John Moore

Christmas 1973 had a focus. All I wanted was the new Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle set.

The short sidewalk in front of our little red brick house on Beech Street was the perfect length to launch and then watch my hero ride off the end of the concrete and into the soft grass.

I’d seen Evel’s unsuccessful jumps and had determined that if he’d had softer places to slide into after descending the ramp, he wouldn’t have broken all of those bones.

That was a big negative for my mom regarding Evel. He broke a lot of bones.

Mom wasn’t a fan. She also wasn’t a fan of football, boxing, or Batman. All involved things she felt were dangerous and all involved things I wanted to do.

I wasn’t the only kid in Ashdown, Arkansas, who loved Evel Knievel. And many of us loved him enough to emulate him.

If our mom’s had only known all of the things we learned because of Evel, and Ed “Too Tall” Jones, George Foreman, and Adam West, I think they’d have been proud.

However, not being completely sure they’d be proud, we hid those moments if we could.

For example, trying to be like Mr. Knievel taught us carpentry. The kid down the street and I were able to borrow some of his dad’s plywood, nails and hammers, and build bicycle ramps.

In the math and geometry departments, we learned all about speed, projected hang times and distance. In the medical realm, we learned where his mom kept the Band-Aids.

When we weren’t flying our bikes, we were playing football. Now, our moms had told us to play touch football, but technically, if you tackled someone you were touching them. And if you’re going to tackle someone, there was no better example of how to do it than Ed “Too Tall” Jones of the Dallas Cowboys.

Ed “Too Tall” hurt people. So, that was also our goal. To see who could hurt the other one the most. Fortunately, we’d already found his mom’s Band-Aid stash.

Boxing was big in 1973. There were many fighters we thought were great. Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, and George Foreman were the guys we wanted to look and be like.

My buddy and I had the desire when it came to boxing, but we didn’t have any gear. This included gloves. But that didn’t stop us.

Again, we viewed this an educational experience. We learned about Newton’s Third Law of Motion. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.

We also were able to use up the last of his mom’s Band-Aid stash, which taught us how to add Band-Aids to his mom’s grocery list and how to stop the bleeding from a gash on your eyebrow.

One other educational experience I gained that didn’t include my buddy, but did eventually include my mom, came from Adam West and Batman.

Remember on that TV show in the 1960s when Batman and Robin would use a rope to walk up the side of a building and as they did, famous people would stick their heads out of the windows and talk to them while they went by?

Well, the pine tree in our backyard wasn’t a building and there weren’t any famous people in it. But that didn’t stop me.

I didn’t have a Batman or Robin costume, but I did have my sister’s jump rope, and I was able to sling it over a limb.

Things were going great until her jump rope broke.

This was my first opportunity to learn what having the breath knocked out of you felt like.

As I was trying to make it to the house with no oxygen in my lungs, with my sister trailing behind me crying and holding her broken jump rope, I learned that your mom can still yell at you, even when you’re in severe respiratory distress.

Summer turned to fall, and fall to winter. Christmas morning came and there, under the tree, was the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle.

I’m sure my mother likely thought that the toy might help me channel any potentially dangerous activity into this new toy. And to a degree she was correct. I took it outside and set it up for its maiden launch.

The first time I jumped it, the bike landed wrong and one of the balance bars on the back broke off, preventing it from ever working right again.

As I tried to glue it back together, I stabbed myself with the sharp plastic on the back of the cycle and began to bleed.

Fortunately, my mom also had a Band-Aid stash.