Evel

by Leigh Montville

  He had been inspired when he saw awards handed out to successful salesmen at a subregional sales meeting in Casper, Wyoming. Why wasn’t he winning those awards? He had made up his mind to move into the game! That was half the battle right there! Everything else was easy! You could do it too!

  “First of all, have a lot of fun,” he advised. “Be serious in your selling, but at the same time laugh and have fun … Know everything you can about the Policy … Know the Sales Talks, the Rebuttals, how to get permission … Know what is really meant by working Systematically.

  “All I was doing was what I’ve been told to do …

  “I’LL MAKE YOU ANOTHER PROMISE,” he finalized in capital letters. “AT OUR NEXT REGIONAL SALES MEETING, YOU’LL HAVE ANOTHER LETTER TELLING YOU HOW I BROKE BOTH OF MY OWN RECORDS ALONG WITH THE 1964 NATIONAL SALES RECORD.

  “THAT’S A PROMISE.

  “BOB KNIEVEL.”

  The triumph did not last. He didn’t take his own advice to put his head down, work harder, and good things might come. He was the rookie who hits a big homer, the actor who scores an Oscar nomination the first time out, flush with success, who immediately looks for a new contract to replace the previous contract. He wanted to talk to W. Clement Stone himself but settled for Matt Walsh, the international sales manager. He asked to be named a vice president.

  “I’ll break every sales record in the history of this company,” he promised.

  Walsh came back with a negative answer. Protocols had to be followed. There were other people who had worked longer with the company who already were in line for that kind of job. Nobody was promoted from sales right to vice president. Stay with the program. Do well. Promotions will come soon enough.

  Knievel quit.

  The lack of logic to his decision stunned his contemporaries. He was built for selling insurance. A lot of aspiring salesmen went through Combined’s payroll, sent home because they were tongue-tied, shy, couldn’t close the deal. This guy closed every deal. He was a master at this business, already making good money, sure to make more. How could he quit?

  “Mr. Stone would talk about a thing called the ‘Mastodonian Instinct,’ ” Matt Tonning said. “You reach a certain pinnacle in what you do, then you can’t stop yourself from just screwing up, losing it all. Some people are like that. They can’t help themselves. That was Bob. That was how he operated. He didn’t have a backup in his personality.”

  Maybe that explanation was a little complicated. Maybe Knievel simply had learned what he had to learn. Maybe the excitement of the insurance business wasn’t exciting enough. Maybe he didn’t give a shit.

  The lessons of Combined and W. Clement Stone did stay with him for the rest of his life. They could be heard in his words, could be seen in his actions. Conceive and achieve. He could sell. He would come back a couple of times to the company when he needed fast money, desperation trumping pride, but never with ambition or commitment. The important lessons from Combined already had been learned. He had the method for success. He knew what to do when he found what he wanted to do. He had to find what he wanted to do.

  His next job was selling motorcycles.

  7 Moses Lake, WA

  He was a mess when he showed up at Barry Queen’s house on this particular morning in the summer of 1964 in Moses Lake, Washington. He had so many bumps, scabs, abrasions, that it seemed as if he had bumps, scabs, and abrasions on his bumps, scabs, and abrasions. He was a cartoon version of a cartoon version of a character that has undergone a physical mishap. There may have been a cast on at least one extremity. Perhaps two casts on two extremities.

  “What happened to you?” Barry Queen asked.

  Bob Knievel explained:

  He had been riding his Honda Scrambler 250 last night …

  He had a logging chain with him …

  He wanted to see what kind of sparks the logging chain could generate off the road if he dragged it behind his Honda Scrambler 250 …

  He especially wanted to see if more sparks came off the chain if he drove faster and faster …

  It all was true. The sparks came off the chain. More speed meant more sparks. He came down the streets of Moses Lake like a noisy, fiery vision from hell. He was roaring, outrageous. Everything was perfect …

  Alas, the end of the chain bounced under the back wheel of a parked car …

  The chain immediately became taut …

  Well, hell, this was the result …

  “I was lying in the street,” Bob Knievel said. “All broken and bloody. It wasn’t pretty.”

  One of the most successful campaigns in American advertising history was being waged in the summer of 1964. “You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda” was the slogan. Those eight words, eleven syllables, had revolutionized the motorcycle business.

  Devised by the Grey Advertising Agency, the campaign centered on pictures of housewives and businessmen, postmen and preachers, college kids, ordinary-looking people riding Honda’s clean and ordinary-looking motorcycles. Everybody laughed, everybody smiled, everybody looked as if he or she lived off a diet of sunshine and Jesus. The image of the motorcycle rider had been taken from the Hells Angels and Marlon Brando and The Wild Ones and planted in the middle of Main Street, U.S.A. The effects of the ads were phenomenal. U.S. sales of Honda motorcycles now were in the midst of a jump from 40,000 in a year to 200,000 in a year. That was a 500 percent increase. Americans wanted to buy a Honda.

  Barry Queen, an enlisted man in the Air Force, had bought a Honda. The first “nicest person” he had met was Bob Knievel, who didn’t look like any of those people in the advertising pictures. Bob Knievel had sold him the Honda.

  Then he went riding with him.

  “He’d just show up at the house and say, ‘Let’s go,’ and I went,” Queen said. “My wife wouldn’t want me to go because I wasn’t too smart. I’d do whatever he did. I’d crash and bleed. We’d just roar around. Go out to the sand dunes. He crashed one time and had a cut on his leg that went so deep I could see his shinbone. I’d never seen anything like that.”

  The nicest people in Moses Lake drove fast.

  Knievel had ridden bikes for years in weekend races just outside Spokane, made friends with some of the locals, and when one of the better riders, Darrell Triber, offered him a job selling Hondas at the Triber family’s Spokane dealership, he had moved his family out of Butte. Three kids in four years made this a substantial undertaking, but when Triber offered a better job after a few months, manager of a new dealership in Moses Lake, Knievel moved everyone again. Linda found a job at a hardware store on Monroe Street.

  He latched right on to the “You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda” approach. He tried to sell to everyone he met, motorcycles replacing insurance in importance in a potential customer’s daily life. He tried to whip up interest, enthusiasm, get known in town. He hired a local high school English teacher and wrestling coach, Gary Frey, to help.

  “I went in the dealership in Moses Lake when it had been open about two weeks,” Gary Frey said. “I had an old Harley 125, where you had to mix in kerosene and oil with the gas, and I wanted to move up. I’d also had five kids in six years, so I didn’t have any money. I just went down there to see if I could work a deal with this new guy.”

  Knievel saw the bike. Knievel laughed at him.

  “Well, what can I do to get something I’d be proud to drive?” Frey asked.

  “You can work for me,” Knievel said.

  Frey had never met anyone like Knievel. The guy was charming and devious and crazy. All at once. He not only would say anything, but do anything. He could sell like nobody’s business, close a deal on most customers who wavered, but you couldn’t trust him for a moment. He was danger and fun and full of himself. Every day around him was a day at a strange circus.

  An example. He had a standing offer for arm-wrestling matches: he would put up a Honda 50 motorcycle against $100, winner take all. News about this deal filtered around the bars and restaurants, high sch
ools and college campuses, in the state of Washington. The starting price for a Honda 50 was $245, so the bet was more than two-to-one. A succession of beefy young men showed up at the dealership, $100 in hand. Knievel whipped them, one after another.

  A report that he was going to take on yet another challenger would run through the neighborhood, and a small crowd would assemble to see if the streak would be broken. Maybe a hundred people, maybe more, would slide inside the shop, stuffing the place. Frey suggested selling seats.

  “He had a strong right forearm,” Frey said. “Maybe from hockey, I don’t know. He just wore out those kids. After a while, they didn’t come around as often, because he’d beaten them all.”

  Frey had a next-door neighbor who was a sheet-metal worker. The sheet-metal worker was a big guy. He never had been interested in the bet because he was not a motorcycle rider. He was, however, a boat enthusiast. Frey told him that Knievel had taken a boat in trade for a motorcycle.

  The sheet-metal worker, the big guy, appeared at the dealership with $200 to bet because the boat was more expensive than the motorcycle. Ten minutes later, he walked out, still with his $200, plus a boat.

  “There were only three people in the shop,” Frey said. “I was the third one. I’ll give this to Bob: he didn’t complain, didn’t try to get out of the bet. The only thing he did was get my neighbor and me to swear that we would never tell what happened.”

  Knievel’s big promotional idea was to build a racetrack. He figured it would stimulate sales of both bikes and accessories, give kids a place to ride. Everyone would win with a racetrack, especially Moses Lake Honda. Where can we build it? Well, Frey told him, there were a lot of farms around, vacant areas left fallow as farmers rotated crops. What farm would be a good choice? Well, we could check out the farms where the Moses Lake wrestlers lived. Well, what are we waiting for?

  The site turned out to be a corner of the farm owned by the father of Moses Lake wrestler Billy Richardson. Billy Richardson’s father saw no harm, the field just sitting there for a couple of years. The equipment to lay out the track came from the Moses Lakes public works department, although the public works department really didn’t know about the project. Frey was also the track coach at the high school, so he had access to a roller, a grader, a backhoe. The work took place on weekends and summer nights, as Knievel recruited local motorcyclists to help. The eventual result was a good-looking but very dusty quarter-mile track.

  “We need to oil it down,” Knievel decided.

  A truck from Standard Oil somehow appeared, another quiet Knievel deal, spread oil on the track. Billy Richardson’s father wondered out loud about the effects on future crops, but Knievel assured him that all would be fine. The oil, he said, would just wash away. Maybe it even would help the crops.

  After all of this hard work, the track was ready to open for business and shenanigans. All it needed was an opening day attraction. There would be opening races, of course, but there should be something more for spectators.

  “I was driving in my car,” Gary Frey said. “The announcer on the radio started describing the races and a big show at the new Moses Lake track. The feature event, he said, was Moses Lake English teacher and wrestling coach Gary Frey driving through some flaming boards. I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘Oh, no, that’s never going to happen.’ ”

  Frey was firm. This was too dangerous, too stupid. He had never done anything like this. He had five kids. His wife would kill him. Flaming boards were regulation pieces of particleboard, four feet by eight feet, set up like so many freestanding closed doors at intervals on the racetrack. The pieces of particleboard would be set on fire. An adventurous motorcycle rider (supposedly him) would crash through the burning obstacles at a high rate of speed. (Maybe.) There was no way in the world he would do this.

  Knievel presented a list of reasons why going through flaming boards would be fun, safe, profitable. Frey said no. Knievel said he would do it himself, except he had to run the races, run the show. No. Knievel said Frey had to do it because he had the local big name. No. Knievel challenged his manhood. No, no, no.

  Then L. V. Shaw, the district superintendent of schools for Moses Lake, called. He told Frey that he had heard the ads on the radio and he was calling to forbid him to take part in this escapade. Forbid? Frey heard the word, became angry. Who was this guy to forbid? This was the summer. Forbid? He called Knievel.

  Yes.

  They picked out a bike from the trade-ins that would have the best chance of success, a big battering ram of a Harley. The bike had a hand shift, and Frey drove it for days, working out the gears. Knievel told him he should be doing forty miles per hour to blast through the board, but the bike was so big that he might get away with going a little slower.

  On the grand opening day of races at the Moses Lake track, wearing Bob Knievel’s helmet and leathers, Frey nervously tried to get the Harley up to speed. The races had broken down the oiled topsoil, made the dirt loose and the motorcycle slow, and the best he could do was twenty-five miles per hour. Knievel told him that was fine. Fine? The teacher-coach looked into the small crowd and saw his wife and children, many of his wrestlers, all with “a look of consternation and worry” on their faces. He sighed deeply, rolled down the track, speedometer still under twenty-five, flaming boards in front of him … and pulled away at the last second. The people began to boo.

  Boo?

  He came around again, gave the Harley as much gas as possible, sort of hung down to one side to protect himself from the big collision, hit the first flaming board at twenty-five miles per hour, crash, then the second and third, crash and crash, and came out the other side. Knievel was right. The bike was big enough to do the job. Frey was alive and whole. The Moses Lake track was open in style. The people now cheered.

  Frey told Knievel he was happy that this craziness was finished at last. Knievel told Frey he had booked the show in coming weeks in Yakima and Sunnyside. Frey said, “Bullshit.”

  In coming weeks, he blasted through flaming boards in Yakima and Sunnyside. The people cheered again.

  Saturday mornings soon became a prime time for racing on the new track. There was nothing formal to the proceedings, just show up and ride. Fool around. Slide and get dirty. When the track became worn down again, soft and slow and dusty, needed to be rolled one more time, the riders moved to the Corral Tavern, a bar on Broadway, Moses Lake, to drink away the effects of that dust.

  Four or five riders were left at the Corral on a Saturday not too long after the grand opening at the track. They had been there for a while. Knievel was not a particularly big drinker, but already was known to do strange things in Moses Lake when the beers piled up. (Example: riding with the logging chain, making sparks.) On this Saturday, the beers had piled up.

  Part of the entertainment had been watching a couple of workers unload a flatbed trailer across the street, bringing appliances into Swartz’s Electric store. The job was almost finished now, maybe one or two boxes left on the truck, the ramp still attached.

  Knievel excused himself from the table. He went outside, put on his helmet, kicked his motorcycle into action, put it into gear, stepped hard on the gas, hurtled across Broadway, up the ramp, and onto the back of the flatbed. Ta-da.

  His fellow drinkers applauded the show.

  This was impressive.

  He then proceeded to do stationary wheelies on the flatbed, holding the bike steady. This was also impressive, more impressive … except he didn’t hold the bike steady enough.

  The back wheel caught traction somewhere on the flatbed. Maybe it hit a piece of tape. Maybe it hit the tops of a couple of screws. Something happened. The motorcycle shot forward, Knievel on top, and flew through the plate-glass window of Swartz’s Electric.

  Flew through the plate-glass window of Swartz’s Electric!

  The fellow drinkers ran out from the restaurant and across the street. Knievel was inside the store, stretched out on the showroom floor. Glass was everywhere
. He stood up, checked the exposed parts of his body. He didn’t have a scratch on him.

  Didn’t have a scratch on him! Magic.

  This was another moment. This was another escape. He could do anything and somehow land on his feet. He was invincible. This was further proof that he was bulletproof.

  “I seriously think it was right here that he got the idea that he lived a charmed life,” Gary Frey said. “He went through Swartz’s window and nothing happened. I think this opened him up to everything that came afterward.”

  He did apologize to Mr. Swartz. Mr. Swartz said he had insurance.

  A charmed life, it was.

  On Monday morning, Knievel started building a ramp. He told Frey he was going to jump over some rattlesnakes.

  “I’m going to jump over some mountain lions and some rattlesnakes” was what he said.

  “Where are you going to get mountain lions and rattlesnakes?” was what Frey said.

  “There’s a guy up in Coulee City,” Knievel said. “He has a roadside zoo. I want you to go up there. Get him to bring the mountain lions and the snakes down to Moses Lake.”

  Knievel had hinted that he was going to perform at the second set of races at Moses Lake. He saw the reception Frey received for going through the flaming boards. Frey became a local hero. Knievel wanted that kind of attention for himself. No flaming boards, this was his trick.

  Frey, relieved to be free from the Harley and the flaming boards, still wasn’t happy about the trip to Coulee City. He didn’t like going on the road for Knievel, because he knew as soon as he left Moses Lake, Knievel would show up at his house and try to romance his wife, Rita.

  Frey had seen it happen again and again. There was a pathological streak to Knievel’s womanizing. Friendships meant nothing. He pursued all women all day, every day, twenty-four hours per day. The schoolteacher was astounded at how many women Knievel caught. Good-looking women. Married women. He knew that Knievel didn’t worry about consequences. He was surprised that the women also didn’t worry.