How Angel Peterson Got His Name | Date: 23 May 2011, 20:18
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I was laughing so hard that I woke up Shari AND both dogs!
A longtime friend of mine, who works as our school's counselor--and who gets to borrow the books that I write about--has occasionally asked me very sweetly whether I could find more funny books for our students. J.T., this one's for you!
"We built countless ramps with old boards laid on barrels or boxes, at the bottom of a hill if possible, and we would try to jump over things with our bikes.
"Remember, these were one-speed fat-tired bikes with a crowned-up, castrating brace bar and the things we tried to jump were fences, wooden walls, barrels, bikes, each other. On one memorable occasion Alan--after carefully calculating distances and angles--tried to jump his stepfather's Ford coupe end to end. He didn't...quite...make it and left a face print on the windshield of the car, but that might have been because he was distracted by the scream when his mother came out just as we finished the ramp and Alan made his jump..."
Now, I can remember some of the "really neat stuff" we did when I was young: There was a telephone cable hanging from a wooden utility pole in this vacant lot filled with mounds of dirt left over from digging foundations in he neighborhood. It made for great swinging (a la George of the Jungle) until Jimmy Dean got a concussion by swinging straight into the pole. There was "skitching" --kids in Beatle boots grabbing onto the back bumper of any car that was cruising through the snow-slickened parking lot behind Modell's. I can also recall the thrill of aiming our banana bikes full speed over the edge and down the big drop-off at Sunshine Acres Park. But my sitting here today (in one piece) attests to the fact that I did NOT spend my impressionable years hanging out with Gary Paulsen and his buddies:
"Alan, again after carefully calculating and measuring..., decided that if you got up to twenty-six miles an hour and angled a ramp to ensure (that's how he put it, 'to ensure') that you got at least seven point six feet in the air, it was possible to do a complete backward somersault and land on your wheels upright. Alan, having gotten at least seven feet in the air after a screaming run down Black Hill, landed exactly, perfectly upside down, bicycle wheels straight up, spinning, in a cloud of dust and gravel."
Decorating the cover of HOW ANGEL PETERSON GOT HIS NAME AND OTHER OUTRAGEOUS TALES ABOUT EXTREME SPORTS is an illustration of a young man on snow skis. He is wearing one of those old leather flight helmets (a la Snoopy) and flight goggles, and he is being pulled through the snow behind a sporty automobile that dates back to my father's adolescence. The young man is Angel Peterson who in 1954, inspired by a newsreel proceeding the Saturday matinee, decided he'd break the speed record for skiing despite being a thousand miles from any hills. Such was passion for scientific curiosity (and impressing girls) amid the "Brain Trust" that hung out with the young Gary Paulsen.
"Alan tried once more, getting a lift from an unsuspecting truck by hanging on to the rear corner and hitting the ramp so fast that it gave way and he went through it like a tank, barrels and boards and splinters flying everywhere."
"Wayne completed the only true backward flip off a bicycle but he didn't take the bike with him..."
Of course Shari, ever-the-mom, shakes her head, appalled by what I'm reading her from the book--a sure sign that this book will be absolutely worshiped by young boys. (Shari says that's why I like the book so much.) No, really, it's a book for girls, too. (Rosemary, who can tell you about trying to bounce through the air from the trampoline to the rope hanging from the tree, is going to love this one.) In fact, the only fault that I can find with the book is its size: One hundred and eleven pages is way too brief for so funny a book. Guess I'll just have to read it again...right after I take my government surplus target kite out in the next heavy wind and see if I can...
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