If you grew up in the 70’s this will look familiar.
I will add my story after the video.
It appears that young Terry and I both admired famous stunt man Evel Knievel.
Back in the early 70’s, my Dad went through a spell of racing motorcycles. He had a Yamaha 250 Enduro that he stripped down and raced on the local dirt tracks around the Portland Oregon/ South West Washington area.
Because he was middling good at it, that meant that he would crash the thing once in a while and have to replace parts on it. Things like handlebars and clutch levers.
In 1971, I was 11 years old and my Dad had recently remarried to a woman with 2 boys. That meant me and my brother plus those 2 made 4 boys in the house. They had 2 male cousins that were around quite a bit so that made 6 of us. By that tender age, I was already tearing things apart to see how they worked and I had basically built, as far as I know, the worlds first BMX bike.
Remember, this was in 1971, over 50 years ago.
I took the Banana seat off and put an old Schwynn single seat on it, took the chain guard off, put a knobby back tire on the front and the back and spent a great deal of trial and error making an old set of my dads reject motorcycle handle bars fit on it.
The closest picture I could find was this but the handlebars were a lot wider.
Between the 6 of us, we got into all kinds of trouble. We were always playing ball out in the street and one day I came up with the idea of painting a 100 foot football field with 5 and 10 yard lines painted on both sides of the road out in front of the house. Eventually we added 3 bases and street hockey goals too.
Because I was such a fan of old Evel Knievel, we built a plywood ramp and set it out at the end of this measured out field and we started seeing who could jump the farthest on our bikes.
We did this for quite a while. We lived just off Killingsworth avenue on 48th street, 2 houses off of Killingsworth, which was 4 lanes wide.
One day I got a real long run at the plywood ramp and jumped a measured 32 feet on my home made BMX bike.
Back then, that was a long ways, on the pavement,
Everybody lined up and tried to beat me, My younger brothers gave it a hell of a try but one’s bike took a hard left on impact and he hit a small pear tree head on and actually wound up stuck in the forked trunk when he landed, my other brother’s bike literally broke in half and he ate an asphalt sandwich.
Fucked him up pretty good and when Mom found out how he got so tore up our fun was over for a while.
Meanwhile, there was this old woman who lived across the street who had had her front lawn replanted and was always bitching like hell when one of our balls or hockey pucks would land in her yard and we would run up and get it. This happened quite often. She finally got pissed off enough that she called the city and demanded that they come out and remove all the lines we had painted for our foot ball field.
The joke was on her.
Whoever the guys were that came out to do that either thought we had come up with something cool or they decided that the old bitch needed a good lesson. When we came home from school, all the lines we had painted had been sand blasted off. In the exact places where the lines were.
Now they were permanently etched into the street.
My hat is off to those guys to this day.
So anyway, the kid in the video absolutely reminded me of me, now fifty odd years later and some of the shit we did to entertain ourselves.
Yup, some of the things we did to entertain ourselves. The sun was up, and it wasn’t hailing or sleeting, so outside you went. The only caveat was to be back at supper time.
We did not jump garbage cans, we jumped our friends.
Ah, memories. Coaster brakes. I had a JC Penney copy of a Schwinn Stingray. My thing was seeing how fast I could go. We lived on a hill, with a T intersection at the bottom. One day I pedaled as hard as I could going downhill, and centrifugal force being what it is, my chain came off the sprockets. Good thing there was no cross-traffic on that street at the bottom. I don’t remember the actual crash. Retrograde amnesia, I guess, for those few moments.
I got a springer, blue Stingray around ’64? Ended up blowing out the front end. There was 4 of us on semi rural Bike Patrol, we would go on 40 mile round trip expeditions (occasionally). So. Cal. (foot hills, San Diego County) was paradise, pre-Commie take over.
aaaaaaa. We had Iron Man legs. Some built, but mostly “jumps of opportunity”.
This is choice! Back in the day if the garbageman dint like you he’d dent the fuck outta the can. Had I used cans instead of ‘volunteers’, and dented them up, there was hell to pay!
The difference between kids now and then.
Ban cell phones and computers and these kids today will find out was real fun was.
67 years old and I still have the scars (badges) of honor from my youth.
Look on Youtube for a video by Willie Porter the song “Loose Gravel”
Deacon
Late 70’s early 80’s here. And yeah, I had an old Schwinn that I had to BMX up, poor folk don’t get new fancy bikes.
Grew up out in Estacada, riding the country roads from sun up till dinner time. Looking back on the stupid things we did, it’s surprising we even lived to adulthood.
GD,I grew up in Canby, Same thing, riding all over the place, we had the Willamette, Molalla, Clackamas rivers to play in and explore and east out to Yoder where all the White Russians and Mennonites lived and had epic gang fights and territory squabbles.
That was an awesome video. I was lucky growing up in that my Daddy liked motorbikes. I had a Honda SL 70 at nine. Two years later, I swapped it back to the Honda dealer for an XR75. It was a great bike that saw a lot of use for years. I thought I was Evil Knievel!
I had an “A” frame with factory straight forks, banana seat, small front sprocket and ape hanger handle bars. Oh, and a slick rear tire. My My , how long ago.
I’ve got a 4 foot road rash on my left elbow from a plywood jump in 1973 that you can still see. Missed the landing ramp.
Terry Bolinger is Evel Knievel, and Terry Bollea is Hulk Hogan. What are the odds of THAT? It’s a wonderful world sometimes.
So that was evil in his utes
Oh yeah, you shoulda seen my backyard last weekend, Phil. My old friend Stan brought about fifty vintage dirt bikes over here for storage in this shed he had built, dating from 1971 to about 1983: couple of Husqvarnas, couple of Pentons, a Zundapp that was absolutely MINT, a CZ, Stan’s old Bultaco Pursang 250 he used to race MX back in our youth, several Yammies including a pristine 1973 MX100 exactly the one I rode back in the day, three (!) Honda Elsinores including one of the legendary Red Rockets, Suzukis, Kawas, you name it.
It was AWESOME.
That sounds like a decent retirement fund to me!
Wow.
Love the banana seat, getta haircut BOY.
Of all the things we ‘SHOULD’VE’ done:When’s the best time to have planted a tree? 20 years ago. When’s the second best time? Right now.