I’m stumped. This Peanuts strip from 1952 has Charlie Brown offering to tune Schroeder’s toy piano. He retrieves some tools: a saw, a heavy-looking hammer, a hatchet, a chisel. But what’s that tall thing he’s holding up? Looks like an i-beam with holes in it and a square cap on one end, but that can’t be it. Too big to be a bubble-level. So, what then?
Almost looks like a folded ladder to me. As for WHY it’s in there, TV Tropes calls that “Rule of Funny”.
I agree; it’s a step ladder.
7 steps counting the top one. Looks from the side just like my aluminum extension ladder, with the openings where the hollow rungs are attached.
Look just to the left (your left) of the holes and you’ll see a line running the entire length of the object. That represents the other leg of the folded ladder.
You’re probably right. I suppose Charlie Brown was maybe going to climb the ladder and jump on the piano.
It’s a ladder, and the joke is that it would be ridiculous to tune a piano with any one of those tools. That’s why Schroeder is walking away with his piano in a huff. Charlie Brown would wreck it.
Charlie Brown would wreck it with the right tools.
There are no right tools. Toy pianos (at least the one I had) have metal bars of different lengths in them instead of strings, and there’s no adjustment for them, unless you want to try filing them down.
I think we’re expected to pretend that it’s not a toy piano, but a tiny real one.
Definitely a step ladder.
No, clearly that’s a cow tuner.
EDIT: Shakes hoof at @Q.Q.Switcheroo
To Schroeder it was never a toy piano.
You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish.
To me, it was always a toy piano, played brilliantly but with that toy piano “tink tink”.
Like a
I’m sure it was a toy piano. I’m also sure that Schroeder, Lucy, Snoopy, and others perceived the music that would have emanated from a real piano. We know this is the case because the notes are sometimes illustrated.
Going back a few posts,
Gary Larson fans, whose devotion baffles me, need to explain that one.
Do those tools look like something an intelligent critter would invent? Nope.
Instead they’re bafflingly pointless. Exactly what you’d expect from a herbivore w an IQ in single digits.