Rabanitos

I was thinking today how much I miss Snoopy and Charlie Brown. They were a big part of the lives of my generation, especially in the Sunday comics section. It has been more than eight years now since Charles Schultz died peacefully in his sleep on a Saturday night. It was just one day before the "Peanuts" comic strip stopped running and fifty years after it began. That is the spooky kind of thing that legends are made out of. Charles Schultz had a great sense of timing which I think a lot of people of his generation did. My own mother, whose name is Armella and who died of cancer a couple of years ago at age ninety two, asked to be carried to her kitchen several days before she died and there she supervised the cleaning out of her refrigerator so that when she died she could rest in peace knowing that all of her chores had gotten done. The older generation had a sense of duty and responsibility that we don't seem to relate to much anymore.

Imagine...Mr. Schultz accumulated fifty five million dollars just doodling every day and reminiscing about his childhood. When the strip first began in October of 1950 the critics said that it wouldn´t last because Schultz's drawing ability wasn't good enough and his characters were too crudely drawn. I guess he fooled them. In people years Charlie Brown would be about 58 years old by now. Sometimes I like to think of Charlie Brown and Lucy and Linus as being in heaven. I have only one problem, however. Would this mean that Snoopy is also in heaven with Charlie Brown or does he have to go to Doggie Heaven with his brother Spike? One other thing...whatever happened to the little red headed girl?

It is interesting to note that Schultz's comic strip wasn't called "Peanuts" in Mexico. It was called "Rabanitos" which means "little radishes" probably because in Spanish the word peanut is "cacahuate" and doesn't have the same sense of diminutive as it does in English. Most of the other names were the same, however, except for Charlie Brown who was called "Carlitos" and Peppermint Patty who was called "Piperita Patty". I guess that is because in Spanish the word for "peppermint" is is "menta" if talking about the flavor and if talking about the plant itself is "hierbabuena". I remember reading an article after Schultz's death that speculated on how Charlie Brown and his gang might have turned out if they had actually aged like we do during that period in real life. Charlie Brown would be well into his second marraige after a brief fling with the cute little red headed girl. He finally became the assistant general manager for the Consolidated Kite Company but his kite still keeps getting fouled up in trees during kite competition every year at the company picnics. Even so he has been named "Employee of the Month" at least twice during the last twenty years. Lucy was married and divorced three times before landing a spot as a radio psychologist and is now looking for a sponsor to produce her new TV show "Judge Lucy". Linus turned into a big "X Files" fan and spends his time conjuring up conspiracy theories and in spite of countless hours of psychiatric therapy he still believes in the Great Pumpkin. Pig Pen taught himself to play the guitar, joined the Grateful Dead, and then died of a drug overdose. Patty became a great woman athlete and shot a 76 in the Woman's PGA Golf Tournament. Schroeder is currently playing for the Boston Pops and Snoopy...well, Snoopy would be about 400 years old in the equivalent of dog years by now so you tell me where you think he might be.