"Is your patch SINCERE?"

That, according to Linus of Peanuts fame, is the deciding factor on whether or not The Great Pumpkin will make an appearance in your pumpkin patch.

I hope you had a chance to watch the video above. Halloween is tomorrow and I'm already conjuring up visions of late nights lying awake in someone's pumpkin patch waiting for a TGP visitation - or at the very least, sitting in front of the boop tube in the dark with a bowl of popcorn and a beer watching my favorite Peanuts' special – “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!”…a 1966 classic. I especially love Snoopy’s dogfight sequences and his subsequent travels through the French countryside – the music, the mood and animation makes me feel like I'm right alongside our favorite four-legged cut-up making the journey myself.

But here’s the real reason I’m bringing this show up. You know the part when the kids go trick or treating…

VARIOUS CHILDREN
“I got five pieces of candy!”
“I got a chocolate bar!”
“I got a quarter!”

CHARLIE BROWN
“I got a rock.”

What’s up with the rocks? It’s the same thing at every home Charlie Brown visits. Why? Did the neighborhood band together after having a collective aghast over Charlie Brown's ghost costume faux paux (too many holes) and decide - rocks? What was Charles Schultz trying to tell us? Did he have a point? It’s not like I lose sleep over it but after watching this cartoon for I don’t know how many times since the mid-60’s, it gets me thinking. It’s sort of cruel, in a way - this little boy getting rocks instead of candy while trick or treating. How traumatic for a child. Halloween's version of Christmas' lump of coal. Was Charlie Brown bad behind our backs? I never saw one comic strip of television show that showed him misbehaving. Was Schultz trying to tell us through his cartoon that life isn’t all fun and games? That life can be cruel? That we don’t always get what we want? Was he trying to show how strong of character Charlie Brown was/is – with the rocks and the drawing the pumpkin face on the back of his head and the constant berating and laughing at and pulling of the football just as he’s about to kick it??

Perhaps Charlie Brown was asking for it - for getting the football jerked out from under him – time after time after time. Maybe he asked for everything he got because he was an easy target. Maybe Charlie Brown is representative of the common man – facing struggle after struggle – and yet, enduring in the hopes that one day he will overcome.

Or did our loveable Charles M. Schultz have a devious, teasing side that he was only able to illustrate through his beloved Peanuts?

I went on the official website for the show and scored 11/12 on the trivia contest. That makes me an expert on the show – good for me. Watch the video if you haven't already. Who's been giving you rocks lately? Well - Halloween's getting close. Maybe it's time for a little payback.

SIDE NOTE:
The biography of Charles Schultz, Schultz and Peanuts, by David Michaelis, is out on bookshelves and reinforces what apparently was already known about Schultz - that "cranky" was his normal state. The response of the Schultz family is not good. “Preposterous,” and “not true” are the verdicts of Monte, one of the late cartoonist's five children. It's no secret that the characters in the Peanuts strip were based on real people in Schultz's life, or that the endless travails, frustrations and disappointments of its main character, Charlie Brown - unrequited in love and never able to kick that darned football - were largely his own. Michaelis paints a picture of a consistently depressed and bitter Schultz, a man who held back affection from those who loved him, especially his children and his wives.

No matter. My love for The Peanuts and Charles Schultz is unrequited. Schultz passed away in 2000. It would have been nice to see Charlie Brown kick that football...just once.