Eighty years on, Smokey Bear has aged like a fine oak
On a muggy mid-morning in early August, I arrived at the Berks County (Pennsylvania) Heritage Center to celebrate the birthday of a bear. This was not your run-of-the-mill bear birthday party, mind you. This one was honoring a bruin who wears pants and no shirt (unlike his edgier cousin, Winnie-the-Pooh, who forgoes britches), a campaign hat just like the park rangers’ and who, at age eighty, shows no signs of slowing down. Yes, Smokey Bear became an octogenarian this year, and a billboard in my central Pennsylvania town informed me of his milestone. Not that we have many wildfires in the damp northeast, but Smokey’s message transcends space and time (and US Forest Service budgets, apparently).
