Charles M Schulz – GEORGE ROTHERT

Fifty Years of Snoopy’s Home Ice

Santa Rosa, the largest city between San Francisco and Portland, has been home to celebrities Dan Hicks, Robert Ripley, Luther Burbank, Guy Fieri. (And me for 20+ years.) Sightings of Tom Waits are occasionally reported. Probably the most celebrated is Charles M. Schulz.

The Peanuts creator moved to Sebastopol in Sonoma County in 1958. A decade later he moved eight miles east to Santa Rosa where he worked and lived until his death in 2000.

Travelers today fly into the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport and visit the Charles M. Schulz Museum. (Highly recommended by me.) Across the street from the museum is the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, built and owned by Schulz. He regularly ate lunch at the Warm Puppy Cafe while watching the skaters. He met Jean, his second wife, when she brought her daughter there. (Jean Schulz’s home was one of more than 5,000 burned in the 2017 fires. Lost was Schulz and Peanuts memorabilia.)

The arena, popularly known as “Snoopy’s Home Ice”, is celebrating its fifty-year anniversary. The festivities include a day of skating at 1969 prices: 75¢ for children and $1.25 for adults. The Warm Puppy Cafe will serve its 1969 Snoopy Special (hot dog, chips and jello) for 75¢.

Remembering Santa Rosa

I recently repatriated from northern California back to Portland. I spent the past twenty-plus years in Santa Rosa, the heart of Sonoma Wine Country. Residing there one becomes accustomed to ever-moving ground and resultant cracked walls and stuck and then unstuck doors. Once a diverse agricultural area, while I was there, Gravenstein apples, hops, prunes and other crops were replaced with vineyards. Nearly every bare patch of ground was planted with wine grapes. Santa Rosa was the setting for Alfred Hitchcock’s murder-suspense “Shadow of a Doubt.” The artist Christo brought notoriety to Sonoma County in the sixties with his “Running Fence.” Every spring, the Rose Parade, smaller scale than Portland’s Rose Festival, brings out thousands of spectators.

When I became a full-time resident, the city’s population was about 125,000; it was about 175,000 when I left last year. What the population is today is a guess; three thousand homes have been destroyed by fire, including the affluent

Fountain Grove neighborhood and the working class Coffey Park area. The Fountain Grove homeowners have the means to be okay sooner than the residents of Coffey Park, many of them renters. Businesses, Trader Joe’s, the Hilton Hotel, K-Mart and dozens more have been destroyed. Chateau St. Jean and Paradise Ridge Wineries are no more; other wineries suffered significant damage. The home of “Peanuts” creator, Charles Schulz burned to the ground. (His widow Jean had been evacuated.) The Charles M. Schulz Museum and adjacent Snoopy’s Ice Rink areunscathed so far. Celebrity chef Guy Fieri, whose Santa Rosa home still stands, recruited volunteers and suppliers for outdoor grilling near the fairgrounds to feed first responders and those who suddenly became homeless.

This is Santa Rosa’s worst disaster since 1906. The epicenter of the San Francisco Earthquake was a couple miles west of Santa Rosa. With about 7,000 residents at the time, Santa Rosa suffered, per capita, greater damage and loss of life than the big city fifty miles south.

Santa Rosa, in transition from small agricultural town to Wine Country destination during my time there, will survive and rebuild, but the scars and pain will last a long time.

How To Pack – without regret

During my recently ended traveling-for-work days I made many passages through the Charles M. Schulz – Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa. Alaska/Horizon Airlines offers once-a-day flights to Seattle, Portland, Orange County, San Diego and twice a day to Los Angeles. Now that I no longer need to go to Scottsdale Arizona, American Airlines is soon to begin service to Phoenix.

Alaska operates prop aircraft from Santa Rosa. A high percentage of travelers passing through security are clueless about the procedure. That’s not a problem, though. With six flights a day, a couple more in summer, and 76 passengers per flight, there’s not much anxiety and TSA people are very patient and accommodating. There is also a 100% chance your checked luggage will be inspected.

Condé Nast recently published a baggage handler’s tips for improving the chances of your belongings arriving in the same condition as when you packed them.

And just for fun: a musician’s paean to the “Worst Airline Ever.”