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| Evel Knievel |
My father spent the
night in the hospital the other night. His illness is not uncommon for a man his
age. My brother had surgery a day or two before that. Then there's me with some
weird strain of chronic vertigo and skin cancer. It always comes in threes--er wait, is that fours? That's
rather macabre. Still, when this stuff happens to you and the people you love
it reminds you how we are not invincible. It also reminds me of my youth. While I was so afraid of baseballs traveling in my direction in what I believed to be at a lethal velocity or riding my bicycle or trail bike faster than a crawl for fear that a limb would tear off * some kids were fearless.
Enter Stewart, the
next-door neighbor who held the record for most trashcans successfully jumped with a bicycle
(at least in our neighborhood). Stewart wore an old-fashioned "brain
bucket"-style helmet he got from my father who no longer used it. After my dad tore up his ear while racing in an enduro or scramble he moved to a
three-quarter Bell helmet.
Stewart re-painted it and, using a magic marker, created his new personae right on the side of the helmet, “Super Stu” with a
four-leaf clover for luck. As far as I could tell he needed that charm. It
scared the shit out of me seeing him start in the street, peddle like a madman
jump the gutter with only a split-second to re-gain his form before his
front wheel hit the ramp.
The passing of this helmet and this trashcan
jumping is germane to the hospital story. My father raced cars, boats, and
motorcycles. He found enjoyment in pushing his body. He almost died in a boat
racing accident years before he got into racing dirt bikes. He wasn’t a dare
devil, but he had injured himself enough to know his body had limits, but
that’s about as far as it went. Super Stu was just crazy, but I like to think
there is poetry in the passing down of a helmet even if it is not to his son,
who, let’s face it, was a pussy.
I don’t know why we set up the ramp in the area
we did. While the landing zone was on grass that’s about where the
OSHA-mindfulness stopped. There was precious little real estate at the end of
the last trashcan before Super Stu’s family fence (and surely the Grim Reaper) stood.
He had to hit the breaks the second his back wheel gained purchase.
He only had one contender (read: someone stupid
enough) to try to match his record. But Dan didn't ride a Schwinn Stingray like
Super Stu and everyone else, for that matter except for Dave, who had a Huffy.
(Poor Dave, always the one with colored socks when everyone else had Adidas and
Puma white sweat socks, green cords when everyone else had blue jeans, loner
parents whereas everyone else’s parents where social.)
Dan had a route bike. Basically, a beach cruiser
with a significantly longer wheelbase than a Stingray and heavy racks in the
back and on the handlebars for his newspaper sacks. I suppose Dan could have
used one of the stingrays that we were all sitting on in kind of a festival “banana”
seating fashion, but then again I doubt anybody would have agreed: "No man,
I’d be in Dutch if you died on my bike. I'd be grounded forever and ever."
Dan had plenty of room for his approach, but he
timed his peddling wrong—hitting the gutter with one peddle down creating
magnificent sparks behind him! The gutter/peddle business made him lose his
balance and one foot and hand slipped off his bike. He shot by the ramp,
missing it by only an inch, and hit my parent's Albizia tree carving a large chunk
out of the trunk.
In my later years--when Dan had moved down to
SoCal and he was now only a memory to me (to manipulate in my mind at will) I used to
fantasize of him not missing the ramp, but hitting it—launching him with one
hand and leg flailing—into what would be the closest thing I would ever see in-person
to the remarkable footage of Evel Knievel's legendary 1967 Caesar's Palace jump and wipe-out landing.
Super Stu once told me that he thought he was
immortal, that he couldn't die (unlike Dan or my mother’s poor silk tree, or me
and my skin cancer and vertigo, or my father with his medical condition). I
don't know if Super Stu was joking or if it was pure hubris, but when he
decided to do some urban skiing behind my brother's Kawasaki 80 he found out
that at least he could bruise. His crash and rash was spectacular! I only wish
I could have seen it up close and not from down the street. This YouTube video is close to the his epic fail.
Which brings me back to how we all are
mortal—even Super Stu, whether he believed it or not. Sitting in my father’s hospital room hearing about his
ailment and how he has had problems over the last few years or so and has just
adapted to them rather than ask a doctor about them, I am reminded of how
growing old is a tough business.
My father has adapted, but there will be a point
when his body finally fails. I don’t like to think about that. My family is taking
it very well. I have broken down and cried a couple of times when I was alone. When that time comes we will be left with precious memories.
Clear images that will stay with us the rest of our own moral lives, just like
Super Stu’s record trashcan jump and Dan’s near-colossal fail!
--
I have lived with a beard for most of my life. Add the years I wore a mustache and I have had facial hair for nearly two-thirds of my existence. I was always shocked on the rare occasions I cut the beard off and (re)discovered how alarming fat my face really was. Not Renee Zellweger cute, chubby-cheeked, more like General Burkhalter from the 60s-70s television series "Hogan's Heroes."
But it was big cheeks, and big cheeks only. So big, though, that--to paraphrase my wife--my eyes would get lost in my face. Now in my fifties, with pitiless gravity taking over, my weak chin has become a real eye sore. I'm glad this hairless face (sorry for the stubble, folks) is only a temporary thing.
After the operation, scheduled for inside of two weeks, I will grow it all back. Why did I shave it off so soon? Damn good question! Why didn't I let it grow back the minute I noticed I look like a fictitious Nazi or a real quasi-Nazi (see Karl)? Another good question. I'm working on these, dear fans. I'll get back to you.
