EVEL KNIEVEL
& MY DAD
Story by Pete Moss
Photos by Ed Riggins
My dad taught Latin for twenty years at the
Lawrenceville school in Lawrenceville, NJ. His
father was an English professor at Princeton, up
the road, and his grandfather was a Lit man at
Penn. My mom went to Middlebury. My grandmom
went to Vassar. My father's mother was teaching
at Deerfield when she was twenty. My uncle spent
seven years at Oberlin. I come from a schooled
family, I guess.
Somehow, my dad neglected to make sure I car-
ried on this tradition. Now that I'm past thirty and
feel comfortable reviewing my teens, I realize my
dad did a really haphazard job of educating me.
I went to public school from kindergarten on. My
dad never quizzed me about the progress of my
studies or my grasp of the grade system. Instead,
he bought me a skateboard and gave me and my
friends rides to the skateparks when they started
opening up on the Jersey shore in the earliest
70's. I even recall him saying, least once:
"Hang the homework. Let's go see the Mets,"
and we'd be off to Shea on the train. I always
wanted to repay my dad for this idyllic childhood,
but I never knew how until I was about sixteen.
It was 1975 and we were in Asbury Park. I was
skating a bowl and I pulled air, maybe. I can't ►
Evel Kneivel on a real man's launch ramp, circa 1968, S.F. Civic Center.