Hello! Welcome once again to the ninth exciting installment of Son of Thunder!

Not much to comment on this time. I did go out to California for a nice little vacation with my family. Personally, I think that the parents just wanted some adult company, as opposed to having swarms of little kids around (from my brothers and sisters).

On one of those days out there, my Mom had suggested going to San Francisco for the day, which I appreciated, don't get me wrong, but I have really done San Francisco to death. I mean, really, there isn't all that much to do when you've been out there forty, fifty times.

Then she mentioned the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa. Binnnnggg!

Well, my Mom and Dad and I drove up to Santa Rosa, a city some two hours from my parent's house and a world away. Let's just say that it could use some economic development - any economic development.

Situated smack-dab in the middle of uninspired housing sits the Charles M. Schulz Museum, the ice arena he built, the baseball fields he built, the indoor tennis courts (he built!) and the greatest gift shop within a hundred miles.

First we had lunch at the Warm Puppy, the ice arena's snack shop. Pretty much the usual fare, but the next table over had a reserved sign on it. It was Charles Schulz' personal table, where he used to come in and hang out every morning and watch the kids skate.

Now I ought to mention this little fact - Charles M. Schulz is the man who got me into the whole cartoon business in the first place. See, I started copying Lisa Grosso (who, because she was Italian, was considered exotic in Camillus NY) who copied Peanuts. She copied very well - I didn't copy so exactly.

I started drawing my own toons - chief among them Active Allen, who was based on my friend Al Lynch. Didn't look like him, at all, but it was based on him.

I bought paperback reprints of Peanuts vociferously. Back when Charlie Brown's father's barbershop appeared regularly and Schroeder was a baby and Lucy was a sweet girl younger than the rest of the cast and Snoopy's head was small and he walked on all fours.

To think I never went down to this place while he was alive... sigh.

The Museum is, somewhat surprisingly, not for kids. It is a museum, with perhaps a hundred of his strips up on the walls. There is a terrific picture, several stories tall, made up of tons of little ones, of Charlie attempting to kick the football while Lucy holds it. There are holograms outside under a giant baseball cap. And there are terrific interviews in a real movie theater - one of which my folks sat through spellbound.

There were the hockey shirts he designed (he loved hockey and baseball) - the Great Pumpkins and the Red Barons really stood out. There were music sheets and animation storyboards. And there were the awards, the really great awards that I had always read about but had no chance to see... before now.

There were Ruebens, the National Cartoonist Society's big award - two of them. There was the Milton Caniff "Golden Brick". There was an Emmy. And several others I forget right now, but equally impressive. All just a foot away.

And I casually explained them all to my parents. After all, I had been reading about these pieces of metal for thirty five years!

Outside there were 75 statues of Woodstock, painted up like Arlington Heights does horses, Chicago does cows, etc. Evidently each year they try a new character.

The gift store's unusual attraction is the gallery up top, which you reach by following a LONG sloping ramp that goes up four sides. The ramp is set by a rug that is some 1500 feet long and ten feet high and has lots of Peanuts scenes.

We headed back to Sausilito for dinner, with my parents talking about their impressions about what kind of man Charles Schulz was. They were impressed that he could have gone anywhere, but stayed in Santa Rosa. That an ice rink and indoor tennis courts and a baseball diamond wouldn't mean much to their town, but to Santa Rosa it was if they had died and gone to heaven. And that this self-professed lonely man was actually pretty darn funny.

Can't ask for much more than that.

I'll be heading back to California for Aaron Storck's wedding reception, then to Chicago to see The Pirate Queen, then to Las Vegas for our big trade show. Should be an interesting month.

Well, on to the Times.

I have two pretty cool Americana tales for you this time. In the first, Americana finds she is being kept out of the loop in "Half Past". And just a few hours later, she finds herself facing the "Body Double".

And a happy autumn to all!

K.C.