Special Episode: She’s a Pretty “Sharp” Mother

Happy Mother’s Day, moms! This one's for you. The gang strolls through Mother’s Day strips from the 60s to the 80s. Spoiler alert… a lot of them are sad!  But don’t worry, Peppermint Patty pulls out a win in the bottom of the ninth. Plus: That Thing You Do

Unpacking Peanuts is taking a spring break. We'll have episodes every other week, then return to our regular schedule in early June.

Harold's Robot Monster project on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/3dfilmarchive/robot-monster-comics-in-3-d-64-page-graphic-novel

Transcript available at UnpackingPeanuts.com

Unpacking Peanuts is copyright Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, and Harold Buchholz. Produced and edited by Liz Sumner. Music by Michael Cohen. Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark. 

For more from the show follow @unpackpeanuts on Instagram and Threads, and @unpackingpeanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky, and YouTube. For more about Jimmy, Michael, and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.  

Thanks for listening.

 

Episode Transcript

VO (00:05):
The podcast where three cartoonists take an in-depth look at the greatest comic strip of all time, Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz

Jimmy (00:15):
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show.
This is Unpacking Peanuts, and today we're going to look at everybody's favorite Hallmark holiday, Mother's Day.
I'll be your host for the proceedings.
My name is Jimmy Gownley.
I'm also a cartoonist.
I did the Amelia Rule series, Seven Reasons Not To Grow Up and The Dumbest Idea Ever.

(00:37):
Joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts, and fellow cartoonists.
He's a playwright and a composer, both for the band Complicated People, as well as for this very podcast.
He's the creator of the original Comic Book Price Guide, the original editor for Amelia Rules, and the creator of such great strips as Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells, and Tangled River.
It's Michael Cohen.

Michael (00:56):
Say hey.

Jimmy (00:57):
And he's the executive producer and writer for Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president for Archie Comics and the creator of the Instagram sensation, Sweetest Beasts, Harold Buchholz.

Harold (01:08):
Hello.

Jimmy (01:08):
So guys, we are going to look at Mother's Day strips in Peanuts, which can be a harrowing experience, as we know.
Some of the most emotional, melancholy, and even sad, sad strips in the Peanuts canon seem to hover around Mother's Day.

Michael (01:30):
This is true.
I think it's kind of odd that we're dealing with a strip that never showed a mother.

Jimmy (01:39):
Right.

Michael (01:39):
Unless there was mothers out on that golf course, when they had, he showed adults for one.

Jimmy (01:47):
Yeah, all the moms are crammed into that sequence.

Michael (01:49):
Yeah.

Liz (01:50):
And the front of the bicycle that we don't see.

Jimmy (01:53):
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
We just see the little bit of her windbreaker, it looks like.
I mean, obviously, this, the parent stuff is important to Schulz.
It is very strange that it's the strip where, you know, famously, adults don't appear, which he said was really a function of just having such a small strip.
There was no room for them.

Harold (02:15):
That's interesting.
And for those who haven't heard this story, he lost his mom in a pretty harrowing way.
Was he still in his teens, I think, when all this happened?

Jimmy (02:26):
Yeah, he was just heading off to war.
So I think he would have, it was like, what, 1943, 44.
So yeah, he was just like 19 years old, something like that.

Harold (02:35):
And she basically said her goodbye to him just as he was heading off to war.
So I think the melancholy in these strips reflects maybe some of his own memories of his mom.

Jimmy (02:48):
Oh, I absolutely think that's true.
And oftentimes we talk about the relationship between the siblings in the cast, Linus and Lucy, Charlie Brown and Sally and stuff.
But Schulz himself was an only child.
And I feel I can speak to this because I too am an only child and have all of the pluses and minuses that only children seem to have.

(03:12):
And one of them is they have a very different relationship with their parents than people who have multiple siblings.
You're the focus.
It's very intense.
And, you know, Schulz being kind of a homebody, kind of a quiet guy, I'm sure it was super intense for him.
But this is why art is amazing.

(03:36):
He manages to take the work, you know, that's a low point in a person's life.
I can't think of many lower points than something like that.
And he turns them into unbelievable golden nuggets of humor and wisdom and empathy.
And that's why we love him and why we're going to be looking at these strips today.

Michael (04:00):
Well, dude.

Jimmy (04:01):
So we're going to start.
We just pulled these.
The Peanuts Wiki is actually a really cool resource.
It has tons of stuff obviously cobbled together by fans over years, probably hundreds of fans.
And for one thing they do is they sort of sort things up by topic.
And I just went on there and found Mother's Day strips.

(04:22):
And the list actually conveniently starts at 1964.
So it'll be more the era 64 to the 80s that we're dealing with recently, that we're going to look at today.
So I think that worked out nicely.
So if you guys out there want to follow along with this, in this instance, just go on over to the Peanuts Wiki.

(04:43):
It's peanuts.fandom.com.
Search for Mother's Day strips and you'll find it.
Normally what you want to do, though, is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com.
That's our website.
Then you're going to sign up for something called the Great Peanuts Reread.
Because what we're doing is every single week, we are reading every strip from 1950 up to 2000, every strip Schulz wrote 17,897 of them.

(05:06):
If you sign up for the reread, you will get an e-mail from us once a month, just a little newsletter telling you what we're going to be covering in the upcoming month.
With all that out of the way, let's get started.
May 10th, 1964.
In the first panel, we have what looks like a homemade Mother's Day card with a photorealistic portrait of Linus drawn by Linus.

(05:31):
Yes, I assume.
It says, Happy Mother's Day from your son, me.
In the next panel, we see Lucy, who looks like she's reading possibly the newspaper, like a tabloid newspaper or something, or a magazine.
And she says, listen to this.
Linus is in the background watching television.
And Lucy says to Linus, it says here that nothing pleases a mother more on Mother's Day than to receive a long distance call from one of her children.

(05:58):
Linus thinks about it and says, that's a good thought.
Then for the next two panels, we see him leaving the house, running through the neighborhood.
And in the final panel, we see him, what looks like more of a city street corner, in a phone booth, and he's placing a call.
Hello, Mom?

Michael (06:16):
So that's what that weird object is in the last panel.

Jimmy (06:20):
Peanuts' obscurities.

Harold (06:23):
For our younger listeners, obviously phone booths are probably things you haven't had a lot of experiences with, but also back in the day, there certainly were lots of advertisements.
Maybe this is also a little bit later.
I don't know what it was in the 60s, but in the 70s, it was expensive to call people long distance.

Jimmy (06:42):
Yes, it was.

Harold (06:42):
It's hard to remember that, how you had to make a commitment to call somebody long distance, because it was...

Michael (06:48):
Wait, wait, wait, you're assuming the mom does not live with them?
She's two blocks away.

Harold (06:59):
As far as what Lucy's reading in that newspaper is, I think it was a Bell Telephone or whatever, or AT&T, they would say, reach out and touch someone.
They'd have somebody sitting in a hotel room remembering somebody they love, and they're encouraging them to spend the money to make that long distance call.

Jimmy (07:22):
Well, what you do when you're in college in 1990 is you have an AT&T calling card, so you dial 1-800-C-A-L-L-A-T-T, then you dial the area code, the number you're calling, then you dial your prepaid, no, it wasn't even prepaid, just your AT&T long distance calling card number, which is, in my instance, 841-142-1168-8660.

(07:46):
Then you would ring it twice at your house, hang up, so that would be the code that your parents call you back, and they wouldn't have to pay for it on the card.

Michael (07:56):
Cool.

Harold (07:56):
Yeah.
Nothing pleases a mother more on Mother's Day than to receive a collect call from one of her children.

Liz (08:05):
My stepmother was so cheap about long distance calls that she, in South Jersey, would send a postcard to her friend who lived in Philadelphia.
Rather than call her.

Jimmy (08:18):
Did she just drive the postcard over?

Liz (08:22):
She didn't drive.

Jimmy (08:25):
Boy, it's cool seeing this early looking Peanuts after looking at more modern Peanuts for the last few months or years.
Perspective on the phone booth, perspective on the little shop with the little awning above the window.
Looks real nice.

Michael (08:41):
This to me is like absolutely classic Peanuts, right?
Right in the heart of the golden age.

Harold (08:47):
I love Linus' little arms bent upward as he's running out of the house.
That's so classic.

Jimmy (08:55):
That's a Schulz.
Yeah, it's such a Peanuts pose.
You don't see kids running like that in any other strip.

Harold (09:01):
No, on the Christmas special, my wife Diane Cook, she's always, I mean, she's an artist and is really great at gesture drawing and she can't stand that pose of Charlie Brown when he's leaning down to look at the Christmas tree at the very end of the Christmas special with his arms up.
She's like, nobody does that.
So I start doing it around the house, of course.

Jimmy (09:24):
Of course.

Michael (09:25):
Linus is doing his Tyrannosaur impersonation.

Jimmy (09:31):
There's a great example of Les's Moor in that next to last panel where it's just the line, the roof line indicating the houses.
There's almost no detail in the background.
It's also spare and that really focuses on Linus in the foreground.

Harold (09:48):
Yeah, little Linus Rex.

Liz (09:51):
I didn't realize that was rooftops.
I thought it was mountains.

Jimmy (09:56):
One real flat mountain, one real pointy mountain.
So I have a question, something that Michael said in an interview in an episode a little while back that I know what he means, but I can't define it.
And I was wondering maybe he could define it better.
But you said something like, oh, this is very...
I don't remember what strip you're looking at.
You said, oh, this is very cartoony for Schulz.

(10:20):
And my version of that is if I would look at, say, Peanuts versus, let's say, High and Lowis, I would go, oh, High and Lowis is too cartoony for me.
But they're both cartoony.
What am I trying to say?

Michael (10:38):
Well, I think what I probably was referring to is a panel where he threw out the guides of how to draw Charlie Brown or Snoopy or whoever it was.
Just threw out the rules and just went crazy on expression.

(11:01):
For him, that's cartoony.
I think any artist has a style, and if they stretch that style for humor, you could call it cartoony, even if they're photorealists.

Jimmy (11:15):
Yeah, you could see that in someone's work, like Dave Stevens, where he'll have one panel where it's a really exaggerated expression or something like that.

Michael (11:26):
Which is just something you've got in your grab bag of tricks.
But you don't want to do it all the time.
Besides, if you don't draw that way.
Yeah, no, there's certain artists I'm influenced by who are cartoonyer than I am.
But occasionally I'll go, well, maybe I'll go for that kind of exaggerated expression just for humor.

Harold (11:59):
How you draw the eyes somehow, to me, defines something that seems super cartoony.
If you have the gigantic elevated whites of the eyes with the full outline around them, that to me is cartoony.
I don't know why.

Jimmy (12:14):
Right, which is also like the Beetle Bailey look or like the Garfield look.

Harold (12:20):
Yeah.

Jimmy (12:22):
Interesting.
May 9th, 1965.
It's another phone gag.
So Charlie Brown goes up to the good old phone and he answers it and he says, Hello.
By the way, this phone has a real pride of place in the house.
It's on like a pedestal just by itself.
So Charlie Brown says to whomever is calling, Just a moment, please.

(12:43):
I'll get him.
He runs outside, goes to see Snoopy who's on the doghouse.
Charlie Brown tells him, Telephone.
And they both run in and Snoopy listens to whomever is on the phone.
Then he sniffs and the next panel is looking very sad.
And then Charlie Brown admonishes him and says, You really ought to be ashamed of yourself.

(13:03):
And Snoopy does look upset.
She was right, you know, says Charlie Brown.
On Mother's Day, you should have called her, he says to Snoopy.
And then Snoopy says, I never think of those things.

Michael (13:17):
Now I was glancing through some strips and I came upon a much later strip where Snoopy's father appears.
Is this true?

Jimmy (13:26):
I don't actually even remember that, but it could be.
I only read the 90s stuff once or twice.

Michael (13:32):
Yeah, I went like, whoa, there's a real old Snoopy like dog who apparently got calls from all his children or cards from all his children.
And I was just wondering if Snoopy's mother actually ever appeared.

Jimmy (13:49):
And not to my knowledge.
And normally it's like he doesn't know where she is, right?

Michael (13:53):
I'm not sure.
I put that up on the lower here.

Harold (13:56):
I love the drawings of Snoopy listening on the phone.
I don't know if you would call that lower left Snoopy more cartoony because the eyes are a little more prominent.
But I think of cartoony when I see that.
But I like cartoony and I love these drawings of Snoopy's kind of looking upward, which means to be able to look like he's looking upward, we have to have a little more of the eye, the overall eye showing.

Michael (14:25):
Boy, this is Mac's forehead.
Where did his brain go when he lost his forehead?

Jimmy (14:35):
May 8th, 1966.
We're at the baseball field.
Schroeder's behind the plate and he calls time out.
And then he walks out to the mound.
He approaches Charlie Brown and he says, I just thought of something.
Today is Mother's Day.
Charlie Brown says, I know it is.
Then Lucy comes in from the outfield and says, What did he say?
I thought I heard Schroeder mention Mother's Day.

(14:56):
Now the whole team is starting to gather around the mound.
We see both Patty and Five show up.
And Schroeder continues.
He says, Today is Mother's Day.
We're playing baseball on Mother's Day.
Lucy says, We should be home serving our mothers breakfast in bed.
Patty says to Schroeder, My mother is always doing nice things for me.

(15:18):
Five chirp, Sensei.
Every time my mother goes to the store, she brings me a surprise.
Fried is now here and she says, My mother always sings to me before I go to sleep at night.
We see the whole team out there now.
Patty says, How can we be so selfish as to spend this day away from home?
Violet says, We're cruel and heartless.

(15:38):
Lucy says, We have no shame.
Shermie, We're no good.
Frieda, We never think of anyone but ourselves.
Then they all burst into tears, including Snoopy.
Not Charlie Brown, though, who's just standing on top of the mound taking this all in.
Then the whole team leaves throwing their hats and mitts behind them yelling, We're no good.

(15:59):
We're thoughtless.
We're selfish and cruel.
And then we see Charlie Brown on the last panel on the mound saying to us, Actually, I sent my mother a very nice card and a dozen pink roses.

Harold (16:13):
Oh, you go, Charlie Brown.

Michael (16:16):
So here on tier number three, panel one, this might be the only time you see the entire team, all nine.

Jimmy (16:26):
And it's a weird team because Linus isn't playing.

Michael (16:29):
This is true.
Five minutes of subslam.

Harold (16:32):
Now, why do you think he did that?
He didn't want to have Linus having forgot his mom.
He's actually back home.

Jimmy (16:38):
It could be that.
Yeah, it could be.
It could be something like that.
It could be just wanting to get five and sure me to have something to do.
You know, because another thing about it would be possibly what strips are going on around this.
If there's like, you know, it could be bumped up against a line of sequence, for example, or something.
Hmm.
But I love and I love when you can see as many of the Peanuts characters in one panel.

(17:05):
It's it's hard to do to get them in groups because their body shape is weird.
Their arm shapes are weird.
Everything about them is actually like very strange compared to normal anatomy.
But when he can get all of them in a big, wide, horizontal panel, oh, that's great.
Like if they're in line for a movie or things like this on the ball, a lot of the discussions on the ball field.

(17:27):
Those are some of my favorite strips, visually, especially.

Michael (17:30):
Yeah, and think five of them have been disappeared.
Hmm.
There's a high mortality rate.

Jimmy (17:36):
How many?
Who's all cut?
Yeah, we got who do we got that's that's gone.

Michael (17:40):
Five is gone.
Violet appears occasionally.
Fried is gone and Shermie's gone.
Yeah.
Wow.
Mercy.

Harold (17:52):
This strip makes me think of the final episode of Seinfeld, you know, where everyone gets kind of judged.
Yeah.
All of these years and they're all like introspective and there's eight sad faces around Charlie Brown.
But boy, you know, gosh.
Yeah, this is a very unique strip, you know, and it makes it very special, I think.

Jimmy (18:12):
Yeah, nice lettering.
Nice everything.
May 10th, 1970, Snoopy and Woodstock are atop the dog house and Woodstock is chirping away.
It's a boy very jarring to see the earlier Woodstock after modern Woodstock.
So anyway, he's chirping away and Snoopy says, really?
And then Snoopy says to him, that's very nice.

(18:34):
I hope you have a good time.
And we see Woodstock fly away upside down.
But after he leaves, Snoopy seems a little upset and Snoopy thinks to himself, I should have said something.
I know just what's going to happen.
He's flying home to what he thinks is going to be a happy Mother's Day reunion, but they'll all be gone.
And then we see two adorable panels of Woodstock with a smile on his face as he flies towards his home nest.

(19:01):
But then he gets to the nest and in fact, no one is there.
And in the penultimate panel, Woodstock flies back to Snoopy looking devastated because Schulz added a comma next to the period, which is his eye.
And in the last panel, Woodstock is leaning up against Snoopy, sniffing away a tear and Snoopy thinks to himself, I don't understand birds.

Harold (19:24):
I love the little pose of Woodstock in the second and third panels after he's announced unbeknownst to us yet that he is going to be flying somewhere and he's got his little wings extended like he's presenting himself to us in two different poses.
That's so cute.

Jimmy (19:42):
Yeah.
It's crazy that he got this far with Woodstock, but he still had...
The design was still going to change.
It would become even more abstract.

Harold (19:54):
Yeah, that third panel is so weird with...
Woodstock has this beak that's going off to one side, but his mouth is looking straight at us.
So it's like that Picasso-y kind of drawing style that is impossible in real life, but design-wise is brilliant.

Jimmy (20:16):
I love the little two panels on the last tier of him flying happily, both right side up and upside down.
There are so many little things in Peanuts that really.
Kind of...

(20:36):
Everybody knows that our trademarks, I knew that as a kid.
If I was going to draw Woodstock flying, it would be upside down.
Everybody has these tiny little either verbal ticks or visual cues, and he manages to somehow get them into people's subconscious that they just know, oh yeah, that's how Woodstock flies.

Michael (20:54):
But there were a lot of other birds who didn't have any distinguishing traits.
And in fact, the little ranger club, those birds don't really, outside of their names, don't have any distinguishing traits.

Jimmy (21:10):
Yeah, no, they function as a unit for sure.

Harold (21:13):
Yeah, is this maybe the first time we've had one of these stories of the little bird trying to go home and trying to find mom, I guess certainly for Mother's Day, right?

Jimmy (21:25):
Yeah, I mean, you know, and as you get older, you become more reflective and melancholy, and I think, especially when you're very young, as a father, you know, he would have been focused on Mother's Day, what Mother's Day meant for his kids and their mother, right?
Not so if you don't think him and his mother.

Harold (21:47):
Yeah, it's slightly didactic, I guess.
He's trying to burn something into your conscience, I think.

Jimmy (21:54):
Yeah.

Harold (21:55):
And it's very effective, actually.

Jimmy (21:57):
Absolutely.
May 9th, 1971, Linus is sitting at a desk, or actually, I guess, his kitchen table, and he is making his mother a Mother's Day card.
He has a very ornate written mom and with some hearts around it.
And in panel two, he continues that.
Then in panel three, Lucy comes in and says, What in the world are you doing?
Linus says, I'm making a Mother's Day card.

(22:19):
Lucy says, making one?
Why didn't you just go out and buy one like I did?
And Linus says, it looks very nice.
May I read the verse?
Lucy, be my guest.
Linus reads the card and says, Dear Mother, I bought this card for you with my own money instead of giving you a handmade one like some cheap kid I know.

(22:40):
Lucy walks away very self-satisfied and Linus is left behind a little flummoxed and saying, These days you seem to be able to get a card for almost any occasion.
Well, Schulz should know that because he made cards for virtually any occasion, I'm sure of, with a long-running tie-in with Hallmark.

Harold (23:02):
Yeah, he kind of walks a fine line here where Lucy says the thing that you probably shouldn't be agreeing with, but he doesn't rebut it.

Jimmy (23:11):
Well, he does that and everything.
I mean, the famous theme of Charlie Brown Christmas being Christmas is too commercial and you can now buy the tree that represented how commercial Christmas had become as an ornament.

Michael (23:27):
So wait, were all these cards in rhyme?
Because he calls it a verse, yet it's not in rhyme.

Jimmy (23:35):
No, I think they just called it the verse in the card, but they're not all in rhyme, no?

Harold (23:41):
I love the drawing in the second panel of Linus lying on his stomach drawing.
You don't see that very often.
And it really makes it stand out.
The limitations of what Schulz has done with the design of his characters.

Jimmy (23:57):
Yeah, the feet particularly.

Harold (23:58):
Linus' legs cannot touch the ground based on how he's designed.
So he's literally holding himself up by his kind of almost ballet style with his feet.
And his legs are floating over the ground by quite a bit.

Jimmy (24:12):
It's like a reverse push up or something.
It would be extremely awkward.

Harold (24:17):
Yeah, and then it made me think, we just looked at some strips by other artists on one of the previous episodes.
And it just makes me think of Johnny Hart's BC who very much followed this design look.
And I'm wondering if Schulz was kind of a pioneer of that.
And Johnny Hart was influenced by Schulz.

(24:38):
Because you've got these little, I don't even know what you call them.
It's like a little rectangle of pants.
It's almost like a mini skirt or something.
And then the two stumps of the legs coming out, which is, you know, it's hard to make sense of it from a design sense.
I mean, let's say it in an anatomical sense, but from a design sense, it's pretty appealing.

Jimmy (25:02):
Well, you know, the other thing that you would be able to do in color, we're looking at it in black and white.
But if you just slap a flat color behind the whole thing that indicates both like the wall and the floor and just leave lines, you'll mitigate a little bit of that.
I think if you drew, like let's say you drew a horizon line indicating the floor and then you colored the wall one color and the floor the other, I think you would notice really, you know what I mean?

(25:27):
It would look like...

Harold (25:28):
You'd be in trouble.

Jimmy (25:29):
Yeah, something's up there.
Why is his legs balanced on the tips of his toes?

Harold (25:35):
Although he's got a nice little shadow on his paste jar next to the scissors and the crayons that he's working with.
But good on Linus for making his homemade card there.

Jimmy (25:47):
Is this like a crazy cap moment between panels three and four?
Like why...
It's a couch behind him and then it's a TV set.
Is that...
I mean, it doesn't change that much that it could...
Right?
The couch, even if you're counting for that angle, now the slight angle change, the chair would be behind Linus if the TV was to the...

Harold (26:12):
Right.
And so because the chair is behind Linus, he has the right not to draw it and he's moved slightly right.
So I guess the chair is there, but it's not worth...

Jimmy (26:21):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, that totally makes sense.
And I think that's it.
But like, why do it?
You know, well, because it will irritate somebody 60 years down the line who's looking at it for a podcast.

Harold (26:37):
So this irritates you that the chair is not visible?
No, not really.

Jimmy (26:42):
Really?
But you know, you got to fill the space.
I mean, for God's sake, we try to put these episodes out once a week.
They can't all be gold.

Harold (26:51):
Draws.

Jimmy (26:55):
As a matter of fact, here's what we're going to do.
We're going to take a break because I have not even told the guys this, but we're having a new segment following the break.
And it's going to be exciting.
I think this is going to be the kind of thing that goes viral, that people are not going to be able to stop talking about.

Michael (27:11):
Oh, my goodness.
We need it.

Jimmy (27:14):
No, you don't need to.
This is a fate accompli...
You'll be so amazed that there's no question that you'll want to continue.

Liz (27:23):
Cliffhanger.
Wow.

Harold (27:25):
Such confidence.

Jimmy (27:26):
Yeah, I hope I didn't oversell it.
All right, so we're going to take a break and we'll come right back.
If you want me to draw you or any of your friends or children or enemies in that peanuts-ish, cartoony style that you know so well and love from our art for the top of the podcast, the little thumbnail art, you can write to us at unpackingpeanuts.com.

(27:50):
We'll have this all set up on the website.
And it'll be 25 bucks and I'll do a digital one for you.
For 50 bucks, you'll get the digital one and I'll draw it on paper and send you the paper one in the mail.
So you'll be able to have a real copy that you can frame and put on the wall.
All right, we're back.
Hope you missed us.

(28:11):
All right, so you guys ready for this exciting new segment?

Michael (28:15):
Hit me with a stick.

Harold (28:17):
Yeah, lay it on us.

Jimmy (28:18):
Dremel.
Okay, so here's, we have, this is actually interesting because what made me think of it as a segment, recently we were recording and someone wrote in and said something about what can they do to improve their skills as a cartoonist if they wanted to be a career.
Well, I realized there is something way more important that we didn't discuss and that's going to be the basis of this segment.

(28:43):
But the other part of it is, as I've mentioned or alluded to at least, I've had to change my diet radically here in 2024 and it's actually going pretty well.
But every day I have a breakfast drink and I always have it while we're doing the mail and recording the podcast.

(29:04):
Now, this breakfast drink comes in three flavors, vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.

Harold (29:12):
Carnation.

Jimmy (29:13):
I will, I'm not saying what the brand is unless they want to sponsor it.

Harold (29:18):
I see, they have to cough up, okay.

Jimmy (29:20):
That's right.
So I have prepared one of these drinks at random and I want you each to guess what Jimmy's drinking.

Harold (29:30):
Hard pass.

Michael (29:32):
Based on the sound of you slurping?

Jimmy (29:35):
Well, all right, I'll take a sip right now.

Liz (29:39):
Oh, that sounds like chocolate to me.

Jimmy (29:41):
All right, so we got two chocolates.

Harold (29:42):
I was thinking strawberry.

Jimmy (29:43):
And you say strawberry?
So, all right, lock in your votes.

Harold (29:47):
I'm locked in.

Michael (29:48):
Chocolate, not strawberry.
Chocolate, possibly vanilla.

Jimmy (29:51):
All right, you're all wrong.
It is vanilla.

Michael (29:54):
I was going to say vanilla, so that counts.

Jimmy (29:58):
Now, this is why it's a tip for cartoonists.

Harold (30:02):
Yes, go on.

Jimmy (30:03):
These things are not cheap, but they're now tax deductible.
Yay!

Harold (30:12):
I think you need to talk to a tax lawyer, Jimmy.

Jimmy (30:15):
I don't think I do.
This is absolutely...
First off, don't be a buzzkill.
Secondly, these are 100% tax deductible now.
Okay, Liz.
I'm hanging out in the mailbox.
Do we got anything?

Liz (30:33):
We do.
A friend of the show, William Pepper, wrote to us and says, Hey, everybody.
I continue to love Unpacking Peanuts.
As someone who is not a cartoonist but pretends to know things about peanuts, I love that you're all here to fill in some of the knowledge that I don't have.
On the most recent episode, you were talking about a strip where Linus is watching TV and the announcer breaks in promising news at 11.

(31:00):
One of you commented that in 1984, you indeed would have had to wait until the late local news to find out what the big story was.
This is not entirely true.
CNN started broadcasting, for better or worse, in 1980.
I can imagine Linus sitting up all night in his beanbag chair toast with grape jelly by his side, absorbing the 24-hour news cycle.

(31:23):
No wonder he needed that security blanket.
Thanks for all you do.
William Pepper from It's a Podcast, Charlie Brown, the OG.

Jimmy (31:32):
Yay.
Well, first off, everybody should be listening to It's a Podcast, Charlie Brown.
William was one of our first guests.
He's super knowledgeable.
Although in this instance, he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
Here's why.
Back then, CNN was on a 20-minute loop.
It was for sure 24 hours, but it wasn't updated constantly.

(31:54):
It was only 20 minutes at a time.

Harold (31:56):
Are you sure?

Jimmy (31:56):
It was a 20-minute loop for most.

Harold (31:58):
I know there was headline news, and that was in that format, but you're saying the network itself started that way?

Jimmy (32:05):
Yeah, and also they didn't cover local.

Harold (32:06):
Wow.

Jimmy (32:08):
Take that, William Pepper.

Liz (32:10):
We love you.
We do.

Harold (32:12):
We're going to have a mail chain on this one.

Jimmy (32:16):
Is there a chance I'm wrong, too?
As always, there is.
Well, you know.
Look, I don't claim to be an expert in media.
All I know is cartooning and tax law.

Liz (32:29):
And fiddles and baseball.

Harold (32:30):
Jimmy, slip away.

Jimmy (32:31):
Thank you, William.

Liz (32:34):
And a clip from our interview with William Pepper is going to be in the next episode that we release.

Harold (32:41):
Oh, cool.

Jimmy (32:41):
Great.

Liz (32:43):
And also we have a new contributor.
Dr.
Cynthia Ainsworth wrote to us.
She writes, Spike, Snoopy's brother, was probably based on Schulz's own childhood dog.
Spike was an adopted stray, was independent, and spent a lot of time on top of his doghouse.
Schulz believed him to possess a full and inventive inner life.

Harold (33:04):
So is she a Spike fan?
Does she come out and say, hey, I really like Spike?

Liz (33:08):
She does not go that far.

Harold (33:11):
Well, maybe she can clarify that, because I know we did ask for those.
And I had forgotten, yes, that famous, Ripley's Believe It or Not, where he got his first published drawing.
He did a little cute drawing of Spike.

Liz (33:23):
It's on page 136 and 137 of Charles M.
Schulz Conversations.

Harold (33:28):
Yes, which is a great book if you want to really hear from the horse's mouth a lot of Schulz's insights to his own work.
I love that little thing that he did send a drawing into this other syndicated panel that was Ripley's Believe It or Not.
He got it in there.
What was it that Spike had eaten razor blades and thumb tacks?

(33:52):
It's like, what are you doing to this dog?
What are you leaving around the house?

Jimmy (33:58):
While we're talking about the proto peanuts and stuff like that, he has to come up with the dog and the dog is going to be named Sniffy.
But then he can't because he sees there's a comic book with the name Sniffy.

Harold (34:12):
I have copies of Sniffy the pup.
I do, yes.

Jimmy (34:17):
We have seen Snoopy be a dog, be a vulture, be Mickey Mouse, be a World War I flying ace, be a writer, be a lawyer.
Have we ever seen him Snoop?

Michael (34:30):
He's a detective, isn't he?

Harold (34:31):
I don't think so.

Jimmy (34:33):
He's a secret agent and Thompson is in trouble, but I don't think he detects anything.
You don't think about it as part of the word Snoop, but obviously if he had a dog named Sniffy, it assumed that the dog is sniffing around a lot, right?
If he had a dog named Scratchy, right?

Harold (34:50):
He might have a head cold.

Jimmy (34:52):
Right, whatever, but he's sniffing.
Snoopy never seems to snoop.
It's an odd name if you really think about it.

Michael (35:02):
He's hanging on his dog house.

Jimmy (35:04):
So you might remember, like, many, many episodes ago when we were talking about AI, I logged on to ChatGPT and saw if they could do an unpacking peanuts script.

Liz (35:17):
They did a pretty good job, too.

Jimmy (35:20):
Yeah, so I tried it again to see if it was getting better.
And I would not worry about the rise of the robots just yet.
I went to the original prompt, but now I just said a conversation about the hosts of the Unpacking Peanuts podcast and they added about their favorite character, Spike.

(35:41):
And I didn't even save it, but it's like, welcome to Unpacking Peanuts, this is Jimmy Gownley.
And then the next one says, and I'm Michael Harold.
And we're here to talk about that bleach blonde bad boy, Spike.

Harold (35:55):
Oh, so you ChatGPT saying, the two of us combined make one Jimmy.

Jimmy (36:02):
Well, they also thought we were talking about the character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
So I don't think it's helping.

Liz (36:10):
But he is my favorite character from Buffy.
And finally, we got a message from Jason Bullitt, who writes, greetings, gentlemen and lady.
Just wanted to express my appreciation for your podcast, especially as a lifelong fan of Peanuts.
I enjoy your observations and your insight as professional cartoonists.

(36:33):
Attached with this email is the cover of a ready to read book called Make a Trade Charlie Brown.
After coming home from the hospital after two months recovering from a stroke, my dad's fiance bought this book for him to help with in-home speech therapy.
It was great to see that Sparky's work lives on almost a quarter century after his passing.

(36:57):
Thanks for all the entertainment and of course, be of good cheer.
Regards, Jason, AKA, caller 518.

Jimmy (37:06):
Caller 518?
Thank you for sharing that.

Michael (37:10):
Reveals its secret identity.

Jimmy (37:13):
All right, so is that all we got in the mailbag, Liz?

Liz (37:16):
That's it for this week.

Jimmy (37:18):
Okay, we got nothing on the hotline.
I will just say, Jim Meyer, who wrote in a week or two ago about the tattoo question, he's actually a guy I know here in Harrisburg, PA.
He was so excited that we were going to be talking about it, that he wants to set up a GoFundMe to pay for me to get this Peanuts tattoo.

(37:41):
This is not happening, so do not.

Harold (37:45):
Well, it's up to him to pass that law.
If he can get that law passed, then I guess it has to happen.

Jimmy (37:52):
There's no way.
Even if that happens, I'm hitting the road.
But he thought that was he got a real kick out of that.

Harold (38:02):
All right.

Jimmy (38:03):
Anyway, before we leave the mailbox and get back to the strips, Harold, give us a little update.
You were working on a Kickstarter.
Tell us about that and where is it in the process?

Harold (38:12):
For those of you listening on the day of the drop of this on a Tuesday, I'm working on a Kickstarter that ends on Thursday, May 9th at 12 a.m.
for a comic book that is in 3D.
The old blue and red glasses 3D will make your characters pop out as if they are leaping off of the page looking at you.
It's based on the 3D movie Robot Monster that came out in 1953.

(38:38):
A bunch of really talented artists and writers have gotten together to have a lot of fun with this goofy movie that came out years ago.
It's low budget.
If you're not familiar with it, you may have seen images of it.
It's basically the monster is a guy in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet on top of him hanging out in a cave with a bubble machine.

(38:59):
It's a great movie.
We said it was inspired by comics from the 1950s, the old golden age of comics.
We decided that Robot Monster should get his own comic after 71 years.
We have this Kickstarter.
If you just type in Robot Monster Comics in 3D, 64-page graphic novel or some piece of that, it should come up.

(39:23):
We are working on it.
I'm doing a little 10-page story that is taking the actual images from the movie and putting them available to you in 3D with my Mystery Science Theater style riffing in there that I think is going to be a lot of fun.
We have wonderful covers by Jeff Slemons, Mitch O'Connell, and Gregory Moffat who, if you have seen the movie, he plays this star, this little boy in the film.

(39:48):
And he is still with us and doing very well and will be signing copies of the book, which is really cool to have somebody who's still with us 71 years after the movie came out.
It's a great little piece of memorabilia for those of you who love classic sci-fi, classic cheesy movies.
You can also get a DVD and Blu-ray of the beautiful restoration of it.

(40:08):
So I just wanted to get the word out.
One last chance.
I'm really part of the team and want to get us across the finish line to be able to make this comic, so thanks for letting me mention it.

Jimmy (40:18):
Awesome.
Well, we hope you make it.
You guys know what to do if you want to see that.
Kick in a couple bucks.
All right, so how about we get back to these Mother's Day strips?
May 13th, 1973.
Woodstock is standing at a nest and looking into it.
The nest is empty.

(40:38):
We see in the next panel he approaches Snoopy on the doghouse and Woodstock is holding a sign on a very long stick.
And the sign we now see in panel three reads, Mom.
This just sends Snoopy over the edge.
He sheds a tear in panel four and he thinks to himself, That's the saddest thing I've ever seen, especially on Mother's Day.

(40:59):
Of course, who am I to talk?
I don't know where my mom is either.
I don't know where my dad is or any of my brothers or sisters.
This makes Snoopy bolt upright and he says, That's terrible.
And then in the last panel, Snoopy is walking around with the sign that says, Where is everybody?
That is sad.
That is really sad.

(41:23):
So yeah, okay.
So earlier in the canon, I guess we thought, it wasn't set up that Snoopy's mom was missing.
But yes, by this point, it comes in that it's a long held thing that Snoopy doesn't know where his family is, at least at this point.

Harold (41:42):
Yeah, that little heavy eyebrow, a sad eyebrow on the very first panel of Woodstock just looking into an empty nest is pretty heartbreaking.

Jimmy (41:52):
Yeah, I love that panel.
I love the way the bird's nest is constructed from the scribble lines.
I love a good tree.
So it stands to reason I love a good branch.
That looks good.
Yeah, seeing Snoopy cry, shed a tear and have it not be like, you know, because his supper was 15 minutes late or something like that.

(42:14):
That's very effective.

Michael (42:15):
Go burn down.

Harold (42:19):
And here in the fourth panel, to your point, Snoopy is sniffing.
So he should have been sniffy the sniffy.

Jimmy (42:29):
But once again, no snooping.
That's all I'm saying.
May 12th, 1974.
Boy, he's on a run with these Woodstock strips from Mother's Day.
Woodstock, we see standing under a sign in like a symbolic panel.
And it says Mom.
And it has like a little hand pointing off in a certain direction off panel right.

(42:53):
Woodstock then is walking around and he is holding a flower.
And he walks up to the tree and up to a nest.
And in the nest, the nest is empty, but there is a little sheet of paper and on the sheet of paper are the little check marks that indicate, you know, bird language.
Woodstock rolls it up and takes it to Snoopy and shows it to him.

(43:13):
Snoopy reads it so we can hear it.
And it says, there's no reason for you to keep coming back to the nest on Mother's Day.
That's not the way we birds do things.
Once you've left little bird, that's it.
You can't go home again.
So fly away.
Don't look back.
The world is yours.
Then there's a silent panel of Snoopy looking at Woodstock and Woodstock just holding this sad little flower.

(43:36):
Then Snoopy lies down and Woodstock leans up against Snoopy's head holding the note and the now useless flower.
And Snoopy says, I must admit, she's a pretty sharp mother.
I mean, this is Schulz's conversation with his mother before he goes to war.

(43:58):
Like, I won't see you again.
Have a good life.

Harold (44:03):
Yeah, the sting is slightly diminished.
She says, the world is yours.
I mean, that's the one positive piece here.
This is how it works for birds and it's okay.
But still, boy, that's hard on little Woodstock.

(44:24):
I'm always mentioning the licensing drawings.
Boy, panel three Woodstock smiling, holding a little flower.
That's a great mug.
That's a great t-shirt.

Jimmy (44:35):
Well, it is.
And you know what's so interesting about Schulz as a cartoonist or just cartooning in general?
That flower is cute and adorable and funny for 90% of this.
And then the same exact flower is devastating.
It is devastatingly sad in the last two panels.
You know, like to me, even that, the next to last panel is heartbreaking.

(45:01):
Just the silence as they look at each other.
Oh, that kills me.

Harold (45:04):
I love that he kind of treats the flower as if he's holding some balloons.
You know, it kind of has that cheery feeling to it.

Michael (45:12):
Yeah.

Harold (45:14):
Poor little Woodstock.
Yeah, I don't think there's any other cartoonist who treated Mother's Day with any of this feeling.
They were hugely very sentimental if there was any Mother's Day mention in the strip.
But boy, the range on these is incredible.

Michael (45:33):
What is the saddest comic strip?
Was there ever a comic strip that's goal was to make people cry?

Harold (45:38):
This nonstop sadness?

Jimmy (45:41):
Nonstop sadness.
First off, that would be the title.
Just nonstop.

Michael (45:45):
Oh, no.

Jimmy (45:45):
Do you know what that makes me think of, though, Michael?
Do you remember Promethea, which is an Alan Moore Wonder Woman kind of take, let's call it.
But in the background, there were those ads for Weeping Gorilla Comics.

Michael (45:58):
Yeah, Weeping Gorilla Comics.

Jimmy (45:59):
And it would just be a sad gorilla saying, like, you know, no one texts me back or whatever.

Michael (46:06):
Yeah.
But did any strip go for this kind of pain?
Mary Worth, maybe.
I don't know.
I never read that.

Jimmy (46:12):
I mean, you know, I'll tell you one.

Liz (46:14):
Yeah.

Jimmy (46:15):
Like for better or for worse.

Harold (46:18):
They could have some sad moments for sure.
Another one that comes to mind that could get you going is there's certain strips that Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie.
Again, that strip for so many people, they haven't really sampled it and they don't know what it is.
And because it's based on, I mean, people now think the musical, but boy, you go back to the strips from the 30s and 40s.

(46:40):
It's a depression era story of this orphan who's trying to get along in the world and she deals with lots of loss.
There's some really, really, really sad moments, but it's really hard to think of very many strips that do that.

Jimmy (46:52):
And there would be things like, I remember that strip Funky Winker Bean had like a long sequence where one of the characters got cancer.
And I'm not criticizing anybody's way of doing these things, but there is something about the way Schulz does it that seems so organic.

Harold (47:09):
Yes.

Jimmy (47:10):
That it's not like the special episode, like, oh, this is the one that's going to tug at your heartstrings.
That could just happen at any moment in Peanuts.

Harold (47:19):
Yeah, you have to know if you're reading Peanuts that this, you never know what you're going to get.
It's like comics are like a box of chocolates.

Liz (47:27):
Yeah.
I have a question.
I must admit she's a pretty sharp mother.
Is that sharp meaning pointed or smart?

Michael (47:38):
Smart.

Harold (47:39):
I was thinking pointed.
I don't know what you guys think.

Jimmy (47:40):
Oh, I was thinking smart.

Michael (47:42):
I was thinking smart.
Yeah.
We have to.

Jimmy (47:46):
Interesting.

Harold (47:46):
What were you thinking, Liz?

Liz (47:48):
My first reaction was that she was smart, but then I took a second look at it because it made me cry, the letter that she wrote.
So I was wondering.

Harold (47:59):
That's really interesting.
Our listeners.
Well, let's open it up to them as well to see what people think.
Yeah, I was absolutely thinking he meant that that was an intense letter, you know, that she was blunt.

Liz (48:12):
Yeah.

Harold (48:13):
And I felt that he's not judging her, but he's not judging her, but at the same time, he's like, wow, that's got us smart, you know?

Jimmy (48:22):
This reminds me of us talking recently about the strip of that'll change your theology in a hurry, which certainly seems to mean something, but we each looked at it and was like, well, it could be this character.
It could be that character.

Harold (48:35):
Right, right, right.

Michael (48:36):
And that's the English language for, because I mean, Sharp could mean, well, she's a good dresser.
I mean, this language is insane.

Jimmy (48:46):
There's a Pennsylvania rock band, they were big in the 90s, called Live, but of course, that also looks like Live, but they thought one thing would be great, like if they ever needed to really get some cash, they would just start calling their albums after famous bands, so it would say like, The Beatles, Live, Rolling Stones, Live.

Harold (49:07):
Live Live.
You never know what trouble you're getting into.
Sometimes you think of a title, you think it's brilliant, and then you're like, oh, it was always like, what's the famous Tom Hanks movie, where he has the band, what's the name of the?
Oh, That Thing You Do, and they think they have the greatest name, The Wonders, One-O-N-E-D-E-R-S.

Liz (49:33):
O'Needers, yeah.

Jimmy (49:34):
Yeah, I wonder what ever happened to the O'Needers.
That's a pick hit to click, everybody, if you haven't seen That Thing You Do, it's a great movie.

Liz (49:46):
Who's the songwriter?

Jimmy (49:48):
Adam Schleisinger, RIP.

Michael (49:49):
It's a good friend, Fancy Wing.

Liz (49:51):
Brilliant, brilliant.

Michael (49:52):
He died too young.

Liz (49:55):
Damn you, COVID.

Jimmy (49:57):
Boy, this is an UP THE MOTHER'S DAY episode.
We are coming, 1975.
This is going to be an UP one.
I can feel it.

Harold (50:09):
It's coming.

Jimmy (50:10):
Oh, no, it's not.
Snoopy is standing atop the O in Mom and he's looking around.
And now he's on top of his dog house and he's pondering something.
He starts typing, Dear Mom, just a short note to wish you a happy Mother's Day.
He continues typing, I miss you very much.
I miss your hugs, your kisses and your apple pie.
Charlie Brown says, I find it hard to believe that your mother baked apple pies.

(50:35):
Snoopy says, he's right, of course, Mom belonged to a little theater group and was never home very much.

Michael (50:43):
This is strange because this is really an odd strip, right?

Harold (50:46):
Yes, I would think.

Michael (50:48):
We read this like last year and I don't remember it.
This is really a bizarre little strip.

Harold (50:57):
He sneaked some in that we...
It's funny how, yeah, you've just read it and when you see it, it's like totally fresh again and new and you don't remember it.
Yeah, a lot of oddities to this one.
Why is he typing the letter to Mom?

Jimmy (51:11):
Right, that he doesn't know where she is.
So where is he going to send it to?

Harold (51:16):
And why is he going to send it?
He's making up a story about her apple pie.
Hopefully the hugs and kisses weren't made up too, but anyway, I'm sure it was a great little theater group though.

Jimmy (51:30):
It's a weird, weird strip.

Michael (51:32):
Yeah, well, we are going to do a show at some point and just pick the weirdest peanut strips.
This would be a nominee.
This is really odd.

Harold (51:41):
Yeah.

Jimmy (51:43):
If we talk about something that you can just ponder and have no satisfaction as to what the intent was, this is a mystery.

Liz (51:52):
That's funny.

Harold (51:52):
Yeah, it's like Snoopy's fantasy life moves into his actual home life, which makes you question everything Snoopy's ever done and said.

Michael (52:05):
Yeah, I mean, do dogs hug?
They don't hug.

Jimmy (52:08):
Well, Snoopy does, right?
But were they all puppies back then?
Because when Snoopy was young, he was running around like a dog.
He wasn't hugging.

Michael (52:17):
And who would use a typewriter as a pillow?

Jimmy (52:22):
It really fits him perfectly there.
That's weird.

Michael (52:27):
Everything's weird about this one, even the opening panel.

Jimmy (52:31):
May 7th, 1978.
Charlie Brown's looking at a calendar and he says, May 14th, I knew it.
He walks outside and says, I better tell him.
So he comes up to Snoopy on the doghouse and he says, next Sunday is Mother's Day.
Snoopy says, it is?
Charlie Brown says, you should give your mother a call or at least write her a letter.
Snoopy says, hmm, it should be a very personal letter, says Charlie Brown.

(52:55):
The kind that can only come from you.
Then he writes, dear mom.
And it's a paw print for the, oh, well, you know, they all can't be winners.
This actually is weird to me because it seems like Snoopy not knowing where his mom is, is obviously a poignant thing.

(53:15):
But he goes back and forth on it without really committing either way.
I don't understand that.

Michael (53:22):
I don't think there's a Peanuts canon.

Jimmy (53:25):
I know, but you know what I mean?
Like it seems like someone would have said, I don't know.
It just seems like a big contradiction in a way.
I don't know.
Maybe it's just me because it's something specific.

Michael (53:39):
Yeah.

Jimmy (53:40):
But I don't know.

Michael (53:41):
Well, Mother's Day, I mean, how many Mother's Day jokes could you come up with?

Jimmy (53:47):
Me?
One?

Michael (53:50):
One maybe in my entire life if I tried really hard.

Jimmy (53:54):
Try right.

Harold (53:55):
Yeah.
I mean, I see what you're saying, Jimmy, though.
That this is a piece of who Snoopy is that Schulz is willing to bandy about, you know?

Jimmy (54:06):
Yeah.

Harold (54:07):
That he's more interested in the gag rather than the consistency, which, yeah, I mean, it is once a year.
Yeah.
You can't be imagining that all these years later, these people are reading them back to back.

Jimmy (54:23):
Yeah.

Harold (54:24):
But still, yeah, this one, you would think that that would be like, I don't know, it's like, Linus has a different sister in different panels or different scripts.

Jimmy (54:36):
Yeah, like the whole, the old Happy Days conundrum, where it starts out with there's an older brother and then he just disappears.

Harold (54:45):
Yeah, right?

Liz (54:46):
Like my three sons was originally four sons.

Jimmy (54:49):
Was it really?

Liz (54:50):
Well, there were three sons and then they added a son.

Jimmy (54:53):
Oh, yeah, well, the kid, I always related to the kid they added at the end.
I was much younger than all my cousins.

Liz (54:59):
One of the sons went to Michael, went to high school with Michael, didn't he?

Michael (55:03):
That was Stanley Livingston III.

Liz (55:05):
Yeah.

Jimmy (55:06):
I presume.

Michael (55:07):
Yeah.

Liz (55:08):
He went, didn't he go to Fairfax?

Michael (55:09):
Yeah, he was in my class.
No, no, it was like-

Jimmy (55:11):
Really?

Michael (55:12):
Yeah.
I mean, for a while, he must've been on location or something and stuck him in a school for a few weeks.

Harold (55:21):
Who was the fourth son in My Three Sons?
Was it Chip?

Liz (55:23):
Ernie.
Chip was the third son.
Ernie was the first.

Jimmy (55:26):
Ernie.
May 10th, 1981.
Snoopy's atop the dog house and Woodstock comes chirping by.
He lands and he says something to Snoopy and Snoopy says, your mom?
And they both hop off the dog house.
Snoopy's saying, you think you found out where she lives?
Now they're running across the terrain.
Snoopy has a little grin on his face.

(55:47):
He says, that's great.
Then you can give her a Mother's Day card.
So Snoopy and Woodstock approach a whole bunch of bird houses that are set up.
It looks like a little thing that has six different bird houses on one pole.
And Snoopy says, wow, you think she lives there?
And then they look at it and Snoopy says, but which apartment?
And they walk towards it and Snoopy says to Woodstock, go ahead, ask the doorman.

(56:12):
And we actually do see a tiny little bird doorman in a little doorman outfit at the bottom of the pole.
It's a good little drawing of some bird houses.
I'll tell you that much.
I like that.

Liz (56:23):
I think they call that a Martin house.

Jimmy (56:26):
Oh, Martin.
Hey, there you go.
A Peanuts obscurity.

Liz (56:29):
I did not know.

Harold (56:30):
A Martin house.
So you see six houses?
I see nine.

Jimmy (56:34):
Well, I'm assuming that those ones have two entrances.
You can have an entrance on this side.

Harold (56:39):
So the three up top are storage or?

Jimmy (56:43):
Yeah, the three up top are storage.

Harold (56:45):
All right.

Jimmy (56:47):
All right, and this is gonna be our last Mother's Day special.
All right, Peppermint Patty.
Let's pull out a win here in the bottom of the ninth.
Here we go.
May 9th, 1982, Peppermint Patty is writing away at a desk and she writes happy any day.
And now we see there in a drug store and Peppermint Patty eyeballs the cards and says, over here, Marcie.

(57:10):
She walks up to the counter and says, yes, ma'am, I'd like to buy a Mother's Day card, but I don't have a Mother's Day card.
I need a Mother's Day card for my father, who has also been a mother to me.
And Peppermint Patty says, you don't have any cards like that?
Marcie peruses the selection of cards and says, how about a graduation card, sir?
Like he's graduated from being a father to being a father and a mother?

(57:32):
Peppermint Patty says, I don't think so, Marcie.
Marcie says, how about a get well card, sir?
Doesn't he have tennis elbow?
Peppermint Patty says, maybe, but I don't think so, Marcie.
Marcie says, how about a Mother's Day card?
But you write on it, do not open till Father's Day.
Peppermint Patty says, I don't think so, Marcie.
I think I'll just go home and give him a hug.

(57:54):
Then they leave the store with Marcie saying, good thinking, sir.
This will be the best Mother's Day a father can have.
I love Peppermint Patty's relationship with her dad.
I think it is just so sweet and genuine and it obviously matters so much to her that she would go to this trouble.
And I think it's cool that she's in a non-traditional home.

(58:17):
I'm sure that meant a lot to kids at this time.
There wasn't a lot of that being even seen in the media.
Or when it was, it would be something like the Brady Bunch which was just wallpapered over so that the non-traditional aspects of it essentially went away.
But not with Schulz.
This is cool.

Harold (58:33):
Yeah, this is a highlight strip of that year and it's very special.
It's poignant and it's sweet and it's genuine.
Yeah, Hallmark loses today, but that's because they didn't have the card.

Jimmy (58:48):
Yeah, I bet there is that card now for sure, obviously.
But Schulz is, he's an interesting, there's something Walt Disney-ish about Schulz in that the conservative parts of Disney, as small c conservative parts of Disney, seem to be the best parts that you would want to consider.

(59:10):
And yet it's moving, progressing and seeing the vision of the future.
I want you to think that there's like two people in the 20th century that were like that in entertainment.
It's not an either or.
Okay, so that is Mother's Day in the Peanuts universe.
If you're a mother, happy Mother's Day to you this upcoming weekend and happy Mother's Day to all the mothers in your lives.

(59:34):
All right, I assigned the guys.
Do we have something nice we can say about our mothers or a mother in our life?

Michael (59:40):
Well, I'll talk about my favorite comic strip mother.
That would be Mammy Yocum.

Jimmy (59:49):
Oh, that's a great pic.
Little Abner.

Michael (59:52):
But that's Abner's mom, right?
Not Daisy Mae's mom?

Jimmy (59:56):
Yeah, it's Abner's, yeah.

Michael (59:57):
Okay, which is, she's like two feet tall and he's like seven feet tall, that's right.

Jimmy (01:00:04):
So we have a nice thing about Mammy Yocum.
Harold, how about you?

Harold (01:00:11):
My mom, I think the things I appreciate the most about her faith and her idealism, she really passed that down to me and that's been a big part of my life.
I'm very grateful to her for that.

Liz (01:00:23):
And Harold, your mom is the only mom who is still with us, right?

Harold (01:00:28):
She is still with us, yes.
In fact, I'm traveling to see her next week in Missouri.

Liz (01:00:32):
Wonderful.
What's her name?

Harold (01:00:34):
Marilyn.

Liz (01:00:35):
Hi, Marilyn.

Jimmy (01:00:36):
Happy Mother's Day, Marilyn.
She is very sweet.
I've met her several times and she's adorable.
She bought my daughter's their first ballet costumes for when they were ballet students as toddlers.
How about you, Liz?

Liz (01:00:50):
I had two mothers.
My real mother died when I was very young.
My stepmother, Agnes, was a wonderful person who told me when I was waiting for the bus to go to first grade, she said, it's more important to get As or Fs than to get Cs.
You don't want to be mediocre.

Jimmy (01:01:10):
That's great advice.
That's, you know what?
Everybody should take that.

Harold (01:01:17):
I mean, to say, I've never heard a parent say that.
But that, what a person to say something like that, that the idea that the freedom to fail, that there's meaning in that as well.

Liz (01:01:30):
She was way cool.

Harold (01:01:31):
Is powerful.

Jimmy (01:01:32):
And it's essential, and it's not something people tell a kid.
You're going to fail.
And you actually kind of have to fail in life if you're going to ever succeed.
That's brilliant and beautiful.
My mom, I would say, she passed away one year ago this week, actually, but if you like any of my cartooning, you can definitely throw some thanks her way because she was hugely supportive.

(01:01:56):
And growing up in the coal region, I don't think a lot of people would have understood what I was trying to do or would be too worried about their kid being poor to support it, but she did.
So I am grateful for that.
Hey, and I got two great adult daughters.
So a shout out to their mother, Karen, for doing an amazing job with them.
So to give you guys a little heads up on what we're going to be doing for the next couple of weeks as we go on spring break.

(01:02:20):
Next week, we're off.
Then we're coming back the week after that to do a best of guests episode where you get to go through the time machine with us and pull out some greatest hits from our guests that we've had in the past.
And we're gonna have another week off.
Then the week after that, we'll reissue 1950, a remastered version with a new intro from us.
And then the week after that, we're back to our regular schedule.

(01:02:43):
So for the next month, we're on two weeks and off two weeks, basically.

Harold (01:02:47):
Yeah, and Liz, can you tell people what you're gonna be doing in the coming month?

Liz (01:02:51):
Oh, I will be at the podcast show in London on May 22nd and May 23rd.
And I will have my Unpacking Peanuts tote bag with me.
So if you see me, if you're there and you see me with my tote bag, please come up and say hello.

Jimmy (01:03:09):
All right.
So that's it, guys.
Happy Mother's Day to all.
We will be back with our next episode whenever it is.
I lose track of these things, but I can't wait for it.
Until then, you can go on our website, unpackingpeanuts.com and you can send us an email.
We're unpackingpeanuts at gmail.com.
You can follow us on social media, on Instagram and threads, we're at Unpack Peanuts and on YouTube, Blue Sky and whatever the other one is, we're at Unpacking Peanuts.

(01:03:39):
So follow us there.
We'll be around.
Until next time, for Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.

Michael & Liz (01:03:46):
Yes, be of good cheer.

Harold (01:03:47):
Be of good cheer.

Liz (01:04:45):
Unpacking Peanuts is copyrighted by Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen and Harold Buchholz.
Produced and edited by Liz Sumner.
Music by Michael Cohen.
Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark.
For more from the show, follow Unpacked Peanuts on Instagram and threads.
Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube.

(01:05:06):
For more about Jimmy, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.
Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.
The world is yours.