Guest Post from Nigel

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

What I Learned Fom Evel Knievel In 1975, I was ten years old. Like a lot of boys my age, I was obsessed with Evel Knievel. So, on the occasion of his death, I'd like to write about the effect Evel Knievel had on my life. Yep, like all my friends, my heroes were Mike Schmidt, Batman, Steve Austin (the bionic man, NOT the wrestler.), but most of all Evel Knievel. Mind you, most of our dads were active members of the local volunteer fire company. Fighting fires is pretty manly/heroic stuff. But oddly enough, we didn't think of our dads as heroes. Hey, I was ten… I bought the bubblegum trading cards. I bought the comic books. I coveted my friend's Evel Knievel lunchbox. I watched the crappy TV movie. I definitely watched all the live coverage of all the jumps. I owned a gold metal flake Schwinn with a banana seat and ape hanger handlebars, but in my imagination, it was a red, white, and blue Harley-Davidson. Most of all, I spent hundreds of hours playing Evel Knievel. Along the way, I chalked up three visits to the emergency room and five sets of stitches. My friends and I spent a lot of time doing "spinouts". One at a time, we'd ride as fast as we could down the dirt lane between our houses. At the end of the lane, we'd slam on the brakes, and the tail end of the bike would swing around a.k.a. spin out. Ideally, there was a big cloud of dust, a long tire mark dredged in the dirt, and I'd end up facing 180 degrees from the direction I'd been riding. Often, the rear wheel would slide out from under my butt, and I'd end up lying on the ground bruised and/or bleeding. Once I knocked myself out. I was out for some time. My friends ran to tell Grandma I'd hurt myself. She had arthritic knees, so it took her a while to hobble over to the scene of the crash. I was still unconscious when she arrived. For years, she claimed I was "never quite right again" after that incident. Obviously, we jumped things. One friend had some old wooden doors stored behind the shed. We propped them on some cinder blocks and we had a take-off ramp and a landing ramp. Over the course of a typical afternoon, we'd gradually increase the distance between the ramps. Between the ramps we'd place things like: bicycles, tricycles, pedal cars, cats, dogs, and siblings. By the way, this was an improvement. Previously, we'd used a single ramp made of a piece of plywood propped up on a stack of scrap lumber. The landings were jarring. Sometimes, if we weren't careful, we'd slam hard into the side of Johnny Bixler's chicken house. Once, we propped the ramp up really high. Johnny came off the ramp and got amazing altitude. He hung in the sky for a moment, like a cartoon character. Then, again like a cartoon character, he dropped straight down and landed in a heap. We never used that ramp again, because Jack Bixler threatened to beat the hell out of all of us if we did. In those days, another kid's parents could discipline you, and your own parents might've thanked them for helping out. Evel Knievel taught me a lesson that every man must learn. Once, I decided to jump my bike down the long flight of stairs that led to the basement door of the volunteer fire company. It was a supremely stupid plan. There was nowhere to land properly. At the bottom was a four feet square slab of concrete and a locked door. I was charging towards the stairs when it occurred to me I might actually smash into the wall on the far side of the stairwell. I tried to stop, but it was too late. I took off from the top stair, flew down (yes flew, I never touched the steps) and landed firmly in front of the door. I had not destroyed the bike. I had not killed myself. I had learned that localized trauma to the groin really hurts. It really hurts a lot.