Baby Boomers: The Strangest Generation
A light look at growing up in the 60's and 70's, TV, music, family life, politics, drugs are just a few of the topics we cover. Whether you're a Boomer or not there was no other time like the Strangest Generation.
Baby Boomers: The Strangest Generation
Evel Knievel: The Daredevil Blueprint for Seventies Manhood
Step back with me to a time when the definition of masculinity was as shifting as the tides and every young man was searching for his place in the world. I unfold tales from my teenage years during the tumultuous mid-70s, wrestling with the legacy of my father's wartime heroism and the contrasting peace-and-love ethos of the era. Through the haze of Vietnam War protests and the sounds of Alice Cooper and Creedence Clearwater Revival, I found an unlikely role model in the fearless Evel Knievel—a man who defied death with a charisma that cut through the confusion and offered a different kind of blueprint for manhood.
Join us as we explore the enigmatic life of Evel Knievel, whose death-defying antics and complex persona captured the imagination of a generation caught between old war tales and the search for a new peace. From his iconic jump at Caesar's Palace to his candid interviews on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Knievel lived a life of authenticity that made him an emblem of raw, uncompromising manhood. We'll consider the dichotomy of his off-stage battles and the principles he lived by, and how these reflections helped to shape my own understanding of masculinity. Evel Knievel's legacy, fraught with personal contradictions yet undeniably impactful, offers a nostalgic yet insightful look at the courage to live by one's own terms.
Take a minute and think about what it was like for a young teenage kid growing up in the late 60s, mid 70s boy becoming a man, teenage guy, mid-70s boy becoming a man, teenage guy and the definition of what a man should be in this era. So your father's a war hero, part of the greatest generation, world War II, korea. You're watching Clint Eastwood on TV kill bad guys. You're thinking, hey, that's the way to go. You know, tough guy, badass, bad MF-er. You know, my dad said. And then you're watching the Vietnam War on TV with your dad. Your dad was overseas. He fought in Korea in World War II. And you're watching Vietnam on TV and you're seeing the protests. And you're watching Vietnam on TV and you're seeing the protests. And you're seeing the hippies and you're seeing the four dead in Ohio. And you're seeing Timothy Leary and you're watching them march on Washington and they're preaching peace, love and marijuana. Tune in turn on drop out. But your dad is a badass Marine, right? You're not old enough to go to Vietnam. You're not going to Vietnam because you're born in at least me'm born in 1960. I'm not going. It's winding down, but I'm watching it on TV and I'm watching these guys come home and they're not war heroes, these Vietnam guys. They're not coming home to parades, they're not kissing women in Times Square and being a more memorialized as heroes. They're coming home and they're getting spit on, they're going through terrible PTSD, they're being accused of mass genocide in Vietnam.
Speaker 1:And you're 15. And you're saying to yourself as a young boy what the hell is a man? What is a man? What am I? Am I Clint Eastwood? Am I Tiny Tim? Am I meditating and doing yoga and preaching love, peace and marijuana? And it's confusing and you're searching for an identity and you just don't know where to go.
Speaker 1:Alice Cooper sang a song. The lyrics were I'm 18, I don't know who I am. Am I a boy or am I a man? I'm like, yeah, I dig that. I understand what he's saying, but the dude's name is Alice and he's wearing mascara. I don't know. Is he cool? Is he right? Am I relating to him? Is he? You know the? Who is talking about singing about Vietnam, fogarty, creedence.
Speaker 1:Everybody's dissing Vietnam and the vets. My dad's like standing up for America. I'm not sure what my dad is thinking about Vietnam, but we're watching Vietnam on the TV every night. It was like watching a sport event. They had scores. Viet Cong met the 5th Battalion of the Marines in Khe Sanh and 411 Viet Cong died and 32 Americans wounded or injured. It's like a game and I'm just confused.
Speaker 1:Who's who's what? What is what? Who am I supposed to be? Am I supposed to be? And in the end, my dad was always just going to be the, the um guide light to my life. But the conflicting personas that were given to us about what it was to be a man were difficult to navigate and really, really confusing for us. Am I good or am I evil? Do I take the side of love and peace or do I take the side of? I'm a badass American that's not going to tolerate shit and we're going to arm up and invade and impose our will on the rest of the world.
Speaker 1:And I just was looking for somebody who was honest, who believed in something, stuck to it and lived by it and showed it. I didn't need a new movie star. I didn't need Clint Eastwood. I didn't need Charles Bronson. They were actors, right. They were just fake guys shooting fake bullets at fake people. I wasn't buying it. I didn't need fake heroes, hippie heroes, abby Hoffman. I didn't need Timothy Leary. I didn't need that whole fake love and peace hippie stuff. That really just kind of deteriorated into a complete mess by the end of the 60s.
Speaker 1:But then came this guy, this weird, strange guy that just cut through all the bullshit and said this is what a man is. And I'm not sure he was even right, but I'm not sure he was even sane. But his name was Evil friggin' Knievel. And I don't know what you all remember about Evil Knievel. All I remember was the jumps and the craziness and the lunacy and the willingness to just sacrifice his body for God knows what Money, pride, manliness. I wasn't sure what he was doing. I still can't figure out what he was doing, but I just knew that he believed in something and stuck to it and really and truly. I just knew that when Evel Knievel was going to be on Wilder Sports or when he was going to jump or whatever he was going to do, everybody I knew was going to be glued to that TV set. So I started researching the podcast, thinking about Evel Knievel's jumps, looking at his jumps and his stunts.
Speaker 1:And if you don't know or you don't remember, Evel Knievel rode a motorcycle. He was a Butte Montana, dirt Midwest kid, very little education, had a motorcycle and somehow figured out that he could build a ramp, drive that motorcycle up the ramp, jump over shit, big shit, build a ramp at the other end and land that bike and sell tickets. And when he was going to be on the Wide World of Sports or he was going to be on any kind of show, everybody was watching and we were watching to see if he was going to make the jump and we were also watching in a ghoulish kind of way to see him crash. So let me just back up a little bit and just tell you what this guy did. What he would do he would go in, like the Houston Astrodome, build a ramp from the top, orange seats all the way down, line up 14 buses, come down the slope from the top of the Astrodome, go down, hit the ramp, fly over the 14 buses and he would supposedly hit the other ramp with his rear wheel and land safely. Drive around the stadium pop wheelies. Drive around the stadium pop wheelies.
Speaker 1:But it didn't really happen like that. Quite often what actually happened a lot of the times was he would jump these buses and cars and sharks, tanks and rattlesnake pits and he would not make it. He would hit. He tried to jump the fountains at the uh caesar's palace in vegas and uh, his rear wheel and you can watch this stuff on youtube any night he would jump in. In this particular instance, he almost makes it. His rear wheel hits the tip of the landing ramp and down His motorcycle topples over him. He just gets annihilated. He breaks several bones and he did this a lot of times.
Speaker 1:That's why I wonder what was the spectacle? What were we looking for? Were we watching? Were we cheering for him to make it, or were we cheering for him to watch the disaster that was coming? I'm not sure. It's human nature to gawk at tragedy to some degree, and it's human nature to root on for the guy doing the impossible.
Speaker 1:All I know is that this guy wasn't an actor. He wasn't Russell Crowe in Gladiator, that was always going to win. He wasn't Clint Eastwood. He was just a guy. He dressed like Elvis. He always made a speech before he jumped about America and how great America was. He always told kids in his pre-jump speeches to stay off drugs. Yet he was a raging alcoholic that had to have a liver transplant, and he confesses that he did a couple of shots before every jump and he made a lot of jumps that ended in disaster and it's controversial about how many bones he broke and how many times. But this dude broke a lot of bones, time after time after time on TV and he would tour, he would do a jump a week all over. He was getting pretty rich from doing all this stuff but he was sacrificing his body.
Speaker 1:And the more I researched Evel Knievel, the less I was interested in the actual jumps of the performance and the more I was interested in his philosophy and his life and his reasons for doing what he did, reasons for doing what he did. And it was like he was a strong guy. He obviously had a death wish. He obviously loved attention. He obviously had a reason to jump because he was making tons of money. But he knew like two out of four jumps he was gonna friggin' crash Concussions, collarbones, two broke ankles, broke wrists, uh, eight Couple broke pelvises. He would spend months in the hospital and then he would get up and just complete his contracts and continue to jump.
Speaker 1:He stood hard for America. He was very against drugs, he would tell you before he would jump like 17 buses. Kids always wear a helmet when you ride a motorcycle. He was anti that all the way. He was an admitted alcoholic that preached against drugs. He was very patriotic. But I always thought he was genuine in everything he did, even though he was sort of hypocritical. How do you be a guy that's against drugs when you're drinking so much that you need a new liver? You know he had a code. He had a strong set of rules that he lived by, set of rules that he lived by, but those rules were kind of friggin' fucked up.
Speaker 1:I live in Fort Lauderdale and there's an old-time yacht in Fort Lauderdale that stays parked there and when you take the water taxi tour they pull up to this yacht. You know, circa 1975. It doesn't look like a yacht nowadays 76-foot helicopter pad. It's square, it it's old, it looks like something out of the 70s. And the guy tells you well, this is Evel Knievel's yacht and he was a big time gambler and he lost this yacht in a poker game to his accountant when he went all in in the living room of the yacht and lost it. Now, if you look at, that's what they tell you on the tour, but if you look at the YouTube, it's more like when he jumped the fountains in Caesar's Palace and Dan Miller killed himself, wound up out on the street through Caesar's Palace, out on some street in Vegas, got him, went to a poker game with the guy that owns Caesar's Pails and bet the yacht on a poker hand and lost it there. It's controversial and it's not that important. It's just interesting that the guy was such a risk taker that he would bet his yacht on a poker hand, that the guy was such a risk taker that he would bet his yacht on a poker hand. So what do you figure?
Speaker 1:Guy like this man dead man, dead man, walking, jumping cars jumping, frigging stuff on fire, crashing. All the time. His family is like begging him to stop. He can't stop. He is committed to this principle of patriotism, manliness, anti-crime, anti-drugs, anti-crime, anti-drugs. Yet he's an alcoholic and even though the contradictions are there, I always thought that he was honest. I always thought that he was true to his beliefs. I never thought that he was phony Like Charles Bronson. You know, good actor, great actor, but he was a friggin' actor. You know, he got fake shot. He fake shot people. Lenny, he's a great guy, love his movies. Dirty Harry, great. You know, self Arnold Schwarzenegger, this dude walked the wonk.
Speaker 1:He'd break seven bones and make the next show in friggin' Poughkeepsie to jump seven more with a dislocated shoulder and missing four teeth. I mean, he was a man's man, right, I couldn't understand it, but he was true to his word. And you know, the whole jump would take all of ten seconds. He'd fly through the air. So when he was going to be on TV he had to put on a pre-show. He would pop wheelies. He would take his son out, they would pop wheelies. He would race through the auditorium or the parking lot or whatever, and go up to the top of that ramp and just get to the top and just hit the brakes and not go over it. Then he'd back down, do some more wheelies, go and go, you know, just build up the tension for the 10 seconds that we were all waiting for, and then he would jump and he would make it or he wouldn't. But he always stood by his word Until he didn't.
Speaker 1:He ran out of stuff to do. He couldn't jump any farther, he couldn't do anything else. What else could he do? Like light himself on fire and jump, you know, jump into the ocean. So he comes up with this scheme he's going to jump a mile across Snake River Canyon in Utah or somewhere, I'm not sure where. But they won't let him do it. They're like, no, you can't do this. They won't let him do it. They're like, no, you can't do this. So he buys both sides of Stank River Canyon and he says this is my property, I can do whatever I want on it.
Speaker 1:And he builds this thing, this rocket ship. That is not even a motorcycle. It looks like a little tiny jet, it's got two wheels and he's got to fly a mile over. It's got a parachute. He's got to fly a mile over this canyon. And I remember watching it with my mom and dad when it came on and everybody knew this is just frigging impossible.
Speaker 1:They showed the ramp. The ramp that he had to go over from the beginning part was just straight up in the air and this thing, I guess, had jet propulsion or whatever. And we're looking at this stuff and we're saying there is no way this guy's going to do this. And I never detected an ounce of phoniness with this guy, but as a 15-year-old kid I'm looking at it, everybody's looking at it. Everybody's saying this is a hoax, this is this guy's last chance and as much as he stood by his principles, I think he's selling out. And so he gets in this little two-wheeled jet and he goes up this friggin' ramp like 80 degrees up into the air at an incredible amount of speed. And you could see that the ramp was too high. The trajectory was not gonna allow him to go across this mile-long canyon, mile-wide canyon. It was going straight up in the air. And like three seconds in, after he's off the ramp, the frigging parachutes blow out and he floats safely down to the edge of the canyon and his people come and get him.
Speaker 1:And I said at that point to myself man, evil, you were a great dude, but in the end you scammed us. You knew you couldn't make it. We knew you couldn't make it. I'm a physics major but I could see you. There was no friggin' way anybody could even comprehend that you were going to make this thing. And it disappointed me about evil. But I don't want to leave you with a bad taste.
Speaker 1:You know, the guy probably needed money. He was a degenerate gambler and a bad drinker, but he stood for something. He was a tough guy. He kind of helped define manliness, when being a man was sort of a confusing thing. He was just I'm a man. This is what I do. I break bones. I love America, I hate drugs, I hate the Hells Angels. I'm gonna jump this thing come hell or high water.
Speaker 1:And in the end he kind of blew it with me with that scam. With that scam he's kind of the last of the manly men, but he wasn't a fake manly man. He was authentic. He was authentically crazy and narcissistic, with a death wish and a craving for attention and money and adrenaline. And you know, you see these guys now on YouTube that do this crazy stuff, this flying through the air with these skin suits and these mountain climbers that climb cliffs. So the daredevils are still out there. So the daredevils are still out there, but they do it more for their own personal reasons.
Speaker 1:Eva was a showman, a daredevil, a man's man, and when everybody knew Eva was jumping, everybody my age was watching and I'm not saying he was right or he was wrong anti-Vietnam War protester man, the hippie man that stood for love and peace, and there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I bought into that too From the just badass MF-er guy that isn't acting, who is really putting his life on the line every day, as crazy as he was and he gave me and like Evel Knievel or I, could be like John Lennon. I got nothing around John Lennon, but you know, give multi-rich, you know. But he set a balance between those two poles where guys like me could find somewhere in between when I could be tough, I could be a man, I could be compassionate, I could be a provider and I could be against violence. I saw the whole gamut and I landed somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1:But I'll tell you what man you want to see some crazy shit. Go on YouTube and watch evil Knievel, do his stuff, watch his interview with Johnny Carson and you'll get a really, really nostalgic, cool view into the guy's life and it'll bring back memories. But you'll get a more in-depth look at the man's inner psyche that you probably didn't have when you were 15, 16, 17. So that's it. Evil Knievel Good guy, kind of crazy, never hurt nobody but himself. My name's John Ward. This is the Baby Boomers, the Strangest Generation, and I hope you like the show. Y'all have a good night now, thank you.