OUR TOWNE CLUB

The year was 1971 and Evel Knievel crashed his motorcycle trying to clear thirteen Pepsi-Cola trucks. I can’t recall whether his televised jump came with the mandatory message, "Don’t try this at home," but I do remember us neighborhood kids emulating his daredevil stunts. Back then, we shoveled enough dirt to make a nice sized pit in a field off Nardone Street, and we placed a small but efficient ramp on the one end near the pavement. Speed was the key. The harder and faster you pedaled down Nardone before veering into the field and onto the ramp, the better your chance of success. But that didn’t seem to matter. Why should it? Evel crashed all the time. Horrific crashes increased your chances of popularity. Mark T. heard of our pit at recess. After school, he rode his bike to our neighborhood to give it a try, racking his nuts on the crossbar. Chris M., my next door neighbor, hit the opposite side with his front tire and flipped over the handle-bars—not once, not twice, but almost every time because he lacked coordination. I, on the other hand, usually missed the ramp entirely, due to a last ditch effort to save myself.

You could say, Evel Knievel had a lot of influence on us—except of course for the type of soda we drank. Towne Club had all those assorted flavors to choose from; so there was no way Pepsi could compete, let alone survive. On the other hand, Evel consumed us during the summers of ’71 and ’72. What’s also amazing is that no one wore bike helmets—grown-ups and children alike.

As you can see from the photo, my dad (his shadow is evident) snapped the picture before letting me pedal away shoeless. If you look even closer, you will see a small bandage on my leg indicating a past injury, an obvious clue to my involvement in our Evel Knievel jumps. Unfortunately, my crashes were not spectacular, which made me average at school.