San Francisco, CA - Good Grief

Peanuts - Just the very name conjures up images of Schroeder playing the piano, Lucy pulling the football away at the last minute, Snoopy with his Red Baron goggles on flying his doghouse through the skies and Charlie Brown trying to work up the courage to speak to the little red-headed girl. The humor and insights into the human condition that Charles Schulz condensed into small strips delight us still today. Even though he died in 2000, his characters live on in movies, songs, TV programs, books and - in the Charles Schulz home and museum in Santa Rosa, just a few miles up the road from where we are staying now.

Since I’m not going to be hiking Mt Tam this trip and probably the stairways in San Francisco will be out of reach, it’s a perfect time to explore the world of Peanuts. Nice drive through the green rolling hills of the north bay area with cattle grazing in the valleys, clumps of purple and yellow wildflowers dotting the hillsides and the vineyards we see remind us that we are only a valley away from Napa. A sunny beautiful day, a road trip kind of day.

How about a little history while we’re driving north? Charles Schulz was born in Minneapolis, MN on November 26, 1922 and was quickly nicknamed ‘Sparky’ by his uncle after the horse named Spark Plug in the comics. As he was growing up, he and his father make it a ritual every Sunday to read the funnies especially strips like Skippy, Mickey Mouse and Popeye. He knew he wanted to be a cartoonist and while in high school took a correspondence cartoon course with the Federal School of Applied Cartooning.

The war interrupted and he joined the army where he became a staff sergeant and a squad leader on a .50 caliber machine gun team. He saw combat towards the end of the way and said that he only had one opportunity to fire his machine gun but had forgotten to load it. Fortunately, he said, the German soldier willingly surrendered. But, it was in the army where he eagerly anticipated every edition of the soldiers newspaper, the Stars and Stripes where he could see Bill Mauldin’s cartoons about army life.

It was while he was in the army that his mother died, of cancer about which he had just learned. He was extremely close to his mother and, even much later, he admitted that he had never gotten over her death. After the war, he returned to his home town and lived with his father above his father’s barber. He was still working on his cartoon style when he was hired by the school where he had studied. Here his fellow instructors were: Linus Mauer, Charlie Brown and Frieda Rich (Recognize the names?) Here also he met and began to date Donna Johnson who turned down his proposal of marriage and eventually married another man. She would be forever immortalized as the Little Red Headed Girl.

As he was studying and perfecting his own style, newspaper editors were changing what they wanted in their comics. Short, punchy strips became popular requiring pithy humor in a small space. Perfect for what Schulz was drawing. He honed his skills featuring precocious children in local newspapers like the St. Paul Pioneer Press and with the Saturday Evening Post. Here are some of his early comics.

Then he hit the big time with his Peanuts comics which started in October 2, 1950. (It was named ‘Peanuts’ by his publisher, a name he thought demeaning and never liked.) By 1999, Peanuts was in more than 2,600 newspapers worldwide. It’s clever, understated humor and realistic characters appealed to more and more people over time and tickled audiences throughout the world. Who has not wanted to dance as Snoopy does? Who has not been as shy as Charlie Brown around someone of the opposite sex? Who has not wanted a security blanket like Linus? Who has not wanted to pull that football out like Lucy?

Schulz thought himself an ordinary and man and never thought he should have a museum. But his wife and two of his friends did and what we are visiting today is what they put together to honor Charles Schulz who entertained and enlightened us all.
OK, we’re here, let’s explore.

The museum is actually 2 stories. We started on the second story where the story of life is told. Here we saw his office, every piece of which has been moved lock, stock and barrel to this museum. Look how worn his desk is where he probably did most of his work.

He began his day with an English muffin and grape jelly in the skating rink next door every morning before he came here to create his daily strip. Sometimes he just sat for a while before he had any ideas. Other days he had several ideas all at once and could get ahead of the game. He thought that having so many different characters in his strip enabled him to have so many different story lines. Can’t think of a Charlie Brown strip, how about Snoopy? or Linus, or Peppermint Patty or . . . ?

Funny story about his pens. He had one which he used for the drawings and one which he used for the text. When her heard that Esterbrook & Co. had discontinued the manufacturing of one of these pens, Schulz bought the remaining stock from the company. The docent told us that there are still lots of these pens left.

On the second floor was a wall that he had painted for his daughter, Meredith, at their home in Colorado Springs in 1951. He himself thought the wall was ‘pretty lousy’ but it shows some of his early work. In fact, both early versions of Charley Brown, Snoopy and Peppermint Patty appear here. After the Schulz family left the house, subsequent owners painted over this was at least 4 different occasions. In 1979 Polly and Stanley Travnicek purchased the home, with prior knowledge of the possible treasure lying beneath the many layers of old latex. When Polly Travnicek learned from Schulz that he had painted the wall with oil paints, she bought cans of sanding liquid and mountains of cotton balls and set to work. Working one inch at a time she spent 3 months carefully removing the latex paint. ‘I was so happy. For weeks, I’d rub and say, ‘Where is Charley Brown? Where is Charlie Brown? I know he’s here somewhere. And, finally there he was!’ They treasured that wall for years but finally decided to donate it to the Charles Schulz Museum.

The second floor was all about Charles Schulz and his development as an artist and successful comic illustrator.

Now to the first floor.