Big Modoc #5

This is "Big Modoc" in 1951 ready for the "Popcorn and Lemonade Finale". As you can see, she is now in her 50's and starting to show her age and for that matter the plume on Arky's helmet has seen better days also. She died in January of 1957 in Sarasota and I arrived a few weeks later to go to work for Hugo Schmitt. Dave Mullaney told me that when she finally went down, a lot of show people he had never seen before came by to say farewell during her final hours. As we know, this was the winter the show moved indoors and the big top retired forever. There was a string of about a half dozen old elephants that we would take out back every morning and return to the barn in the evening, sort of a melancholy parade as they seemed to know that the show was going out without them. One of them was "Big Babe" and my dad once mentioned that she was the first elephant he ever rode, with the Barnes Show in 1922. When it came time to leave for the Garden and we were waiting for a yard engine to move the cars out of quarters, I noticed Babe standing out back and I asked Mullaney to take my picture on her. Later I heard that she died a few days later and I somehow managed to lose that picture.