December 22, 1999

A spark of genius makes the world a better place

How many men see news of their retirement splashed on the front page of the SF Chronicle and hundreds of other newspapers? Especially when the man in question is a quiet, mild-mannered, highly principled fellow who has spent most of his days for fifty years obsessively drawing caricatures of little kids, kids whose charm coincides with their frailties and quirks.

It's ironic that Charles Schulz should announce his retirement so near Dec. 16, Beethoven's birthday. It's doubtful if one American in a million had a clue to that momentous natal event until Schroeder brought it to their attention. I am a great admirer of Beethoven (his Ninth symphony is playing in the background as I write) but it would never have occurred to me to memorialize the day of his birth. That was and is Schulz's genius. He takes esoterica like Beethoven's birthday or World War I flying heroes and villains, and biblical quotes, and great pumpkins, and beagles with attitude, and makes it all fun.

I can tell you within a short span of time the day I first read Peanuts. I didn't get in on it when it first started syndicating in 1950. It was some time in the Spring Quarter of 1955. I had just started college at San Jose State. Walt Phillips and I became good friends, and one day he shared the clippings of a comic strip his mother sent him regularly from the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian. It was, of course, an unassuming panel about a group of little kids, including one who played Beethoven on a toy piano, another kid whose kite always wound up in a tree, and whose baseball team never won a game.

It never occurred to me in 1955 that I would still be reading that same strip more than 44 years later, or that it would impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people, or that the life and ills of the cartoonist would become matters of personal interest and concern to me.

A few short years after I last lived in my home town of Santa Rosa Charles Schulz had the good judgment to select that beautiful city as the place to live and do his work.

A syndicated cartoonist or columnist can do his work anywhere. I know one liberal magazine and newspaper columnist who lives in the boondocks of Redwood country, 40 miles from the main highway, one of, perhaps, 500 people living in hundreds of square miles. He is an expert on world affairs. I know of another columnist, a dyed in the wool conservative/reactionary, who lives on Nob Hill in San Francisco, surrounded by liberals who voted for Ammiano or Brown.

In a sense, Mr. Schulz (I don't know him well enough to call him Sparkie) has never left Minnesota. His characters still deal with snowmen in the winter, and four seasons of the year. Schulz himself ice skates year round in his own rink. He is generous enough, however, to share the rink with his neighbors, in a place where an ice rink run mainly for profit might never last.

It is unfortunate that Charles Schulz is mortal. One of these days, I hope in the far future, he will do the second part of the dust to dust thing. When that happens, the world will have been the better for his stay in it. Would that we could all say as much.

Some recent Reactor columns may be found at Paul Azevedo's website, http://www.thereactor.net/ Reach him by e-mail at Paul@thereactor.net