Jackie Hallgren

Los Angeles is full of popular tourist attractions. But there’s only one place where you can eat a buffalo burger, see 1,000 different dolls, and get a photo with a 3-metre-tall dinosaur. Charlie Brown Farms is one of the country’s most unusual gift shops. It’s an all-American experience. Visitors travel from all over the world to eat, shop, or just browse through the tens of thousands of things on display.

ALLIGATOR MEAT!

This family-owned business in Littlerock sells ostrich and emu eggs, honey, dozens of flavours of jerky, fresh kettle corn, and fudge. And its Real Texas Style BBQ serves up unusual meat such as alligator, antelope, buffalo, kangaroo, and even wild boar.
Wander through its collection of stores and you’ll find a huge collection of memorabilia representing more than 100 years of American history, as well as legendary stars such as Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and James Dean. You’ll also find several worlds to explore, including the House of Dolls, the Land of Dinosaurs, the Village of Gnomes, and the World of Betty Boop.

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES

Charlie Brown Farms has more than 1,000 different types of candy, which is from every decade as far back as the 1800s, and more than 400 different types of soda. And it has novelty toys that were popular long before there were video games. So it’s the perfect place for Americans to revisit their childhoods, and for foreigners to experience what life was like in the USA many years ago.
Find out more about Charlie Brown Farms at: www.charliebrownfarms.com

INTERVIEW

A NOSTALGIA TRIP

LANGUAGE LEVEL C1 (ADVANCED)

Speaker: Chuck Rolando (Standard American accent)

For fans of Snoopy and other characters in the comic strip, Peanuts, Charlie Brown Farms in Littlerock, California sounds like a special Charles M. Schulz theme park. But it’s not, as owner Jackie Hallgren explains:

Jackie Hallgren (Standard American accent)

No, it doesn’t have anything to do with the cartoon. Charlie was my husband’s name and, actually, it was from a song, “Charlie Brown.” He got the nickname Charlie Brown from that song, for whatever reason, and that was 40 some years ago, but that’s how the name came about. He was called Charlie Brown, but nothing connected with Charlie Brown the cartoon figure.

AMERICANA

Charlie Brown Farms is a tourist attraction in its own right. It’s a store on the back roads north of Los Angeles. Here traveling families can stop and choose from an amazing selection of products:

Jackie Hallgren

The House of Dolls, Village of Gnomes, World of Betty Boop, World of Teapots, large salt and pepper shakers. If you’re interested in flamingoes, we’ll have a large variety of flamingoes, or apples, and we get our product not like from one manufacture(r). To complete a category we might buy from 10, 15 different small businesses, and we still do a lot of business with American Made.

Charlie Brown Farms is a roadside attraction that belongs to another era, and that’s what makes it so fascinating:

Jackie Hallgren

It’s a family business. There’s not too many of us really around any more. You see so many of your memories at Charlie Brown Farms. There’s not too many stores left like us because they’ve all been... big corporation, big box stores. We’re like a destination, a destination for travellers.