Daisy Hill Puppy Farm

It’s gone!! The Daisy Hill Puppy Farm is gone! They’ve built a six-storey parking garage! Aaugh! I can’t stand it!! You stupid people!! You’re parking on my memories!!!

Poor old Charlie Brown, perpetually down on his luck, eviscerated by his peers at every opportunity and the owner of a dog infinitely more popular and memorable than him. And he can’t kick a football to save his life. Though that might have something to do with Lucy van Pelt over his own skill set. Looking on the bright side, he was a child when Peanuts was first published (in 1950), so is of the generation that could’ve bought their home for about $5 as an adult. Going by numbers*, that would put him and his friends around the 80 year old mark in present day. So swings and roundabouts.

The Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, then. Even if you’re not familiar with the strip (and / or the animated series, first broadcast in the mid-60s), you wouldn’t have to be too much of a genius to connect the place with Snoopy’s origin. If we’re honest, Snoopy is a bit of a dick. He’s selfish, lazy and lives in a fantasy world; he’s a flying ace, a novelist, a Lothario and even has an alter ego called ‘Joe Cool’. But then he is just a dog, so who knows what those lads think with their canine minds. Maybe that’s par for the course with them.

‘Puppy Farm’ is a pretty abrasive turn of phrase in the modern world but I’ve said before that I’m just documenting the facts and this is no different. You might’ve worked out from the quote that the farm got razed to the ground, seemingly as some kind of comment on American commercialisation (probably with a ‘z’) in the 1970s.

The design was tricky, as there aren’t really any particularly well known animal breeders. They all seem to be quite local. Is that because it’s deemed pretty unethical in modern times? These days it’s all about rescue dogs. And cats. And pretty much everything. So I ditched that and headed towards Minneapolis, based on nothing more than it being Charles M. Schulz’s home city. That lead me to the all-encompassing retail behemoth that is Target, though as I started to work the daisy into it a lot of their influence dropped off a bit. There’s still a circle in the middle, I suppose.

On a personal note, Peanuts is always a fond memory for me, as it reminds me of going to stay with my grandparents in Liverpool when I was a child. My uncle had hundreds of the books and I used to read them every summer. He died a few years ago, so it’s all a little bit bittersweet.

*In 1971, they claimed Charlie Brown was born in 1963. Which is obviously impossible, given the original strip’s publication date. So just like Bart Simpson and Alphaville, he remains forever young.