We are not the only ones…..

A recent news story about a letter written in 1945, which was recently found in a bottle churned up by Hurricane Debby, took me back to this event.

In 1975, Sparky and I set sail on the Island Princess for an Alaskan adventure.

 

Our group was Debbie and Lee Mendelson, Helen and Bill Melendez, Sparky’s secretary, Evelyn Delgado, and a friend of all of ours, Arlene Southstone.

 

You can see from Sparky’s calendar page, July 1975, that we left on our trip on Sunday, July 27.

 

It was after the fancy ‘Captain’s Dinner’ that we decided to throw a bottle with a note in it over the stern. Sparky had drawn a Snoopy, dated the drawing August 2, and we all signed our names on the page. We decided that for our privacy, we should put down Lee and Debbie’s address.

The bottle was launched on August 2. The following letter arrived at Lee and Debbie Mendelson’s home two months later. It was posted from San Diego, so the Mendelson’s initially assumed the bottle had made a grand journey.

 

I still enjoy reading the letter today because it is a reminder of the remnants of WWII all along the Pacific Coast and of carefree wanderers who live in a floating home.

Alaska was serene and peaceful during our trip, and the shore excursions were carefully planned to introduce us to unspoiled scenery, native crafts, and traditions. And even a sled dog ride.

While everyone else was looking at a calving glacier, we were posing for our Christmas cards.

 

The Mendenhall Glacier, which I gather has diminished in size since 1975.

 

It was after the sled trip, walking through the kennels, seeing the tethered dogs, sometimes standing on top of their kennels, that gave Sparky and Bill the idea for the 1978 animated special, What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown! These dogs were all business, and as we walked past, I had the impression that they would just as soon attack us as not.

In the animated special, Snoopy has a dream and is thrown back to his ancestral days when he had to fight for every morsel of food. The entire trip is a perfect example of how Sparky used everything that happened in his life and translated it into his comics.

 

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This blog post was inspired by the news about 1945 message that was found recently and an element in the current exhibition, Cowabunga, Peanuts! (on view through September 11, 2024), which features an interactive display for visitors to write their own messages in a bottle.

I read through about a hundred responses, many of which were positive messages, and I have included a few below:

—Jean Schulz