It’s been forty years since Snoopy flew to the Moon on Apollo 10, the last mission of the program to intentionally not land on the surface of Earth’s nearest neighbor. “Precious” seems to be the best word to describe this photo of NASA secretary Jayme Flowers holding a big Snoopy.
Before Snoopy flew ’round the Moon he was a Sopwith Camel pilot, of course, battling the Red Baron in — what else? — dogfights. A traveling exhibit from the Charles M. Schulz Museum, featuring Snoopy’s most famous persona, which was inspired by a bit of boyhood whimsy by Monte Schulz, is now at the Pearson Air Museum in Vancouver, Washington. The origin of the hit song “Snoopy and the Red Baron” is murkier than is generally known, as I hope to explain one day, but for now I am pledged to remain silent.
In another bit of Peanuts news, there are apparently financial problems at the New York auction firm Illustration House, which needed a bit of nudging to make a good faith payment to the owner of a Schulz original.
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I’ll take your word for it, Anonymous. But he’s your great-grandfather’s cousin? Stafford is more than two years younger than my father!
My Great Grandfather’s cousin is Thomas Stafford (The Astronaut touching Snoopy)
So proud 🙂
In Recent Comments, just below yours, is the guy who inspired the creation of Snoopy and the Red Baron — Sparky’s son Monte. He would be the one to know about Schulz’s reaction to the song.
Somewhere online there’s an interview with one of the Royal Guardsmen in which the musician talks about Sparky’s reaction to their Snoopy/Red Baron songs (of which there were several besides the one everybody remembers). Though he seems to have enjoyed these and felt complimented by them, the interview says that when the Guardsmen sent him an test pressing of their first album, which included a cover of the Coasters’s “Charlie Brown,” Sparky replied with a request that the track be taken off the record (which was done). After all, the kid with the big head was never one to call his English teacher “Daddy-O.”