Saturday 14 October 2017

sopwith camel

The municipal airport serving Sonoma county was renamed in 2000 in honour of cartoonist and long-time Santa Rosa resident Charles M Schultz (Sebastopol to be specific whom Schultz created a contemporary of Charlie Brown and Linus van Pelt called Five for short but whose full name was 555 plus the postal code of the town, 95472, which is one of the few restrictions, numbers, on naming children in American) we discover thanks to Just a Car Guy, adorned with the logo of Snoopy outfitted in flying ace attire and piloting his dog house.
The former army airfield is not only a tribute to the creator of Peanuts and his cast of characters but also the chief staging area for California’s forestry protection against and where the firefighting aircraft battling the wildfires ravaging the state deploy from.  Sadly, we learn the Schultz’ homestead was also consumed by the fires along with untold thousands of others.