Our conversation about the term bear-caught, describing someone with heatstroke, prompted Sondra in Florida to share a poem on the topic written years ago by her late husband, Bert Furbee. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Bear-Caught Poem”
We were talking a couple of weeks ago about the term bear caught.
Yeah, that means heat stroke or sun stroke.
It’s as if an actual bear came up behind you and knocked you down.
Right, right.
And it was popularized by…
Oh yeah, the film Cool Hand Luke and the book by Don Pierce.
Right.
Well, we heard from Sondra Taylor Furby in Florida, who said that her late husband, Bert, actually met Don Pierce, the author of Cool Hand Luke in Florida, at a writer’s conference.
And they talked about the fact that Mr. Pierce had been incarcerated in a Florida prison for a while.
And Sondra writes,
My husband later wrote this poem about some time when he worked driving a cement truck in southwest Florida.
Creative writing degrees were not much in demand at the time.
He passed out one day from the heat.
His co-workers, who would have all been local Floridians, called it Hugged by a Bear.
Oh, interesting.
And so her husband, Bert, wrote this poem called Bear Hug, and I’d like to share it with you.
Rolling mesh wire off the back of a flatbed in August, southwest Florida Gulf Coast, piles of crushed rock waiting for the mixer.
I’m halfway through the load and there’s no sweat on my forehead.
I’m cold in 100 plus heat.
Waking to a wet smelly bandana on my head, somebody is holding both my wrists under the water tap.
What the hell happened, I ask.
And the guy says, you just got hugged by the bear.
My eyes feel like they are bleeding.
My ears are buzzing.
The ferocious son stabs again and again.
Tell me what happened.
I told you, you got a bear hug.
Oh, nice.
How cool is that?
That’s cool.
So now I have to go spend several hours figuring out if bear hug is an established term for sunstroke.
It has to be, right?
Right?
At least in that community of people.
Yes.
I didn’t research it, but I thought the poem was so lovely.
So Sandra and I have been going back and forth about it.
And the poet’s name, what’s his name?
His name is Bert Furby.
That is wonderful.
You know, we talk about language like that on the show all the time.
Regional terms, dialect, slang, and poetry, of course.
Or email words@waywordradio.org.
