locals as well as visiting boaters. In fact, east-west Illinois Route 164 stops in — not at, but in — the river, where the pavement slopes into the waterway to accommodate boat trailers. Norma Jean On July 17, 1972, the circus was in town. The main attraction of the Clark & Walter Circus was a 29-year-old elephant named Norma Jean. History records little of her background, except that she was born in the U.S. She was an Asian elephant, which have smaller ears and bodies than the African variety, and weighed . As nightfall approached, head elephant caretaker "Possum Red" tethered Norma Jean to a tree at the village park in the center of town, using a metal chain to hook her up. Not long after, in rolled storm clouds. A bolt of lightning ripped through the sky and found Norma Jean’s tree — the only one in the park. The voltage fired through the tree, along the metal chain, and into Norma Jean. Possum Red, who was still on the scene, was thrown by the electrical blast. Norma Jean thudded to the ground, lifeless. Possum Red and the rest of the circus scurried out of town. The following year, without its lone elephant — uninsured and worth the then-princely sum of $10,000 — the circus folded. Townsfolk used a backhoe to dig a hole, rolled the three-ton-plus pachyderm corpse into the grave and marked it with a plywood sign. After town druggist Wade Meloan had raised enough money to erect a memorial, he and a mason friend rounded up two tons of rock and cemented together a tall wall stretching over the grave. Atop the monument, they secured a concrete elephant statue and ringed the wall with flowers. They affixed a glass case to the wall with newspaper accounts about Norma Jean. The plaque on the wall proclaims: When they finished they invited hundreds of well-wishers to the dedication. They even rented a baby elephant to carry a wreath in its trunk to lay at the marker. Meloan became something of a sideshow barker for Norma Jean. He printed professional postcards of the memorial, selling them in Oquawka and beyond to drum up tourism. When reporters came calling, he’d gush over the lore of Norma Jean. John Behnke, a graduate student from Southern Illinois University's cinema program, filmed a 15-minute documentary on the marker, which later appeared on Showtime.