Evel Knievel

One of my adolescent boyhood heroes was Evel Knievel.

I always spent a lot of time riding my bike whenever I was bored. Then I learned to do wheelies, ride down the park fieldhouse stairs, and see how far I could ride from home. I also delivered the afternoon newspapers riding my bike.

Then, I discovered Evel Knievel! By accident. And I mean that by coincidence, but also by accident. The first time I saw him on TV was on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. They showed a video of his famous and disastrous jump at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. I was extremely impressed by how Evel had survived the crash and even gained notoriety from it.

This sounds crazy as I look back at my former teenage self, but I wanted to be just like Evel Knievel! Crash and all!

My father knew how much I admired Evel Knievel, so he asked if I was interested in seeing Evel Knievel jump in person. Of course, I was! Well, in February of 1972, my father and I went to the Chicago International Amphitheater to see Evel Knievel!

The place was packed. There was no stadium seating. In fact, there were no seats at all. A typical Chicago wood and wire snow fence separated the crowd from Evel’s Harley Davidson XR 750. Evel spoke to the crowd, and everyone tried to get closer to the fence. I was only five feet tall at the time, so I could only see Evel at the top of the ramp as he spoke, but not when he raced back and forth on his motorcycle.

My father wanted me to see, so we pushed our way through the crowd to get closer to the fence. We got up to a supporting steel beam where no one stood because of the poor visibility. My father had me go on his shoulders and hold on to the beam. My head was two feet above the crowd and now I could see everything!

My father asked me if I could see, and I said, “Yes! But now you can’t see Evel.” And he said, “That’s okay. I’m happy that you can see!” And see I did! Evel jumped over the cars. And then, as a surprise, he rode his jet-powered motorcycle that he would use to jump over the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. He wanted to jump over the Grand Canyon, but he couldn’t get permission.

Inspired by Evel Knievel’s performance, I set up a ramp in the alley behind our house. The ramp consisted of an old picnic tabletop propped up by bricks. Since the table was two inches thick, I used a 1/8″ sheet of plywood to ride up on the picnic tabletop to have a smoother takeoff.

We started by jumping short distances and then increasing them until I was the only one attempting them once we got past six feet. The neighborhood kids would gather round to watch my jumps. Then someone suggested that I should jump over something to make the jumps more interesting. So, I put some empty cardboard boxes two feet tall to jump over. I figured since they were empty, they would collapse if I hit them. Boy was I wrong!

I wasn’t particularly good at math, and I had never studied physics, so I estimated the distance I could clear from my previous jumps. I finally reached about 25 feet. I decided to break the 1968 Mexico Olympic long jump record of twenty-nine feet, 2 1/2 inches by Bob Beamon.

I set up the boxes for thirty feet. I made a couple of runs past the ramp to build up the excitement, just like Evel Knievel. When I finally jumped, my rear wheel grazed the last cardboard box causing me to land front wheel first, crashing, and rolling like Evel Knievel. Luckily, I had learned to tumble correctly, so I tucked my head into my chest and arched my back allowing me to roll forward with the momentum. Surprisingly, I didn’t suffer any broken bones or scrapes.

And just to show exactly how tough I was, I attempted the jump immediately afterward. Of course, I made some mental adjustments. This time I cleared the boxes with room to spare!

I was so inspired by my feat that I wrote a letter to my local TV news station describing my stunt in detail. They always had a segment with local personalities. I typed it up so it would look more impressive. I wrote that I could perform my jumps for them. About a week later, I received a response. Well, not actually a response. They returned my letter with two handwritten notes on it. The first note said, “This would make a nice, light feature.” The second note said, “We do not want to encourage children to attempt this.”

That ended my career as an Evel Knievel wannabe. However, in hindsight, I now understand perfectly why they wouldn’t feature me on the local news.