When I was a kid I was a HUGE Evel Knievel fan. I had his lunch box and his three ring binder and models of his motorcycle and lots of other EK stuff. I used to build little ramps with boards and bricks, tie a towel around my neck and pretend I was the man himself. I'd peddle my bike as fast as I could, spitting motorcycle sounds while I jumped over every little Hot Wheels car I could find. I lined 'em up like school buses 'cause that's what Evel used to jump.
The Christmas I got the Evel Knievel T-string pull toy was awesome! You'd feed that plastic "key" down the narrow slot, then pull it as hard as you could then throw it to the ground. That thing would take off and fly like the wind for about ten seconds. What a rush!! Then I got the Evel Knievel crank toy. This was the ultimate in EK excitement and worlds above anything I'd ever had before. You'd set the bike in the cradle, with the Evel doll gripping the handlebars of course. Then you'd crank the handle as hard and fast as you could before pulling the trigger and watching the doll fly off the seat. I loved it!!!
Evel was called lots of things. Most people called him crazy. Besides the buses, he jumped lots of other stuff, including the Snake River Canyon. His first "big" jump was over a box of rattlesnakes and mountain lions. Not all of his jumps were successful. He never made it to the other side of the big hole in the earth, and he barely missed the venom and the claws. Some called him the death defyer. He'd cheated death on more than a couple of dozen occasions. He barely survived several of his biggest feats, but always made his way back to eventually jump again.
You can't do something like that forever though. Back in November of 2007 it was cancer that caught up with the man who'd been so close so many times. Evel is finished jumping things now. It's hard to call him a death defyer anymore.
Today is a celebration of the real and ultimate defyer of dying. I'll bet that in his day there were more than a few folks who thought the outspoken rebel who worked on sabbath days and touched forbidden things and ate with skank was close to being finished a time or two himself. You didn't ignore the law and disregard tradition and established religion in times like those then live to tell about it. So they killed him. For making crazy claims, loving people more than rules and bucking the same-old-same-old they killed him.
His ideas didn't seem so crazy though when the final word was said. All those ridiculous claims had sudden merit when what they were sure was the final solution was over ruled. He claimed he could beat it, but they obviously didn't believe him. Who can outlive death?
Evel made a lot of claims in his career. He knew he'd eventually stop breathing and die. He became a Christian before he did, and as the once self-proclaimed death defyer, he knew he really wasn't, and he certainly knew he wasn't the original.
Happy Easter!
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