Captain Jack Finbar - A Man
of Mystery
One local, an old
curmudgeon named Captain Jack Finbar, had been sitting
quietly, as he took everything in. He was one of the most
colorful characters I have ever met in my entire life. When
some of the skeptical young marines were ridiculing some of
the locals that mention that they saw extra-terrestrial
craft; Captain Jack felt it was necessary to jump in. He
told all of us in the diner that on a hunting excursion into
the barrens, he saw an object that was a craft not from this
world. He also asserted that in the middle of the night
something caused him to wake up and peer out of his tent, to
look out and check his camping supplies by the campfire --
which was still burning at a low level. He said that because
of the light from the campfire and the light of the full
moon, he could see what could be described as non-human
creatures.
Before I go into his story, I
feel that it is best if I go into a little detail about Jack
and his standing in the community. His livelihood was never
clear to me, nor was the reason why he was often called
Captain.
I heard that he served
in World War Two. I never understood why he was called
Captain Jack. I wasn’t sure if he had been a captain in the
service, or if it was because he owned a boat, which he
often lived on, or if it was because he looked like a crusty
old pirate who sometimes wore his eye patch when he wasn’t
wearing his glass eye. When ever I saw him I always thought
that a parrot would look right at home on his shoulder and I
always expected to hear him say “Arrr, shiver me timbers
bucko!”
Sometimes I wondered if
he was called captain because his name was Jack Finbar,
which to me sounded like it could be the name of a pirate
out of some exciting novel.
Everyone in the
community that I asked seemed to have a different answer as
to why he was called captain.
Some of the locals said
he moved into the area right after World War Two, other
people said that in his youth he ran guns and rum to and
from Cuba. The rumors also were that he poached gators,
fished, and made moonshine to supplement his military
disability.
Every time I saw him at
the seed and feed store or the diner, he somehow managed to
keep a one weeks growth on his face, never more, never less.
He had a thick head of very scruffy, unkempt and wiry steel
gray hair. When I think back about him I think of him as a
product of a genetic recombo experiment, mixing of Roy Boehm
(the founder of the Navy Seals) and the character “Quint” in
the movie “Jaws.” One of Jack’s ears was half torn off and
he also had numerous scars and bumps on his face. His
shuffling walk was a product of his time spent in a Japanese
prisoner of war camp and the torture he was forced to
endure. Some of the locals mentioned that Captain Finbar’s
left eye had been lost during a session of interrogation and
torture and that his feet had been beaten and broken a few
times by the turn keys of the POW camp where he was
imprisoned.
They said that he had
been stretched out and they had taken a hard pole with which
they kept beating the bottom of his bare feet, snapping
bones and tendons. Supposedly his legs and hips had been
broken, and when freed from the camp he spent a lot of time
in the military hospital, just like my Uncle Antonio.
Captain Jack never told me anything about the War, nor did I
ask.
He never fully
recovered normal use of his lower body. Local legend was
that he was also a highly decorated before being captured.
The locals said that he use to make money on the side from
bare fisted fighting any tough person who wanted to take him
on, especially before the war. It was said that his torn ear
and the scars on his face were from the fights before the
war.
It was said that he did the
bare fisted fighting for pay after the war, but within a
short time he quit that trade, saying that witnessing the
unnecessary violence during the war more than his own
disabilities made him lose his taste for it. He reminded me
of my Uncle Antonio, real old school and tough.
