Part 2 of personal reflections and historic explorations of the Grafton to Cairo length of Illinois Route 3 by writer and poet Richard Stimac.

Since childhood, my plan was to earn a doctorate and work as a college professor. In my early 20s, I collected my bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in English from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. For whatever reason, I stopped with the master’s degree. Part of the reason was practical. Did I really want to live in genteel poverty and assume mounds of debt with the hope that some college, somewhere, would hire me? I wasn’t looking forward to the hyper-specialisation a doctorate would require either. I’m an old school liberal arts guy who thinks the more widely read the better.

CAREER INTENTIONS

I needed a job after graduation. There were three options: earn a high school teaching certificate; teach on a part time contract basis at two, three, or maybe more colleges; or work at a local medical textbook publishing company. I chose a fourth option. I enlisted in the army, as much for adventure as for money. I didn’t get adventure. Yes, I went to jump school in Fort Benning, Georgia, and got to wear a maroon beret, but my job for years was working in a battalion operations office processing paperwork at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I attended a Polish language class at the John F. Kennedy School of Special Warfare, which sounds all special ops, but for me, it was just a classroom. I did get multiple tattoos in some shop on Yadkin Road in nearby Fayetteville, which we nicknamed Fayette-nam. After five trips to the tattoo shop, I walked out with a tribal band on each upper arm and Alton’s Piasa Bird on my left shoulder blade.

Image: Richard Stimac

THE FLESH EATING PIASA BIRD

Between Grafton and Alton, hundred-plus foot limestone cliffs rise beside the Great River Road as it hugs the contour of the Mississippi River. These sheared rocks are the ancient cut bank of a miles-wide glacial river that carried the sediment of an entire continent to the gulf. That sediment slowly constructs the land called the bird-foot delta south of New Orleans.

Small tributary creeks crawl from higher in the cliffs to carve ravines often large enough for snug and shaded hamlets that now boast a small number of residents who host tourist festivals among their quaint 19^th century wood frame homes. The northern edge of the American Bottom begins across the river from Grafton. This expansive floodplain extends along the length of Illinois Route 3 to Kaskaskia 125 miles to the south.

Image: Richard Stimac

Between Grafton and Alton there is the contemporary take on the Piasa Bird. Nineteenth-century quarrying destroyed the original. The current icon (that has been painted for the tourists) probably doesn’t resemble the original that would overlook downtown Alton if it still existed. The French Jesuit missionary Pere Marquette wrote in his journal that there were two fading images on the cliffsides of a creature with a deer’s antler, a lion-like mane, a humanoid body, scales, and a tail that encircled the body.

The current rendering adds griffin-like wings. The exact indigenous stories of the creature are lost. The most likely myth is that the flesh-eating Piasa Bird terrorised the Illini people who lived along the river. The name Piasa means “the bird that devours men”. Chief Ouatoga killed the monster and died in the process. Scholars surmise that the Piasa Bird holds a relationship with the underwater panther of the Northeastern Woodlands and Great Lakes people.

Like other Indian words, Piasa has been commercialised beyond the current kitschy roadside attraction that’s easy to miss, as one zooms up and down the Great River Road. There’s a Piasa gun shop, Piasa tattoo shop, Piasa cleaners, Piasa martial arts, and even a Piasa oil company. Local artists banded together to repaint the icon. Over the years, the current monster has faded under the strength of sun and rain. Conagra Brands, Inc. owns the land.

Image: Richard Stimac

TIME CHANGES THINGS

Having the Piasa Bird tattooed on my back connected me to my home. I asked a fellow soldier who drew well to create the tattoo flash with the Piasa Bird devouring its own tail, giving my version of the creature an Ouroboros reference. I was in my 20s then. Decades later, tattoos became trendy. If I have any fixed personality traits, then one of them is contrarianism. Tattoos were now popular, and I wanted nothing to do with them. Also, I was middle-aged. When I went to the pool, I felt more like an aging white guy who got tatts to appear youthful and hip. I was embarrassed. None of that for me, please. In a mocking of the destroyed indigenous Piasa Bird, I would have my Piasa Bird machined away.

The laser removal felt like hot grease dripping on my skin, even though the aesthetician numbed the area with chilled air. The thicker and darker the lines, the greater the burn. Getting the tattoos took twenty minutes and less than $100 each visit. Removing the tattoos took around two years of visits every six weeks at over $100 a visit. With the first treatments, the skin blistered, mostly with dozens of small pin-prick sized circles. In the thick lines, the blisters could be a dime of an inch in diameter. I stuck it out. I wanted the tattoos gone. As the aesthetician said to me, “Your tattoos grow either with you, or they don’t.”  In the end, my Piasa Bird faded, too.

Author bio: Richard Stimac lives in the St. Louis area, Missouri, USA. He has published the poetry book Bricolage (Spartan Press), two poetry chapbooks, and one flash fiction chapbook. In his work, Richard explores time and memory through the landscape and humanscape of the St. Louis region. He invites you to follow his poetry Facebook page.

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