Bear-ly Surviving

When I was a wee lad, Babe’s Muffler Shop in San Jose had a giant fiberglass statue to advertise its business. This was one of the many “muffler men” that dominated the landscape in the 1960s. And a number of them still survive today. There seems to be a small but fanatical fan base for these roadside artifacts from another era.

But this post is not about Muffler Men. Instead, it explores an analogous phenomenon: Laughing Bears.

For around the same time as I was growing up in the shadow of Babe’s Muffler Man, I was also vaguely aware of several wheel alignment shops that sported a laughing, golden bear on their signs. The image of the Laughing Bear seems to have been buried in my subconscious, entirely forgotten until I moved to southern California a few years ago. And then, lo and behold, I re-encounted the Laughing Bear in Torrance, looking only a little worse for wear.

The story of the Laughing Bear goes back a century. For in 1913, brothers Will and Henry Dammann founded Bear Manufacturing in Rock Island, Illinois. One of their first products was an electric starter for Henry Ford’s Model T. (Until then, starting your Model T required standing in front of the vehicle and turning a metal crank quickly. A startling number of individuals were run over by their own cars in this process.) So the Brothers Dammann had a popular item on their hands. Of course, Henry Ford being Henry Ford, he began manufacturing his own starters and undermined the Dammanns’ market. So Will and Henry shifted their focus to automotive diagnostic equipment.

Bear Manufacturing soon became a well-known and respected trainer of automotive mechanics. Their reputation led to their being appointed as the official servicing outfit for the Indy 500 for half the 20th Century. In 1949 Bear Manufacturing built an impressive, Streamline Moderne headquarters in Rock Island, housing the Bear School of Automotive Safety Service.

Naturally, the Bear name developed a certain cachet in the automotive industry, and thus being associated with Bear was considered to be good for sales. And so auto repair shops whose mechanics were trained by Bear would often erect signs with Bear’s “laughing bear” logo.

Alas, the Bear training school closed in the early 1970s, and the last vestiges of the company disappeared about twelve years ago. But many of the signs live on, referencing a training standard that no longer exists.

Over the past few months I’ve been keeping a list of all the Bear signs I’ve spotted in the South Bay area of Los Angeles. And today I went out and took photos of them. Here they are (in addition to the one from Torrance Auto Repair, above, which dates back to 1948):

And if these are reminding you of your Woodstock years, you’ve been listening to too much Grateful Dead.

I’m sure there are many more surviving Laughing Bear signs. Please send me pictures of any that you’re aware of! I’ll post them in a subsequent blog.

Also, stay tuned for my trip to visit the Bear Headquarters building in Rock Island, which I’m told is still standing. My wife has been encouraging me to take another road trip…