The timeless wisdom of Charles Schulz and “Peanuts” in Daydreaming on the Porch

Growing up in suburban NewOrleans in the 60s we always subscribed to the two local papers then, The Times-Picayune, the morning and Sunday paper, and the afternoon States-Item. Yes, there actually was a time when there were afternoon dailies in most major cities.

I started reading them both from around the age of 12 and something about those newspapers, and “the news” just drew me in. So much so that I made journalism my first career when I graduated from college in 1973 with an English major, a very sensible profession for a not-so-easily-marketable degree.

Everyone of a certain age remember those fat, multi-sectioned Sunday papers, with all the news, features, real estate, arts, opinion and sports in tidy sections of their own.

I can’t tell you how much I loved the Sunday paper. I avidly read them in whatever city I was living in for many years until the Internet came along and started making print newspapers obsolete.

I’m not saying I read them cover to cover, especially not massive treasure troves like the Sunday New York Times, but I savored them slowly, often with coffee and a glazed donut.

Online newspapers, which have revolutionized the news business, are the future and I enjoy them inordinately. But the old-fashioned printed paper, while always environmentally unfriendly, had a sense of gravitas and substance when you held it in your hand that you just can’t duplicate when staring at a laptop or phone screen.

But a curious thing when I was young and infatuated wih newspapers. I only read a few of the comic strips such as Blondie and Beetle Bailey, but never got that much into the greatest cartoon strip ever published, Peanuts, by it’s uniquely brilliant, wry, wise and very funny creator, Charles P. Schulz. I am not sure why this was so. I didn’t even read Doonesbury.

Decades went by and suddenly I seemed to wake up to the genius and wisdom of Schulz, whose keen social commentary and observations were always very current and timely, and shone through day after day for 50 years.

I started buying collections of his cartoons in book format, as well as books about the strip. On some of the most difficult evenings when I was a caregiver for my mother, I could always retreat to the sofa in the living room and smile indulgently at the misadventures of poor old Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, Sally, Woodstock, Snoopy and a cast of other memorable characters.

Some of mysll-time favorite strips featured the Peanuts characters in school, doing homework, writing themes,giving presentations and having the experiences we all relate to and remember about school.

https://www.gocomics.com/comics/lists/1626962/peanuts-in-the-classroom

I’m very grateful that finally in my advancing years, I truly discovered Peanuts for the first time.

I’ve bought my share of Peanuts special publications and mementoes such as these two favorites:

And this:

Last updated August 05, 2022