Phoenix, although it still lacks a decent football team, is singularly blessed in the bear department, a fact the town has yet to trumpet in its Chamber of Commerce promotions. For aficionados of the bear sign, this city is a gold mine.

At least half a dozen wheel-alignment companies in Phoenix still use the bear to advertise their services. In addition to Moe Allen's bears, the three locations of Jack's Wheel Alignment use the cheerful little logo, as does Paul J.P. Johnson's over on 35th Avenue, Jim Wilson's on 16th Street, and J & L on McDowell The bear transcends cultural and linguistic barriers Tom Ocano's auto body shop on Buckeye uses the logo, His Spanish-speaking customers know it as the "Osito."

While the little yellow bear advertising Bear Manufacturing's wheel alignment products is not as instantly recognizable as, say, the Coca-Cola logo, it evokes a considerably greater emotional response.

Mention of the bear causes the woman who answers the phone at Hemmings Motor News ("Bible of the old car trade") to shriek in recognition and talk about the bear she used to walk by on her way to school 30 years ago on Long Island.

"It was like a major part of my childhood," she says. This reaction is wide spread; the number of people who love the bear appears to be exactly equal to the number of people who recognize it.

But unlike devotion to Coke memorabilia, affection for the Bear wheel-alignment bear is completely unorganized, which is somewhat odd in a country with a club devoted to every collectible artifact, childhood disorder and faded movie star.

Through it all, the little bear has remained the same He has never been updated, modernized or made politically correct, like Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima. He has laughed the same laugh for 70 years, possibly because he has outlasted the founders of the company he represents and a number of management teams who have wanted to get rid of him.

"Anymore, people jump around with trademarks," says Hank Durham, owner of Lee's Front End on 32nd Street, which sports a fine-looking bear sign. "They change it around so it's different. But the bear has never changed."

Although Bear signs are not particularly collectible mostly because they were made of cheap materials, and have stayed the same for 70 years the little yellow bear has wormed its way into popular culture. That's thanks to the Grateful Dead, who loved the logo enough to steal it. Deny it though the band may, the Dead appropriated its bear from the wheel alignment prototype, a theft Bear executives recognize, but don't feel the slightest bit litigious about.

Even Allan Sherman--remember him?--was a bear fan. The comic songwriter, popular in the early '60s, for some unacountable reason took the bear and ran half a dozen tiny little pictures of it all along the edge of his album My Son the Celebrity. Since he's dead, it's too late to ask why.

It makes perfect sense that a warm and fuzzy teddy bear should be the spokesman for a fabric softener you use on baby diapers. IL makes perfect sense that a similar bear advertise the baby formula Similac. It even makes sense that a sleepy-looking bear advertise the Travelodge motel chain, when you think about how bears gorge for a few months and then snooze away the entire winter.

But wheel alignment? What do smiley-faced bears have to do with wheel alignment? "I'm going to assume the guy's last name was Bear," says George Patten, a mechanic at Moe Allen's for the past decade and a half. "I don't think the company was named after the logo. I think the name inspired the logo."