Stuffed bears figure large in my childhood. Most children grow up learning the story of the three bears. This is a story of two bears, both cherished by my younger sister. Bwacky was a large (by bear standards) black teddy. My older sister found him at a rummage sale and salvaged him as a gift for my little sister. He had suffered much in his teddy-lifetime and wore it hard. He was already very old when my sister rescued him in the 1050s. From what I know of teddy bear construction, he was made well before World War II. His original fur was black mohair, but mohair is attractive to moths, and they had dined well on Bwacky. His fur had patches of thick and thin mohair. His face was a bit mangled too. One eye had to be re-affixed on a regular basis; otherwise it would have fallen out. He also required frequent surgeries, all performed by my older sister, to keep him from disgorging his insides from seams that had come open. His insides were wood excelsior, which was used to stuff old German teddy bears. Sawdust was used as filler for the face and head. Bwacky had already lost some of the sawdust from his face before he came to live with us. He lost even more after he came to live with us. A drizzle of sawdust was a bear emergency. Big sister would find the hole and patch him -- a bit thinner and ever stranger looking.
He was an ugly, ugly bear, but my little sister went nowhere without her Bwacky bear. He was beautiful to her, and she was inconsolable if she did not have Bwacky nearby at bedtime. She would drag him along by his ear whenever we went anywhere. My older sister loved to take us out to a nearby field where we would look for 4-leaf clovers or make timothy grass wreaths to wear as crowns. These bucolic afternoons were lovely, and we would return home hungry and tired.
After one excursion, as we were getting ready for bedtime, Bwacky was nowhere to be found. My big sister remembered him accompanying us out for our excursion. She recalled making him a wreath. No one remembered him coming home. My big sister retraced our excursion and with a flashlight found Bwacky wearing his wreath sitting in the field. He was damp with the evening dew, but he came back home. After that, whenever we went anywhere with Bwacky, his was one of the noses that had to be counted before we returned home. I have no idea what became of Bwacky. I do know that at some point he was retired, and Fuzzy-WasHe took over as first bear.
When Fuzzy-WasHe first arrived he was a lovely tan, soft mohair bear about 12-inches tall, less than half the size of Bwacky. My sister named him Fuzzy and adored him. She loved him, cuddled him and played with him so much that she rubbed the fuzzy fur right off him. She did a more thorough job than the moths had done to Bwacky. In just a few short years his torso was completely bald and his cloth exposed. He still had a fuzzy head, limbs and back side, albeit somewhat sparsely covered in fuzz. That was when he became Fuzzy-WasHe. We created a little rhyme, that my younger sister hated. It would set her into an instant protective stance. It went like this: Fuzzy-WasHe was a bear/ Fuzzy-WasHe had no hair/Fuzzy-WasHe didn't care/Cuz Fuzzy-WasHe was a bear.
I took pity on Fuzzy-WasHe and set about covering his hairless body. I had learned to knit when I was six years old, and by the time I was 8 or 9 years old was creating knitted garments for my dolls. Fuzzy-WasHe was a nice challenge for me. I made him two sweaters -- a pullover with sleeves and a cabled vest. The pullover was was a lovely beige/tan wool almost Fuzzy's original color. It had a nice bit of color detail (raspberry and navy) just above the ribbing at the bottom. My sister was thrilled with it, for her beloved Fuzzy's baldness was no longer a source of sibling mockery. I decided to make him a vest, a summer wardrobe so to speak. I wanted to practice/teach myself how to do cable stitches. I was successful. I did not have a cable needle so I used a bobby pin and was startled at how nicely it turned out. Fuzzy-WasHe was a dapper-looking bear with a summer and winter wardrobe. These two bears -- one horribly ugly from the get go and another one that was loved to near ugliness both show how indiscriminate child's love for a beloved toy can be.
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