Well, Volume 7 of Fantagraphics’ indispensable COMPLETE PEANUTS (1963-64, covering, ahem, the year I was born) has solved the riddle. On Monday, Sept. 30, 1963, Linus and Charlie Brown meet the spiky haired kid… whose name is… 5. Actually, it’s 555 95472, but everyone calls him 5 for short.And the twins? They’re 5’s sisters, whom we meet some weeks later on October 17th. Their names? 3 and 4. (Predating SEINFELD’s gag about George naming his kid 7 by decades).
The numerically-named siblings were Charles Schulz’s commentary on the ever-increasing use of numbers to identify individuals, from Social Security to zip codes to expanded phone numbers. There are a few funny strips surrounding the kids (such as the one in which Snoopy, who has problems with names, isn’t sure if it’s 5 or V), but it seems as if Schulz came to feel that they were one-note jokes. They didn’t disappear from the strip altogether (5 makes appearances through the end of the book), but, as in the Christmas cartoon, they quickly become relegated to tertiary status in the Peanuts universe.It’s also interesting to note that their last name, 95472 is their zip code… which would place them in Sebastopol, California. So, did the kids just move from the west coast to Charlie Brown’s unnamed, but very seasonal neighborhood? Or does it snow in Sebastapol California? Hmm…
Only future volumes will tell how long 3, 4 and 5 stayed in the ‘hood, but it’s nice to now be able to fully identify every single character in A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS. Although in all honesty, I can’t tell 3 and 4 apart at all.
4 comments:
As a dancer, that is one of my favorite scenes. My dance teacher from the early 1990s and her sister used to pretend they were the twins with they were kids.
Thank you!!
--joan--
Plus, 5 apparently invented pogoing over a decade before the punks.
Could he actually be — the MC5?
Karl, Such great usage of primary sources. You made your librarian friend very proud.
-romel
No, it doesn't snow in Sebastopol. My family moved to Sebastopol in 1973 (when I was 7), and I lived there until the early 90s. It snowed maybe twice in all that time, and very lightly.
The Peanuts characters don't seem to have lived in Sebastopol, but Charles Schulz did. I had friends who knew his kids but I never saw his house. I don't think I ever saw him around town either. But when I was 19 I got a job at a bookstore in nearby Santa Rosa. I was told Schulz bought all his books there, all hardcovers. Indeed one day I rang him up. My mother announced my birth with a card saying, "The Great Pumpkin has arrived!", but did I tell Schulz that? No. I was too shy.
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