More on Evel Kneivel

I wondered if people in "Twin" were kind of embarassed by having their town be the site of Evel Kneivel's most famous jump. From the looks of the granite memorial, with its center picture missing and most of the letters fading away, it appeared that might be the case.

Then we talked to the good senior citizen volunteers in the Visitor Center that is close by the monument and I heard a different story. They seemed proud and excited to talk about it. They said the whole town turned out to watch on that afternoon in 1974. If you know the story you know that when the "Skycycle" descended its earthen ramp a drag parachute accidentally deployed and Evel ended up in the river. His greatest effort ended in failure.

You can see the earthen ramp two miles upriver when you are at the monument. I wanted to get a closer look, and luckily one of the volunteers gave me directions. We went to the end of a dead end road, and there it was, about a 500 yards in the distance on private property. The volunteer said, however, that the city had purchased the site and was going to make it into a park. So there's further evidence that the good citizens of Twin may have come around to being proud of their 15 minutes of fame in 1974.

One volunteer said Evel makes a visit to Twin every now and then. "He's in pretty bad shape, pretty banged up," she said. I'll bet.