In the Doghouse

(This is another piece from my now-defunct essay blog.)

How many times did you wonder what it looked like inside Snoopy’s doghouse?

Charles Schulz depicted several humorous scenes in the lives of his “Peanuts” characters, but the strip was just as notable for what it didn't show – parents, teachers, the little red-haired girl, the stupid cat who lived next door to Charlie Brown – as for what it did show. One thing we never saw was the interior of Snoopy’s doghouse. No one knew what it looked like, but we knew what was in it. We knew Snoopy displayed Van Goghs and Andrew Wyeths, he had a huge circular staircase, and he was the only one in the neighborhood with a postage meter. Schulz never drew the interior of Snoopy’s doghouse, because he knew if he did “Peanuts” readers who imagined it in their own way would be disappointed. Most of us imagined a palace, no doubt.

It was peculiar how the abodes of several other cartoon animals were always depicted. In animated Bugs Bunny cartoons, we always saw inside Bugs’s rabbit hole. Bugs had the typical furnishings of an all-American home – a stately bedroom set, a nice dining room table, a living room couch. Today we see the basic furniture in Hawthorne the hermit crab’s cave in the strip “Sherman’s Lagoon.” None of this, though, is as nice as what Schulz led us to believe what Snoopy’s house was like inside. Snoopy’s doghouse was special, and it excited and inspired our imaginations. Maybe it looked like Schulz’s own house. I don’t know if Schulz owned a Van Gogh, but he certainly could have afforded one.

Snoopy’s house, though clearly palatial inside, had a humble exterior. Snoopy himself was just as modest. He usually didn't bother with his material possessions; he preferred the simpler pleasures of living and sleeping on his roof much of the time. Of course he did, what with all that stuff taking up so much room inside. When we did see his head poke out from inside occasionally, it was because he chose to sleep in the “guest room.”

Snoopy didn't take his creature comforts for granted, though. While he liked being on his roof, he was understandably miserable in bad weather. When it rained in one Sunday strip, he simply went inside, turned on the stereo, and played pool.

We knew from the musical notes and the clinks and clanks that he was doing just that. Linus, standing just outside the doghouse, could hear it. We just never saw it. But we probably wished we could, or even wished we could be in there with Snoopy.