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My Famous Bicycle Jump

I was reared on North Seventh Street and Shaw Avenue in De Queen, Arkansas. I did many dumb things when I was growing up. I am going to write about one of them rat now!!!!!!!!


One block east of where we lived was sixth Street, the heavily used route to De Queen from the North side of Town. We lived just one block inside the city limits. All the streets in our end of town at this time were gravel and not well maintained.

I was a venturesome kid. I tried all the things other kids just thought about. My bike was a beautiful Schwinn. A pretty red with white strips. It had a tank between the top bars, which made it comparable to a Cadillac. It also had an original light. The tank held batteries for the light. I had installed white fender flaps at the price of about seventy five cents each, bought with money I earned from delivering the Texarkana Gazette. It was the pride and joy of my life:"A Real Beauty.". To use an old Arkansas saying, "It was as pretty as a speckled pup."

While over on sixth street one day I noticed that the city had hauled some gravel to the end of the street. It was dumped from the bed of a dump truck in piles. These piles were about waist high, and stacked in three very neat piles.

I looked these piles over real well. I thought I might take my two-wheeler; start at the top of the hill and peddle real hard all the way down the hill, and by the time I got to the gravel I would have enough speed to run up the first one and jump across the other two. I was sure that I would hit the ground with the bike in an upright position and just cycle away. I looked this over for a few days. Finally on or about the 3rd. day I got up enough nerve to try it. I always planned these kind of things carefully before doing them.

"Smart HUH ?!!!!" "Jonesstein"

I went to the top of the little hill and started down the hill. I had a siren on my bike so I pulled and latched the chain to hold the siren tight against the wheel and let it start sounding off. I was peddling so fast I could hardly keep my little feet on the pedals. Seeing me you would have though my life depended on it. [Well] The siren was blaring and the wind was streaming through my hair. The small dust clouds flying upwards from my bike tires was getting me even more excited about the wonderfull trick that I was about to perform.

AH BUT the best laid plans of mouse and man sometime go astray.

I got to the gravel piles and everything was going great. As I approached the gravel I was looking forward to a great thrill. As soon as I hit the gravel with the front wheel I become a victim of Newton’s (or some of them scientist fellers) law. My front wheel just buried into that pile of gravel . The bicycle stopped just like it had struck a brick wall. Even being a dumb Arkie I instantly figured out that I had miscalculated and that I didn't have enough time to go to plan two. Well I didn’t make it over the gravel with the bike, but nonetheless I did make it to the third pile. I also got pretty high off of the earth. However one of them scientist fellers says, "All that goes up must come down." He sure knew what he was talking about. Notwithstanding the bicycle was still stuck in the gravel pile. I hit on my face and did a belly flop in that pile of gravel. I was so sore the rest of the week that I couldn’t promenade even a little bit.

Well all the family decided I was a little teched in the head for trying something that stupid. However as bad as it ached I did learn a valuable lesson from my experience. That lesson being,

“Let Evil Knievil do the jumping
and
I’ll stay home and eat ice cream.”


To read about the shoot out
at the ladd Bridge click here.
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TOMMY JONES

Copyright © January 1, 1990
James T. Jones