Bear Traps

Last year on the first day of spring I posted 6 buttons in the shapes of bears. Sticking with the bear theme a year later, today is the first day of spring and I'm ushering in the season with this set of 4 buttons that remind me of bear traps. These Bakelite wedges are jaggedly heavy with deep notches set on both sides of chocolate Bakelite and a stripe of rootbeer sandwiched in the middle sections.

Come to think of it, the man who sold me these buttons was a rather bearlike creature himself. The gruff character got annoyed with me at an antique shop in Mount Kisco, New York when I asked him if these buttons were tested Bakelite. "Sure they're tested!" the old grouch snarled. "I smelled them myself!" Needless to say, his sniff test was accurate. These bear traps are true Bakelite, circa 1929.

-Sherbert McGee