Tony Malinowski had a pet bear. That much is fact. The best information we have about him comes from Elizabeth Malinowski Rogers. In her autobiography she writes:
When Tony was a teenager,(that would have been 1917-1923) he met a man, someplace up on the Wishkah. The hunter had two (black bear) cubs. One was a male and one was a female. And Tony bought the male for three dollars. Ours was always very good-natured but they said the female got ornery. They had to get rid of it. We called ours Teddy.
He was so small when we got him, he could fit inside of a man’s hat. We fed him with a baby bottle, which he soon held by himself. We’d put the milk in a bottle and he’s hold it with his paws. He ate other things, too later. He liked bread and honey, corn which we cooked for him. We never gave him meat they said that made them mean. I can’t remember what else we fed him but I remember he ate a lot of corn.
When he grew, he grew quite fast. He always laid on the couch and slept. We put a blanket on one end. He was always good-natured. He seemed to be house broken right from the start. We kept the bread in a tin bin, which was a part of the kitchen table. He learned how to open it and get out his own bread. He wrestled with our Collie dog, climbed ladders, took baths in a tub of water, and played with the hose. Usually fed himself. It was Tony’s bear but somehow I got the job (of feeding the bear).
When he got a little older he would open the door by himself then come back in. He walked on two feet a lot. He’d go outside and he never ran away but he always stayed right there. Quite often he’d get under the couch and grab at our feet, whichever of us happened to be sitting there. But he was always just playing. Tony would even put his whole hand in his mouth. And he would just play. He wouldn’t bite him. We gave him a hose with little water running. Mary had all these things and I think she gave them to Dick Anderson1 because he had something for the school. So I think he had all the pictures.
We kept bread. We had a table that had a bread drawer in it and he would go in there and get himself a loaf of bread and sit down and eat on the floor. He’d hold the loaf in his paws. We always put some honey on it. We had ten hives of bees. We had some woods not far from our house. He was even better natured than a dog. Mary’d often get mad at him because he’d bring a little mud in and she’d chase him with a broom. He’d run out of the house but pretty soon he’d come back again.
One day when he was quite little, I was going down the Wishkah road. I don’t remember if he went first & I followed anyway he climbed a tree, a big fir tree. I thought for sure that he was a goner. I called him but he wouldn’t come down. I started back to get Tony. But he saw me leave and he really climbed down that tree in a hurry and followed me. He always bawled, they make a sound like a calf or something, and he came running and came home with me. He didn’t want to be left. He never went any place except the house and the yard. Sometime he played in a tree close to the house. Quite often a car would stop to watch him. All the school kids and the teacher came up to see him. That was when we had consolidated schools.
One time Rose and Adam (married 1915)were visiting from Oregon. Adam was at a quarry; he was the boss up there. They brought two men with them that worked for Adam. One was Johnny Gallow; he was a sort of foreigner. He talked a little broken. Then there was a Swedish one his name was Martin. They came with Rose and Adam, up the Wishkah and stayed a few days while they were there. Arne & Mary(married 1927) worked with Adam so Mary knew quite a bit about Johnny Gallow. She said he was really funny at camp. Everybody knew he couldn’t read because he’d ask the men read his letters for him. But he’d always take a newspaper and sit and flip the newspaper. Sometimes he’d even laugh a few times. We were telling them about the bear we had. We showed him pictures and said he could open windows. He could (This sounds like stories they were telling long after bear was gone) open doors and comes in whenever he feels like it. Said he left but expected him back anytime. In the night Johnny Gallow started having a nightmare and yelling. He thought the bear was back. He started yelling, thought the bear was after him.
Later on just before winter, he left and we thought he’d probably just run away or something. We didn’t know where he was. But we found a place with evergreen trees. Tony & Henry found a log that wasn’t too far from the house where he had stayed and hibernated in a hollow log. We didn’t really expect him back.
One time in the spring I was home by myself. My mother and Dad, Joe’s twins, Frances and Joe were with them (Twins were born in 1923). They stayed with us for quite a while until Joe got moved down to Aberdeen.
I was in the house by myself. I saw the doorknob turning. I saw the doorknob turning and I thought it was one of the twins coming. I went to open the door and there was the bear. He pushed right past me and went to the bread drawer. He got out a loaf of bread and just like he always did, he sat and ate the bread. This time he ate the whole loaf, he was so thin. I brought him honey. I gave him berries and cooked him some corn, just like we used to feed him before. After he got through eating he laid on the couch and slept for quite a while until the other people came. But he stayed in nights too; he stayed in the house just like a dog.
Later after he left that time, he didn’t stay home that much. Tony figured he had to tie him. He had a chain that he put around his neck. But his head was so little compared with his neck that he’d pull the collar off. Then he’d go. He’d go visiting the neighbors. One day he went into a parked car and went to sleep. When the man started the car up, the curtains were cloth in the back of it at that time a lot of them were, and he shot out the back of the car. Most everybody knew him so they weren’t really afraid of him.
Along the Wishkah Road there were some evergreen trees that weren’t too big and he’d go sit up in there. And the cars would all stop and watch him. Tony once brought home the whole school came to look at him. I was the one that had to feed him. I figured if he wanted to eat I had to do it. I figured that was my job. Tony used to feed him once in a while and he played with him a lot. Tony was the one that took pretty well care of him except that I fed him.
One day there was a man named Brigger Sevitch. We used to call him Greasy Cabbage. He had a kind of baldhead and mustache that kind of went downwards instead of upwards. He was always afraid of the bear. This time he came; he was drunk or partly drunk anyway. So he went out, right out where the bear was chained to a little house that Tony made him. And the bear just put his paws all over his head, but he didn’t scratch him at all. So when he got sober and we told him, he almost had a heart attack.
One day I was down at Soph’s. I was down at Soph’s a lot. I had to take my last year of high school down in Aberdeen and just come home on weekends (High school – if she was 18 that was 1924 and they still had the bear. But she could have been a little younger.)So Henry told me quite a bit what he (the bear) did. He said one day he got away and went to Davis’s. There was a neighbor that wasn’t too far off. And I think they knew it was our bear, but they were still scared of him. He came and tried to open the door and they locked the door. They had a ladder leaning up and he climbed up on the roof. Davis shot a hole through his roof trying to shoot him. Then he ran off. Then he came home.
Well, I don’t know how old he was, when he stood on his hind legs he was four maybe five feet. Tony figured we had to do something with him and he called the Portland Park, the zoo. So they came after him. And when they came, they came with a big cage and put him in. Henry said he looked just like he was waving. He wasn’t very happy to go in that cage.
I went down to Mrs. Remsen’s soon after. I went down there to go to Millinery School. Mary & Rose knew Mrs. Remsen. She was a widow. Her husband worked for Adam and he was killed working. (Died in 1925 so this had to have been after. Hard to say how long bear had been at zoo.) So they knew she was close to Portland, Woodland. Mrs. Remsen had Sylvia my age, Marguerite and Chet. Sylvia was my age, about eighteen. Chet and Marguerite were younger.
So I had quite a long way to go on the bus. But I stayed with her. I didn’t see it but she said there was a piece in the Portland paper about the bear and they called him Tony. He got away from the people who came after him. They said he went into a store and scared everybody. Then he climbed a tree and they couldn’t get him. So they had to chop the tree down. (Articles say nothing about cutting down the tree but there again memories & rumors – hard to tell.) They got him down anyway and put him in there (the park).
So I went there I told Mrs. Remsen where he was. We went down. They had a real nice big place for bears, a creek and a big place under the sidewalk. Then a room lined with heavy wire where they could come up and see the people. All the rest were brown bears and ours was black. It was maybe a year or so before I went down and he had grown an awful lot. He really got big. But I know it was the same bear. He was the only one that stayed up. They had a big cage and they were feeding peanuts and things. And he knew a few more tricks. Most of the bears were wild, but this one very big one was up by the people. I’m sure that was our bear. The zookeeper wasn’t there so we couldn’t find out for sure. The people were feeding him peanuts, etc. Anybody could have trained him because he was so good with people and wasn’t a bit afraid. But I’m sure he was the one, but he really grew. He must have weighed 300 pounds. He was big, really big. So it was a good thing we got rid of him. I wouldn’t have wanted him around that big.
As I was down at Soph’s quite a bit Henry knows quite a lot more about him than I do.
1 Nephew-in-law who was a teacher in Hoquiam
Henry said:
“When I was about fifteen years old (1924) , my brother Tony paid a man three dollars for a little bear cub. I think the man had killed the mother bear–it wasn’t illegal to take little animals out of the woods back in those days.”
“We fed little Teddy milk from a baby bottle. He held the bottle in his paws like a real baby, and he was small enough to curl up in a man’s hat for a cradle. When he was hungry , he would bawl like a little calf, and we got used to his Waa-waa when he got ready to eat.”
” As he grew he had the freedom of the house and he learned to open the bread drawer when he got hungry , much to our mother’s displeasure. He also learned how to open the door, and many a time my sisters took the broom to him when he tracked muddy mud onto a newly cleaned floor.”
“We had a big Collie dog that enjoyed wrestling and romping with the little bear, but when Teddy got big enough to hold him down, that stopped. He kept out of the bear’s reach after that.”
“When Teddy was about a year old and winter came, he disappeared, and we thought he’d gone to the woods to hibernate, as wild bears do. About two months later, my sister heard the door open in the middle of the night In came Teddy and out flew the bread drawer. When all the bread was gone, Elizabeth gave him some honey. He finished everything in sight, then stretched out on the couch and went to sleep as if he’d never been gone.”
“After that, he started to roam the neighborhood. As he was getting pretty big, most of the neighbors didn’t want him around. He went to one man’s house in the middle of the night and scratched on the door. When the man opened the door and saw the bear standing on its hind legs he got very frightened and slammed the door shut There was a ladder leaning against the building, so Teddy climbed up on the roof. The man got a gun and shot up through his roof, but he didn’t hit Teddy.”
“After that, we had to keep him tied up, and that was hard on him and us, too. I don’t remember how many times a day I had to go get him untangled. . Once he climbed up m the garage and got his chain wrapped around the rafters. He was bawling and fighting the chain, and I had a hard time getting him loose. I was afraid he would choke himself, though by the time I got him out of there, I felt like doing it myself.”
“We decided to offer him to the Portland Zoo, and they sent a man up to get him. The last I saw of him was his paw waving out of the cage as the car went down the road. Several years later, Elizabeth was in Portland, and she went to the zoo to see how he was. He was the only black bear in a cage with several brown bears. She said he seemed to enjoy seeing people, and was doing somersaults and other tricks to coax people to feed him. “
“He was often a nuisance, and I often think how much better off he’d have been if he’d been left in peace in the woods with his mother. That is where little wild things belong.”
Karen Gregg found several newspaper articles about a bear cub escaping the Portland zoo in 1922. They are clear the bear came from Aberdeen and his personality sounds just right. So we think the memories of Elizabeth & Henry may have been mushed around a little – not that any of us ever have those issues!——– transcription ——
“Tony the freedom loving cub, is back in his cage today, apparently happy and contented. The man who was wise enough to find a way of getting Tony from the top of the fir tree where he had defied the world for a day and night was quick enough to learn the cause of Tony’s dissatisfaction.
They had been keeping the cub in a cage with a lot of old sit-by-the-fire-and -doze sort of bears, and Tony was young and spry and wanted to frisk about. Every time he started to box or play prisoners base, one of the old bears would cuff him and growl: “Be still–can’t you? Liston to the narrative your elder is raising and remember little bears must be seen and not heard.”
Tony stood that about as long as he could. Wednesday night he shinned over some high rocks that bound his little world and climbed out into the freedom of the park and a fir tree.
After a night and a half day of it, Ray Weaver, park foreman, learned Tony’s weakness. Extremely sensitive ribs and a remarkable sense of humor for a bear. In conjunction with the end of a bamboo pole wielded by Weaver, brought Tony back to earth and captivity.
Now Tony is happy with bears of his own age. He rules the cage.
Another article states: Tony is a new addition to the park family. He arrived about three weeks ago from Aberdeen, Washington. His high and mighty ways speedily made him unpopular with other tenants, Brownie, Tom and Marty. They resented his youth, also made life wretched, physically and intellectually.
This the combination of circumstances really compel Tony to seek other quarters. But he forgot his troubles once he was out, hunted up Finn for a playful wrestle. The way this effort was received hurt his pride and he fled to the tree. It may not have been parlor, bedroom and bath, but it suited Tony–at least in contrast to his unhappy lot in the pit.
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