history's Great Captains.  The courage of Nelson, the resolve of John Paul Jones, the unrivaled courage of Farragut.  Countless are the boys who sailed the seas of imagination with Horatio Hornblower, who sought the Great White Whale with Captain Ahab, and even those who sailed the darker seas with the likes of Hook, Blackbeard and LaFitte.

There is one Cap'n though, who has touched the lives of more children than all of the above, combined.  For decades, he has steered his course across the milky seas, finding favor everywhere, save for those cruel shores where he and his kind were never welcomed.

Scorned by the humorless scolds who find pleasure in nothing and evil in all, the number of ports offering him welcome dwindled in numbers ever less, until it came to pass that he was Cap'n without a flag, navigating the doldrums of bottom shelf passages, endlessly adrift as a merchantman's worst nightmare, a cargo without a market.  Unwanted, unwelcome and turned away nearly everywhere, his once bright career ended, with hardly a ripple to compare with the mighty waves his ship's bow once displaced, everywhere he sailed.

It is with great sadness, that I mark the passing of this once great Cap'n, and mourn forever the void that his passing brings.

The cruel bastards at Quaker Oats/Life, Inc. have done that which no Somali pirate ever dared, much less even dreamed of having the temerity to do.

 

 

 

They've forced the Cap'n from the seas, stripped him of command, are making him walk the plank, never to again sail the milky seas of children's cereal bowls around the globe.

My anguish runs deep.  I sailed aboard the Cap'n's ship for most of my youth, and still enjoyed the occasional pleasure cruise, even to this day.  My annual time on those sweet decks was a treat indeed, one to be savored.  Not only for it's sweet, crunchy immediate rewards, but for the aftertaste of young memories, carefree pleasures and so much of the lost innocence of simpler times.

Such an ignominious fate, for such a Grand and Noble Cap'n, must be properly noted, observed, and mourned.  And so, it shall be.

It was a pleasure and an honor sailing with the Good Cap'n Crunch.  I was proud to be amongst his crew, and would gladly have sailed with him as long as his red, boxy ship plied the churning whitecaps of the spoon-churned bowl.

I hereby order a Twenty-One Bowl salute, in honors.

Godspeed, Cap'n Crunch, may you one day sail again!

Comments

[Rob De Witt]

And now I'll tell you a tale.....

Are you old enough to remember Phone Phreaks? In the '60s, at the inception of direct dial, some genius with perfect pitch realized that the tone in the system which accessed the long-distance trunk amounted to 2600 cycles per second - which, handily enough, was the exact tone produced by the little plastic bosun's pipe that came in each package of Cap'n Crunch. Blow it into the phone at the proper time, and Free long distance for all! Until Ma Bell figured out what was going on, at which point things got a little ugly.

"Cap'n Crunch" became a legend among Phone Phreaks, of course. And the best part of the legend was that "Cap'n Crunch" was actually Jose Feliciano.

Times was lots more fun before computers, Matey...

[De]

I'll miss having the roof of my mouth torn to shreds by the Cap'n. :(

[Jeffro]

What De said. I was a purist - none of those newfangled Crunch Berries or anything for moi.

[Rivrdog]

I was a counter-geek to the Phreaks, and made the first ever arrest and prosecution of one of them for possession of a Blue Box right here in Stumptown in the early 70's.

Of course, the perp wasn't hard to spot, driving his retired still-Olive Ma Bell ford Econoline van, with the Blue Box right on the seat next to him...

The arrest blew our CSI away though, they had no clue about Blue Boxes, but I got a Bell engineer to 'splain it all to them.

[Mo K.]

Glad to see you well and blogging, Cap'n Jim!

Now onto my soapbox...

Money phrase from the original article: "pressure from the White House..."

Where the hell is it written in the Constitution that it's among the president's duties to pressure food companies to make or not make certain products?

And where the hell is it written in the Constitution that the president's spouse has ANY power whatsoever?

I am sick of living in a damn monarchy, run by nannies who think they know how to run my life better than I do.

I haven't bought Cap'n Crunch in years, but that was MY choice. And I want choices, not government-mandated uniformity. If they keep getting their way, every item you can think of will fall into one of two categories: forbidden and mandatory. There will be no choice, no discretion, no options. Argh!

That is all.

Well, prolly not. ;-)

[shoreacres]

I've never eaten a bowl of Cap'n Crunch in my life. When it arrived on the scene (1963) I was a senior in high school. Uh-oh.....

Well, still - I'm feeling rather rebellious after reading your post, so I believe I'll see if I can't find a box in the grocery and have some for old times' sake.

I'd stockpile some, but there's not much room left between the boxes of incandescent light bulbs.

[og]

Damn, I'm glad to see you posting again, I hadn't checked in a while. Will have to make this a daily stop again.