Linda, who admitted later that she should have gotten a divorce, had all the signs of an abused woman. She certainly was verbally abused. He barked, she jumped. He delivered his tortured explanations about why it was all right for him to sleep with other women, indeed, he glorified his relationships with them, boasted about them, while maintaining he could still love his wife, his “girl.” Linda, at least in public, accepted it all, said nothing.
“I understand the romance, the balls-to-the-wall thing about him,” one female neighbor said. “My father worked in the mines. I was, like, thirteen years old, and I said, ‘Oh, boy, Evel’s going to jump some more cars.’ I was sort of sarcastic. My father was upset. He admired him. A lot of those guys in the mines did …
“But he beat his wife. That was not romance. Everyone in town knew it. What kind of a man does that? Linda is just the nicest person. Linda is class. Evel was not class.”
His relationship with his kids also seemed to come out of a drill instructor’s manual. He was autocratic, tough. The emerging defiant one was Robbie. Kelly and Tracey tended to follow his orders. Robbie would shake his head in agreement at whatever pronouncement his father made, then do exactly the opposite as soon as his father left. He was, more than one person said, exactly like his father, payback for a lifetime of bad behavior.
“That Robbie, he’s driving me crazy,” Knievel would say. He would mention that Robbie was bitten by a rottweiler as a young child. Maybe that was it. The rottweiler.
When he got around to putting some of his new money into a home for the family, Knievel mostly built a temple to himself. He picked the place, a nine-acre lot on the sixteenth fairway at the Butte Country Club, in April of 1972. He paid $100,000 for it in four installments to the Lakeshore Development Corporation over the next eight months. He then picked the style of the house, a ranch, and picked out the stone that should be used and picked out the curtains. If this was to be his dream house, then the features should come out of his own dream.
“I designed the whole thing,” Knievel told Betty Sue Raymond, the women’s editor of the Montana Standard, for a story on March 3, 1974.
Though finishing touches were still to be added when he showed Betty Sue the $200,000 house, most of the work already had been done. Knievel’s sense of style—Linda told Betty Sue that he made great choices, even when he kept changing his mind—was obvious. The shag carpet that ran through the house was a burgundy wine color. The bathroom decor was a mixture of blacks and golds, right down to the black-and-gold fixtures. Heavy gold drapes were hung in the living room. A seven-foot circular bed dominated the bedroom, a mirrored headboard part of the picture. A giant cedar closet off the bedroom held Knievel’s many fur coats.
“Grandma just loves to put on my mink coat and go in and lay on that king-sized bed,” he said.
There was a room for Emma, for Grandma, when she wanted to stay. Ignatius had passed away in 1972. There were rooms for each of the kids, red fixtures in their bathroom. An artist was going to paint a picture of the sixteenth green at the Butte Country Club in the exercise room, a mural that would be in plain view while Knievel pounded golf balls off the Astroturf floor into a net. A stone wall surrounded the place, heavy wrought-iron gates in front, Knievel’s signature “EK” prominent in the design. There would be stables, a putting green, a place to land a helicopter.
A second artist, not the one who painted the mural, worked with Montana travertine rock to create a picture of a man on a motorcycle behind the wet bar. The image of another man, no, probably the same man and same motorcycle, was created on the perimeter of the cathedral window in the living room. There was little doubt about who lived in this place and what he did for a living.
The house would become a stop for whatever tourists came through Butte, so Knievel added a guard shack in the front, staffed twenty-four hours per day. The locals mostly would drive past and wonder what was inside. The latest rumor was a heated horse arena. The house was a subject of conversation.
“I had a printing business,” Mike Byrnes said. “Knievel called me up and asked if I could print some elaborate gold checks for him. He was smart. He knew that if he gave people a gold check with his signature on it, they might not cash it, save it for the autograph. I wasn’t much interested in printing the checks, I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole, but I wanted to see the place.
“I went in. He was sitting in the living room at a big glass table. There was a silver telephone. The phone rang. Evel listened. Then he said, ‘I’m my own agent. I don’t care if you worked with Sinatra and Dean Martin. Now get off my fucking phone.’ ”
The place where he could be found most often in Butte was outside his new living room window. The Butte Country Club was 6,343 yards of challenge, fun, aggravation, fast-talking, high-finance, white-knuckle excitement. The characters from the bars would gather when he was in town, and new characters would arrive, and golf would be played as if it were blood sport.
Knievel was on the course almost every day he was home. Noisy declarations would be made. Money in startling amounts would change hands. The daredevil would be the pacesetter, the trendsetter, the certified star of the show … which was exactly what he expected to be.
He played as low as a six or seven handicap at one time, fell all the way back to eighteen at another, but ability was almost a secondary asset in his version of the game. Composure was everything. How well could a man keep his hands steady when he played for money? How much money would make him shake? This was daredevil golf. Knievel claimed to reporters that he would play against Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, anyone, for $10,000 a hole. He said the famous golfers would shake like anyone else.
“They would find it different when they weren’t playing for Bob Hope’s, Bing Crosby’s, Glen Campbell’s, Dean Martin’s, or Andy Williams’s money,” he said. “It’s different when it comes out of your own pocket when you lose.
“Everybody has his own choking price, but I play $2,000 a hole with two guys every day I play. And we pay $1,500 into the kitty for every sand trap you hit, every water hazard, and every out of bounds. I’ve lost $60,000 on a round of golf. When Nicklaus or Palmer says he ‘lost’ $10,000, he merely means he didn’t win it. I lost it.”
The side bets changed the way people played. That was the key to daredevil golf. The opponent, thinking about the money he could lose, would have to alter his game to stay away from the out of bounds, from the trap, from the water. The Knievel theory was that he, stout of heart, steady of hand, fat of wallet, would not be worried about these distractions.
The theory, alas, sometimes did not hold true.
“A guy once rode around in the cart with Knievel all day, didn’t swing a club, and won $17,000 from him,” Ed Zemljak said. “Knievel would keep making these bets … ‘I’ll get a par on this next hole’ or ‘I’ll get out of this sand trap in one shot’ … and kept losing them. The other guy never left the cart. He won $17,000 in eighteen holes.”
Zemljak, who went to both grammar school and high school with Knievel in Butte, was a six-time state amateur champion in Montana. Knievel would sign him up to be his partner in assorted big-money matches. Zemljak wouldn’t bet. Knievel would bet for both of them. Zemljak would find himself trying to make a putt for $5,000 of Knievel’s money. It was a certain kind of pressure, putting for Knievel’s money.
“I don’t think I ever played a round of golf with him that he didn’t break a club,” Zemljak said. “You had to watch out. He’d throw the club at the golf cart. He threw a club at the cart once, a guy jumped out just in time. The club came right through the cart, in one side, out the other. Would have killed the guy.
“Knievel would break his putter mostly. But he’d also break the driver. He’d also break the irons. He broke just about all of them.”
The daredevil would stop at one of the other houses along the course, run inside to call Linda in this pre-cell-phone age to have her bring another putter, driver, seven-iron, whate
ver he needed, from his own house. Sometimes he would tell her to bring another $2,000. She would find him on the course to replenish his supplies. He didn’t drink much while he played, but when he hit the clubhouse, the Wild Turkey factor was added. Zemljak, who didn’t drink, would hang around until the third or fourth shot of bourbon was served. Then he would make a fast exit.
“The fourth shot, that’s when the fights would begin,” Zemljak said. “He became a wild man. He was always fighting someone, arguing about something.”
Knievel wanted the last word.
That fact was never in doubt.
“There was a Lebanese guy in town, did some work for me,” Muzzy Faroni, owner of the Freeway Tavern, said. “I invited him out to play golf. He said he didn’t play, but came out for the afternoon. We rode around in the cart. He handed me a club, and I said—Lebanese, he was dark—‘Hey, you’re the first black caddie that ever has worked this country club.’ We laughed. I told Evel on the phone that he didn’t have everything in this town. I had the first black caddie at the Butte Country Club.”
Two days later, Knievel returned the call. He said he had a surprise for Muzzy. Muzzy should be prepared.
Maybe a week later, two black men walked into the Freeway. If two Martians had done the same thing, it wouldn’t have raised as many eyebrows in Butte. The two black men asked for Muzzy by name.
“This is Rabbit,” one black man said. “I’m Killer. We’re here to caddie for you and Mr. Knievel this weekend.”
Rabbit was Gary Player’s caddie on the PGA tour. Killer was Hale Irwin’s caddie. The two men hung around for the week, carried bags at the country club, told a million stories. A fine time was had by all. Knievel had the last word.
He played in every celebrity pro-am across the country that would invite him. He would use old tricks if no invitation had been extended, call the organizers and use another voice to ask if Evel Knievel was going to be in the field. That would make your tournament worth attending! The organizers would call him and offer an invitation.
He would bring the boys from the Butte Country Club to the tournaments sometimes. He would have them caddie. Muzzy was his caddie for the pro-am in the Jackie Gleason Inverrary Classic in Florida. Knievel played in a foursome with Lee Trevino. Trying to sound important, Knievel ordered Muzzy to do some caddie-like duties and do them fast.
“Go fuck yourself,” Muzzy said.
Trevino stared at the scene. He never had heard such a discourse between golfer and caddie.
Jack Ferriter found himself talking with Paul Hornung at some tournament. Bob Pavlovich, a longtime St. Louis Cardinals fan, found himself drinking with Stan Musial and Roger Maris. (“I thought I was in heaven.”) Maybe a dozen of the boys, plus their wives, found themselves on a private plane to Fort Lauderdale.
“The plane was owned by Jerry Lee Lewis,” Sandy Keith said. “Knievel told him he was interested in buying it and wanted to try it out. He took all of us to Florida, then he told Jerry Lee that he had decided against it.”
The stories now involved all these famous names. The golf involved all these famous places. Arnold Palmer said … and then Doug Sanders had to write out a check … the golf outfits were elaborate. The golf clubs, the equipment, changed from week to week, new stuff replacing old stuff. The new life was a golf life. Evel Knievel played all of those places Bob Knievel only could dream about, the places in the magazines that you’d read in the pro shop. Better than that, sometimes he was in those magazines.
A bunch of guys dared him to jump his golf cart off a ledge on a steep par 3 at the Rivermont Country Club in Alpharetta, Georgia. The path between tee and green zigged and zagged down the hill. If he jumped from the middle of one zig over the ledge, he would pick up the path in the middle of the returning zag. The guys said this certainly would be an easy jump for a man of his talents.
“For days they dared me to make the jump, and when I came to the hole in a foul mood one afternoon—I wasn’t playing well—I just went for it,” Knievel told Golf Digest writer Guy Yocum. “Halfway down the hill I realized I’d made a mistake. You have no idea how unstable a three-wheel golf cart is when it becomes airborne. By the grace of God I made a perfect three-point landing, but the tires were like basketballs, and the cart jumped like an SOB. When I got the thing stopped, down by the green, I immediately got a royal chewing out from my wife. I couldn’t blame her. She’d been in the passenger seat the whole time.”
Maybe it happened. Maybe not.
Sounded great.
For the opening of the movie in Butte at the Fox Theater and the Motor-Vu Drive-In a couple of years earlier, where the lines of cars clogged up Harrison Avenue that night, bad as anyone could remember, mayor Mike Micone had proclaimed July 21, 1971, Evel Knievel Day. Part of the proclamation was that “Evel Knievel is requested to stay away from the city of Butte and to take his capricious and destructive acts elsewhere.” That was a laugh, part hype for the movie, part look back at his larcenous past. The request, in truth, already had been granted. Knievel already had taken his capricious and destructive acts elsewhere.
He was gone far more than he was home.
The FBI, in one of its reports, would state that “REDACTED advised that while Knievel does maintain a residence in Butte, his family resides here permanently. Since he travels considerably, he is seldom seen in the area of Butte.” REDACTED was right. Not only was Knievel on the road for his shows, he also spent those long stretches of Filthy McNasty time in Los Angeles, where he boasted about his ascent from the Hollywood Land Motel to the Saharan Motel to the Country Continental, and finally to a year-round bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He was no stranger to Las Vegas, where tales came back about his gambling moments, taking a hit on 20, spending the day betting thousand-dollar bills on the wheel of fortune, being outrageous. He was soon to learn the virtues of Florida in the winter.
Visits to Butte were noisy surprises now. He no longer was someone who other people expected to see on the street.
“I worked at the Montana Power Company,” Tubie Johnson, teammate from the Butte Bombers days, said. “I went to the M&M for lunch. Bob came in, asked if it was all right to sit down with me. I said sure. I hadn’t seen him for a while. He started talking about how he was going to jump over the Grand Canyon, and I said, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ and he said he was doing pretty good, and I said, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ and he said, did I see that colored guy at the end of the bar? That was his chauffeur. I said, ‘No shit.’ Then he asked me to come outside and see his purple Rolls-Royce and, sure enough, right around the corner at Park and Main there were three people just standing there, staring at it.
“He asked what time I got off work, and I said five, and he said he’d pick me up in the Rolls. Five o’clock, there he was. The colored guy was driving. I got in the back, and Bob gave me a cigar. We drove home in the purple Rolls-Royce, smoking cigars.”
The locals would study the local boy when he came back for these short, electric bursts. They would remark on whether he had or hadn’t changed. Most would argue that he had. Of course he had. He was goofy maybe in high school, but he had the chance to be elaborately goofy now. He certainly was taking advantage of it. He had no appreciation for other people’s money when he was growing up. He had no appreciation for his own money now. He was out of control.
“He was like those kids from the ghetto who become rich and famous athletes,” Dan Killoy, who had grown up in the same Parrot Street neighborhood, said. “He didn’t know how to handle it too well. He had no common sense. One on one, he was a solid human being. Get him in a crowd, he spent his whole life trying to impress people.”
The big emotion attached to Bob Knievel now in Butte mostly was curiosity. How the heck did all of this happen? The good citizens were alternately bemused and flabbergasted. They laughed at what they read and what they heard. The change in Bob Knievel’s status was amazing. He was the one who made it big? Personal memories of that crazy son of a bitch Bob were attached to
all of the things that that crazy son of a bitch Evel Knievel did now.
The private planes, the exotic cars, the jewelry, the sponsorships for everything he did …
“I was down at the Spot, a bar my friend owned,” Clyde Kelley said. “Evel had come back from Caesars Palace, after being in the hospital for that long time. His trailers were parked outside the bar. I was outside looking at them. They looked good, painted a sort of purple color, but U-Haul at that time was using some kind of special paint that you couldn’t paint over, no matter what you did. Sure enough, if you looked at Evel’s trailers when the light hit a certain way, there was ‘U-Haul.’ He was driving around with those stolen trailers from U-Haul, all over the country.”
The grand promotion for the death-defying moments, the money that was offered …
“Bob came into the Met Tavern one day,” Dick Pickett said. “I had a motorcycle, one of those little rice burners. Not so little, really, but, you know, Japanese. Bob said, ‘Give me the keys.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘I have a bet going with those two guys over there from Helena that I won’t drive at fifty miles per hour, doing a wheelie, standing on the seat with one leg. Give me the keys.’ I gave him the keys.
“The entire bar went outside to watch this. He goes down Harrison Avenue, comes back once, turns around, comes back twice. This time he’s really flying. Turned around the third time, and there he is. He pulls that sucker back into a wheelie. He’s standing on the seat with one leg. Everybody from the bar claps. The guys from Helena didn’t want to pay … but they paid. Oh, yeah, they paid.”
Hometowns always have surrendered their local heroes to fame. That was always part of the deal. Politicians and athletes and singers and actors and corporate hotshots all had to move to a bigger place, a more celebrated stage to fulfill their dreams. This time, though, the local hero never really had been so heroic at home. The dream seemed kind of weird. The whole thing was weird.
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