A Town Loaded for Bears : Mother Lode Community Hosts International Gathering of Teddy Lovers

“I just saw this big guy on the street and he looked like a linebacker for the Raiders,” said a somewhat bemused Nevada City merchant named Peter Ray, “and in his arms he was cuddling his little teddy bear. I want you to know I didn’t say a word to that guy . “

There was a lot of that kind of restrained tolerance shown by the 2,400 every-day citizens of this once rough-and-tough old Mother Lode gold mining town over the weekend.

Tolerance is an absolute necessity when about 6,000 assorted members of the genus ursus theodorus --that’s Latin for teddy bear--plus about 2,400 arctophiles (as lovers and collectors of stuffed toy bears sometimes call themselves) descend upon an otherwise normal Sierra foothill town.

The occasion for this odd invasion was the second International Teddy Bear Convention, the quirky inspiration of Pat Cobler, curator of Nevada City’s somewhat eclectic and eccentric American Victorian Museum.

An International Gathering

The people attending the three-day convention, which ended Sunday, came mainly from Northern California, with some from Southern California and a scattering from elsewhere across the country.

The teddies were mostly American, but there were bears from Germany, Italy and France, giving museum co-founders David Osborn and Charles Woods the right to call it an international gathering.

About 1,000 of the teddy bears were official delegates, brought by their owners. The other 5,000 were displayed by dealers and collectors who were offering bears and bear-aphernalia for “adoption” at a price, often steep.

On hand were teddy bears (not to mention teddy bear lovers) of every size, shape and description.

There was a pregnant bear knitting “little things” for her expected teddette, although teddies are usually thought of as asexual. And a sexy little number called “Naughty Bearietta” wearing a slightly kinky black lace teddy undergarment and a black mask over her flashing glass eyes to disguise her true identity.

There was even a political teddy bear--a stuffed animal bearing the unmistakable grinning features of U.S. Sen. Edward M. (Teddy) Kennedy, one of 800 bears owned by Mary Ann Rhoads of Huntington Park.

A tiny teddy whose head screwed off to permit dabbing behind the ears with the perfume contained therein was owned by Dorothy Dearden. The Nevada City woman bought the perfume bottle teddy at a yard sale for 50 cents. She has since turned down offers of as high as $300 for it.

Some of the teddies, both ancient and modern, manufactured and hand made, fetched much more. The rarest of the rare are rumored to cost four figures or more.

Although nationally the teddy bear business is estimated at more than $125 million annually, neither the sellers nor the buyers of teddies here liked to speak of the money aspects of what they say now ranks as the fourth most popular hobby in the country.

“It is very hard to talk in dollars and cents terms about teddy bears,” said Nancy Sauers, a dealer from Grass Valley. “You see, this is a work of the heart. Dollars are involved of course, but it is a work of the heart.”

And, indeed, sentiment, whimsy and fun do seem to be the essence of the teddy bear phenomenon, the latest outburst of which began about five years ago. Teddy bears, of course, have been around for much longer than that. The standard story is that in 1902, while out on a bear-hunting expedition, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a black bear that members of his party had helpfully tied to a tree. Newspaper cartoonist Clifford Berryman immortalized the scene of Roosevelt’s sportsmanship in a widely publicized drawing.

A Russian immigrant named Morris Michtom was inspired by the cartoon, had his wife sew a few toy bears and started peddling them from his Brooklyn candy shop in 1903. He supposedly had written to Roosevelt for permission to call his product “Teddy’s Bear.”

The rest, as they say is history--although disputed history, because many teddy bear experts say the Steiff family of Giengen-on-Brenz in Germany created a virtually identical stuffed toy bear at almost the same time.

Michtom’s shop eventually evolved into the Ideal Toy Co., and those who proclaim him the originator of the teddy bear are known as Idealists. Those who maintain the German firm created the critter are known among cognoscenti as Steiffians.

Population Growth

In any case, the stuffed toy bears began selling by the millions and, as collector-dealer Joan Venturino of Berkeley expressed it Saturday:

“The teddy bear has traditionally been a big selling toy, the most stable stuffed toy in history. Cabbage Patch Dolls will come and go, but the teddy bear is forever.”

She said that “about 90% of all adult Americans once had a teddy bear” and speculated that since very few teddies are ever thrown away (they wind up in attics and in the back of closets or lately at conventions) it is not inconceivable that there are actually more teddy bears than people inhabiting the United States at this very moment.

And Venturino, like everyone else at the convention, thought there never could be an over-population of teddies, because they represent “a certain gentleness, a sense of holding on to the better times of childhood.” In short, innocent, cuddly, comforting love.

Not everyone in Nevada City was all that gushy about teddies. Surprisingly, Melitta Beeson, owner of Bear Necessities Toy Shop on Broad Street, admitted that after a time all the teddy talk “gets to be a bit much.”

This from a businesswoman who said 40% of her sales are teddy bears. “I like teddy bears well enough,” she said, “but I don’t really understand the whole mystique about the teddy bear. And when you see a grown man 45 or 50 years old, cuddling a teddy bear--this is silly, really. “

Grizzled gold miner Mickey Svetich--a hard rock miner for 50 of his 72 years--didn’t feel that way at all. Svetich is locally famous for seeing the last real bear in Nevada City.

“It was about 5:30 in the morning three years ago, I was coming down to get the newspaper. I heard this click, click, click behind me and turned my flashlight on it,” recalled Svetich, sitting in the Mine Shaft Saloon.

“And there was this black bear right on my butt, about 200 pounds. He screeched to a halt and went the other way.”

The fact is, said the old miner, bears won’t hurt anybody unless you bother them first.

And that, he noted, was pretty much how he felt about the teddy bear people. He allowed that he might even wander over to the convention and adopt a nice teddy for his grandchild.

Matter of Principle

Larry Barham, a burly 250-pound ex-Marine and a member of the National Rifle Assn., took an equally benign view, one you might not expect from such a rugged individualist.

He and his wife had come from the city of Citrus Heights, paid their $4 admission fee (teddy bears admitted free, as were children under 12) and ooohed and aaahhed at all the wonderful stuffed animals along with the rest of the teddy bear sentimentalists.

“I collect teddy bears,” he growled. “I got eight teddies . . . and a rifle and a quick-draw pistol . . . I collect teddies because I follow the principles of Teddy Roosevelt--’Speak softly and carry a big stick.’ ”

Perhaps more typical was 8-year-old Michael Frazier, at the convention with his bear Ted and his grandma Betty Frazier of Sacramento.

Bedtime Companion

“I have eight other teddy bears, but Ted is my favorite because he doesn’t talk back to me,” Michael explained. “I have a Cabbage Patch Doll, too, but I sleep with Ted.”

Did that mean he loved Ted more than the Cabbage Patch Doll?

“No,” Michael said, “I like both of them better.”

But he hinted that his heart belongs more surely to Ted. “I like Ted because he does tricks--flips and sings--and because I talk to him and he talks to me. He tells me that he likes ice cream and cake and popcorn and Oreo cookies. And I love those things too.”