Modoc

Modoc goodThink About It. Modoc. Regular readers have noticed that the senior Weavers seem to move often. We’ve done it again. For at least the third time, this is our last move. For a year or three, we’ve been staying at the beautiful boutique Charley Creek Inn or B&B, Herrold on Hill when enjoying a function at the Honeywell Center, or bothering son Wade with some excuse or another. In the process we found parks and people we couldn’t resist seeing on a more regular basis. But the center of Wabash daily life has a large elephant painted on its wall and small statuettes all around. The name on the side is Modoc’s. Knowing Walter, you know curiosity required research.

Seems the nearest community bearing that name is a few miles Southeast of Muncie. Some say it was a local looking down at a cigarModoc cigar box wrapper with the logo.  Others suggest a tribute to the indigenous natives of Northern California who sometimes struck back when attacked by interloping early American invaders. We can probably skip the Missouri Department of Corrections Offender Search, known as MODOC. Also ignored will be the alternative rock band from Nashville, but formerly from Indiana. More likely was the story of a misadventure during a visit by the traveling Great American Circus. But why an elephant named Modoc! There could be more to this story.

Seventy years earlier a female Indian elephant was born to a circus animal trainer in Germany at the same time a male child was born to the family. They became close and loving friends as the bright pachyderm was trained gently for stardom in sometimes three rings. The show was over in New York City after extraordinary, even lifesaving adventures. Animal trainer Ralph Helfer wrote the book Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived. But our Modoc probably got more publicity in five days than her predecessor did in seven decades.

It was November 11, 1942, 75 years ago, the much younger Modoc (like her predecessor, gently trained) waited outside the Wabash High School gym, ready to entertain inside, when some dogs barking created enough excitement to prompt our heroine’s escape…… for five days. Her most famous target was a drugstore (now MODOC’S MARKET) with peanuts roasting, ruining the day for employees and shoppers alike. Then to the cigar store across the street. Not finding her brand, our young Modoc crossed the river five times, wandered through frightened farmers’ plots and finally gave up to the lure of six quarts of whiskey, thirty gallons of water and twenty-six loaves of bread. That also helped to regain part of the 800 pounds lost from her previously 1900 pound frame. At the great Wabash Museum last Wednesday evening, local historian Pete Jones surprised me with the news that he was in the gym that day when the ringmaster told everyone to go home because the elephants had escaped. Too bad he was too young to write the story appearing first in the Wabash Plain Dealer. Publications large and small all over the country joined the paper chase, following the fun and frightening adventures of the most famous elephant in America…..for one week in 1942, Modoc. Think About It.

Take a look at what I’ve plagiarized and get the whole story.

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