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Highlands Today

Evel Knievel

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Stephen Lee Goodman

Published: January 18, 2008

I was 25 feet from Evil Knievel. I almost couldn't believe it.

However, due to years of battering, his body had deteriorated and he couldn't come out of his room.

His wife, Krystal, signed for a massage chair, and we maneuvered it up an elevator and down narrow hallways in a condominium off Old Tampa Bay.

I had been following this American icon for years since his disastrous crash landing at Caesars Palace. I'd seen the movie with George Hamilton portraying Evil and heard him admonish the Easy Rider types who smoked dope and disdained America. His white jump suit with red and blue trim said it all.

However, my clearest memory of Evel is at the Tampa Tribune newsroom when I was a copy boy in the 1970s. Huddled over a wire copy machine, editors, reporters and myself watched in eager anticipation as the rocket-propelled machine sat poised on the edge of Snake River Canyon. Evel had wanted to jump the Grand Canyon, but the U.S. Parks Service wouldn't let him.

Silence. Interminable, silence. Then, ding, ding, ding, ding. Four-bells bulletin. The parachute deployed early, hurling Evel's contraption into the depths of the canyon. He got out okay, but had failed on his mission. Nevertheless, it was a heck of a spectacle, drawing thousands to that remote spot to watch this larger than life man attempt the un-attempted.

That's what he did, attempt the un-attempted. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes not, but he tried again and again. Until he retired in 1980.

Evel died recently, ending an era. Some people say he was crazy. Some say egotistical. In the latter years, they called him a cranky old man. But there will never be another like him. Goodbye Evel. Rest in peace.

Stephen Lee Goodman
Tampa

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