July 4, 2026 • 57 mins
The gang celebrates the USA’s birthday by looking at one of the latest iterations of Snoopy’s alter egos…The Revolutionary War patriot.
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Transcript available at UnpackingPeanuts.com
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Unpacking Peanuts is copyright Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz, and Liz Sumner. Produced and edited by Liz Sumner. Music by Michael Cohen. Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
VO (00:02):
Welcome to Unpacking Peanuts.
The podcast where three cartoonists take an in-depth look at the greatest comic strip of all time, Peanuts by Charles M.
Schulz.
Jimmy (00:18):
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to the show.
This is Unpacking Peanuts.
Today, we're celebrating the 250th birthday of the good old US of A, and I'll be your host for the proceedings.
My name is Jimmy Gownley.
I'm also a cartoonist who did things like Seven Good Reasons Not To Grow Up, the dumbest idea ever, and Amelia Rules.
You could read all my new comics, GVIL Comics over there on Substack.
(00:42):
Joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts, and fellow cartoonists.
He's a playwright and a composer, both for the Man 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, Gathering of Spells, and Tangled River.
It's Michael Cohen.
Michael (01:01):
Say hey.
Jimmy (01:03):
He's executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics, and the creator of the Instagram sensation Sweetest Beasts.
It's Harold Buchholz.
Harold (01:13):
Hello.
Jimmy (01:14):
Making sure we stay out of trouble and everything runs smoothly, it's our producer and editor, Liz Sumner.
Liz (01:20):
Howdy.
Jimmy (01:21):
So guys, happy Fourth of July, happy Independence Day.
Are you guys having some hot dogs or in hamburgers doing anything?
We have a wide variety here.
We have our Midwest boy, we have our two ex-patriots living on the continent, and then there's me here from the home of Liberty itself, good old Pennsylvania.
Harold (01:43):
Yeah.
Michael (01:44):
Yeah, we're ex-patriotic here.
But we have had a traditional annual Fourth of July with our Brit friends just so we can rub it in.
I'm not sure that's happening this year.
Liz (02:00):
Yeah, they've decided that they don't really want to celebrate it anymore.
Jimmy (02:04):
That's not that fun for them.
Michael (02:06):
But usually there is a hamburger or what passes for a hamburger made by an English person.
Jimmy (02:16):
Nice.
How about you, Harold?
Are you doing anything fun?
Harold (02:19):
We've been talking about it.
Of course, we're recording this a little early, so we haven't quite nailed down everything that we're going to do.
So we're looking at our options.
Jimmy (02:28):
Nice.
There's always fireworks in the state capital here and the beautiful park.
Harold (02:33):
And a beautiful state capital too.
Pennsylvania is one of the loveliest ones.
Jimmy (02:38):
Yeah.
Oh, it's gorgeous.
Based on St.
Peter's.
Lovely.
There's a park, the highest point in Harrisburg and it overlooks the city, and you can even see down to the river and they send the fireworks over that.
It's fantastic.
It's a great park.
It's also where they do Shakespeare in the park.
Anyway, so all right.
Well, you know, it's an interesting time to be an American here in 2026.
(03:05):
I have some of my earliest childhood memories or of the Bicentennial.
Do you guys remember anything about that?
The old Bicentennial in 76?
Michael (03:14):
Yeah, I was a kid.
I was 35.
Jimmy (03:17):
Young boy of 35.
Liz (03:20):
I was in downtown Philly for the parade.
Harold (03:23):
35.
You were not 35.
Jimmy (03:29):
No, you were 26.
Liz (03:32):
Yeah.
Michael (03:32):
I was 26.
Harold (03:34):
Okay.
I know you did the first comic price guide, but wow.
Jimmy (03:42):
Thank God we have someone who could do math.
Harold (03:46):
I equate the Bicentennial with Disney World because we went down, I think, in 75, but they were celebrating early for the Bicentennial, and I do remember everything decked out, red, white, and blue, and all of that.
Our first time as a little kid, I think I was like nine years old when we went down there, so I just forever had that connected in my head.
Jimmy (04:10):
Yeah.
I was big on the Bicentennial.
I remember being all in on it.
One of the things I was really excited about, there was a chain of grocery stores in Pennsylvania called Acme, which is slightly different than the ones that supply Wiley Coyote.
They had all kinds of little 200th anniversary tchotchkes, and they had these little figurines, I mean the cheapest little plastic blister packed toys called the Men of 76.
(04:42):
You can get George Washington, and you can get Cornwallis, and the horses, you can get Molly Pitcher.
That's a deep cut, but really fun.
Michael (04:52):
Did you get a slave?
Jimmy (04:55):
No, but you could get a Native American.
I had these still by the time I was in fifth grade years later, and we had to make a plantation as like a pro-
each, there were like, it was a group project, and each group had to make one of the, like a diorama of one of the original colonies.
(05:17):
We got Virginia, and I brought out my men of 76 figures, and yeah, we had a slave uprising in ours.
It got pretty violent in one of the fields in Virginia.
Harold (05:33):
Wow.
Jimmy (05:35):
Plantation that we put together.
Harold (05:36):
It was great.
Jimmy (05:37):
We won.
We came in first.
Harold (05:39):
Oh, congratulations.
That's cool.
Jimmy (05:41):
What do you remember about the parade, Liz?
Liz (05:43):
I don't remember.
I remember exactly where I was standing, except I don't know Philadelphia well enough now to see it.
It was a good location.
They had each state sent their own band, and float, and it was very exciting.
I didn't decide to go until the very last minute, and my best friend and I took the high-speed line in, and we're really glad we did.
Jimmy (06:10):
Very cool.
I'm bringing up the Bicentennial, I think partly because it's so difficult to talk about being an American.
Yes.
Yeah, but it was very important to Mr.
Charles Schulz.
He served this fine country in World War II, so we thought we would bring this out.
I have a variety of little quotes he came up with about patriotism, about America that I'm going to sprinkle throughout.
(06:38):
One thing I thought was really funny that's just a little adjacent to this, but I was talking to a friend of mine about doing this.
He goes, oh, well, that's going to be really rough.
I'm like, yeah.
He goes, would you have a lot of listeners outside of the US?
I'm like, yeah, actually, we have quite a bit.
He goes, well, they're not going to want to listen to that.
Everyone outside the US hates America.
Harold (07:00):
I'm like, well, yeah, we know that.
Jimmy (07:03):
That's why there is America.
Because you hated a group of people, they said, we got to get the hell out of here.
And then they came to America.
So that sort of thing kind of, I think, bounces off us.
But we're going to get it together.
You just wait and see.
Everything will work out in the end.
And until then, let's celebrate what we've accomplished so far.
(07:28):
And by we, I mean previous generations, not us.
And also look at some good comic strips.
Does that sound fun?
Yeah.
Liz (07:34):
Yes.
Jimmy (07:35):
So if you guys want to follow along with us as we do these episodes, what you can do is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com and sign up for the Great Peanuts Reread.
That will get you one email a month letting you know exactly what strips we're going to be covering, which is even more important in this era of post reread Unpacking Peanuts because you never know what we're going to do.
It's madness.
So if you could sign up for that, that would be great.
(07:57):
All right.
With all of that out of the way, how about we get to these comic strips?
Liz (08:03):
Let's do it.
Jimmy (08:05):
January 5th, 1997.
It's a symbolic panel of Snoopy atop the dog house, we assume.
But the dog house has been replaced by a niggle.
It's a very cold and wintery day.
Sally is inside playing with her crayons and something attracts her attention outside and she looks outside the window and says, it's still snowing.
(08:28):
Then she goes in the TV room to talk to Charlie Brown and says to him, where's your dog?
Charlie Brown says, outside.
Sally says, outside.
She goes to look out the window again and says, poor dog standing out there in the snow all alone.
I wonder what he's thinking.
Then we see Snoopy out in the yard wearing a three-corner Revolutionary War style hat holding a musket and saying, here's the Revolutionary War patriot standing guard at Valley Forge.
(09:01):
Valley Forge, also PA.
There's a lot of Philadelphia-related stuff here.
Harold (09:06):
That's right.
Yeah.
Michael (09:07):
This is the first, I assume.
Liz (09:10):
This was the first patriot soldier.
Harold (09:12):
Wow, that's late in this strip, 1997.
Michael (09:15):
Yeah.
This has nothing to do with the Bicentennial.
Jimmy (09:20):
No, none of these strips will be Bicentennial-related.
Harold (09:23):
No.
Jimmy (09:23):
They're just him being a patriot.
I don't think he did anything really for the Bicentennial.
Well, we didn't have a national celebration.
It was like every city was left to their own thing.
I remember.
Harold (09:37):
Yeah.
But boy, was it everywhere.
In the schools, it was a big, big deal.
Jimmy (09:44):
As we talk about the differences between 1976 and good old 2026, I have two quotes here.
These are not from Charles Schulz, but they are about Charles Schulz.
Harold (09:58):
Let's see if we can guess who said them.
Jimmy (10:00):
Ready?
Here's number one.
Through the years, you have brought joy and laughter into millions of homes worldwide with your comic strip, television specials, and books.
Characters like Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and Lucy have a warm place in our national heart.
Anyone know who said that?
Liz (10:16):
I'm assuming it's a president.
Michael (10:18):
It's Ronald Reagan.
Jimmy (10:20):
One guess for Ronald Reagan.
Michael (10:21):
Okay.
Harold (10:22):
Anyone else?
Bill Clinton.
Jimmy (10:24):
One interesting, one guess for Ronald Reagan, one guess for Bill Clinton.
Liz, do you want to get in on this action?
Liz (10:30):
My guess is a generic president.
Jimmy (10:33):
Generic?
Liz (10:34):
A president.
Harold (10:35):
A speechwriter.
Jimmy (10:37):
Yeah, a speechwriter for a president.
Well, Michael, you are correct.
That was President Ronald Reagan.
Michael (10:43):
Okay.
Wow.
Harold (10:44):
Yeah.
Michael (10:44):
I had no idea.
Harold (10:46):
Do you know the occasion by any chance?
I wonder how that happened that he gets called out.
Did he get like a Medal of Freedom or anything like that?
Jimmy (10:53):
Posthumously, unfortunately.
Harold (10:55):
Okay.
Jimmy (10:56):
Yeah.
Harold (10:57):
Here's a second quote.
Jimmy (10:59):
Whether through newspapers, television, books, or movies, Peanuts has made us laugh, challenged us to think, and encouraged us to dream.
Any guesses?
Michael (11:09):
Thomas Edison.
Jimmy (11:11):
Thomas Edison.
I was like betting $1 on the price is right.
I hope everybody else goes over.
Liz (11:19):
Steve Jobs.
Harold (11:21):
I'm going to say, because I believe he wrote, did he write an introduction to one of the fanographic books?
Did Barack Obama say that?
Jimmy (11:28):
Barack Obama.
You're all wrong.
But you were very, Harold was closest because it was Bill Clinton.
Oh, okay.
Harold (11:35):
There we go.
Jimmy (11:36):
So my point being, President Ronald Reagan, President Bill Clinton, both found joy and art and sustenance, all kinds of stuff in this.
Yeah, both of these were probably written by staff.
But if you see the originals and you can find them online, they each wrote handwritten notes.
And he had personal contact with at least, well, no, I thought it was Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Reagan, that I know of, that he was at the White House with and worked on projects with.
(12:09):
Amazing.
An amazing person and an amazing thing to imagine.
And let's hope we get there.
Harold (12:15):
I'm a cartoonist.
I mean, come on.
Jimmy (12:16):
I'm a cartoonist.
You know what I'm saying?
Harold (12:18):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Very cool.
Jimmy (12:22):
I wonder what do you think?
I think a lot of his attention towards this Patriot Snoopy stuff has to do with his aging and his thinking about his time in the Army, even though obviously this isn't, it's not World War II stuff, but it's still Army stuff.
Harold (12:42):
Well, it's interesting that the Patriot Snoopy, it's almost always in the snow.
This first one, he's not bundled up the way he is in later strips, which really gets you feeling like he's really cold.
He doesn't have shoes, he's got, who knows, bandages, it looks like wrapped around his feet.
(13:04):
Every time I see that, I just feel incredibly cold.
This first one, strangely, where he has nothing on, he doesn't feel as cold.
Jimmy (13:12):
Yeah, yeah, it's true, it's true.
Yeah.
Well, when you see someone shivering and hunched over too, that just emanates cold.
January 12th, 1997.
Here we see Patriot Snoopy and he is in fact all bundled up.
This is the official Valley Forge look.
Valley Forge being the famous freezing cold winter that George Washington and the troops huddled up outside of Philadelphia.
(13:40):
We see Snoopy in that attire inside a barracks, I guess, and he's riding home.
Dear mom, I've never been so cold in my life.
He looks outside and we see some evocative snow on the ground and some birds in the air.
It just looks very wintery and Snoopy thinks to himself, at least it stopped snowing.
(14:01):
Then he takes up his position and says, here's the world famous Revolutionary War Patriot standing guard at Valley Forge.
Tell General Washington, one of his men wants to see him.
Yes, sir, I have a little suggestion.
This is Snoopy talking to good old George now.
He says, you may or may not have noticed that there's a lot of snow here.
My idea is we build a skating rink out there.
(14:24):
We could organize a hockey team, maybe even start some kind of figure skating club.
Snoopy is getting into it at this point.
He's like, we could even invite some of the chicks from town for a skating party.
I think what happens in the next panel is Washington slams the door to his barracks, sending Snoopy flying and his musket soaring through the air and then Patriot Snoopy lying in the snow, thinks to himself, I didn't get a chance to tell him he could drive the Zamboni.
(14:52):
We can even invite some of the chicks from town.
Harold (14:57):
That was the straw that broke the camel's back with General George Washington.
These strips are strange that Schulz obviously goes out of his way to do this.
He's trying to evoke something and then he's consistently undermining it with these silly, I wouldn't say undermining it, but this is where he chooses to go with it.
(15:20):
He chooses to go with these silly anachronism.
Then the very fact that Snoopy is talking to General George Washington in his imagination, but the thing he's suggesting to Washington is they need to get a hockey team going.
Jimmy (15:42):
What it does make me think of, and Schulz would have known this far more profoundly than I, but when you end up, I imagine getting caught up in a war like this, especially when you're drafted, you were doing something.
You were in the middle of your life doing something else, and now all of a sudden, you're doing this.
Harold (16:02):
Yeah.
Jimmy (16:04):
I think that would be hard.
Obviously, that would be next to impossible to imagine.
I think that comes through here with Schulz.
I'm sure there's a lot of times he was in the basic training or God in Europe during World War II thinking, boy, I'd like to be home on the ice rink.
Harold (16:23):
Yeah.
Also, the idea that you've got your own thoughts about what's going on, you have absolutely no real input.
You just have to read, you're just a tiny, tiny cog in a massive, massive event.
Jimmy (16:37):
Yeah.
Harold (16:38):
Exactly.
Jimmy (16:39):
No one's asking if you want to have a figure skating club or something.
Harold (16:43):
It was nice for General Washington to give him some time.
Jimmy (16:46):
Yeah, you did.
That's nice.
What do you guys think of the birds?
I think they make it look very forlorn and wintry and sad.
Harold (16:56):
Yeah.
I wasn't going to say anything, but that top right panel on the right, are those two birds one in front of the other?
Because either that has the longest lopsided wing I've ever seen.
Jimmy (17:09):
I think that's two birds.
Harold (17:11):
Okay.
Yeah.
Jimmy (17:12):
Yeah.
Oh, wait.
But no, no.
No, it's not.
That's all of them.
That's how he's doing it.
Look, it's just that one got out of control.
Harold (17:20):
Okay.
Jimmy (17:21):
But every bird has a broken wing if you look really close.
Harold (17:26):
Because to my eye, it almost looks like one's in front of the other.
Otherwise, one of the wings as we see it is double the length of the other one.
Liz (17:35):
I think it's that the bird is turned.
So we see the left wing more than we see the right wing.
Harold (17:43):
Got you.
Jimmy (17:44):
Well, I think that's a new saying I'm going to say.
How are things going?
The bird has turned.
Is that good or bad?
Harold (17:52):
That's the bird, I guess.
Jimmy (17:55):
February 16th, 1997, Snoopy of Valley Forge again, bundled up over a sad little fire outside.
Then he's walking back to camp and he says, I have to know.
He's trudging through the field saying, here's the world famous patriot soldier at Valley Forge.
I must see General Washington.
(18:15):
He's continuing to hike.
I have to know.
He crosses a bridge of a fallen tree crossing an iced over stream.
Then he falls to his knees outside Washington's barracks and says, tell me sir, I have to know.
Did the mail arrive?
In the next panel, he says, did I get any valentines?
(18:38):
Were they given out valentines in the 1700s?
Harold (18:41):
I don't think Hallmark had gotten into business yet.
Liz (18:45):
But if anybody got valentines, it would have been Snoopy.
Jimmy (18:50):
He is all in here in 1997 on Patriot Snoopy.
Liz (18:56):
On Sundays.
Yeah.
Harold (18:57):
Yeah.
I guess I'm so used to Snoopy having these flights of fancy that to step back, try to step back and look at it afresh.
It's such an interesting display of who Snoopy is.
Why would he place himself in the desolate part of a war in the wintertime mixed with his hubris of calling himself the world famous Patriot soldier and that in his flights of fancy, he's getting thrown out of places.
(19:39):
He's just very humble in what he's actually doing.
It's a fascinating mix of things that comes from Schulz over the years building this picture of Snoopy.
The whole world famous thing at first doesn't really strike me because I'm just assuming he's going to say that, but in this context, it's a little odd.
(20:00):
Right.
Jimmy (20:02):
Actually, it's even odd to think if anyone could have possibly been world famous in the 1700s, other than maybe the King of England and General Washington.
Harold (20:12):
Yeah.
Then this is such a fascinating late peanuts character.
When he's alone on his own, we just see him, of course, we're not going to see George Washington.
It just feels incredibly lonely and bleak.
Liz (20:29):
I wish that we knew what inspired this.
Jimmy (20:33):
Well, it's funny you should mention that because Harold just described it loneliness, and I think this might have something to do with it.
Because here's another quote from Mr.
Charles Schulz.
The three years I spent in the army taught me all I need to know about loneliness.
And I think, I think there's a, as you get older, people start falling away.
(20:59):
And the loneliness you probably feel from being ripped away from people when you're young and thrown in the army, isn't that dissimilar to having people who are close to you leave this mortal plane, you know?
And I think those things get mixed up in his head as he's, not mixed up in his head in a bad way, but I mean combined creatively, you know, as he gets older and it comes out in this.
(21:25):
Why it's set during the Revolution, it might just have to do with the fact that it was the one he hadn't done yet.
And it might also have to do with the fact that that seems like an old guy thing to be into.
May 20th, 1997, Snoopy's still at the Valley Forge.
These are all Snoopy at Valley Forge, of course.
(21:45):
And he's on guard duty apparently, and he says, here's the world famous patriot soldier standing guard at Valley Forge.
And he thinks to himself, these are the times that try men's souls.
And then the last panel, he says, let's put it another way, I hope I make the cut.
What do you think the cut is?
Not get shot?
Liz (22:06):
Yeah, or be relieved.
Harold (22:10):
And that your soul has tried successfully, whatever that is, right?
Yeah.
Looking at these, another thing that's really striking me is, we talked about Leight Schulz a lot in terms of the waiver of his line.
And because Snoopy is so bundled up, and we've also mentioned the head of Charlie Brown stayed remarkably round.
(22:33):
And so you would see the eyes and the nose, and usually the mouth, it was really pretty clean still, right?
And then everything around it looks a little rough and bedraggled.
Here, because Snoopy is so bound up and we don't see his ears, we just see all of the stuff he's wearing and carrying.
There's not a whole lot of the clean stuff that makes the strip look like it's still in control, I guess, in terms of his line.
Jimmy (23:04):
Right.
Harold (23:04):
And even the stuff that he is drawing of Snoopy, like the bottom of his snout in that first panel is just rough.
And I think that adds to this feeling of this, he's just bedraggled and in a really tough situation.
Because this is, I think, pretty much as far as you're going to go in terms of not getting to see the faces he's so good at.
(23:31):
And because Snoopy is being so, what do you call it?
He's just stoic in a lot of these panels.
It just has a different feel than most peanut strips.
Jimmy (23:43):
It sure does.
All right.
How about we take a break there?
We'll come back and answer the mail and do some more of these Revolutionary War peanut strips.
Sound good?
SPEAKER_1 (23:56):
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's god entitle them.
(24:16):
A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Jimmy (24:46):
All right, and we are back.
I'm hanging out in the mailbox.
Do we have anything, Liz?
Harold (24:50):
Hey, before we-
There's something that's very important that we have not brought up yet, that we absolutely want all of our listeners to hear.
Jimmy Gownley has just been nominated for a 2026 Will Eisner Comics Industry Award for Best Digital Comic of this year for In the Real Dark Night, which is on GVIL Comics.
Michael (25:13):
Congratulations.
Liz (25:14):
It was.
Jimmy (25:14):
Thank you, guys.
Harold (25:15):
That's a huge honor.
Liz (25:17):
It really is.
Harold (25:18):
Just really quickly, the way that people choose the nominations for the Eisner Awards is they lock some people up together and they go through virtually, well, every comic that's been nominated or been sent in by somebody, they actually read every single comic and then collectively, these experts in comics from all these different backgrounds, they pick the nominations and then it's a popularity contest of who actually has read this because the people voting on it haven't read 98 percent of the things that are being nominated.
Jimmy (25:49):
What they're voting on.
Harold (25:50):
But to be nominated is a huge, huge honor because this means Jimmy's stuff stood up to every single other digital comic that is out there, that was on their radar.
So congratulations, Jimmy.
That's a huge, huge thing.
Jimmy (26:05):
Fifteenth time's the charm.
Yeah.
Liz (26:07):
You bet.
Harold (26:08):
Susan Lucci, come on.
Jimmy (26:11):
By the way, if you want to hear the whole story of what it's like to lose 14 Eisner Awards, and Susan Lucci, a story to go along with it, my brand new podcast, It's an honor just to be nominated on Jimmy Gownley's Dumb Ideas dropped.
Well, today that we're recording it, but it'll be a couple of weeks from now.
Liz (26:32):
Who votes for the Eisners?
Jimmy (26:34):
Any professional comic book person can vote.
So cartoonists, writers, editors.
Harold (26:41):
And we have hundreds of professionals who have listened to this podcast.
So for you guys, if you want to do Jimmy a favor, if you love Unpacking Peanuts and you love Jimmy, check out this comic.
It is amazing.
And vote, vote for this thing.
I want Jimmy to get his just desserts here.
Jimmy (27:01):
Oh, well, thanks for bringing that up, Harold.
I really do appreciate it and I am pretty darn excited.
Harold (27:06):
Yeah, me too.
That's just cool.
Liz (27:08):
Yeah.
Jimmy (27:10):
All right.
But do we have anything in the mailbox?
Liz (27:12):
We do.
We do.
We heard from Megan Bittner who writes, I'm so happy you did an episode on the Beagle Scouts.
When I was a kid, one of my first and favorite Peanuts collections was The Many Faces of Snoopy, which featured Snoopy in five of his alter egos, including the Beagle Scout leader.
Jimmy (27:32):
Nice.
Liz (27:34):
She writes, I always read the July 23, 1978 strip where Marcy finds one of the birds in a sleeping bag as a follow up to the Sunday strip from the previous week, where Olivier falls behind and Snoopy tells him that they'll travel a lot faster if he gets out of his sleeping bag.
(27:55):
I always figured that Olivier was the one who Marcy found, and part of the reason Snoopy is annoyed is that he already told Olivier to get out of the sleeping bag.
Harold (28:05):
That makes total sense.
Jimmy (28:06):
Yeah.
Amazing.
It does make sense.
Harold (28:09):
It's Olivier.
Done.
Liz (28:11):
Done.
Jimmy (28:12):
Confirmed.
Liz (28:13):
Canon.
Jimmy (28:15):
That's right.
Liz (28:16):
We also heard from Lee on Spotify commenting on the 1954 part 1 episode and said, I was not a great athlete in school, but I greatly enjoy your conversation about baseball.
You have such memories of sports.
Harold (28:33):
Meaning Jimmy.
Liz (28:35):
Well, that's Michael.
I'm Michael too.
Harold (28:37):
All right.
Okay.
Yeah.
Nabi.
Jimmy (28:40):
That's good.
Hey, pirates are simultaneously doing great and also in last.
I don't know how.
I don't know.
They're doing better than they've done in like 10 years.
But it's a very competitive division.
Harold (28:54):
Well, they need to take off those eye patches.
They need some three-dimensional vision.
Jimmy (28:59):
That probably does hurt with the depth perception, if nothing else.
Harold (29:03):
You cannot hit a ball out of the park with a scabbard.
Michael (29:09):
The piglet really sucks for flying.
Jimmy (29:16):
Do you guys know why they're called the pirates?
Harold (29:18):
Why are they called the pirates?
Jimmy (29:19):
They stole a player from Philadelphia.
The night before he was supposed to sign, they came in and made him a deal he couldn't refuse.
The headlines in Philadelphia, because they were just the Alleghenies at the time, which is a terrible name.
The Philadelphia Enquirer wrote a headline that said, the Pittsburgh Pirates.
SPEAKER_1 (29:40):
That was the name.
Liz (29:42):
Finally, we heard from the very wise and extremely talented listener Marcus Entorleso, who sent us a copy of his strips called Butter Nuts with lovely compliments for Jimmy.
Jimmy (29:56):
That was so nice.
Should we do an Unpacking Peanuts of Butter Nuts?
Give me a second.
Liz (30:01):
Okay.
He also sent a copy of himself holding the whole world's crazy and what makes you happy that he just bought it.
Harold (30:09):
Oh, cool.
Jimmy (30:10):
Yes, he's a very handsome young man.
Harold (30:11):
Very handsome.
Okay.
Liz (30:14):
Okay, here we go.
Jimmy (30:15):
This is Butter Nuts for, and there's even the date just like Schulz, May 22nd, 2026.
Our main character is very frustrated with it, and we have one of them there, symbolic panels, with the character being very upset and seeing all kinds of art stuff floating around their head.
(30:35):
The next panel, he says, boy, wait till I tell him, and he comes up to his friend and says, I've decided to be a cartoonist when I'm grown.
I'm going to make comics like Charles Schulz and Jimmy Gownley.
So really good ones and ones like me.
Oh.
Here's a drawing of Amelia McBride I drew, and the kid looks at it and goes, hmm.
(30:57):
The response from the kid looking at this drawing is, oh, God, it looks like she got hit by a truck.
Then our hero yells, Critic!
Which is pretty funny, and the only way you can handle criticism.
Liz (31:14):
I agree.
So thank you, Marcus.
That was really great.
Jimmy (31:18):
That was awesome.
All right.
Are we going to get back to the strips?
Sure.
All right.
Well, if you want to be a part of our show, you can call us.
We're 717-219-4162.
That's the Unpacking Peanuts hotline.
If you want to leave a message or text and tell us what you're up to, you could also email us at unpackingpeanuts.gmail.com.
(31:40):
Remember, when I don't hear, I worry, so I'd love to hear from you.
All right.
Let's get back to the strips.
May 22nd, 1997.
Patriot Snoopy at Valley Forge, snow everywhere, and he says, morale is low at Valley Forge.
The troops are hungry, nothing to eat but fire cake and water.
(32:02):
This morning, General Washington gave us more bad news.
We see Patriot Snoopy looking into a little jar, and he says, we're all out of grape jelly.
Michael (32:10):
Oh, no.
Fire cake sounds pretty good right now.
I'm hungry.
What is it?
Jimmy (32:17):
I don't think it actually is good.
I remember looking this up, but it does sound like something cinnamony possibly.
Harold (32:26):
It's flour and water if you got salt.
Michael (32:28):
It's spicy too.
Hot peppers or something.
Jimmy (32:31):
Yeah, you're thinking right?
Harold (32:32):
You think, yeah.
Jimmy (32:34):
Now flour, water, and sometimes salt.
Harold (32:37):
If you got it.
Sprinkle it if you got it.
Jimmy (32:42):
Wow, that's bleak.
Harold (32:44):
Yeah.
That's rough.
Especially with the grape jelly.
Jimmy (32:50):
Yeah, no grape jelly.
Harold (32:52):
He should have saved a few packets from the cracker barrel.
Yeah.
Jimmy (32:58):
I think I'm going to make some for the fourth.
Harold (33:00):
Really?
Jimmy (33:00):
I think I could possibly make this.
Harold (33:02):
Yeah.
That's something I could probably make.
Liz (33:07):
I think I'm going to find something else to eat on the fourth.
Jimmy (33:15):
May 26, 1997, Snoopy at Valley Forge.
It's another cold day at Valley Forge.
I've baked General Washington a piece of fire cake.
He says to me, where's the grape jelly?
I tell him we haven't had grape jelly for six weeks.
Then he says, can't someone go over to the mall and get some?
Snoopy says, it was too hard to explain.
(33:36):
He goes back to warming himself over the fire.
I'm assuming the king of Prussia mall is where he would be going.
Harold (33:46):
Yeah.
That's right.
Not too far from Valley Forge.
Liz (33:52):
They used to bus us there for Christmas shopping when I was at boarding school.
Michael (33:57):
Really?
Really.
Jimmy (33:59):
That must have been brand new.
Harold (34:03):
What are you saying?
Jimmy (34:04):
No, that didn't come out the way-
Harold (34:06):
They didn't have malls back then?
Jimmy (34:08):
That's not how I meant it.
SPEAKER_2 (34:12):
They had shopping back then?
Harold (34:15):
Let's know.
Jimmy (34:16):
Oh my God.
I miss everything about malls.
Harold (34:23):
We'll make a little come back.
We'll see what happens.
Jimmy (34:26):
You said Spencer Gifts a couple of years ago.
Spencer Gifts opened up on its own, not in a mall, in Harrisburg.
Isn't that weird?
It did not last long, but it was like seeing something in the wrong habitat.
It's just weird.
Harold (34:41):
That's like a subaro in the wild.
Jimmy (34:44):
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
Why would you go there when there's other?
May 27th, 1997.
It's Peppermint Patty and Charlie Brown.
Peppermint Patty comes up to Charlie Brown's house and says, Can you believe it, Chuck?
Can you believe it?
Charlie Brown says, Believe what?
Peppermint Patty says, Marcy was named outstanding student of the year.
(35:07):
I thought I was going to win.
Then Peppermint Patty, delusional as ever, sits down and says, I've never been so depressed in all my life.
Then Patriot Snoopy appears and says, You should have been at Valley Forge.
(35:27):
Michael, as someone who had a World War II veteran father, do you find that that's true?
That what are you going to complain about to your dad, having known what it was like?
Michael (35:42):
Like everybody I know from his generation, he never talked about it.
Jimmy (35:46):
Never talked about it.
Michael (35:47):
Never.
Jimmy (35:48):
Crazy.
My dad was the same way.
It wasn't until a person from those days came up and visited that I even knew that he witnessed the atomic bomb.
You think that would be mentioned.
But I guess just trauma and they didn't.
Michael (36:03):
Yeah.
My dad was like at Pearl Harbor when I got bombed.
Not worth talking about.
Harold (36:09):
Wow.
Jimmy (36:10):
Insane.
Harold (36:11):
How did that make you view your father's given?
Here, I'm living this life and they live that life.
What does that make you do in terms of like, you can't help but compare yourself, right?
Especially as you grow older.
Michael (36:25):
I mean, clearly, the good reason to hate me.
Liz (36:30):
But also understand why you didn't want to fight in Vietnam.
Michael (36:34):
Well, yeah, you understood that.
But basically, my problems must have seemed ridiculous, like, oh my God, I don't have enough room for all my comics in the club.
Jimmy (36:45):
Yeah, right.
But yeah, I mean, there's no question that we are sad little wussies compared to that.
Harold (36:55):
I mean, yeah, I mean, and there's mixed with some tremendous gratitude that they did.
That we have not been in that space for a while, to the extent that we'd have drafts.
And yeah, that's a huge, huge thing that millions and millions of people have been through.
Jimmy (37:17):
Yeah.
And everyone should kind of remember that and make sure those people are taking care of in their old age.
There's not that many of them left and they haven't been treated that great, to be honest.
Harold (37:26):
But there are from, you know, Korean War and lots of, and Gulf War and yeah.
And many other wars around the world.
Jimmy (37:34):
Iraq and Afghanistan, for sure.
So give them a thought.
Liz (37:38):
Here in Italy, there are some people who really appreciate the Americans who came and fought.
Jimmy (37:44):
Oh, yeah.
Harold (37:44):
Yeah.
Jimmy (37:45):
Norm MacDonald, that comedian, talks about going to Holland after his dad passed away because they would do a celebration day honoring all the allied forces that came in and liberated the country.
Yeah, it was amazing.
Harold (37:58):
It is great.
But yeah, to being depressed, that's the connection that Patriot Snoopy has to Valley Forge in this comic.
Jimmy (38:08):
Going back to Schultz being lonely in the army.
Yet, when he decided what his final resting place would be, it doesn't say Charles Schultz beloved creator of Peanuts, it says staff sergeant Charles M.
Schulz, which is amazing.
Liz (38:27):
Where is he buried?
Jimmy (38:29):
A cemetery.
I don't know what it is, but somewhere in California.
Harold (38:33):
I'm sure our listeners know somebody's got that.
Jimmy (38:36):
Yeah.
May 31st, 1997.
We're back with Peppermint Patty and she says, I suppose having a dog helps to make you feel better when you're depressed, huh, Chuck?
Charlie Brown says, I wouldn't know.
We see Snoopy, musket on his shoulder, marching away saying, say goodbye to Valley Forge, man.
(38:58):
We're moving out.
Harold (39:00):
What shoulder?
Jimmy (39:03):
What is that balanced on?
Harold (39:06):
Yeah, there's depressed again.
Four days later.
Jimmy (39:10):
Yeah.
Harold (39:11):
Makes you feel better when you're depressed.
Liz (39:12):
I wonder if that was a Memorial Day.
Harold (39:15):
Could be.
Jimmy (39:16):
You know the other interesting thing about this, and I'm looking about this now, all of this Valley Forge stuff that we did, the last one, three, four, five strips, they're all in May.
Michael (39:28):
Yeah.
Jimmy (39:29):
Right?
These winter strips in May.
Harold (39:32):
With Memorial Day built in.
Michael (39:33):
Well, your imagination knows no season.
Jimmy (39:38):
I wonder if he was cold when he was, you know what I mean?
He was doing these in February or March and it was freezing, and especially as you get older.
Michael (39:48):
California.
Harold (39:49):
You're saying if he bought a Snuggie, there would have been none of these strips.
Jimmy (39:52):
None of these strips.
Yeah.
November 23, 1997.
We see the world famous patriot at Valley Forge with his musket and reading something.
Then in the next panel, we see him keeping watch over a hill with those very sad, war-lorn birds in the sky.
(40:13):
Then the strip starts in the second tier with Snoopy thinking, here's the world famous patriot soldier standing guard at Valley Forge.
Suddenly, he receives word that General Washington wants to see him.
Build a fire?
This is Snoopy at Washington's barracks again.
Build a fire?
Yes, sir, I can do that.
He runs off with some sticks and says, if I can just get it started, I can build a good fire.
(40:37):
We see him getting it going in the next panel as he sighs to himself.
Then in the last panel, he says, all my old comic books.
Liz (40:45):
Don't do it.
Jimmy (40:46):
Michael, that's got to hurt.
Michael (40:49):
Well, it's revolutionary work.
Jimmy (40:55):
Captain America punching.
Michael (40:58):
The King of England.
Yeah.
Harold (41:01):
All those Benjamin Franklin comics.
Michael (41:04):
Yeah, those were good.
Harold (41:05):
Don't Tread On Me, comic number three.
Jimmy (41:10):
Thomas Paine, those, they were like, serebus, too much words.
What do you think is going on?
That second panel on the top tier is very odd.
Is that like a low-hanging winter cloud cover?
Liz (41:25):
Maybe.
Harold (41:25):
That works for me.
Looks like a grayish cloud over that bleak blue.
Liz (41:31):
The bird with the extra long wing.
Harold (41:34):
There it is again.
Michael (41:37):
Notice the sky gets darker and darker.
The storm's moving in.
Jimmy (41:42):
I didn't notice that.
That's a really nice catch.
Harold (41:44):
Oh, wow.
That's very cool.
Yeah, good catch.
Jimmy (41:49):
Boy, I really like the color of the blue on the third panel in the second tier, that grayish dusky blue.
That looks nice.
Liz (41:58):
Marine.
Harold (41:59):
It's interesting.
Usually, Schulz creates the outlines for whatever is colored.
But if you look in that last panel, when we're saying, again, he's not doing the Sunday coloring at this point, as we understand it, he's just made some really thickety scraggly lines for bushes.
I'm guessing those are bushes, and somebody has filled in an evergreen and having to make some choices too of what the edges are because he's not provided them that way.
(42:29):
It's interesting.
Obviously, he was good with them.
He would have told them if he didn't like what they were doing.
But I like it.
It's cool.
But it's a little artistic choices being made there by whoever's coloring them.
Jimmy (42:40):
Yeah.
Liz (42:40):
Yeah, because it could have been just sticks because it was winter.
Jimmy (42:44):
Yeah.
November 22nd, 1998, Valley Forge Snoopy is, where?
No, I don't see it.
Then in the next tier, he starts, this is Sunday again, he's patrolling, he says, here's the world famous patriot soldier at Valley Forge.
Then someone gets his attention and Snoopy replies, all right, I said I'd tell him and I will.
(43:08):
Then he's walking away and he says, I still don't think he'll listen to me.
We're at Washington's barracks again.
He's like, yes, sir, I'd like permission to see General Washington.
Well, yes, I'd say it causes suffering.
Yes, General, I understand.
Then he walks away saying, I knew he had other things on his mind.
What I said was, sir, we keep losing these white ping pong balls in the snow.
(43:35):
Well, yes, I'd say it causes suffering.
Very, very funny.
I'm getting to this, Washington is becoming one of my favorite peanuts characters at this point.
Harold (43:50):
Yeah, it's playing off again that Snoopy doesn't have it hard.
All the things we're talking about for ourselves, seems like he's laying that on Snoopy.
He's got a simple life, a little life of imagination.
This is a strange question, but a perspective question.
Last panel, you see this green-sided ping pong table, which probably a lot of us have played with, the folding one.
(44:17):
You can see the little folding arm on one of the outside legs.
But in the middle legs, what's going on?
Because there's one perspective for the legs going underneath, and then one perspective for where the net is going.
It's like they don't.
Jimmy (44:32):
That is his saison influence.
Harold (44:34):
Is that what it is?
Jimmy (44:36):
Yeah.
Harold (44:37):
Okay.
Jimmy (44:38):
That's everything I've ever drawn in perspective.
Michael, you have an answer for that.
I'm sure you actually know how to do this.
Michael (44:46):
Well, I'd assume the far side of the net is where the leg should be.
Harold (44:56):
Yeah.
There should be a clamp, right?
Traditionally, the ones we had had a clamp on each side to hold it down.
Maybe he's favoring himself over Woodstock, who we don't see on the other side by making the net a little bit further into his space.
Yeah.
Jimmy (45:12):
Anyone good here at Ping Pong?
Harold (45:15):
No.
I love to play it.
It's a fun game.
We used to have one in our basement.
Michael (45:19):
Yeah, but when someone's good, you just can't beat them.
Jimmy (45:21):
You can't beat them now.
Harold (45:23):
My friend Wayne Mayfield in high school, he was better than me in tennis.
He was better than me in table tennis as well.
He knew the way to get me every time.
I would just crumble as he said, this is a pivotal point.
As soon as I heard that, I would choke.
Jimmy (45:46):
That's amazing.
A little psychology.
Harold (45:49):
It was, of course, never a pivotal point.
It's like, you know, six-five.
Jimmy (45:56):
August 1st, 1999.
Now, we get to see Patriot Woodstock, and what's cuter than regular Woodstock?
Bundled up Patriot Woodstock.
We see him sitting there with Snoopy out at Valley Forge by the fire and warming their hands and Snoopy says, He wants us?
(46:16):
And then they arrive at Washington's quarters and says, Snoopy says, Patriot Snoopy and Patriot Woodstock reporting, sir.
And then it continues.
Yes, sir, we can do that.
General Washington, Snoopy says to Woodstock, wants us to deliver this message to Thomas Paine.
And Snoopy reads Washington and Paine's mail, which can't be good.
(46:38):
But anyway, he reads it and says, Dear friend, I'm concerned of your welfare.
Are you well?
Tell me your thoughts.
Snoopy arrives at Thomas Paine's house and says, Mr.
Paine, a message from the general.
Do you have a response?
And he writes back, These are the times that try men's souls.
Snoopy looks at it and says, That's too depressing.
(47:01):
I'll change it a little.
And then he arrives at Washington's bunker and says, Here you are, sir.
And then Snoopy says to Woodstock, See, my message made him feel better.
And Woodstock asks, What did he write?
And Snoopy says, I said, No problem.
Have a nice day.
Harold (47:25):
Oh, man.
Jimmy (47:27):
I don't know why that really makes me laugh.
Harold (47:29):
So Liz is an editor.
Can you relate to this?
Liz (47:35):
But Jimmy did like interpret what Woodstock said.
Jimmy (47:42):
Yeah, it's true.
Harold (47:43):
It was chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp question mark.
Liz (47:46):
Yes.
Jimmy (47:49):
Oh, man.
Now, for those of you who don't know, Thomas Paine was one of the good old founding fathers, and he was, the reason I compared it to Serapis, he was a self-publisher, basically, cranking out pamphlets like they were going out of style, Common Sense, the most famous title of them.
And he's the one who famously said, we must hang together or we will surely hang separately.
Harold (48:12):
That's some colloquialism.
Let's hang.
Yeah.
Jimmy (48:17):
He also invented the hand jive.
Harold (48:19):
I did not know that.
Jimmy (48:21):
Yeah.
That was one of the impressionists.
Harold (48:24):
Yes.
He invented the word Fofana.
Jimmy (48:29):
All right.
I think we may have reached the end of this episode.
Hey, it's been a while.
We haven't done our world famous segment, Unpacking Peanuts Recommends.
Do you guys have anything?
Liz (48:41):
I do.
Jimmy (48:42):
All right.
Give me something, Liz.
Liz (48:44):
I think that anybody who has not yet seen the Ken Burns documentary, The American Revolution, really needs to watch it.
It's wonderful.
I studied, as I'm sure we all did, The American Revolution in school, but I never understood it or got any kind of appreciation for it until I watched this documentary.
(49:10):
It's really wonderful.
Jimmy (49:12):
Yeah.
I'll second that.
It's great.
Anything else that you guys got?
Michael (49:18):
I'll do something quick.
There's a podcast I've listened to almost every episode of it.
It's called Supercontext.
Like maybe every fifth or sixth podcast, they'll do a comic and it's so in-depth.
It's way beyond any kind of review or any kind of analysis you've ever read.
(49:42):
These guys are really smart and they go back and they will tell the story of the artist and the publishing house and how the issue came to be, and what the critic said and what sales were like.
One of them is the cartoonist, even though that's not his main, doesn't talk about that that much, but they know their stuff.
(50:04):
If you ever get bored and you want to waste 100 hours of your life, search for a podcast called Super Context and just go and look.
If you just want to watch the comic book ones, because they do movies, they do music, they do books, and I think the first thing I read was a review of From Hell, which was really, I'd read it many times, but really thoughtful.
Liz (50:31):
Well, that's a good one to do.
Michael (50:32):
Anyway, that's my recommendation.
Liz (50:35):
Nice.
Jimmy (50:35):
How about you, Howard?
You got anything?
Harold (50:36):
Yeah.
Bridging that.
I did a lot of driving this past week, and for those of you who like podcasts and that thing, have not delved into old-time radio back in days before TV and even overlapping, I discovered something I really had not listened to before, I think, one of the longest-running Western on TV was Gunsmoke.
(51:00):
But a lot of people don't realize it was also the longest-running radio show and predated by a little bit.
Do you know who played the Marshall Matt Dillon on the radio program?
Michael (51:13):
Ronald Reagan.
Jimmy (51:14):
Not James Arnaz?
Harold (51:16):
No, Bill Clinton.
It was played by William Conrad, known mostly for Cannon and Jake and the Fat Man.
Michael (51:26):
But I can't see him on a horse.
Harold (51:28):
Well, I think that's why James Arnaz was the star of the TV show.
Because William Conrad was a fairly large man.
But he has an amazing voice, and these are what they called the first, what they would call adult westerns of the time.
Gunsmoke, it's a violent show, and it's about Dodge City, Kansas, probably around the turn of the century or so.
(51:50):
He's the marshal, and it's just a very thoughtful, sometimes very bleak radio show, very well told.
If anybody wants to try old-time radio, and doesn't mind giving a western a try, I was really impressed.
All right, cool.
Jimmy (52:07):
Well, I'm going to pick something to listen to as well.
I go through this thing, usually around in spring, I pick one of my favorite books that I've read a million times over, and I read it again.
Like for years, it was Harried Spy, then Huckleberry Finn, then The Fellowship of the Ring, whatever.
For the last few years, it's been the same book, and I found a really, really good audio book of it, and you can find it on YouTube.
(52:35):
And I hear a lot of, apparently a lot of men in the 21st century don't want to read fiction, but I think this book, it would, they want to read like self-help books.
Harold (52:44):
Okay.
Jimmy (52:44):
This might be a, this might be a great bridge, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Michael (52:51):
I love that book.
Jimmy (52:52):
One of my all-time favorite books, the audio book's incredible.
It combines my two favorite genres.
One, nothing happening, people just talking.
Two, people on a cross-country trip somewhere, and they do both of this.
Nothing happens and yet they go across the river.
Michael (53:11):
Totally Lord of the Rings-y, heading towards the mountains.
What's going to happen when they get up in the mountains?
Jimmy (53:16):
It's so good when they get in the mountain, right?
That's the best part.
Michael (53:19):
Yeah.
Liz (53:21):
Who's the author?
Jimmy (53:23):
Oh, Robert Pirsig.
Michael (53:25):
Wrote two books.
Jimmy (53:27):
Yeah, I started the second one.
Michael (53:28):
Not good.
Jimmy (53:30):
I can sense that coming in.
Michael (53:32):
Well, let me get my top 10 all-time books.
Jimmy (53:36):
Yeah, me too.
Me too.
Michael (53:38):
All right.
Liz (53:39):
Where are you going to be, Harold?
Harold (53:41):
On July 11th, I will be in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania under my tent.
The first time this year, I'm pulling out the tent at Blobfest, celebrating 1958 movie starring Steve McQueen.
It was shot around that area, including in the movie theater, where you can see the film during Blobfest.
(54:01):
So come out on Saturday, July 11th, between 11 and 5, I will be there and I'll be there for a part of the shows as well.
You can run out of the theater, the famous scene in the movie, where everybody runs out in terror as the Blob takes over the projection room and goes down into the theater space.
That's the place they shot it.
So everybody gets to recreate the running out of the theater on Friday and Saturday night.
(54:25):
You have to get tickets for it or whatever, but it's fun.
It's a fun, really fun festival.
Railway on in Phoenixville is a beautiful town.
So come on out.
Jimmy (54:33):
Another great thing about Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania, in addition to giving you Liz and myself, also gives you working democracy and the Blob.
Come on.
All right.
Well, if you guys want to keep this conversation going, there's a couple of different ways you can do it.
The first thing you can do is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com, sign up for the great Peanuts reread, get that one email a month that'll let you know what the heck is going on over here and what we're going to be covering.
(54:59):
You can also just, if you want to have something to say, you'd like to be a part of the show, you can write to us at unpackingpeanuts at gmail.com.
You can also call us on the Unpacking Peanuts hotline at 717-219-4162.
And you can follow us on social media.
We're at Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads and at Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube.
(55:26):
So that's it for this episode.
But I would just like to end by wishing everybody a happy Independence Day.
And for those of you who are listening around the world, I hope you have a wonderful summer.
And I just want to end with this.
Charles Schulz received a letter.
I lost the date, but I believe it's in the 70s.
(55:48):
But he received a letter from a 10-year-old boy named Joel Lipton, who asked him, what does it take to make a good citizen?
And Charles Schulz, being the thoughtful person that he was, wrote this back.
Dear Joel, I think it is more difficult these days to define what makes a good citizen than it has ever been before.
(56:09):
Certainly, all any of us can do is follow our own conscience and retain faith in our democracy.
Sometimes it is the very people who cry out the loudest in favor of getting back to what they call American virtues who lack this faith in our country.
I believe that our greatest strength lies always in the protection of our smallest minorities.
(56:30):
Sincerely yours, Charles Schulz.
That's the best.
If you don't want to be disappointed by your heroes, pick better heroes.
That's Charles Schulz.
That's it for Unpacking Peanuts.
Thank you all for listening.
Happy Fourth of July.
And for Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.
Harold (56:48):
Yes, be of good cheer.
Liz (56:50):
Yes, be of good cheer.
Unpacking Peanuts is copyrighted by Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz and Liz Sumner.
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.
(57:11):
Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube.
For more about Jimmy, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.
Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.
Harold (57:22):
This is a Pivotal Point.
Welcome to Unpacking Peanuts.
The podcast where three cartoonists take an in-depth look at the greatest comic strip of all time, Peanuts by Charles M.
Schulz.
Jimmy (00:18):
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to the show.
This is Unpacking Peanuts.
Today, we're celebrating the 250th birthday of the good old US of A, and I'll be your host for the proceedings.
My name is Jimmy Gownley.
I'm also a cartoonist who did things like Seven Good Reasons Not To Grow Up, the dumbest idea ever, and Amelia Rules.
You could read all my new comics, GVIL Comics over there on Substack.
(00:42):
Joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts, and fellow cartoonists.
He's a playwright and a composer, both for the Man 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, Gathering of Spells, and Tangled River.
It's Michael Cohen.
Michael (01:01):
Say hey.
Jimmy (01:03):
He's executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics, and the creator of the Instagram sensation Sweetest Beasts.
It's Harold Buchholz.
Harold (01:13):
Hello.
Jimmy (01:14):
Making sure we stay out of trouble and everything runs smoothly, it's our producer and editor, Liz Sumner.
Liz (01:20):
Howdy.
Jimmy (01:21):
So guys, happy Fourth of July, happy Independence Day.
Are you guys having some hot dogs or in hamburgers doing anything?
We have a wide variety here.
We have our Midwest boy, we have our two ex-patriots living on the continent, and then there's me here from the home of Liberty itself, good old Pennsylvania.
Harold (01:43):
Yeah.
Michael (01:44):
Yeah, we're ex-patriotic here.
But we have had a traditional annual Fourth of July with our Brit friends just so we can rub it in.
I'm not sure that's happening this year.
Liz (02:00):
Yeah, they've decided that they don't really want to celebrate it anymore.
Jimmy (02:04):
That's not that fun for them.
Michael (02:06):
But usually there is a hamburger or what passes for a hamburger made by an English person.
Jimmy (02:16):
Nice.
How about you, Harold?
Are you doing anything fun?
Harold (02:19):
We've been talking about it.
Of course, we're recording this a little early, so we haven't quite nailed down everything that we're going to do.
So we're looking at our options.
Jimmy (02:28):
Nice.
There's always fireworks in the state capital here and the beautiful park.
Harold (02:33):
And a beautiful state capital too.
Pennsylvania is one of the loveliest ones.
Jimmy (02:38):
Yeah.
Oh, it's gorgeous.
Based on St.
Peter's.
Lovely.
There's a park, the highest point in Harrisburg and it overlooks the city, and you can even see down to the river and they send the fireworks over that.
It's fantastic.
It's a great park.
It's also where they do Shakespeare in the park.
Anyway, so all right.
Well, you know, it's an interesting time to be an American here in 2026.
(03:05):
I have some of my earliest childhood memories or of the Bicentennial.
Do you guys remember anything about that?
The old Bicentennial in 76?
Michael (03:14):
Yeah, I was a kid.
I was 35.
Jimmy (03:17):
Young boy of 35.
Liz (03:20):
I was in downtown Philly for the parade.
Harold (03:23):
35.
You were not 35.
Jimmy (03:29):
No, you were 26.
Liz (03:32):
Yeah.
Michael (03:32):
I was 26.
Harold (03:34):
Okay.
I know you did the first comic price guide, but wow.
Jimmy (03:42):
Thank God we have someone who could do math.
Harold (03:46):
I equate the Bicentennial with Disney World because we went down, I think, in 75, but they were celebrating early for the Bicentennial, and I do remember everything decked out, red, white, and blue, and all of that.
Our first time as a little kid, I think I was like nine years old when we went down there, so I just forever had that connected in my head.
Jimmy (04:10):
Yeah.
I was big on the Bicentennial.
I remember being all in on it.
One of the things I was really excited about, there was a chain of grocery stores in Pennsylvania called Acme, which is slightly different than the ones that supply Wiley Coyote.
They had all kinds of little 200th anniversary tchotchkes, and they had these little figurines, I mean the cheapest little plastic blister packed toys called the Men of 76.
(04:42):
You can get George Washington, and you can get Cornwallis, and the horses, you can get Molly Pitcher.
That's a deep cut, but really fun.
Michael (04:52):
Did you get a slave?
Jimmy (04:55):
No, but you could get a Native American.
I had these still by the time I was in fifth grade years later, and we had to make a plantation as like a pro-
each, there were like, it was a group project, and each group had to make one of the, like a diorama of one of the original colonies.
(05:17):
We got Virginia, and I brought out my men of 76 figures, and yeah, we had a slave uprising in ours.
It got pretty violent in one of the fields in Virginia.
Harold (05:33):
Wow.
Jimmy (05:35):
Plantation that we put together.
Harold (05:36):
It was great.
Jimmy (05:37):
We won.
We came in first.
Harold (05:39):
Oh, congratulations.
That's cool.
Jimmy (05:41):
What do you remember about the parade, Liz?
Liz (05:43):
I don't remember.
I remember exactly where I was standing, except I don't know Philadelphia well enough now to see it.
It was a good location.
They had each state sent their own band, and float, and it was very exciting.
I didn't decide to go until the very last minute, and my best friend and I took the high-speed line in, and we're really glad we did.
Jimmy (06:10):
Very cool.
I'm bringing up the Bicentennial, I think partly because it's so difficult to talk about being an American.
Yes.
Yeah, but it was very important to Mr.
Charles Schulz.
He served this fine country in World War II, so we thought we would bring this out.
I have a variety of little quotes he came up with about patriotism, about America that I'm going to sprinkle throughout.
(06:38):
One thing I thought was really funny that's just a little adjacent to this, but I was talking to a friend of mine about doing this.
He goes, oh, well, that's going to be really rough.
I'm like, yeah.
He goes, would you have a lot of listeners outside of the US?
I'm like, yeah, actually, we have quite a bit.
He goes, well, they're not going to want to listen to that.
Everyone outside the US hates America.
Harold (07:00):
I'm like, well, yeah, we know that.
Jimmy (07:03):
That's why there is America.
Because you hated a group of people, they said, we got to get the hell out of here.
And then they came to America.
So that sort of thing kind of, I think, bounces off us.
But we're going to get it together.
You just wait and see.
Everything will work out in the end.
And until then, let's celebrate what we've accomplished so far.
(07:28):
And by we, I mean previous generations, not us.
And also look at some good comic strips.
Does that sound fun?
Yeah.
Liz (07:34):
Yes.
Jimmy (07:35):
So if you guys want to follow along with us as we do these episodes, what you can do is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com and sign up for the Great Peanuts Reread.
That will get you one email a month letting you know exactly what strips we're going to be covering, which is even more important in this era of post reread Unpacking Peanuts because you never know what we're going to do.
It's madness.
So if you could sign up for that, that would be great.
(07:57):
All right.
With all of that out of the way, how about we get to these comic strips?
Liz (08:03):
Let's do it.
Jimmy (08:05):
January 5th, 1997.
It's a symbolic panel of Snoopy atop the dog house, we assume.
But the dog house has been replaced by a niggle.
It's a very cold and wintery day.
Sally is inside playing with her crayons and something attracts her attention outside and she looks outside the window and says, it's still snowing.
(08:28):
Then she goes in the TV room to talk to Charlie Brown and says to him, where's your dog?
Charlie Brown says, outside.
Sally says, outside.
She goes to look out the window again and says, poor dog standing out there in the snow all alone.
I wonder what he's thinking.
Then we see Snoopy out in the yard wearing a three-corner Revolutionary War style hat holding a musket and saying, here's the Revolutionary War patriot standing guard at Valley Forge.
(09:01):
Valley Forge, also PA.
There's a lot of Philadelphia-related stuff here.
Harold (09:06):
That's right.
Yeah.
Michael (09:07):
This is the first, I assume.
Liz (09:10):
This was the first patriot soldier.
Harold (09:12):
Wow, that's late in this strip, 1997.
Michael (09:15):
Yeah.
This has nothing to do with the Bicentennial.
Jimmy (09:20):
No, none of these strips will be Bicentennial-related.
Harold (09:23):
No.
Jimmy (09:23):
They're just him being a patriot.
I don't think he did anything really for the Bicentennial.
Well, we didn't have a national celebration.
It was like every city was left to their own thing.
I remember.
Harold (09:37):
Yeah.
But boy, was it everywhere.
In the schools, it was a big, big deal.
Jimmy (09:44):
As we talk about the differences between 1976 and good old 2026, I have two quotes here.
These are not from Charles Schulz, but they are about Charles Schulz.
Harold (09:58):
Let's see if we can guess who said them.
Jimmy (10:00):
Ready?
Here's number one.
Through the years, you have brought joy and laughter into millions of homes worldwide with your comic strip, television specials, and books.
Characters like Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and Lucy have a warm place in our national heart.
Anyone know who said that?
Liz (10:16):
I'm assuming it's a president.
Michael (10:18):
It's Ronald Reagan.
Jimmy (10:20):
One guess for Ronald Reagan.
Michael (10:21):
Okay.
Harold (10:22):
Anyone else?
Bill Clinton.
Jimmy (10:24):
One interesting, one guess for Ronald Reagan, one guess for Bill Clinton.
Liz, do you want to get in on this action?
Liz (10:30):
My guess is a generic president.
Jimmy (10:33):
Generic?
Liz (10:34):
A president.
Harold (10:35):
A speechwriter.
Jimmy (10:37):
Yeah, a speechwriter for a president.
Well, Michael, you are correct.
That was President Ronald Reagan.
Michael (10:43):
Okay.
Wow.
Harold (10:44):
Yeah.
Michael (10:44):
I had no idea.
Harold (10:46):
Do you know the occasion by any chance?
I wonder how that happened that he gets called out.
Did he get like a Medal of Freedom or anything like that?
Jimmy (10:53):
Posthumously, unfortunately.
Harold (10:55):
Okay.
Jimmy (10:56):
Yeah.
Harold (10:57):
Here's a second quote.
Jimmy (10:59):
Whether through newspapers, television, books, or movies, Peanuts has made us laugh, challenged us to think, and encouraged us to dream.
Any guesses?
Michael (11:09):
Thomas Edison.
Jimmy (11:11):
Thomas Edison.
I was like betting $1 on the price is right.
I hope everybody else goes over.
Liz (11:19):
Steve Jobs.
Harold (11:21):
I'm going to say, because I believe he wrote, did he write an introduction to one of the fanographic books?
Did Barack Obama say that?
Jimmy (11:28):
Barack Obama.
You're all wrong.
But you were very, Harold was closest because it was Bill Clinton.
Oh, okay.
Harold (11:35):
There we go.
Jimmy (11:36):
So my point being, President Ronald Reagan, President Bill Clinton, both found joy and art and sustenance, all kinds of stuff in this.
Yeah, both of these were probably written by staff.
But if you see the originals and you can find them online, they each wrote handwritten notes.
And he had personal contact with at least, well, no, I thought it was Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Reagan, that I know of, that he was at the White House with and worked on projects with.
(12:09):
Amazing.
An amazing person and an amazing thing to imagine.
And let's hope we get there.
Harold (12:15):
I'm a cartoonist.
I mean, come on.
Jimmy (12:16):
I'm a cartoonist.
You know what I'm saying?
Harold (12:18):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Very cool.
Jimmy (12:22):
I wonder what do you think?
I think a lot of his attention towards this Patriot Snoopy stuff has to do with his aging and his thinking about his time in the Army, even though obviously this isn't, it's not World War II stuff, but it's still Army stuff.
Harold (12:42):
Well, it's interesting that the Patriot Snoopy, it's almost always in the snow.
This first one, he's not bundled up the way he is in later strips, which really gets you feeling like he's really cold.
He doesn't have shoes, he's got, who knows, bandages, it looks like wrapped around his feet.
(13:04):
Every time I see that, I just feel incredibly cold.
This first one, strangely, where he has nothing on, he doesn't feel as cold.
Jimmy (13:12):
Yeah, yeah, it's true, it's true.
Yeah.
Well, when you see someone shivering and hunched over too, that just emanates cold.
January 12th, 1997.
Here we see Patriot Snoopy and he is in fact all bundled up.
This is the official Valley Forge look.
Valley Forge being the famous freezing cold winter that George Washington and the troops huddled up outside of Philadelphia.
(13:40):
We see Snoopy in that attire inside a barracks, I guess, and he's riding home.
Dear mom, I've never been so cold in my life.
He looks outside and we see some evocative snow on the ground and some birds in the air.
It just looks very wintery and Snoopy thinks to himself, at least it stopped snowing.
(14:01):
Then he takes up his position and says, here's the world famous Revolutionary War Patriot standing guard at Valley Forge.
Tell General Washington, one of his men wants to see him.
Yes, sir, I have a little suggestion.
This is Snoopy talking to good old George now.
He says, you may or may not have noticed that there's a lot of snow here.
My idea is we build a skating rink out there.
(14:24):
We could organize a hockey team, maybe even start some kind of figure skating club.
Snoopy is getting into it at this point.
He's like, we could even invite some of the chicks from town for a skating party.
I think what happens in the next panel is Washington slams the door to his barracks, sending Snoopy flying and his musket soaring through the air and then Patriot Snoopy lying in the snow, thinks to himself, I didn't get a chance to tell him he could drive the Zamboni.
(14:52):
We can even invite some of the chicks from town.
Harold (14:57):
That was the straw that broke the camel's back with General George Washington.
These strips are strange that Schulz obviously goes out of his way to do this.
He's trying to evoke something and then he's consistently undermining it with these silly, I wouldn't say undermining it, but this is where he chooses to go with it.
(15:20):
He chooses to go with these silly anachronism.
Then the very fact that Snoopy is talking to General George Washington in his imagination, but the thing he's suggesting to Washington is they need to get a hockey team going.
Jimmy (15:42):
What it does make me think of, and Schulz would have known this far more profoundly than I, but when you end up, I imagine getting caught up in a war like this, especially when you're drafted, you were doing something.
You were in the middle of your life doing something else, and now all of a sudden, you're doing this.
Harold (16:02):
Yeah.
Jimmy (16:04):
I think that would be hard.
Obviously, that would be next to impossible to imagine.
I think that comes through here with Schulz.
I'm sure there's a lot of times he was in the basic training or God in Europe during World War II thinking, boy, I'd like to be home on the ice rink.
Harold (16:23):
Yeah.
Also, the idea that you've got your own thoughts about what's going on, you have absolutely no real input.
You just have to read, you're just a tiny, tiny cog in a massive, massive event.
Jimmy (16:37):
Yeah.
Harold (16:38):
Exactly.
Jimmy (16:39):
No one's asking if you want to have a figure skating club or something.
Harold (16:43):
It was nice for General Washington to give him some time.
Jimmy (16:46):
Yeah, you did.
That's nice.
What do you guys think of the birds?
I think they make it look very forlorn and wintry and sad.
Harold (16:56):
Yeah.
I wasn't going to say anything, but that top right panel on the right, are those two birds one in front of the other?
Because either that has the longest lopsided wing I've ever seen.
Jimmy (17:09):
I think that's two birds.
Harold (17:11):
Okay.
Yeah.
Jimmy (17:12):
Yeah.
Oh, wait.
But no, no.
No, it's not.
That's all of them.
That's how he's doing it.
Look, it's just that one got out of control.
Harold (17:20):
Okay.
Jimmy (17:21):
But every bird has a broken wing if you look really close.
Harold (17:26):
Because to my eye, it almost looks like one's in front of the other.
Otherwise, one of the wings as we see it is double the length of the other one.
Liz (17:35):
I think it's that the bird is turned.
So we see the left wing more than we see the right wing.
Harold (17:43):
Got you.
Jimmy (17:44):
Well, I think that's a new saying I'm going to say.
How are things going?
The bird has turned.
Is that good or bad?
Harold (17:52):
That's the bird, I guess.
Jimmy (17:55):
February 16th, 1997, Snoopy of Valley Forge again, bundled up over a sad little fire outside.
Then he's walking back to camp and he says, I have to know.
He's trudging through the field saying, here's the world famous patriot soldier at Valley Forge.
I must see General Washington.
(18:15):
He's continuing to hike.
I have to know.
He crosses a bridge of a fallen tree crossing an iced over stream.
Then he falls to his knees outside Washington's barracks and says, tell me sir, I have to know.
Did the mail arrive?
In the next panel, he says, did I get any valentines?
(18:38):
Were they given out valentines in the 1700s?
Harold (18:41):
I don't think Hallmark had gotten into business yet.
Liz (18:45):
But if anybody got valentines, it would have been Snoopy.
Jimmy (18:50):
He is all in here in 1997 on Patriot Snoopy.
Liz (18:56):
On Sundays.
Yeah.
Harold (18:57):
Yeah.
I guess I'm so used to Snoopy having these flights of fancy that to step back, try to step back and look at it afresh.
It's such an interesting display of who Snoopy is.
Why would he place himself in the desolate part of a war in the wintertime mixed with his hubris of calling himself the world famous Patriot soldier and that in his flights of fancy, he's getting thrown out of places.
(19:39):
He's just very humble in what he's actually doing.
It's a fascinating mix of things that comes from Schulz over the years building this picture of Snoopy.
The whole world famous thing at first doesn't really strike me because I'm just assuming he's going to say that, but in this context, it's a little odd.
(20:00):
Right.
Jimmy (20:02):
Actually, it's even odd to think if anyone could have possibly been world famous in the 1700s, other than maybe the King of England and General Washington.
Harold (20:12):
Yeah.
Then this is such a fascinating late peanuts character.
When he's alone on his own, we just see him, of course, we're not going to see George Washington.
It just feels incredibly lonely and bleak.
Liz (20:29):
I wish that we knew what inspired this.
Jimmy (20:33):
Well, it's funny you should mention that because Harold just described it loneliness, and I think this might have something to do with it.
Because here's another quote from Mr.
Charles Schulz.
The three years I spent in the army taught me all I need to know about loneliness.
And I think, I think there's a, as you get older, people start falling away.
(20:59):
And the loneliness you probably feel from being ripped away from people when you're young and thrown in the army, isn't that dissimilar to having people who are close to you leave this mortal plane, you know?
And I think those things get mixed up in his head as he's, not mixed up in his head in a bad way, but I mean combined creatively, you know, as he gets older and it comes out in this.
(21:25):
Why it's set during the Revolution, it might just have to do with the fact that it was the one he hadn't done yet.
And it might also have to do with the fact that that seems like an old guy thing to be into.
May 20th, 1997, Snoopy's still at the Valley Forge.
These are all Snoopy at Valley Forge, of course.
(21:45):
And he's on guard duty apparently, and he says, here's the world famous patriot soldier standing guard at Valley Forge.
And he thinks to himself, these are the times that try men's souls.
And then the last panel, he says, let's put it another way, I hope I make the cut.
What do you think the cut is?
Not get shot?
Liz (22:06):
Yeah, or be relieved.
Harold (22:10):
And that your soul has tried successfully, whatever that is, right?
Yeah.
Looking at these, another thing that's really striking me is, we talked about Leight Schulz a lot in terms of the waiver of his line.
And because Snoopy is so bundled up, and we've also mentioned the head of Charlie Brown stayed remarkably round.
(22:33):
And so you would see the eyes and the nose, and usually the mouth, it was really pretty clean still, right?
And then everything around it looks a little rough and bedraggled.
Here, because Snoopy is so bound up and we don't see his ears, we just see all of the stuff he's wearing and carrying.
There's not a whole lot of the clean stuff that makes the strip look like it's still in control, I guess, in terms of his line.
Jimmy (23:04):
Right.
Harold (23:04):
And even the stuff that he is drawing of Snoopy, like the bottom of his snout in that first panel is just rough.
And I think that adds to this feeling of this, he's just bedraggled and in a really tough situation.
Because this is, I think, pretty much as far as you're going to go in terms of not getting to see the faces he's so good at.
(23:31):
And because Snoopy is being so, what do you call it?
He's just stoic in a lot of these panels.
It just has a different feel than most peanut strips.
Jimmy (23:43):
It sure does.
All right.
How about we take a break there?
We'll come back and answer the mail and do some more of these Revolutionary War peanut strips.
Sound good?
SPEAKER_1 (23:56):
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's god entitle them.
(24:16):
A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Jimmy (24:46):
All right, and we are back.
I'm hanging out in the mailbox.
Do we have anything, Liz?
Harold (24:50):
Hey, before we-
There's something that's very important that we have not brought up yet, that we absolutely want all of our listeners to hear.
Jimmy Gownley has just been nominated for a 2026 Will Eisner Comics Industry Award for Best Digital Comic of this year for In the Real Dark Night, which is on GVIL Comics.
Michael (25:13):
Congratulations.
Liz (25:14):
It was.
Jimmy (25:14):
Thank you, guys.
Harold (25:15):
That's a huge honor.
Liz (25:17):
It really is.
Harold (25:18):
Just really quickly, the way that people choose the nominations for the Eisner Awards is they lock some people up together and they go through virtually, well, every comic that's been nominated or been sent in by somebody, they actually read every single comic and then collectively, these experts in comics from all these different backgrounds, they pick the nominations and then it's a popularity contest of who actually has read this because the people voting on it haven't read 98 percent of the things that are being nominated.
Jimmy (25:49):
What they're voting on.
Harold (25:50):
But to be nominated is a huge, huge honor because this means Jimmy's stuff stood up to every single other digital comic that is out there, that was on their radar.
So congratulations, Jimmy.
That's a huge, huge thing.
Jimmy (26:05):
Fifteenth time's the charm.
Yeah.
Liz (26:07):
You bet.
Harold (26:08):
Susan Lucci, come on.
Jimmy (26:11):
By the way, if you want to hear the whole story of what it's like to lose 14 Eisner Awards, and Susan Lucci, a story to go along with it, my brand new podcast, It's an honor just to be nominated on Jimmy Gownley's Dumb Ideas dropped.
Well, today that we're recording it, but it'll be a couple of weeks from now.
Liz (26:32):
Who votes for the Eisners?
Jimmy (26:34):
Any professional comic book person can vote.
So cartoonists, writers, editors.
Harold (26:41):
And we have hundreds of professionals who have listened to this podcast.
So for you guys, if you want to do Jimmy a favor, if you love Unpacking Peanuts and you love Jimmy, check out this comic.
It is amazing.
And vote, vote for this thing.
I want Jimmy to get his just desserts here.
Jimmy (27:01):
Oh, well, thanks for bringing that up, Harold.
I really do appreciate it and I am pretty darn excited.
Harold (27:06):
Yeah, me too.
That's just cool.
Liz (27:08):
Yeah.
Jimmy (27:10):
All right.
But do we have anything in the mailbox?
Liz (27:12):
We do.
We do.
We heard from Megan Bittner who writes, I'm so happy you did an episode on the Beagle Scouts.
When I was a kid, one of my first and favorite Peanuts collections was The Many Faces of Snoopy, which featured Snoopy in five of his alter egos, including the Beagle Scout leader.
Jimmy (27:32):
Nice.
Liz (27:34):
She writes, I always read the July 23, 1978 strip where Marcy finds one of the birds in a sleeping bag as a follow up to the Sunday strip from the previous week, where Olivier falls behind and Snoopy tells him that they'll travel a lot faster if he gets out of his sleeping bag.
(27:55):
I always figured that Olivier was the one who Marcy found, and part of the reason Snoopy is annoyed is that he already told Olivier to get out of the sleeping bag.
Harold (28:05):
That makes total sense.
Jimmy (28:06):
Yeah.
Amazing.
It does make sense.
Harold (28:09):
It's Olivier.
Done.
Liz (28:11):
Done.
Jimmy (28:12):
Confirmed.
Liz (28:13):
Canon.
Jimmy (28:15):
That's right.
Liz (28:16):
We also heard from Lee on Spotify commenting on the 1954 part 1 episode and said, I was not a great athlete in school, but I greatly enjoy your conversation about baseball.
You have such memories of sports.
Harold (28:33):
Meaning Jimmy.
Liz (28:35):
Well, that's Michael.
I'm Michael too.
Harold (28:37):
All right.
Okay.
Yeah.
Nabi.
Jimmy (28:40):
That's good.
Hey, pirates are simultaneously doing great and also in last.
I don't know how.
I don't know.
They're doing better than they've done in like 10 years.
But it's a very competitive division.
Harold (28:54):
Well, they need to take off those eye patches.
They need some three-dimensional vision.
Jimmy (28:59):
That probably does hurt with the depth perception, if nothing else.
Harold (29:03):
You cannot hit a ball out of the park with a scabbard.
Michael (29:09):
The piglet really sucks for flying.
Jimmy (29:16):
Do you guys know why they're called the pirates?
Harold (29:18):
Why are they called the pirates?
Jimmy (29:19):
They stole a player from Philadelphia.
The night before he was supposed to sign, they came in and made him a deal he couldn't refuse.
The headlines in Philadelphia, because they were just the Alleghenies at the time, which is a terrible name.
The Philadelphia Enquirer wrote a headline that said, the Pittsburgh Pirates.
SPEAKER_1 (29:40):
That was the name.
Liz (29:42):
Finally, we heard from the very wise and extremely talented listener Marcus Entorleso, who sent us a copy of his strips called Butter Nuts with lovely compliments for Jimmy.
Jimmy (29:56):
That was so nice.
Should we do an Unpacking Peanuts of Butter Nuts?
Give me a second.
Liz (30:01):
Okay.
He also sent a copy of himself holding the whole world's crazy and what makes you happy that he just bought it.
Harold (30:09):
Oh, cool.
Jimmy (30:10):
Yes, he's a very handsome young man.
Harold (30:11):
Very handsome.
Okay.
Liz (30:14):
Okay, here we go.
Jimmy (30:15):
This is Butter Nuts for, and there's even the date just like Schulz, May 22nd, 2026.
Our main character is very frustrated with it, and we have one of them there, symbolic panels, with the character being very upset and seeing all kinds of art stuff floating around their head.
(30:35):
The next panel, he says, boy, wait till I tell him, and he comes up to his friend and says, I've decided to be a cartoonist when I'm grown.
I'm going to make comics like Charles Schulz and Jimmy Gownley.
So really good ones and ones like me.
Oh.
Here's a drawing of Amelia McBride I drew, and the kid looks at it and goes, hmm.
(30:57):
The response from the kid looking at this drawing is, oh, God, it looks like she got hit by a truck.
Then our hero yells, Critic!
Which is pretty funny, and the only way you can handle criticism.
Liz (31:14):
I agree.
So thank you, Marcus.
That was really great.
Jimmy (31:18):
That was awesome.
All right.
Are we going to get back to the strips?
Sure.
All right.
Well, if you want to be a part of our show, you can call us.
We're 717-219-4162.
That's the Unpacking Peanuts hotline.
If you want to leave a message or text and tell us what you're up to, you could also email us at unpackingpeanuts.gmail.com.
(31:40):
Remember, when I don't hear, I worry, so I'd love to hear from you.
All right.
Let's get back to the strips.
May 22nd, 1997.
Patriot Snoopy at Valley Forge, snow everywhere, and he says, morale is low at Valley Forge.
The troops are hungry, nothing to eat but fire cake and water.
(32:02):
This morning, General Washington gave us more bad news.
We see Patriot Snoopy looking into a little jar, and he says, we're all out of grape jelly.
Michael (32:10):
Oh, no.
Fire cake sounds pretty good right now.
I'm hungry.
What is it?
Jimmy (32:17):
I don't think it actually is good.
I remember looking this up, but it does sound like something cinnamony possibly.
Harold (32:26):
It's flour and water if you got salt.
Michael (32:28):
It's spicy too.
Hot peppers or something.
Jimmy (32:31):
Yeah, you're thinking right?
Harold (32:32):
You think, yeah.
Jimmy (32:34):
Now flour, water, and sometimes salt.
Harold (32:37):
If you got it.
Sprinkle it if you got it.
Jimmy (32:42):
Wow, that's bleak.
Harold (32:44):
Yeah.
That's rough.
Especially with the grape jelly.
Jimmy (32:50):
Yeah, no grape jelly.
Harold (32:52):
He should have saved a few packets from the cracker barrel.
Yeah.
Jimmy (32:58):
I think I'm going to make some for the fourth.
Harold (33:00):
Really?
Jimmy (33:00):
I think I could possibly make this.
Harold (33:02):
Yeah.
That's something I could probably make.
Liz (33:07):
I think I'm going to find something else to eat on the fourth.
Jimmy (33:15):
May 26, 1997, Snoopy at Valley Forge.
It's another cold day at Valley Forge.
I've baked General Washington a piece of fire cake.
He says to me, where's the grape jelly?
I tell him we haven't had grape jelly for six weeks.
Then he says, can't someone go over to the mall and get some?
Snoopy says, it was too hard to explain.
(33:36):
He goes back to warming himself over the fire.
I'm assuming the king of Prussia mall is where he would be going.
Harold (33:46):
Yeah.
That's right.
Not too far from Valley Forge.
Liz (33:52):
They used to bus us there for Christmas shopping when I was at boarding school.
Michael (33:57):
Really?
Really.
Jimmy (33:59):
That must have been brand new.
Harold (34:03):
What are you saying?
Jimmy (34:04):
No, that didn't come out the way-
Harold (34:06):
They didn't have malls back then?
Jimmy (34:08):
That's not how I meant it.
SPEAKER_2 (34:12):
They had shopping back then?
Harold (34:15):
Let's know.
Jimmy (34:16):
Oh my God.
I miss everything about malls.
Harold (34:23):
We'll make a little come back.
We'll see what happens.
Jimmy (34:26):
You said Spencer Gifts a couple of years ago.
Spencer Gifts opened up on its own, not in a mall, in Harrisburg.
Isn't that weird?
It did not last long, but it was like seeing something in the wrong habitat.
It's just weird.
Harold (34:41):
That's like a subaro in the wild.
Jimmy (34:44):
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
Why would you go there when there's other?
May 27th, 1997.
It's Peppermint Patty and Charlie Brown.
Peppermint Patty comes up to Charlie Brown's house and says, Can you believe it, Chuck?
Can you believe it?
Charlie Brown says, Believe what?
Peppermint Patty says, Marcy was named outstanding student of the year.
(35:07):
I thought I was going to win.
Then Peppermint Patty, delusional as ever, sits down and says, I've never been so depressed in all my life.
Then Patriot Snoopy appears and says, You should have been at Valley Forge.
(35:27):
Michael, as someone who had a World War II veteran father, do you find that that's true?
That what are you going to complain about to your dad, having known what it was like?
Michael (35:42):
Like everybody I know from his generation, he never talked about it.
Jimmy (35:46):
Never talked about it.
Michael (35:47):
Never.
Jimmy (35:48):
Crazy.
My dad was the same way.
It wasn't until a person from those days came up and visited that I even knew that he witnessed the atomic bomb.
You think that would be mentioned.
But I guess just trauma and they didn't.
Michael (36:03):
Yeah.
My dad was like at Pearl Harbor when I got bombed.
Not worth talking about.
Harold (36:09):
Wow.
Jimmy (36:10):
Insane.
Harold (36:11):
How did that make you view your father's given?
Here, I'm living this life and they live that life.
What does that make you do in terms of like, you can't help but compare yourself, right?
Especially as you grow older.
Michael (36:25):
I mean, clearly, the good reason to hate me.
Liz (36:30):
But also understand why you didn't want to fight in Vietnam.
Michael (36:34):
Well, yeah, you understood that.
But basically, my problems must have seemed ridiculous, like, oh my God, I don't have enough room for all my comics in the club.
Jimmy (36:45):
Yeah, right.
But yeah, I mean, there's no question that we are sad little wussies compared to that.
Harold (36:55):
I mean, yeah, I mean, and there's mixed with some tremendous gratitude that they did.
That we have not been in that space for a while, to the extent that we'd have drafts.
And yeah, that's a huge, huge thing that millions and millions of people have been through.
Jimmy (37:17):
Yeah.
And everyone should kind of remember that and make sure those people are taking care of in their old age.
There's not that many of them left and they haven't been treated that great, to be honest.
Harold (37:26):
But there are from, you know, Korean War and lots of, and Gulf War and yeah.
And many other wars around the world.
Jimmy (37:34):
Iraq and Afghanistan, for sure.
So give them a thought.
Liz (37:38):
Here in Italy, there are some people who really appreciate the Americans who came and fought.
Jimmy (37:44):
Oh, yeah.
Harold (37:44):
Yeah.
Jimmy (37:45):
Norm MacDonald, that comedian, talks about going to Holland after his dad passed away because they would do a celebration day honoring all the allied forces that came in and liberated the country.
Yeah, it was amazing.
Harold (37:58):
It is great.
But yeah, to being depressed, that's the connection that Patriot Snoopy has to Valley Forge in this comic.
Jimmy (38:08):
Going back to Schultz being lonely in the army.
Yet, when he decided what his final resting place would be, it doesn't say Charles Schultz beloved creator of Peanuts, it says staff sergeant Charles M.
Schulz, which is amazing.
Liz (38:27):
Where is he buried?
Jimmy (38:29):
A cemetery.
I don't know what it is, but somewhere in California.
Harold (38:33):
I'm sure our listeners know somebody's got that.
Jimmy (38:36):
Yeah.
May 31st, 1997.
We're back with Peppermint Patty and she says, I suppose having a dog helps to make you feel better when you're depressed, huh, Chuck?
Charlie Brown says, I wouldn't know.
We see Snoopy, musket on his shoulder, marching away saying, say goodbye to Valley Forge, man.
(38:58):
We're moving out.
Harold (39:00):
What shoulder?
Jimmy (39:03):
What is that balanced on?
Harold (39:06):
Yeah, there's depressed again.
Four days later.
Jimmy (39:10):
Yeah.
Harold (39:11):
Makes you feel better when you're depressed.
Liz (39:12):
I wonder if that was a Memorial Day.
Harold (39:15):
Could be.
Jimmy (39:16):
You know the other interesting thing about this, and I'm looking about this now, all of this Valley Forge stuff that we did, the last one, three, four, five strips, they're all in May.
Michael (39:28):
Yeah.
Jimmy (39:29):
Right?
These winter strips in May.
Harold (39:32):
With Memorial Day built in.
Michael (39:33):
Well, your imagination knows no season.
Jimmy (39:38):
I wonder if he was cold when he was, you know what I mean?
He was doing these in February or March and it was freezing, and especially as you get older.
Michael (39:48):
California.
Harold (39:49):
You're saying if he bought a Snuggie, there would have been none of these strips.
Jimmy (39:52):
None of these strips.
Yeah.
November 23, 1997.
We see the world famous patriot at Valley Forge with his musket and reading something.
Then in the next panel, we see him keeping watch over a hill with those very sad, war-lorn birds in the sky.
(40:13):
Then the strip starts in the second tier with Snoopy thinking, here's the world famous patriot soldier standing guard at Valley Forge.
Suddenly, he receives word that General Washington wants to see him.
Build a fire?
This is Snoopy at Washington's barracks again.
Build a fire?
Yes, sir, I can do that.
He runs off with some sticks and says, if I can just get it started, I can build a good fire.
(40:37):
We see him getting it going in the next panel as he sighs to himself.
Then in the last panel, he says, all my old comic books.
Liz (40:45):
Don't do it.
Jimmy (40:46):
Michael, that's got to hurt.
Michael (40:49):
Well, it's revolutionary work.
Jimmy (40:55):
Captain America punching.
Michael (40:58):
The King of England.
Yeah.
Harold (41:01):
All those Benjamin Franklin comics.
Michael (41:04):
Yeah, those were good.
Harold (41:05):
Don't Tread On Me, comic number three.
Jimmy (41:10):
Thomas Paine, those, they were like, serebus, too much words.
What do you think is going on?
That second panel on the top tier is very odd.
Is that like a low-hanging winter cloud cover?
Liz (41:25):
Maybe.
Harold (41:25):
That works for me.
Looks like a grayish cloud over that bleak blue.
Liz (41:31):
The bird with the extra long wing.
Harold (41:34):
There it is again.
Michael (41:37):
Notice the sky gets darker and darker.
The storm's moving in.
Jimmy (41:42):
I didn't notice that.
That's a really nice catch.
Harold (41:44):
Oh, wow.
That's very cool.
Yeah, good catch.
Jimmy (41:49):
Boy, I really like the color of the blue on the third panel in the second tier, that grayish dusky blue.
That looks nice.
Liz (41:58):
Marine.
Harold (41:59):
It's interesting.
Usually, Schulz creates the outlines for whatever is colored.
But if you look in that last panel, when we're saying, again, he's not doing the Sunday coloring at this point, as we understand it, he's just made some really thickety scraggly lines for bushes.
I'm guessing those are bushes, and somebody has filled in an evergreen and having to make some choices too of what the edges are because he's not provided them that way.
(42:29):
It's interesting.
Obviously, he was good with them.
He would have told them if he didn't like what they were doing.
But I like it.
It's cool.
But it's a little artistic choices being made there by whoever's coloring them.
Jimmy (42:40):
Yeah.
Liz (42:40):
Yeah, because it could have been just sticks because it was winter.
Jimmy (42:44):
Yeah.
November 22nd, 1998, Valley Forge Snoopy is, where?
No, I don't see it.
Then in the next tier, he starts, this is Sunday again, he's patrolling, he says, here's the world famous patriot soldier at Valley Forge.
Then someone gets his attention and Snoopy replies, all right, I said I'd tell him and I will.
(43:08):
Then he's walking away and he says, I still don't think he'll listen to me.
We're at Washington's barracks again.
He's like, yes, sir, I'd like permission to see General Washington.
Well, yes, I'd say it causes suffering.
Yes, General, I understand.
Then he walks away saying, I knew he had other things on his mind.
What I said was, sir, we keep losing these white ping pong balls in the snow.
(43:35):
Well, yes, I'd say it causes suffering.
Very, very funny.
I'm getting to this, Washington is becoming one of my favorite peanuts characters at this point.
Harold (43:50):
Yeah, it's playing off again that Snoopy doesn't have it hard.
All the things we're talking about for ourselves, seems like he's laying that on Snoopy.
He's got a simple life, a little life of imagination.
This is a strange question, but a perspective question.
Last panel, you see this green-sided ping pong table, which probably a lot of us have played with, the folding one.
(44:17):
You can see the little folding arm on one of the outside legs.
But in the middle legs, what's going on?
Because there's one perspective for the legs going underneath, and then one perspective for where the net is going.
It's like they don't.
Jimmy (44:32):
That is his saison influence.
Harold (44:34):
Is that what it is?
Jimmy (44:36):
Yeah.
Harold (44:37):
Okay.
Jimmy (44:38):
That's everything I've ever drawn in perspective.
Michael, you have an answer for that.
I'm sure you actually know how to do this.
Michael (44:46):
Well, I'd assume the far side of the net is where the leg should be.
Harold (44:56):
Yeah.
There should be a clamp, right?
Traditionally, the ones we had had a clamp on each side to hold it down.
Maybe he's favoring himself over Woodstock, who we don't see on the other side by making the net a little bit further into his space.
Yeah.
Jimmy (45:12):
Anyone good here at Ping Pong?
Harold (45:15):
No.
I love to play it.
It's a fun game.
We used to have one in our basement.
Michael (45:19):
Yeah, but when someone's good, you just can't beat them.
Jimmy (45:21):
You can't beat them now.
Harold (45:23):
My friend Wayne Mayfield in high school, he was better than me in tennis.
He was better than me in table tennis as well.
He knew the way to get me every time.
I would just crumble as he said, this is a pivotal point.
As soon as I heard that, I would choke.
Jimmy (45:46):
That's amazing.
A little psychology.
Harold (45:49):
It was, of course, never a pivotal point.
It's like, you know, six-five.
Jimmy (45:56):
August 1st, 1999.
Now, we get to see Patriot Woodstock, and what's cuter than regular Woodstock?
Bundled up Patriot Woodstock.
We see him sitting there with Snoopy out at Valley Forge by the fire and warming their hands and Snoopy says, He wants us?
(46:16):
And then they arrive at Washington's quarters and says, Snoopy says, Patriot Snoopy and Patriot Woodstock reporting, sir.
And then it continues.
Yes, sir, we can do that.
General Washington, Snoopy says to Woodstock, wants us to deliver this message to Thomas Paine.
And Snoopy reads Washington and Paine's mail, which can't be good.
(46:38):
But anyway, he reads it and says, Dear friend, I'm concerned of your welfare.
Are you well?
Tell me your thoughts.
Snoopy arrives at Thomas Paine's house and says, Mr.
Paine, a message from the general.
Do you have a response?
And he writes back, These are the times that try men's souls.
Snoopy looks at it and says, That's too depressing.
(47:01):
I'll change it a little.
And then he arrives at Washington's bunker and says, Here you are, sir.
And then Snoopy says to Woodstock, See, my message made him feel better.
And Woodstock asks, What did he write?
And Snoopy says, I said, No problem.
Have a nice day.
Harold (47:25):
Oh, man.
Jimmy (47:27):
I don't know why that really makes me laugh.
Harold (47:29):
So Liz is an editor.
Can you relate to this?
Liz (47:35):
But Jimmy did like interpret what Woodstock said.
Jimmy (47:42):
Yeah, it's true.
Harold (47:43):
It was chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp question mark.
Liz (47:46):
Yes.
Jimmy (47:49):
Oh, man.
Now, for those of you who don't know, Thomas Paine was one of the good old founding fathers, and he was, the reason I compared it to Serapis, he was a self-publisher, basically, cranking out pamphlets like they were going out of style, Common Sense, the most famous title of them.
And he's the one who famously said, we must hang together or we will surely hang separately.
Harold (48:12):
That's some colloquialism.
Let's hang.
Yeah.
Jimmy (48:17):
He also invented the hand jive.
Harold (48:19):
I did not know that.
Jimmy (48:21):
Yeah.
That was one of the impressionists.
Harold (48:24):
Yes.
He invented the word Fofana.
Jimmy (48:29):
All right.
I think we may have reached the end of this episode.
Hey, it's been a while.
We haven't done our world famous segment, Unpacking Peanuts Recommends.
Do you guys have anything?
Liz (48:41):
I do.
Jimmy (48:42):
All right.
Give me something, Liz.
Liz (48:44):
I think that anybody who has not yet seen the Ken Burns documentary, The American Revolution, really needs to watch it.
It's wonderful.
I studied, as I'm sure we all did, The American Revolution in school, but I never understood it or got any kind of appreciation for it until I watched this documentary.
(49:10):
It's really wonderful.
Jimmy (49:12):
Yeah.
I'll second that.
It's great.
Anything else that you guys got?
Michael (49:18):
I'll do something quick.
There's a podcast I've listened to almost every episode of it.
It's called Supercontext.
Like maybe every fifth or sixth podcast, they'll do a comic and it's so in-depth.
It's way beyond any kind of review or any kind of analysis you've ever read.
(49:42):
These guys are really smart and they go back and they will tell the story of the artist and the publishing house and how the issue came to be, and what the critic said and what sales were like.
One of them is the cartoonist, even though that's not his main, doesn't talk about that that much, but they know their stuff.
(50:04):
If you ever get bored and you want to waste 100 hours of your life, search for a podcast called Super Context and just go and look.
If you just want to watch the comic book ones, because they do movies, they do music, they do books, and I think the first thing I read was a review of From Hell, which was really, I'd read it many times, but really thoughtful.
Liz (50:31):
Well, that's a good one to do.
Michael (50:32):
Anyway, that's my recommendation.
Liz (50:35):
Nice.
Jimmy (50:35):
How about you, Howard?
You got anything?
Harold (50:36):
Yeah.
Bridging that.
I did a lot of driving this past week, and for those of you who like podcasts and that thing, have not delved into old-time radio back in days before TV and even overlapping, I discovered something I really had not listened to before, I think, one of the longest-running Western on TV was Gunsmoke.
(51:00):
But a lot of people don't realize it was also the longest-running radio show and predated by a little bit.
Do you know who played the Marshall Matt Dillon on the radio program?
Michael (51:13):
Ronald Reagan.
Jimmy (51:14):
Not James Arnaz?
Harold (51:16):
No, Bill Clinton.
It was played by William Conrad, known mostly for Cannon and Jake and the Fat Man.
Michael (51:26):
But I can't see him on a horse.
Harold (51:28):
Well, I think that's why James Arnaz was the star of the TV show.
Because William Conrad was a fairly large man.
But he has an amazing voice, and these are what they called the first, what they would call adult westerns of the time.
Gunsmoke, it's a violent show, and it's about Dodge City, Kansas, probably around the turn of the century or so.
(51:50):
He's the marshal, and it's just a very thoughtful, sometimes very bleak radio show, very well told.
If anybody wants to try old-time radio, and doesn't mind giving a western a try, I was really impressed.
All right, cool.
Jimmy (52:07):
Well, I'm going to pick something to listen to as well.
I go through this thing, usually around in spring, I pick one of my favorite books that I've read a million times over, and I read it again.
Like for years, it was Harried Spy, then Huckleberry Finn, then The Fellowship of the Ring, whatever.
For the last few years, it's been the same book, and I found a really, really good audio book of it, and you can find it on YouTube.
(52:35):
And I hear a lot of, apparently a lot of men in the 21st century don't want to read fiction, but I think this book, it would, they want to read like self-help books.
Harold (52:44):
Okay.
Jimmy (52:44):
This might be a, this might be a great bridge, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Michael (52:51):
I love that book.
Jimmy (52:52):
One of my all-time favorite books, the audio book's incredible.
It combines my two favorite genres.
One, nothing happening, people just talking.
Two, people on a cross-country trip somewhere, and they do both of this.
Nothing happens and yet they go across the river.
Michael (53:11):
Totally Lord of the Rings-y, heading towards the mountains.
What's going to happen when they get up in the mountains?
Jimmy (53:16):
It's so good when they get in the mountain, right?
That's the best part.
Michael (53:19):
Yeah.
Liz (53:21):
Who's the author?
Jimmy (53:23):
Oh, Robert Pirsig.
Michael (53:25):
Wrote two books.
Jimmy (53:27):
Yeah, I started the second one.
Michael (53:28):
Not good.
Jimmy (53:30):
I can sense that coming in.
Michael (53:32):
Well, let me get my top 10 all-time books.
Jimmy (53:36):
Yeah, me too.
Me too.
Michael (53:38):
All right.
Liz (53:39):
Where are you going to be, Harold?
Harold (53:41):
On July 11th, I will be in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania under my tent.
The first time this year, I'm pulling out the tent at Blobfest, celebrating 1958 movie starring Steve McQueen.
It was shot around that area, including in the movie theater, where you can see the film during Blobfest.
(54:01):
So come out on Saturday, July 11th, between 11 and 5, I will be there and I'll be there for a part of the shows as well.
You can run out of the theater, the famous scene in the movie, where everybody runs out in terror as the Blob takes over the projection room and goes down into the theater space.
That's the place they shot it.
So everybody gets to recreate the running out of the theater on Friday and Saturday night.
(54:25):
You have to get tickets for it or whatever, but it's fun.
It's a fun, really fun festival.
Railway on in Phoenixville is a beautiful town.
So come on out.
Jimmy (54:33):
Another great thing about Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania, in addition to giving you Liz and myself, also gives you working democracy and the Blob.
Come on.
All right.
Well, if you guys want to keep this conversation going, there's a couple of different ways you can do it.
The first thing you can do is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com, sign up for the great Peanuts reread, get that one email a month that'll let you know what the heck is going on over here and what we're going to be covering.
(54:59):
You can also just, if you want to have something to say, you'd like to be a part of the show, you can write to us at unpackingpeanuts at gmail.com.
You can also call us on the Unpacking Peanuts hotline at 717-219-4162.
And you can follow us on social media.
We're at Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads and at Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube.
(55:26):
So that's it for this episode.
But I would just like to end by wishing everybody a happy Independence Day.
And for those of you who are listening around the world, I hope you have a wonderful summer.
And I just want to end with this.
Charles Schulz received a letter.
I lost the date, but I believe it's in the 70s.
(55:48):
But he received a letter from a 10-year-old boy named Joel Lipton, who asked him, what does it take to make a good citizen?
And Charles Schulz, being the thoughtful person that he was, wrote this back.
Dear Joel, I think it is more difficult these days to define what makes a good citizen than it has ever been before.
(56:09):
Certainly, all any of us can do is follow our own conscience and retain faith in our democracy.
Sometimes it is the very people who cry out the loudest in favor of getting back to what they call American virtues who lack this faith in our country.
I believe that our greatest strength lies always in the protection of our smallest minorities.
(56:30):
Sincerely yours, Charles Schulz.
That's the best.
If you don't want to be disappointed by your heroes, pick better heroes.
That's Charles Schulz.
That's it for Unpacking Peanuts.
Thank you all for listening.
Happy Fourth of July.
And for Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.
Harold (56:48):
Yes, be of good cheer.
Liz (56:50):
Yes, be of good cheer.
Unpacking Peanuts is copyrighted by Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz and Liz Sumner.
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.
(57:11):
Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube.
For more about Jimmy, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.
Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.
Harold (57:22):
This is a Pivotal Point.
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