Thanks, Evel!

As a youth my hero was John Lennon. I still get all choked up when I pass the the place he was shot in New York City. It was easy to idolize the Chief Beatle: He wrote beautiful ballads about peace, spoke his mind, and could hit notes that would make opera singers blush. I wonder if some of those guys who spent 1976 strumming tennis rackets, listening to "Helter Skelter" (the Beatles song), and roller skating to the "Rock and Roll Music" double LP with me in Warren, Pennsylvania thought about me when Lennon was slain in 1980.

You see, I've been thinking about them lately. One of theirs died this week...Evel Knievel. If I'd completed the list of things we were doing during America's bicentennial, I'd have added: jumping barrels on bicycles, throwing our Evel Knievel figurines over ditches and matchbox cars, and watching Knievel's escapades on the Wide World of Sports. In that gentle little town, my buddies tried to dream with me about bringing world peace through music, but a guy our parents' age jumping buses, buildings and rivers on a motorcycle--now that was reality!

What is truly ironic is that Lennon died "with his boots on" and from the accounts I've seen, Knievel withered away. No one in our little circle would have predicted that when I left town for Newport News in 1977. Be that as it may, like George Bailey in "It's A Wonderful Life," Evel Knievel changed at least one life, mine! He wasn't quite my hero, but I think somewhere among Caesar's Palace, the Snake River, and the six barrels I jumped on my 20-inch Huffy in 1976, he had a hand in convincing me that, in the words of the 1974 hit--the Ballad of Evel Knievel:

I can move a mountain
Leap across a winding river
Once I've made my mind up
There's nothing I won't try.

I hope that his life hasn't not inspired many people to jump impossible things with motorcycles. On the other hand, since this most optimistic of men has convinced a few of us to exceed what we perceive the limits to be, then his was a life to be celebrated. If I'd have been by his bedside on November 30th., I'd have slipped my boots on him. I hope someone did. Thanks, Evel!