Evel

Last week one of my childhood heroes died. I hadn't really paid any attention to him at all in thirty years, but when I heard he was gone, I felt very, very sad.

His name was Evel but the name wasn't meant to evoke diabolical intent, just coolness. For a little fat kid in Garland, Texas, who loved comic books & science fiction, this guy sure seemed like a super hero. I wish I still had the toys I owned - the action figure on the motor cycle, the action van, the ramps - but the reason I don't is not because I outgrew them. I just played the shit out of them.

He of course wasn't a super hero. Listen to this:

Performing stunts hundreds of times, Mr. Knievel repeatedly shattered bones as well as his bikes. When he was forced to retire in 1980, he told reporters that he was “nothing but scar tissue and surgical steel.”

By his own account, he underwent as many as 15 major operations to relieve severe trauma and repair broken bones — skull, pelvis, ribs, collarbone, shoulders and hips...

He had a titanium hip and aluminum plates in his arms and a great many pins holding other bones and joints together. He was in so many accidents that he occasionally broke some of his metal parts, too.

I'm trying to remember specific moments I watched Evel Knievel jump something - like, did I see the Las Vegas jump, or the Snake River Canyon jump, live on TV? - but I don't think I ever saw anything but "best of" shots. For me, he wasn't someone you tuned into television to watch. He was captured on film doing what came natural to him, like you imagine a stray camera catches Superman flying overhead. He was someone my friends & I talked about, lied about, made up new legends about.

He was such an amazing thing to have as a kid. The New York Times obituary says he retired in 1980, which seems awful late, but by that time I was ass-deep in puberty & not really going to pay attention.

Aw, who am I kidding. Even now, if I had heard he was going to jump the Washington Monument on a Vespa, I'd have wanted to at the very least hear about it. Insert some dumb comment about his motorcycle leaping the river Styx here.