Foreword by Walter Cronkite

Extracted from The Complete Peanuts 1953-1954

Peanuts has caused me almost as much anguish as has been suffered, through vast disappointment or the dastardly doings of fate, by so many of Charles Schulz‘s wondrous characters.

The first of my tales of woe concerns a planned visit with Mr. Schulz in his Santa Rosa home, as arranged by a good friend of his, the noted California newspaper editor and columnist, Neil Morgan. A day in July was set. My anticipation began to grow, like that of a teenager about to meet a rock star. At almost the last moment, a news assignment took me to another corner of the globe. An understanding Schulz agreed to postpone the meeting to another date when I was back in the States.

And then, tragedy struck — he suffered the cancer attack from which he would not recover. That huge part of the world’s population that adored him grieved and I, deprived of the opportunity to at least briefly share his company, was a particularly stricken mourner.

As did others who were luckier and got to know Schulz personally, perhaps I would have assumed the privilege of calling him by his almost onomatopoeic nickname, Sparky.

Back there in 1922, just a few days after he was born to the wife of a barber in St. Paul, Minnesota, an uncle was so enchanted by his infant nephew he started calling him Sparky — after a horse, Spark Plug, featured in a then-popular comic strip called Barney Google. The nickname stuck, and Charles Schulz was called Sparky the rest of his life.

Now here you have a confluence of coincidences that would never be accepted even by the producers of a Hollywood pot-boiler: A baby nicknamed after a cartoon character growing up to be one of the greatest and most popular cartoonists of all time!

And second of our coincidences, that name “Sparky” would have been just right for a Peanuts character — a self-promotion Sparky Schulz managed to resist for his entire career.

I recount this now because I find it difficult to think (or write) of the great man by any name other than that perfect pseudonym of “Sparky.” I would like to think that my talk with him would have been sprinkled with Sparkys and Walters, and would have been as lengthy and fascinating as the one he granted Rick Marschall and Gary Groth for the interview that appeared in the first volume of this series. It was enthralling stuff, and among it’s interesting revelations was the fact that Schulz in conversation was verbose and rambling, leaving sentences dangling and unfinished. Now that is not unusual when an individual is under interrogation (and that includes this newsman when on the other side of the microphone). However, it deserves notice because of its sharp contrast to the tight discipline he exhibited in his work. His few words of dialogue — a sentence or two a panel at most — were complemented by an economy of line in his illustrations. His drawings were but scribbles, a few lines scarcely more elaborated than children’s stick figures, but his genius was such that with this short few lines he created a panorama of life’s experiences as are suffered, or enjoyed, or tolerated by the inhabitants of a cartoon village.

A member of that community, one who experiences all the emotional pangs of his human friends, is the dog Snoopy. I’m a dog lover, as was Schulz, and he is my favorite Peanut. It was in fact Snoopy who, indirectly, caused me the anguish which I mentioned at the top of this essay. (Schulz called his first childhood dog Spike — an inspired play on his own nickname. A sculpture of Spike is on display at the Peanuts museum in Santa Rosa.)

On a Father’s Day many years ago, one of my children bestowed upon me one of those Peanut souvenirs which we are told made millions of dollars for Schulz. It was a little miniature doghouse on which perched Snoopy in his aviator’s goggles and helmet as he imagined himself a World War I fighter ace.

The tiny music box it held failed almost immediately, but Snoopy went on to grace my dressing table for several decades. I would greet him every morning and he would put a smile on my face and a little song in my heart as I faced the day, and each night before retiring I would bid him goodnight and wish him well as he searched the skies for his adversary, The Red Baron.

Then, several decades after our meeting, Snoopy disappeared. It wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t run away. He was lost as we moved to another house. I was as devastated as anyone losing a pet animal. Oh, of course I might have found another souvenir Snoopy in a Broadway shop, but that would have been disloyal to my Snoopy. And it was a good thing I didn’t try to acquire a replacement: He turned up in some misplaced furniture almost a year after his disappearance, and it would have been terrible if he had thought I ever tried to replace him. He is sitting right now on my desk and I think he’s throwing a salute to all his loyal fans.

I suppose there are out there some people who will think I’m a foolish old romantic, possibly even a little nuts, to have such an association withm even to the point of talking to, an inanimate object. You Peanuts fans know better. You know that the greatest of Charles Schulz‘s magic tricks was bringing life to all those wonderful folks with which he peopled our world and brightened our days.

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