Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, July 31, 1990                   TAG: 9007310052
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

JUST DON'T ASK FOR ANY BEAR STORIES

I'm doing this early to head off a lot of letter writing and begging that will take up too much of my valuable time.

For reasons that are a little murky to me, these people are looking for the gift or loan of teddy bears famous persons have loved.

I can't help them. Although I am famous, I didn't have a teddy bear to love - which, I suspect, may be the case with many fellow famous persons.

A news release about the museum says "a certain British princess took along her teddy bear in the wedding carriage."

Well, a bit cheeky, that.

We are also told that a "U.S. first lady and a very macho movie star" have favorite teddy bears.

Come on. Nancy Reagan and Sly Stallone with teddy bears?

The fact that the Beagles of Arch Street didn't have a teddy bear had nothing to do with being macho - which nobody had heard of in those days.

(I will say that a male child who slept with a teddy bear might have been considered a little funny.)

My lack of a bear was a matter of poverty. Nobody on the street had one of the things. If we had owned one, we'd have sold it to a rich kid up the hill or figured out some other way for it to bring in some money.

We might also have stuffed the sucker into the stove on a cold night.

You think I'm kidding? I knew 14-year-olds who lied about their age trying to get into the Army just to get warm.

Because of this deprived childhood, I also cannot send the museum a picture of myself and a teddy bear.

I could send along a picture of me and my now-departed, still-missed dog Sport, but I don't think this is what these people are looking for.

This is a shame, really. I look just as cute as I can be in my corduroy knickers, which I wore before fame set in and at a time in my life when my father worried about me being a sissy.

It should be obvious that I also do not know any good teddy bear stories to pass along.

I know some dandy stories about my cat Doodles, now also departed and still-missed, but the museum isn't interested in cats.

This entire affair has made me insecure by reminding me that I was deprived of a teddy bear as a child.

For example, I recently overheard my helpmate telling my oldest daughter:

"It's getting worse, you know. The old fool fell asleep on the sofa last night with his thumb in his mouth."