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he would later say. ‘I used to go down there [San Francisco] when he raced midgets and sports cars. Helluva good driver.’ Whatever his true feelings were about being given up as a child, Bobby certainly had his dad to thank for kick-starting his two-wheeled career.
    The pattern for Bobby’s wild-riding style was set right from the first time he ever rode his little bike. Without any formal tuition, Knievel threw a leg over the Bantam, pulled in the clutch lever, engaged first gear, popped out the clutch, roared off down the street and smashed straight into a mailbox. ‘I couldn’t control it. I really got in trouble on that motorcycle that day. I almost got killed.’
    Undeterred, Bobby brought the Bantam back to Butte and set about learning the skills of his future trade as well as annoying and amusing the good citizens of the town in equal measure. ‘I used to ride through bars here and ride down the sidewalk, and my dad said, “What is the matter with you? You’re going to get killed.” ’
    Tales of his cop-baiting (in which he would spark off chases from Butte’s finest) have become legendary and are, at least in part, due to the depiction of such events in the 1971 George Hamilton movie Evel Knievel. Officer Mo Mulchahy lends some credence to the legend, however, with his testimony that ‘It got to be kinda fun. Most times you chased him you’d go have a coffee. If he didn’t wanna be caught, you didn’t catch him. But it was never nothing serious.’
    While Mulchahy’s version of events is certainly within the realms of possibility, other versions show how the legend of Evel Knievel has been added to over the years to the point of absurdity. In his book Evel Knievel: An American Hero, author Ace Collins relates one particular incident involving Knievel and the local police. Without crediting anyone as a source or witness, Collins tells of Knievel being trapped in a dead-end alley by police, who had barricaded the entrance with their patrol vehicle. Undeterred, Knievel rides straight towards the police car, but bears to the right at the last minute, hits a convenient earthen ramp and sails straight over the police car! At best it’s a highly unlikely scenario, and had there been any element of truth in the tale it’s certain that Knievel would have told and retold it over the years. The fact that he hasn’t done so would seem to prove that it is just another myth.
    However much truth there is in the cop-baiting tales, there is no doubt that Bobby Knievel loved his motorcycle and spent countless hours riding round Butte on it, his thrill-seeking character making him a natural when it came to trying wheelies and rear-wheel slides and gunning the little Bantam flat out for all it was worth. ‘I learned to do wheelies on my little BSA and when I later had bigger bikes I could do a wheelie either sitting on the motorcycle or standing on it better than anyone else in the world. And I mean that – better than anybody in the world. I was the first guy to do one standing on the seat. I could wheelie until the oil ran out of the pan and the engine seized up.’
    Knievel’s two-wheeled antics became something of an institution in Butte, and locals were particularly fond of turning out to watch Bobby race up impossibly steep mine hills on his bike. ‘I was goin’ up and down mine hills here in Butte. Everybody thought I was a nut. Fifty or sixty cars used to come out every night to this mine-hill dump. I used to climb it; I’d fall off ten times and make it once. They’d all sit there and blow their horns.’
    Bobby also started to discover that people would actually pay to see his motorcycle pranks, and he found he could make a buck here and there by amusing his drinking buddies. On one occasion outside Bobby’s favourite watering hole, the Met Tavern, a friend bet Knievel $10 he couldn’t ride over a Volkswagen car which was parked outside. With friend and Met owner Bob Pavolich riding pillion, Knievel