Peanuts Death Trip of 2012

Loyal readers may recall that while I was home for Christmas this past year, I spent hours digging through all of my junk to prioritize what I wanted to keep, throw out, and donate. It turns out that Andrea and I were able to buy a house before July even with the new baby in tow, but my parents would not be driving my stuff to me. Since they are incredible people (and probably just as excited to get the stuff out of the house I was to get it), they shipped the boxes to me, labeled "A" to "AA" (that's right, the number of boxes went past "Z." If only the letter "peeb" was officially recognized [see image below for example], then they could have stayed in the alphabet proper).

Special thanks to Rob Ribera for the image!

It's taken a few weeks, but the house is finally in a state where I feel comfortable introducing new clutter (I swear, there will be pictures coming!) to the space. I'd already dug out all of my books because the first priority in any home is displaying everything that shows what great taste you have (so books, movies, and records and to do this, I had to build shelves). The excitement of rediscovery was amazing. Baseball cards! NES and all of my games! Old stuffed animals! Nearly everything made the cross-country journey without incident. Except...

My mom is big on gifting collectibles. I have a ton of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Young Frankenstein figures from Sideshow Toys (still in the box!), loads of Simpsons miscellany, and almost as much Peanuts-related paraphernalia. Well, formerly almost as much. Like I said, not much broke on the trip, but if something did break, it was Peanuts. The first thing I noticed was Franklin's head rolling around at the top of a box. I knew this to belonged to the "Heroes" scene (which can be seen here. I have no idea if the seller will get the asking price.) Upon further exploration of the box, which also featured a tiny broken Linus snow globe (there were sparkles everywhere!), I found, wrapped in newspaper, the shattered remains of the rest of the gang.

Even in death, the celebrate.

In another box, I found a picture frame that featured figures Charlie Brown and Snoopy on either side, except only their feet were still attached. Of course, all of the broken stuff was glass or ceramic and probably got knocked around a bit even with the careful packing (though why none of my other glass possessions broke is anyone's guess). I held out hope for my foot tall sculpture of Charlie Brown pitching. My dad has a similar sculpture in his home of Linus waiting in a pumpkin patch for, who else, The Great Pumpkin. These sculptures are large and heavy and seemingly sturdy. Sadly, even though he was packed amongst stuffed animals, Charlie Brown didn't make it unscathed:

Charlie is doing his best Jim Abbott.

All the rest went into the trash, but I think I can mostly salvage the big sculpture. Given that I'm immensely attached to stuff, I'm pretty broken up about this (see what I did there?), but I guess it's more space for some other trinkets.

And that, friends, is the story of the Peanuts Death Trip of 2012.