I've gotten some nice feedback on part one of this little adventure. Perhaps the most vocal so far has been my wife who said that there is no way Pig Pen grew up to be Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs. Pig Pen isn’t good looking enough she says. Instead, she thinks Pig Pen would have been removed from his home by Child Protective Services. Yeah...maybe. But I stand by my ending. If there is a happy ending for Pig Pen, it’s turning getting dirty into a high paying profession.
While I certainly tried to make this humorous, as my assistant and others at work could attest, I have agonized over each of these as well. I want these endings to be more than plausible, I want them to be logical, likely even. And while you may feel the way my wife does, I hope you’ll agree that this could very well be the way these characters ended up after the end of Peanuts.
So, without further ado, here is Part II of Peanuts Characters: The Later Years.
Snoopy
Snoopy was perhaps the most successful of all the Peanuts gang. He parlayed all the early attention into a long running gig as the spokesdog for Met Life insurance. But, like most things, it didn't last forever. He and his pal Woodstock were shooting a commercial with the Met Life blimp when Woodstock accidentally got sucked into one of the blimp's props. It was a tragedy from which Snoopy never fully recovered. Between the bad press, questions about Woodstock’s pharmaceutical intake, and Snoopy’s heartfelt remorse about the passing of his dear friend, the gig with Met Life was soured beyond repair and so he ended his relationship with the company.
When he left Met Life, he returned home to his doghouse. Snoopy was at heart a simple hound with few needs. He wanted regular meals, his root beer, and the opportunity to write. So after leaving Met Life, he wrote his memoirs and they were an instant success. Titled
It was a Dark and Stormy Night, Snoopy's book spent 15 weeks on the New York Times best seller list selling hundreds of thousands of copies in the U.S. alone.
With the success of the book and the money he made pitching insurance, Snoopy never had to work again. He gave heavily to charity, specifically PETA, ASPCA and Amnesty International.
Snoopy died quietly one night at the age of 16. He was found curled up in Charlie Brown’s old striped shirt; in front of the movie
My Dog Skip on his big screen plasma with a half finished letter to fan that included an autographed photo of him with Woodstock, his oldest dearest friend.
Linus Van Pelt
Linus suffered for years after the run of Peanuts ended. He had a deep seeded love for Sally Brown that she obviously did not share. In an effort to get on with his life, he tried every kind of self-help group he could find. EST, scream therapy, alcoholics anonymous, if there were steps to be taken, he took them in an effort to get past his pain. But nothing seemed to help. So he decided to find his own path and developed his own self-help concept: “Embrace Your Inner Blanket”.
While he never made it as big as the ShamWow guy, Linus was mildly successful on the Holiday Inn circuit pitching mental and emotional wellness. Eventually, at the Comfort Suites in Enis Oklahoma, he met a nice, ill-adjusted, more than slightly over-weight, curly blond haired woman who grew to love him. She married him and they had a son, Linus Jr.. They had a good, happy marriage. He didn’t mind that she never lost those extra 50 or 60 pounds and she didn’t say anything when he occasionally shouted “Oh Sally!” when they had sex.
Oh, and he never did lose the blanket. He had pieces of it sewn into the lining of all his suits so that he never felt alone.
Charlie Brown
Early in life, Charlie Brown never succeeded at anything. His baseball team never won a game, he got nothing but rocks in his Trick-or-Treat bag, and he fell for the same pull the football away gag over and over again. But in the end, Charlie Brown had the last laugh.
During high school, Charlie Brown had the good fortune to sit next to a bright young man in computer class. This guy was a real whiz. But he really struggled in the rest of his subjects. He didn’t get English, History to him was whatever was on TV the week before, and gym class was just a form of medieval torture. But Charlie took pity on this kid. He helped him with his English papers, explained History to him and always picked him for his teams in gym class, even though the kid stunk on ice when it came to sports.
Just before graduation, the kid asked Charlie if he could borrow a hundred bucks. Charlie, not knowing how to say “no” gave the kid five twenties the next day. After graduation, the kid just seemed to disappear. Charlie Brown didn’t think twice about him. He had figured the hundred bucks was a goner anyway and he just hoped that the kid was doing okay.
Charlie went off to Junior College to study architectural drafting and try and convince girls to sleep with him. He was better at the first than the second, but neither endeavor was a total failure. In fact, he hooked up on a regular basis with Frieda from the old neighborhood. She wasn’t very interesting in bed, but she was willing and that was good enough for Charlie.
Two years later, just as he was about to graduate, he got a letter in mail from the kid he’d lent the hundred bucks. In the letter he found out that the kid had gone on to start his own computer company that he called Microsoft. With the letter were a one hundred dollar bill and a check for five million dollars. As the letter explained, Charlie’s one hundred bucks was the first investment in what had become the greatest software company in the world. The five million dollars was the dividend from that investment.
Charlie immediately packed up his stuff and moved to Napa Valley where he bought a small vineyard and hired a hot girl to hold a football on demand so that he can kick field goals on his private football field whenever he feels like it.
