Happy Birthday Smokey

I joined millions of others in wishing Smokey Bear a very happy 70th birthday this past week. Like numerous school age children over the last seven decades I grew up knowing Smokey “the” Bear and his message about preventing forest fires. While Smokey’s middle name was never actually “the”, he will always be Smokey “the” Bear to most baby boomers thanks to the iconic song from the 1950’s which inserted the word “the” into Smokey’s name to help the song flow better. And flow it must have, since many senior citizens can still remember the lyrics to this day. Even though the lyrics are nostalgically simple they still send a great message - “You can take a tip from Smokey that there’s nothing like a tree ‘cause they’re good for kids to climb in and they’re beautiful to see. You just have to look around you and you’ll find it’s not a joke to see what you’d be missing if they all went up in smoke”. Thankfully after 70 years children and adults alike are still hearing Smokey’s message and hopefully will take it to heart, because being careful and helping to prevent wildfires is still the least that we can do.