Member-only story
The Daredevil
My big scooter jump didn’t end well.
The bunting that stretched between lamp posts, and the cheering crowd that lined the route were only present in my imagination, but when I wheeled my MoBo scooter up to the top of the street, I felt like Evel Kinevil himself.
A Machine for a Boy, Not a Kid
I had received the scooter as a Christmas present, and it was my pride and joy for a long time. This was the first scooter I had ridden that didn’t have two rear wheels; it was a machine for a boy, not a kid. It was green with a metal footplate and a foot-operated back brake pedal. It even had a stand so I could prop it up and admire it.
My friend Jimmy had an identical scooter, and we went about together on them. There was a special bonding in having identical machines, and I understood at an early age the attraction of groups like Hells Angels and (motor) scooter gangs.
Motivated by a motorcycle jump I had seen on television, I hatched a plan to emulate the feat by constructing a crude ramp on the road outside my front door. My structure was nothing more than a drop down door from one of those brightly coloured kitchen pantry affairs that everyone seemed to have back then (it still had the chrome handle attached), resting two house bricks laid end to end.
