HE often talked about the dog he had had—going into detail about his little antics, running around with the supper dish in his mouth, chasing the birds that didn’t seem to be scared of him in the slightest, chasing airplanes as if they were birds. He always said that he felt his childhood ended the night that, after so many years, in the middle of a big thuderstorm, his old little beagle vanished without a trace. Until then, he would say, he thought that nothing would ever change, the bad as well as the good. Then his dog ran off—“either to die or to chase airplanes—or, maybe both.” He never got tired of telling those stories, even though, in later years, his wife had to correct him when he would call the dog “Sparky” throughout the course of an evening.
— How it turned out — Originally titled “Charles Schulz, R.I.P.”
Posted July 8, 2008 at 3:36pm
