Story by Jon Stalnaker AKA The Studebaker Dude
Charles Schulz is well known as being the creator of the “Peanuts” comic strips that have entertained the world for over seven decades. He died in the year 2000, but his cartoons continue to be published to this day. His strip was published in 2500 newspapers in 75 countries. I challenge you to find anyone that is not familiar with the wonderful characters he created. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus and several more are like family to most of us. Most of us can relate to at least one of them and recognize others in a real person that we know and love in our own family. I can certainly relate to Linus, and my big sister Valerie was definitely Lucy. I even had a special blanket that I carried around when I was a young child, just like Linus, but that was before I had ever heard of Linus or the Peanuts comic strip. My wife bought me a little book for Christmas titled “Peanuts And The Mail”. It was published by the Postal Service and explores Charles Schulz’s frequent references to the mail and mailboxes of all kinds in his strips.
After I became a mailman in the mid-seventies, I noticed that the mailbox flags in his cartoons were drawn upside down. Prior to that, I never gave a thought to it and actually didn’t know or care about the flags. I remember a Jerry Lewis movie where he played a mailman. He was shown delivering the mail and lifting the flags every time he put mail in. That’s not even what the flag is for. Anyone that has delivered mail knows that the flag is raised to let the mailman know there is outgoing mail to pick up. Even the customers know that. But how the flag is mounted to the box, most people probably never even noticed it, even my fellow letter carriers, but it bugged me. Whattya expect from a guy that thinks we should take one day each from January and March and give them to February so they can all three have 30 days…
This book is illustrated with some of his comic strips from 1953 to 2000. The first thing I looked for were the upside down flags in his drawings. What I saw surprised me. He drew them correctly in 1965, wrong in 1971, correct in 1979, and wrong again in 1990. 1993 was correct again and 1997 was again upside down. The last example was correct in the year 2000. Charles Schulz made about 18,000 strips and this little book only used 78 strips so, I’m sure there were many more mailboxes penned by Charles Schulz. But it was enough to make me wonder: Why did he draw them upside down sometimes and correctly other times?
So I searched the internet for answers and found none. Then I thought; why not pose this question on Facebook and solicit the combined intelligence of the Facebook community. I knew full well my responses would include wise cracks and false information but, just maybe, someone might make a comment that seems plausible. The responses I got were exactly what I expected, except I didn’t get anything good. As soon as I posted it, my wife suggested that perhaps it was his way of commenting on something personal to him. Her thought was maybe times of global conflict would trigger an upside down flag. Flying the Stars and Stripes upside down is a sign of national distress. Maybe he was using the mailbox flag to represent Old Glory. Now that made sense to me. It could be times when the stocks are down or something personal that he didn’t want to share with anyone but needed to vent. Perhaps they were times of depression for him and it was his way to silently cope.
I like that idea best, and was once again reminded that my wife has a brilliant mind. I think it is somewhere down that road, and we will never know because it was probably something he did and didn’t share with the world, as if it was any of anybody’s business anyway. Then I took another look at the drawings that showed the mailbox flag. There it was; Charlie Brown, frustrated and depressed, leaning against the mailbox with the upside down flag. Case closed for me (not that it really even matters).
Intellectual Property: Peanuts Characters
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