I guess I am a Bear person
My great step grand father had two pet bears. He was an inventor and a bit of a enthusiast.
When I was a little girl we would go to Peck’s Wildlife in Minocqua Wi. It’s still there, a scattered petting zoo filled with unusual animals, many of them that you can feed. The deer, the parakeets, the goats, but the best was feeding the bears. You would put money in the Bear Juice machine, like an old fashioned soda machine with glass bottles. I have no idea what was inside the bottles but you would feed the bears in their cage and they would drink out of the bottles just like babies.
I live behind the Brookfield Zoo right now. The bears living there back in the day used to be treated with marshmallows. They had a stand where you could buy marshmallows and throw them into the grotto. One of my favorite stories is when the Bear moat flooded. The bears swam across and instead of hurting people, they attacked the marshmallow stand. That was the end of that tradition. I am hoping that the animals can no longer swim across when it rains a lot. I know my back yard floods and sometimes I will have ducks swimming around.
Wes and I saw a bear once. Hanging out at the top of the hill at his house in Lake Tomahawk. We heard a rustling and a huge bear appeared walking by us on all fours. Scared us to death, jumped into the Golden Goose (Wes’s car-a Pontiac Sunbird), me in the front and Wes in the back. It shook me up pretty good. Driving back to No Vacancy (my Grandma’s cabin) later that night with hardly any gas I was hoping I would make it. When I got to the cabin I remember Grandma comforting me and talking with me until well into the night.
Spending summers in Wisconsin back in the 70’s we used to go the the Dump to see the bears at night. We would sit in the car and watch them dig through the garbage. But then they wouldn’t let cars in anymore because people would get out of the cars to feed the bears and try to pet them. That did not go well. They are bears after all.
We used to go to this restaurant in Maywood called the Welcome Back Inn. I loved the place. You could eat peanuts and throw them on the ground. They had a huge stuffed bear in a glass case in front of the restaurant. Great steaks, dark North Woods atmosphere.
And of course, I am a Bears fan. I remember the Super Bowl Shuffle like it was yesterday. I am cursed. I still love the Bears even though their performance has been a little lackluster. I remember going to a Super Bowl party at the Grave’s house when Devin Hester ran the ball back for a touchdown. After that, the party was a disaster. Not because of the the Grave’s. Those damn Bears.
