Donald Fraser - Security Blankets: How Peanuts Touched Our Lives

Security Blankets 2009 by Don Fraser and Derrick Bang. All rights reserved. Printed in China. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews. For information, write Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, an Andrews McMeel Universal company, 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106.

E-ISBN: 978-0-7407-9056-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008042206

www.andrewsmcmeel.com

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To Harley Chapman, who in 1956 introduced me to Peanuts by giving me a copy of a Peanuts reprint book. At the time, we were going through Marine Corps officer training at The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia. Little did Harley know, back then, that he was sending me on a journey that would find me working with Charles Sparky Schulz and creating two companies dedicated to Peanuts character products. Thank you, Harley, for this gift of a career filled with lifelong friends, and for the satisfaction that comes from bringing happiness to so many.

Don

To Andrea, without whom this bookand its predecessorswould never have existed, because I would never have met and befriended so many wonderful Peanuts folks including my coauthor here. Andrea, my eternal thanks for having been so attentive to a research geek who greeted you, that first time, laden with five huge notebooks filled with Peanuts strips and arcane minutia. (Goodness, what you must have thought!) Bless you for being so kind and so patient!

Derrick

At a point in time when all our relationships seem characterized by the many elements that separate usreligion, politics, environmental concerns, and world affairswe need to remember and make a point of sharing those things we have in common with family, friends, and even total strangers who live on the other side of the world.

Consider for more than half a century, weve unknowingly bondedas small towns, as nations, as a world communitythrough the collective experience of reading a single daily newspaper comic strip: Charles M. Schulzs Peanuts.

Popular mediaentertainmenthas an uncanny gift for helping cultural differences evaporate. The daily cartoonist plays a particularly important role in this vibrant cornucopia: Part humorist, part sage, and part cogent observer of the social condition, a cartoonist is charged with revealing little truths in a modest format that many view as disposable (mores the pity!).

Early cartoonists had no illusions about the permanence of their work; they could not possibly have dreamed of a time, now common in our twenty-first century, when their work might be carefully restored, preserved, and analyzed in gorgeous hardcover books that occupy places of pride on best-seller lists. Back in the day, cartoonists labored solely for the moment, hoping to provoke a smile oron a particularly good daya nod of recognition.

Charles Schulz began in a woefully scant seven newspapers when Peanuts debuted on October 2, 1950. A staggering 17,897 strips laternow published all over the world, in more than 2,600 newspapershe finally, reluctantly, put down his pen for the last time. His spirit remained willing, but his body could not oblige.

Although many expected (and feared) that Peanuts would fade away altogether, after Schulzs death on February 12, 2000, something entirely different happened. To be sure, some of those thousands of newspapers ran reprint Peanuts strips for only a brief period of time, as a gesture of respect, before replacing Schulzs work with something newer and (invariably) far less perceptive or pleasing to the eye. But most newspapers retain their customary dose of Peanuts even now, their editors having acknowledged that too many readers still regard the strip as an essential daily experience.

In short, Peanuts remains something that brings people together. How much else can be said to do that, during these tumultuous times?

Like many of the worlds best ideas, the concept for this book began with a question. Wed known each other for years and years, during which wed independently met hundreds of folks who could point to a significant Peanuts moment in their lives, just as we had our own vivid Schulzian memories. For a long time, such stories were no more than something to share during social occasions. And then the penny dropped: Just how universal was the Peanuts experience?

The more we thought about this, the more excited we became. Surely the authenticity of intimate personal anecdotes, as filtered through the gentle adventures of Charlie Brown and his friends, would result in a book that people wouldnt be able to put down!

Or so we hoped, anyway. And if youre reading these words, then you must know how we felt.

Putting the concept into motion, however, proved far harder than wed expected. We were certainly well connected with what could be dubbed the Peanuts community, which responded with some of the stories youre about to read. But both of us believed, quite strongly, that the best anecdotes would come from folks with no particular involvement with Peanutseither as avid fans or bercollectorsaside from the original comic strips regular presence in their lives.

But how to reach such folks? Ah, that was the supreme challenge. Short of taking out full-page display ads in every large newspaper and popular magazine in the country (in the world?)something we never could have affordedhow does one get the word out? The Internet, ironically, isnt nearly as helpful as one might imagine; the very ease with which information can be spread throughout the Web makes it almost impossible to call attention to one particular appeal for civilian participation.

But we persevered, although the process took more time than wed expected (and we remain grateful to all our friends and colleagues at Andrews McMeel, for being so patient with us!). Eventually, slowly, oh so slowly, the stories began to arrive. First a trickle, then a steady stream. Never a deluge; the word didnt spread quite that effectively although were hoping to have a much easier time with the sequel. (Which brings us to the obligatory plug: If you have a personal Peanuts-themed anecdote and would like to share it with the rest of us, flip to page 147 for how-to details.)

Not every submitted story was appropriate, of course. We heard from all sorts of pack rats who boasted of huge collections of stuff: not really our mug of root beer. Numerous other folks told us about naming their dogs Snoopy, or their delight at being able to meet Charles Schulz once upon a time, or the humbling experience of a recent trip to the Charles M. Schulz Museum, in Santa Rosa, California. Again, not what we were after.

Describing the perfect submission for