Good and Evel

Recently, I encountered a ghost from my past festooned in a garish leather jumpsuit. Actually, it was by pure chance that I unearthed the memory of this individual—someone whom I hadn’t thought about in a very long time. And when I was a callow youth back in the colorful 1970s, he was big—really big.

The man’s occupation was daredevil. He liked jumping over things—usually while riding his motorcycle but, occasionally, utilizing other forms of transportation, like a steam-powered rocket. Dean Martin roasted the guy—the ultimate evidence back then that he was a somebody. Robert Knievel, aka Evel Knievel, was his name and he’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for having cumulatively broken more bones than anybody else…and lived to tell. Evel Knievel is no longer among the living, but his iconic status is eternal.

Evel Knievel impacted our lives. I remember this affable kid named Eddie from the old neighborhood, who wasn’t, in retrospect, the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Eddie was coaxed by his  friends, who regularly made sport of him, into performing an Evel Knievel stunt on his old Sting-Ray bicycle—with the banana seat. The agreeable, always-game, and stupidly fearless Eddie rode his bicycle up a wooden plank into the air, which enabled him to hop a short wall. What goes up six feet, though, must come down six feet—it's the law of physics—and down Eddie came. He lost control of his bicycle on the concrete grounds and crashed into a garage.

I witnessed this local Evel Knievel moment, which had been advertised—date and time—by word of mouth. And like Arthur Fonzarelli, aka the “Fonz,” who jumped the shark on Happy Days, it didn’t quite end on a high note. At least the Fonz made it over the man-eating white shark, which was his goal. Eddie’s goal amounted to  just doing it—come what may. Mission accomplished, He hurt himself—just like Evel and the Fonz—but lived to tell and ride another day.