Evel Knievel was my hero. As someone now in his forties who barely remembers what he had for dinner yesterday, I still remember my tween years and how they were influenced by the man I so hoped to emulate someday.
I watched in awe as he jumped his Harley over all those busses, the Stars and Stripes on his jumpsuit standing out like a lighthouse over heavy seas. I watched in horror as he cleared the fountains of Caesar’s Palace, only to bounce from his landing ramp like one of Jepetto’s marionettes gone terribly wrong. And my heart sunk to its deepest depths when Knievel’s parachute ejected prematurely during his Snake River jump, making the man I admired above all others a veritable laughing stock with my friends. I didn’t care. I was going to be like him.
My dad used to have one of those small, flip-over portable grills that cooked many a family barbeque over the years, but in time, I used it as a platform from which to mount my own ramp in hopes that my bicycle would fly through the air as gracefully as Knievel did on his motorcycle. I even fashioned my own little outfit, complete with the Harley Davidson number one on the front, and jumped my red Schwinn – over the ramp supported by this grill – over tin cans, a squirmy dog and even a small creek that ran near our house, most with the same disastrous results my hero encountered. I never broke a bone, of course, but it sure felt like it when I landed hard, and I could empathize with the pain he went through to entertain his audiences.
To me, a hero endures a lot get his message across. These days, the only message being projected by our so-called heroes is that it’s OK to be greedy or that drugs will most certainly bring you fame and fortune. For me, that’s not what a hero is about and it’s certainly not what Evel Knievel was about. Sure his pitfalls were well documented, but show me an authentic, I mean authentic hero without a flaw and I’ll show you the way to the Fountain of Youth.
The point is that I learned how to be a better man because of Evel Knievel. I learned that a true American hero is someone who doesn’t let adversity get the better of him and that ambition is the American Way. I learned that while records may fall, the person behind the effort should make an honest effort to be true to his fans, true to his country and true to himself. To me, Evel Knievel was all that and more.
I don’t lay plywood on rusted grills anymore, and my trusty Schwinn has long since been dismantled, but the memory of my hero Evel Knievel will still remain with me. No, he never saved the world from radical terrorists, invented the light bulb or hit more home runs than anyone else, but he gave me hope which, in my humble opinion, is exactly what a hero is supposed to do.
