Another era, another chance to cheat death

Norman Rapp's dad saved my life that day. Maybe I better explain.

An article on MSNBC.com discussed how kids raised in the 1950s, '60s and '70s are survivors. We survived chain-smoking adults, meat-and-potato diets and rough-and-tumble fearlessness of every kind.

It was the Evel Knievel era, after all. Knievel became famous doing wheelies and jumping his motorcycle over cars and buses. Every kid with a bicycle sought to emulate him.

The average kid then was covered with scrapes and bruises. When a landing went really wrong, a mom would arrive, the moaning kid would be loaded inside a wood-paneled station wagon and off he'd go for stitches or a cast.

Which brings us to the day I could have died.

I was riding a five-speed Murray Spyder bike that year. My fifth gear allowed me superior speed and, thus, superior distance off the ramp. I held the neighborhood record for the longest jump - until some outsider broke it.

I wasted no time reclaiming my record. I rode to the tippy-top of Marilynn Drive. I started off in first and, pedaling like mad, pounded through the gears all the way through fifth. I pedaled faster and harder - the wind whipping through my David Cassidy hair - as I pointed my bike toward the center of the ramp.

Suddenly, as my front tire hit the ramp, everything went into slow motion. The jolt was spectacular. I remember floating through the air like a directionless missile, my arms flailing as my body sought to regain its balance.

I remember the tremendous impact that shot through my spine as the rear wheel hit the pavement. I was roaring toward a thicket of pine trees. Their trunks and branches would surely turn me into kid stew.

Then Providence intervened. His name was Norman Rapp's dad.

Mr. Rapp, a welder, had built a giant street-hockey net. Norman stored it in the pine trees where I was headed. The net caught me like a glove. I didn't suffer a scratch.

A doctor in the MSNBC.com article says that most kids of my era survived their childhood just fine. However, some were badly hurt or worse. A helmet could have saved them. I certainly wear a helmet now when I ride.

But it's also true that whereas kids were once free to roam and explore - free to experience "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" - many of today's kids aren't free to do anything.

Even if a kid were daring enough to rig up a ramp and jump his bike now, he'd still be covered in more protective gear than a Transformer.

There's no way a kid carrying that much weight will ever fly as far as I did the day I could have died.

• Tom Purcell is a humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.