This copper bear was a special keepsake of my mother’s. She got his item on a childhood camping trip out west that included Yellowstone National Park. The bear has a very worn sticker that says Yellowstone. The bear resided in the china cabinet in the dining room and then in the hutch as my mother decided to change out the dining room furniture. When the collection of miniature liquor bottles seemed to overrun the available space in the hutch, this little guy (3 oz., 4 inches) it was shifted to the shelf around the basement bathroom. But, no matter how many purges of “stuff” happened, this bear was kept.

My mother, her sister, and her parents, took a road trip from their home in Detroit, Michigan, out west in the 1930s. This was one of my mother’s favorite trips as a child and they camped in tents throughout the trip. This is probably one of the reasons, Mom had a real desire to camp on our family vacations (I did not inherit this gene!). Many of our trips were taken in various versions of camping tents, starting with an army pup tent (that had dead canvas odor) and ending with a series of rented pop up trailers with different configurations.