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Bobby became a victim of his own success. Feeling he should have been rewarded with very swift promotion after his success in the field, Knievel determined he was going to ask the president of the company, Mr W. Clement Stone, for just that; he demanded, rather arrogantly in a face-to-face meeting, to be promoted to the position of vice president. Not surprisingly, Stone declined and Knievel immediately resigned. ‘He refused me and I quit. He said he was sorry to see me go and wished me the best of luck. I thought I’d regret it but in every adversity there is a seed of benefit. Mr Stone taught me a lot about the value of a positive mental attitude and he taught me to do the right thing by others simply because it’s right.’
    Significantly, as well as being president of Combined Insurance, Stone was also a self-made millionaire and author, and his book, The Success System that Never Fails, became one of Bobby’s favourites. Preaching the benefits of a positive mental attitude, Stone’s book would be a constant source of support and guidance in the making of the star that was Evel Knievel. Also present at the meeting between Knievel and Stone was Napoleon Hill, another author who promoted the benefits of positive thinking. Hill had written a book called Think and Grow Rich, and while Knievel had been trying to do just that over the last few years with varying degrees of failure, he would have the art mastered within the next ten years and would be rewarded with riches beyond his wildest dreams. All he had to do was think of a field in which he could grow rich.

2
Happy Landings
‘I could do a wheelie either sitting on the motorcycle or standing on it better than anyone else in the world.’
    Having flunked out of school, tried his hand at so many occupations and moved from one sport to the next, it seemed that Bobby Knievel would never be able to maintain enough interest or enthusiasm in any particular field to make a decent living. He was too restless, too ambitious to make something of himself and too opposed to knuckling down and accepting a regular nine-to-five job. The only real constant in his life, the only thing he hadn’t tired of since his schooldays, was riding motorcycles. Bobby simply loved to fool around on bikes.
    Motorcycles had first entered Knievel’s life when he was 15 years old, although he had fantasised that his bicycle was motorised long before that. He was given his first motorcycle by his father while visiting him in El Sobrante, California, where Robert senior had eventually settled with his second wife Jeanie Buis and had three daughters: Christy, Renee and Robin. After working as a bus driver for a time, Knievel’s father had managed to save and borrow enough money to open a Volkswagen dealership in Berkeley (he would later return to Butte and open another dealership there), and while young Bobby was visiting his father presented him with a little British-built 125cc two-stroke BSA Bantam – a massively popular machine at the time and one which was responsible for launching countless racing careers as well as the less-travelled route Knievel would eventually follow on two wheels.
    It might have seemed an extravagant gift, given the relative poverty Bobby was accustomed to living in, but it may have been his father’s way of assuaging his own guilt at deserting his son at such a young age. And, as the bike was part of a trade-in on a car sale, it probably didn’t cost him too much.
    As well as running a garage, Robert Knievel also raced cars on occasion in local events. He was never serious enough about the sport to attempt to make a career out of it but he was a competent driver and was responsible for generating Bobby’s interest in cars and bikes.
    Perhaps surprisingly, Bobby never displayed any real anger or bitterness at having been abandoned by his father (and mother) as a child. On the contrary, he usually spoke well of his dad. ‘Jeez, I thought my dad was a helluva guy,’