An Ongoing Story for Two of My Grandsons (in progress)

                         Matthew, Luke and Gramps

     I call my grandpa Gramps and he calls me Matt. We like to go for walks together, usually down to the creek by his house. Gramps claims where he lives is his house but we both know it's grandma's. 

     We almost always have a good time on our walks even when my little brother is tagging along. Both Luke and I like to throw sticks in the creek from atop the wooden foot bridge. Gramps says we do it because of a story he read in the Winnie the Pooh tales. My brother and I keep looking under the bridge in hope that someday Pooh Bear will come floating by along with the sticks. Gramps says he doubts that will ever happen but there's always a chance. 

     The funny part is that it's not the throwing that's the most fun. It's the looking for sticks that I like best. We almost always get side-tracked when we're searching. We end up walking through the big meadow on the other side of the creek and over to the willow trees where we can climb on the fallen logs. Luke and I think it's a hoot but Gramps knows if something goes wrong he's the one who's in trouble. 

     While we walk and search Gramps tells stories. Some are true, some he makes up. On our last walk he told us that everyone starts getting shorter about the same time they stop growing taller. A little later he said that the funny part was that our noses keep getting bigger all the time. We both laughed about that. Even Luke.

     Maybe that was why I had a strange dream last night. Gramps is a big believer in dreams. Says they're God's way of talking to a person. Anyhow, like usual Gramps and I were walking to the creek, only this time he looked a little different. Well, the truth is he looked a lot different though somehow he still looked like Gramps. You see, he was a nose, a big nose. He had stubby little legs and tiny arms and eyes in the back of where his head should have been. Gramps sure was strange but he was still fun. He could tell exactly where we were by how it smelled. And because his nose was so big he could smell things that weren't there anymore. Like bison and dinosaurs. He said dinosaurs smelled like blueberries. I think he might have made that up.

     The best part was when we got to the creek. Gramps waded right in and snorted up so much water the creek went dry. Then blew his nose so hard he shot up in the air like a big bottle rocket and got stuck in the top of a tree. Yeah, even though he was only a nose Gramps still knew how to have a good time.

     That wasn't the whole dream and wasn't even the real fun part but when I woke up I couldn't remember what happened next. Maybe I'll have a dream tomorrow night and see where I traveled with my grandpa the rocket nose.

     Three days later I had another dream about Gramps. Dreams can be pretty strange. They take you where they want to go and you’re just along for the ride. They tell stories but those stories are sure different than any I’ve ever read or even heard.

     This time Luke and Gramps and me were up at the cabin. I don’t know how we got there. Since Gramps wasn’t much more than a big nose with his eyes in the back where his head once was, I don’t think he could have driven a car. But however it happened we were in the front yard by his floating tree house. And it wasn’t only the house that was up in the sky but also the whole tree.

     Gramps said when he built the treehouse it wasn’t floating above the forest like it was now. No, that happened when he built the ladder, “I figured any old fool could build a ladder on the outside of the tree. Me, I went for the inside. Cut a hole in the bottom of the trunk and hollowed it out all the way to the littlest branches. The hard part was how dark it was inside the trunk. So dark I couldn’t see a thing. At first I used a big flashlight to light up the inside while I worked. Then I found it was easier if I ran an electrical cord from the cabin and brought in a big floodlight. Sure worked good.

     “All went fine and dandy till the very end. Even finished the little house up in the branches. Then, one night I forgot to turn the big light off. Woke up the next morning to find both the tree and the house floating ten feet off the ground. Seemed I’d hollowed so much wood that when the tree heated up inside from the floodlight it floated up just like a hot air balloon. Didn’t want for that to happen but it sure is something isn’t it?”

     But that wasn’t the strange part of the dream. That happened after we’d had lunch. Gramps asked Luke and me if we wanted to go for a ride and see something special. Of course we did. Luke even jumped up and down he was so excited. Gramps said we were going to take a trip in time. Not forward ‘cause his eyes faced the wrong direction and could only see where’d he’d been, not where he was going. 

     Luke asked him how far back we could go and Gramps said, “as far as we wanted. But for the moment it won’t be far. Only to this morning since he forgot to take something out of the freezer for dinner. I’ll be back in a second.” 

     In a flash he was done and then back. Only now he had a package of thawed pork cops in his hand. Gramps liked pork chops.

     He put the chops in the cabin. Then came out and laid on the ground. “My arms are too little to hold onto both of you boys so you’ll have to get inside my nose. Luke on the left. Matthew on the right.

     I can’t say I’d ever thought about climbing into anyone’s nose before but if that’s what we’d have to do to travel to the past, then that’s what we’d have to do. 
     It sure was warm in Gramps’ nose. And wet. Both Luke and I were afraid he’d sneeze and we’d end up lost in time. And maybe covered in boogers. I don't which would be worse. But Gramps said we had nothing to worry about. He’d already traveled with furry animals in his nose and he never once felt like sneezing,

     “Though there was that time I took along a dog in one side and a raccoon in the other. I was traveling back to see if Benjamin Franklin really did fly a kite in a thunder storm and took the two critters ‘cause I thought it’d be fun to have someone along. Never made it past last March. Boy did they get in a fight. First they chased each other from one nostril to the other then ran around on the outside. Got so I didn’t know which way was up or what day it was. We finally tumbled down in the middle of a snowstorm. Boy were they surprised. One minute it was summer, the next it was winter. But I doubt that will happen to us.”

     Next second, in a bright flash of light, we were off. It was like traveling through a rainbow even though I don’t know what that would be like. There were colors sparkling by all over the place. Red, green, blue, yellow and every now and then, periwinkle. It was on the third flash of periwinkle that Gramps put on the brakes and we set down alongside a railroad track. When I asked him where and when we were, Gramps said, “1955, early June.” 

     Wow! We went over sixty years in less than a minute. 

     “Matt and Luke, that’s nothing. The farther back we go, the faster we go. In another five minutes we’d have been back with the dinosaurs. But we don’t ever want to go back that far. No sir. Once had a close call about eighty million years ago. Near as I can figure we smell good to dinosaurs. Kind of like one of those delicious muffins your mom makes with an extra dose of raisins. Kind of odd isn’t it? They smell like blueberries and we smell like raisins. Should you show up around a dinosaur when it’s snack time, and most every time is snack time for a dinosaur, you’re just what they’re looking for. But this is 1955. No dinos around here, though a few of the cars are about the same size.”

     Gramps said Luke and I should walk over and talk to the blond-haired boy sitting by the side of the lake. Then he ducked down in the ditch on the other side and hid. I could understand seeing as how he wasn’t but a big nose. Most people would find him a little strange looking and maybe he'd draw a crowd. 

     It seemed the boy was trying to untie a big knot in his fishing line. Luke asked if we could help but one look told us that knot was staying right where it was. It was some knot alright. Looked like a web made by a hundred spiders. Instead we sat down and talked.

     The boy pointed into the little neck of lake where we sat and there swam a school of bright colored sunfish. Big ones. The water was so clear we could see they were looking back at us and wondering what we up to. I asked the boy what his name was and he said, “Mark.”

     Mark said, “I’d sure like to catch one of those sunnies but don’t know what I’d do with it if I did. Maybe just toss it back in the lake but I guess I’ll never find out seeing as how my reel is messed up. Oh well.”

     About that time Gramps walked over. Mark looked at the big nose with the little arms and legs and his eyes got real big but he didn’t say a word. I looked at Gramps and he gave me a nod of the head so I asked Mark if he’d like to take a trip in time. 

     He looked the three of us up and down, especially Gramps, then said, “I can't say I've ever seen a man who was nothing but a big nose before, so if you say we can travel through time then I suppose we can. But, one way or the other, I have to be back before supper.”

     Gramps said, “That’ll be no problem. We might be gone for a few hours but I’ll have you back right here like you never left. Heck, you can even balance your fishing pole on end and you'll be back to catch the rod before it falls to the ground. Okay?”

     All three of us said, “Okay.” Luke and I climbed back in Gramps’ nose and Mark grabbed him by the arm and we were off.

     Once Gramps had a grip on all of us, we were off. 

     “We’ll not go far,” he said, “at least not far as to time but she’ll be a long distance from anyplace you’ve ever been.”

     I had no idea what he was talking about but somehow Luke seemed to know. He had a big smile on his face like we were heading off to the biggest joke Gramps could think up. And if you knew Gramps like we did, that might be the biggest joke in the whole world.

     This time as we zoomed into the past, the colors were different. Yellow and black whizzed by, with the black in a line and zigzagging back and forth like it didn’t know which way to turn. Every so often we zipped by what looked like a fried egg only the yoke was black and maybe wet. Strange indeed.

     After a few seconds we began to slow. And when we landed it took a moment for my eyes to start clearing and begin to see where we were standing. Everything looked sort of right at first but then it changed. Luke, Mark, Gramps and I were standing in a smooth street with rows of houses along each side that seemed familiar but at the same time, not like any I'd seen before and there were no cars anywhere. I looked at Luke and nearly screamed. He looked like Luke. Kind of. I mean I could tell he was my brother but his head was really big and round with just a few hairs combed straight back. He was wearing a striped t-shirt and shorts but his arms and legs were way too skinny. And his hands only had four stubby fingers with no nails. I looked at Mark and he was the same only you could hardly see his hair at all. Gramps was still a big nose but now didn’t seem out of place at all. Then it dawned on me, we were in a cartoon drawn way back in the 1950s. When I saw the white beagle with the floppy black ears sitting on a dog house I knew for sure we were somehow, someway part of Peanuts. Good grief!

     One look at Mark should have told me right off. He had on a yellow t-shirt with a black zigzag stripe across the front. Could he be….?

     “Yes I am,” said Mark, “if that’s what you’re thinking. Did you think Charles Schultz made up all those stories? No, they really happened. And all of the cartoon characters, Linus, Lucy, Schroeder, they’re all real people. They lived in the world of Charles Schultz’s head and were so real to him they became people. Well, not real people like you and Luke, but cartoon people who are really alive. And we’re always the same age no matter how long we’ve been around. The hard part is making the world think we look like normal people when we travel outside the frame so as not to scare anybody.

     “Right now you and Luke still look like real people but Mr. Schultz is kind of spinning an invisible web around you so you fit in. Actually, you still look like you always do but I figured you’d have more fun if you fit in. I don’t mind being in your world but every so often, thanks to your Gramps, I can go back and just be a child again. 

     “The plan for today is Luke will head off on a flight with Snoopy and maybe even shoot down the Red Baron. Matthew, you and I will head in the garage and get out my kite. The wind is just right for flying.”

     At that moment Snoopy came flying by with Linus’ blue blanket clenched in his teeth. At the other end was Linus. It almost looked like Snoopy was trying to fly a kite and the kite was Linus. Strangely, the world we were in was so much like a cartoon, streaky lines trailed the two of them as they sped by. Thinking it might be fun, both Luke and I started jumping up and down and waving our arms back and forth. Sure enough, the two of us were surrounded by shadowy lines and when we talked, our words floated above us in white balloons. 
     Luke said, “This sure is fun Matt but that’s not why we’re here. I’m going to round up Snoopy to see if he’s ready to fire up his Sopwith Camel of a dog house. Before I could say a word he was off. Later, when Like showed up covered in oil and smelling like smoke, he told me what happened.

     “At first Matt, it was a lot of fun. Kind of. I finally found Snoopy and Linus in Schroeder’s back yard. Again they went streaking by in a blur. I tried to grab hold but they were too fast. Next thing I knew, back trotted Snoopy with a big smile on his face, only this time without Linus and he was smoking along on top of his doghouse, in leather goggles and white scarf and ready to rumble in the sky. He grabbed me as he flew by, threw me on back and we were off so fast there was a cartoon shadow of me still standing on the ground. Next thing I knew the sun was gone and there were large words beneath us as we roared across the starlit sky.” 

     “IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT….”

     “Yes, a part of me was having fun, a lot of fun. Another part of me was scared, real scared. When I got up that morning I never thought to be a part of a cartoon, much less flying over the fields of France on a doghouse. Oh well, what could I do but get a better grip on the roof, hang on, hope for the best and let Snoopy do the flying?

     “After a few minutes I began to calm down. Relax and enjoy. That lasted till we were nearly hit by a bolt of lightening from the storm clouds gathering above. I looked at Snoopy and he wasn’t smiling anymore. His eyes were squinched and his teeth bared as he stared off through the rain and into the night. What was he seeing that I wasn’t? The Red Baron of course, far below us and rapidly rising to do battle. I knew we were in for trouble.

     “Immediately Snoopy sprang to action, dove through the clouds, his twin machine-guns rat-a-tatting away but his aim was off and his course as well. Next thing I knew the Red Baron was right behind us. Bullets snapped by and then we were circling down, out of control and trailing a black slick of oil and smoke. Curses!

     “Somehow, at the very last instant, Snoopy managed to pull the nose of his doghouse/airplane up and we safely crashed to a landing near a small farmhouse and barn with thatched roofs.

 (Meanwhile - back in Charlie Brown’s yard)

     Charlie said he hadn’t yet flown his kite this year and was rarin’ to give it a go. Fine with me, though I already knew for sure what would happen. My Dad and had read enough Peanuts comic strips to know for certainty Charlie Brown always got his kite hung up in a tree. Before heading out to the park the two of us rummaged through the garage and knotted up a brand new tail for his red kite. We even tied a red bow on the end.

     “This should work for sure Matt. This time everything will go right. I know it will. Wow, just think, in a few minutes the two of us will be standing on a hill in the park, the kite will be way up in the sky so far it’ll be soaring with the clouds and you’ll patting me on the back and saying how happy you were to be with me on such a wonderful day. Thanks for being here.”

     We both were so excited we ran all the way to the park. Once there, I held the kite while Charlie walked off seventeen paces while saying, “Seventeen has to be right. Last year I tried sixteen and the kite crashed into an oak tree and knocked a squirrel to the ground. The next time, I tried eighteen. That time the kite dove straight down into a gopher hole and I never saw it again. Yup, seventeen will be perfect.”

     Finally he yelled, “Are you ready?”

     I yelled back that I was. We waited a minute for the breeze to pick up just a little more, then Charlie was off and running as fast as he could. And he was right. The kite rocketed up like it had been shot from a cannon. Wow! I couldn’t believe it. Charlie Brown was actually flying a kite!

     The kite soared up in a blur of red and in a few seconds was so high it was no more than a speck in the blue sky. It looked like a tiny bird.

     About that time Charlie ran out of string and had to hold the kite in place. But the kite was in such a strong breeze it wanted to soar higher and higher. Wanted it so badly the kite got mad at the two of us. I know it’s not possible but it was so mad about not being able to fly higher the kite quickly grew redder and redder. Then the string broke. Oh-oh.

     We both simply stood for a moment, not moving at all and staring into the sky, just like Charlie Brown said we would only a few minutes earlier, only now I wasn’t patting him on the back and he didn’t look happy. Then the kite started getting bigger and bigger, real fast. Yeoww! It was blazing down straight at the two of us. We ran! I’d thought Charlie ran fast when he was launching the kite but that was nowhere near as fast as the two of us were sprinting now!

     We made a beeline for the garage, jumped in and slammed the big door down just before the kite arrived. No sooner was the door closed than the kite crashed into it and exploded into flames. The two of us sat on the floor inside panting from our near escape, afraid to go out. Finally we caught our breath. Charlie cracked the door open a little bit to see if everything was okay or somehow, someway, the kite was laying there in the driveway and only pretending to be a pile of ash. We were taking no chances. At last we opened the door and Charlie scuffed the ash around with his toe. Nothing happened. Whew! That was close.

     What was Luke to do? Trapped behind enemy lines, alone, in a downpour with only a city dog as his guide and he had no idea where Snoopy had already disappeared. But there, up ahead, not far at all, sat a cozy, little farmhouse, smoke rising from the stone chimney and the glow of a candlelit room pouring from the windows.

     “Yes I was scared. I don’t think that silly dog cared one little bit that he’d left me behind with no idea how to get home. Oh well, I did the only thing that made sense and ran for the door of the little house with the hope they’d take me in, even though I didn’t speak French.

     “I quietly knocked on the door and after a moment it cracked open. I carefully slipped into the room and found myself nose to nose with a white poodle. No people around at all, just the dog and over in the corner by the stone fireplace stood Snoopy warming his paws. I was both mad that he’d left me and happy to see he was okay. It wasn’t fair. Dog’s are supposed to be nice people.

     “It turned out the poodle’s name was Fifi and Snoopy had already fallen in love with her. How is that possible? He'd only met her a minute ago. And now, to make it worse he wanted to stay here in France and live with her.”

     "I asked him, 'What about me you dumb dog? Here I am in another country, in another time, stuck in the middle of a cartoon in the middle of another cartoon and trying to talk sense to a dog who can’t speak.' "Yup, I was in trouble for sure.

     “Then I remembered. Aha! I had a pencil in my back pocket. And the pencil had an eraser. There was only one thing to do. I dashed across the room, drew my pencil like a sword and erased Fifi's legs so she couldn't escape. Then quickly finished the job. In place of her I sketched a monkey with a trouble-making look on its face as quick as I could. No, it wasn’t a good drawing but that monkey did the trick. He started jumping up and down, running around the room, throwing pots and pans and baskets and firewood all over the place. Of course Snoopy wanted nothing to do with a trouble-making monkey and ran from the house as quick as he could with me close behind.  The two of us tore across the field, then up and over the hills. Ran so fast we ran up trees, down trees then through trees leaving holes shaped like the two of us, over houses, in front doors and through kitchens with people sitting down to dinner. Went tore so fast through a barn we turned a cow into fifteen chickens. Rocketed over the rivers leaving a trail of steam behind us and didn’t even get wet, blazed across the ocean in less than a second, passed a whale in such a hurry it turned from blue to pink and were back in Charlie Brown’s yard at the same time as he and Matt were coming out of the garage with a new kite kite.”

    Matthew sure looked happy to see me and Snoopy even though we’d only been gone for twenty minutes. Time sure travels fast when you’re traveling through time. Funny how that goes but what could we do? Heck, Matt and I were now cartoon characters and everything, no matter how strange, now seemed normal to us. I wondered if back home in our real lives, Matt and I were showing up as characters in the Sunday funny papers. 
     When I asked Charlie Brown he said, “No. All of us, even you and Matthew, are in a series of cartoons only Charles Schultz knows about. He keeps them stored away where only he can find them. After all, he was born in St. Paul and things are different on the other side of the Mississippi. He knew all along this was going to happen. So when the time was right, he picked up his yellow pencil and started drawing. The funny thing is, his pencil always has to be yellow, a big fat, soft-leaded one. Any other color and traveling from the real world into the cartoon world can’t happen. I don’t know how Mr. Schultz found out he could do that, but one day, there he was, trotting out from Lucy and Linus’ house. When he shows up, we have a meeting and talk about what we should do for the next week’s cartoons. The odd thing is, he’s the only adult we can understand and he doesn’t make a sound at all, not like the adults in our comic no one can ever see, who talk like a horn going, ‘Wah-wah-wah-wah.' Mr. Schultz doesn’t say anything but somehow, when he thinks, a talk balloon forms over his head. It’s a good thing we can read. He’s watching us right now from outside the frame of this drawing to see what we’ll do. But no one will ever know the two of you have been here but Mr. Schultz and the kids on this street.”

     Wow! This was getting curiouser and curiouser.

     Then Matt called us back to the job at hand. It seemed he and Charlie had talked it over and this time Matt would fly the blue kite. Yes it’s true, Matt likes red but he’d already seen what happens to red kites. Once again the three of us were off to the park.

     This time it was Charlie Brown’s turn to walk downwind and hold the kite. Once he got there I told him to put the kite down and come back.

     “Okay Matthew but how will you ever get the kite to fly if no one holds it?”

     “Trust me Charlie, it’ll be okay.

     We turned and lo and behold!, the kite was standing up all on it’s own. How was that possible? Then the blue kite started to rise straight up, slowly and gracefully, even though I did nothing but let out string. It rose and rose till it was flying hundreds of feet up. The odd thing was, it didn’t waver or dive a bit even though the breeze was whipping.

     “Wow Matt, it’s perfect! How did you do it?”

     Even Luke was standing staring like he’d never seen anything like it before. I put the ball of string down and let the line go slack. Still the kite hung in the sky, then began to do loop-di-loops all on its own. I stood with my arms folded like I expected nothing less to happen. 

     Charlie Brown was happy for me. And also sad that he’d never-ever flown a kite without something going terribly wrong and here I was, doing what he couldn't and making it seem like it was easy as pie. I looked at Charlie and could see he was going to cry. I knew had to do something and quick.                                                                        

     I yelled out,“ Okay Woodstock, you can come out now!”

     A moment later, Woodstock and five of his feathered friends, who were hiding behind the kite from the very beginning where we couldn’t see them, let go and flew down to us, jabbering away. Slowly the blue kite fluttered down. Then wrapped itself around a branch of the big oak tree alongside five of Charlie’s old kites. All was good. The three of us stood and laughed and laughed and laughed so hard we fell to the ground and laughed some more.

      Finally, Charlie Brown wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes and said, “I have to tell you Matt, that was the most fun I’ve ever had getting a kite stuck in a tree.”