The newest book in the AAUGH.com Reference Library is The Great Pumpkin Case… and, despite it’s name, it’s not a licensed Peanuts book. In fact, it’s not a Peanuts book at all. And if you’re saying “hey, it’s got to have at least been influenced by Peanuts to be named that,” well, no. I am absolutely certain that Charles Schulz’s comic strip Peanuts was no influence on it.

How can I be so sure? Simple: while in some ways it’s the newest book in the reference library, it’s also the oldest book. This thing was published in 1903, before Charles Schulz created the Great Pumpkin… really, before Schulz himself was created. Written and published by T. S. Denison, who was America’s leading creator of amateur theatricals, the book (well, more a booklet, a mere 20 pages) is the script for a short play. Schools, churches, community groups, etc. could buy the scripts for 25 cents a copy and put on their own show… and that they did. I can find record of this play being produce from 1904, when the band boys of School District 62 in Western Kansas performed it as part of a blue ribbon social all the way through to 1966, when it was staged by Orlando’s Community, Tourist, and Shufffleboard Club.

The play, which runs about 35 minutes, is a humorous trial over a lawsuit between two farmers, one of whom planted a pumpkin seed which led to a giant pumpkin growing in his neighbor’s yard. The play is filled with over-the-top lawyers, earthy farmers, wacky local witnesses, and a frustrated judge. It’s not great for generating laughs as a read, but there is plenty of space for performers to put a lot of sauce on it. And it’s free of the racial stereotypes that populate some of Denison’s other work (he produced and published various scripts for minstrel shows).

So if it’s got nothing to do with Peanuts, why is it in the Reference Library? Because it’s got Great Pumpkin in the title. Yes, I am that shallow.

Okay, so the thing on the left of the picture is the book I bought. So what’s that thing on the right? Well, I figured that since it’s that old, it’s in the public domain… so I went ahead and published a new edition of it. The facsimile volume lists for a mere $4.99 (which makes me a whopping 27 cents), and I expect to sell approximately zero copies, but reproducing it gave me something to do on a quiet day.

But that was the other day. Today, I spent part of the morning at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, and guess who I saw there?

The statue of Joe Motocross is facing some famous movie cars, including a Delorean from the Back to the Future films, Bumblebee, Herbie (from 2005’s Herbie: Fully Loaded, not the original Love Bug), and Steve McQueen’s car from Bullitt, among others. (The museum has a bunch of cars from The Fast & The Furious franchise, but they’re on a different floor…. which means that you could have an F&F movie where they have a chase that goes through this museum and they commandeer those other famous cars and still not have a meta problem.)

Share the news!