Joe Little & Jim Dick, Evel’s Pals

Oral History Transcript of Joe Little & Jim Dick

Interviewers: Clark Grant & Ellen Crain
Interview Date: March 2nd, 2018
Location: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives
Transcribed: April 2021 by Adrian Kien

Joe Little: Well, when I first met Evel, he was a motorcycle rider back in the early sixties, down on South Montana Street. They used to have a big mine dump down there. And my brother bought a motorcycle from him and we'd go over there at night and watch all the guys on motorcycles in Butte back then. And they'd go up and down these hills. And there was one steep part, but this one guy just kept trying to hit it and hit it and try to get up over the top and he'd crash and he'd come back and he'd go at it again. And I was sitting in an old truck with my mom and dad, and I said, "Mom, who's that guy?" She goes, "That's Evel Knievel." And just the sound of that name, you know, when you were a kid, the name just struck everybody. Wow, what a name? But this guy was crazy. I mean, just at an early age, he was, nobody else had even attempted what he was trying to do.

Finally, he went up over the top and everybody was sitting around in their cars and they was honking their horns and they're beeping. And, uh, so that was my first encounter with Evel Knievel. And then, you know, he was born in Butte in 1938 and he went to the Joey Chitwood Auto Thrill Show when he was eight years old. And I think that's what got him started into the daredevil business, because he'd seen Chitwood. They were jumping cars over and, uh, T-bone crashes and a guy would ride a motorcycle through a wall of fire. So as soon as Evel got home from seeing that him and his younger brother, Nick went out and the story was, they took the garage doors off of grandpa's garage and made ramps out of them. And Evel was jumping his bicycle from ramp to ramp over a couple of the neighbor kids. And then Nick was charging everybody 2 cents to come over and see him. And then they dreamed up, "Well, let's get a hula hoop and I'll light it on fire and I'll go through that."

So at a young age, he was already a daredevil and him and his brother, Nick, they used to go over to South Montana Street. They made soap box cars and they'd run them down Montana Street. They'd fall apart and crash. And, uh, it was pretty unusual, you know, to be a daredevil when they were that young. And, you know, Evel was an outstanding athlete. You know, he used to skate at Clark's park. He played football at Naranche Stadium. He pole vaulted for track and field competition. He was in neighborhood rodeos, organized football, baseball, ice hockey, ski jumping, baseball, organized baseball. And then, of course, he was a very good ski jumper. In 1956 and 58, he was a class A division Northern Rocky mountain ski association men's ski jumping champion.

And, of course, rodeo and hockey and ski jumping, motorcycle racing, the things that he did, didn't pay anything. And Evel always said, "Bob Knievel never made a cent, but Evel Knievel made millions." And then of course, you know, Evel, he worked in the mines. He worked at the Emma mine and the Stewart mine as a skip candor and a diamond driller, a contract miner. And then he went in the army and he served a year in the army and seven years in reserve where he was in the 47th infantry. And he learned how to shoot rifles, Browning rifles. He was a torpedo expert. He was on the army track team as a pole vaulter and a sprinter. So he was really good. And, in 58 he won the ski jumping championship. I believe it was out at Beef Trail, when they had ski jumping. And they had another one at the archery range. There was two ski jumps in Butte at that time. And then because of his ice hockey, he formed his own hockey team, the Butte Bombers. And it was a semi-pro team. He was the owner or the manager or the coach and the player. And he got married to Linda. They had four children, but then he started his own protection service.

Ellen Crain: What's Linda's last name?

Jim Dick: Bork.

Crain: And how did they meet?

Dick: I believe in high school.

Little: The rumor was that he kidnapped her.

Dick: He drove his motorcycle through the halls of Butte High School. Evel didn't spend much time in high school.

Crain: Did he ever graduate from high school?

Little: They said he did. He had a senior picture.

Dick: I don't know if they gave it to him after he got famous. So they gave him a degree or what. They want them to come to the class reunions.

Crain: Did you guys ever ask him about that kidnapping thing?

Little: No. There was a story about it though, that he apparently kidnapped. We didn't have to ask Linda about the whole story. I'm sure she'd be able to tell us.

Crain: Yeah, that would be a good story. Okay. So he started a protection business.

Little: Yeah, this had to be sometime in the sixties, but he started his own protection business or he would drive around at night and uh, check your business, make sure doors were locked and everything. And you'd pay him so much a month.

Grant: It'd be a shame if this place burned down.

Dick: Right.

Little: Well, if you didn't pay him, sometimes your business got broken into. So he pretty much had everybody's business and he'd drive around check, make sure everything was okay. And it was called the South Side Merchant Police. And at the same time, you know, he was married, had kids and stuff. So he was trying to work to support his family. And he also took up hunting because of his army experience with guns. He was a hunting guide. And during his hunting guide days, uh, they were shooting and killing all the elk in Yellowstone Park. It was open season in the park. So Evel was angry about that. So he took a pair of antlers, put them over his neck. And hitchhiked from Butte to Washington DC to stop the slaughter of elk in Yellowstone Park.

And when he got to Washington, because of Congressman Arnold Olson and Senator Mike Mansfield from Montana, they got Evel into the oval office to see John F. Kennedy. And Evel told Kennedy, he says, "Hey, if we don't stop slaughtering elk in Yellowstone Park, they're going to be like a buffalo on a nickel because they're all going to be gone." So they sent him over to the secretary of the interior. Stewart Udall was the guy's name at the time. And within 24 hours, he put a ban on shooting elk in Yellowstone. And Evel hitchhiked back home. Before he was ever a daredevil, these are some of the things he was involved in. And he got into the motorcycle racing and stuff. And he met some guys in Washington state that kind of took them under their wing and made him one of their racing team where they went all over the West coast. And then I believe he was 50% partners in the business and the guy told him, he says, "Well, why don't you take the business back to Butte? And we'll be half partners in that too."

So Evel opened a shop on Harrison Avenue. It was called Imported Motors. It was down next to where the Paradise Bar is now on the corner. And that's where he's sold . . . he sold motorcycles, but I don't know if anybody ever got paid for them. He'd have a clean up day for everybody that bought a motorcycle. "You guys got to bring your bikes down. I got to wash them all and shine them up for you." That was the day the guy from the bank was coming by to see his inventory.

And then he joined the American Motorcycle Association and he started racing professionally. And a lot of that was in Ascot Speedway in California, where he'd met all kinds of guys, especially JC Janey, and I believe. And he said "This motorcycle racing isn't for me." So he started his own stunt show.

Well, there was one stunt he'd do where a motorcycle would come at him at about 60 miles an hour and Evel would jump up in the air and let the motorcycle go underneath him. Well, one time he didn't make it. The motorcycle hit him right between the legs. And he did about five cartwheels in the air and landed on the pavement and they thought he was dead. So he survived that. He says, "This motorcycle show stuff isn't for me." So then he started jumping the motorcycle. He started like over two trucks, turned into 10 cars, 15 cars, semis. And his career of motorcycle jumping took him to the Caesar's palace, where he had one of the most spectacular crashes ever recorded on tape, when he crashed at Caesar.

Crain: I want to back up a little and ask you, what year do you think he moved from motorcycle racing into the stunt business.

Dick: Well, that happened when he was down, like in 67, he went down to Ontario, California. JC Ag Janie, and he'd called him to get a sponsorship down there. So he told them how good he was and everything and got down there. And after a couple of weeks being there Ag said, "Hey, Knievel, you'd better go back to Montana and practice." So he calls his grandmother and he gets in his Volkswagen with three bikes and coming back. She sent him $300. So he stops in Las Vegas and blows the $300. So when they had been down there a few months earlier, when Dick Tiger and Roger Rouse were fighting. So there was a fireman from Butte, Billy McTossin. He stuttered, well, Knievel was running around with his little portfolio and he was telling everybody about himself, but he was unknown at the time. So Billy McTossin said, "Knievel, why don't you just go get on your motorcycle and jump them fountains over Caesars." So he planted that seed. So he's back in Vegas, broke, in North Las Vegas. So he called Caesar's palace and he said, "This is the sports page from New York Times. I want the story on that Evel Knevel [sic] jumping at your fountains." They said, "We know nothing about it." So he calls them the next day. He said, "This is sports illustrated. We want the story on that Nevil Nevil [sic]."

They said, "We don't know anything about it." So the next day he calls them up and he said, "Who's in charge there?" And they said, "Well, Jay Sarno." And he said, "Well, tell him Mr. Sarnoff, he's going to be using Knievel's name. He'd better compensate him for it." He said, "This was Goldstein. I'm Knievel's attorney." He said, "I also represent Lawrence Welk and we're going on a European tour, but I'll send the kid down there by the time I get back, you guys better have this thing straightened out." So here goes Evel over to Caesar's palace and sets up the deal to jump there. And it was supposed to be two jumps for $3,000. So they jumped and it was on New Year's Eve. This is 1967. Evel wrecks. And, so Sarno comes over to the hospital. He said, "Evel, I don't know what I was thinking to let you do this." He said, "Your hotel bill is taking care of, your gambling debts are taken care of, and here's your money. And I hope I never see you again." Sarno goes back to Caesar's. He can't find a place to park. The place is going crazy. It's been on the international news and everything. And that day is when he became famous and known by everybody, household name. But it was this conman who came out to get him in there.

Little: That was December 31st, 1967 on New Year's Eve. And then after that crash and he started jumping just a little bit of everything and he had some big jumps that he did. One in 1970, he jumped 13 cars in Seattle. I think that was on Wide World of Sports, where they started Wide World of Sports doing all of his jumps because everybody wanted to see him. It was one man, red, white, and blue crazy guy from Montana on a motorcycle. He jumped at the Astrodome in Ontario, California, Yakima, San Francisco. He jumped in the Cow Palace. He got in a big fight with all the Hell's Angels. And that was really lots of publicity. That one.

Dick: That was early seventies.

Little: That was 72 in San Francisco.

Crain: Jim, tell us when you first saw him.

[00:14:37]

Dick: I grew up in Butte, so I knew a little bit about him and I watched him perform at Narache Stadium, but I went to work for him. In 1978, I moved back from Missoula when they did just started gambling in the early seventies here. So I opened a card table up at the Red Rooster, but I was gone out of town and Evel and a couple of his buddies come in. And we had like a three, six game going on. So they got all this money out and they said, "No, we're gonna play a no limit game and everything." So my gal was dealing for him, my girlfriend, Lorene Hanley. She said, "No, unless everybody agrees, we can't do it." So Evel and her got into a verbal confrontation and everything and had it out. You know, he had quite a mouth on him when he got going. So I called home and I said, "How's everything going?" She said, "Not very good. Knievel is in here raising a bunch of hell. The game is closed till you get home." So I come home and get on a Sunday night and I walk in the Red Rooster and who's sitting there, but Evel and his wife, Linda and his grandmother, which he called his mother. So I confronted him. I said, "Hey, you know, you've got the whole world to make a living. I make mine on that table." I said, "You know, you're the big guy, Evel Knievel and everything, but let's go outside. You're probably going to kill me, but I'm going to get a few in. Let's go."

He said, "Hey, Jim, I'm gonna take my wife, my mother home. I'll be right back." I said, "Alright." So I don't see him for about 10 days. He walks in. He goes, "Hey, Jim, I need to talk to you." I said, "Yeah, what's up?" He said, "I've been all over town looking for somebody to kick the shit out of you. Nobody wants the job. They're all scared of you and your brothers. I guess we got to be friends." He says, "By the way, you want to go to work for me?" He said, "I'll pay a thousand a week. You only got to work half a day. I don't give a shit if it's the first half of the second half, just half a day it's work." He said, "By the way, I got some guys coming in to meet me tonight. We're going to Australia next year." This was 1978. So he said, "We're going to get the equipment and everything ready to put on the boat to ship to Australia." So these guys came and met that night. So the next thing I was working for him. So that summer we left around August or September. We took the equipment to Tacoma and put it on the boat. And then we flew to Vegas. But when I went to work for him is right after when he'd had the trouble over the baseball bat. He'd just got out of jail and stuff.

So when we were going to, you know, he was on probation and everything. He was trying to get so he could leave the country and everything. And then he had some IRS problems. So he had just sold his office building down on Harrison Avenue. He sold it for $300,000. So he made an agreement with the IRS. If he paid them 150, they would go ahead and let them go to Australia. But on the contingence of the judge in LA, had to go see him also. So we stopped in the Log Cabin bar in East Missoula with $150,000 cash, called the guy from the IRS. Guy's name was Burlingame. He came down there and "here's your money" and everything. He goes, "Most of the time, when I do business with somebody like this, we at least have a shot of Wild Turkey." The IRS guy had a shot of Wild Turkey with us. Now I don't know how many cops and everything were outside waiting, but everybody thought, you know, Knievel's going to have somebody rob this guy, but they paid him the money. And so we just went on with our trip to Tacoma to put the stuff on, to go to Australia.

Clark Grant: $150,000 in cash.

Dick: Cash. And this is in 1978.

Crain: Let's go back to that baseball bat incident.

Dick: Yeah. Well, when Evel told me about it. You know, Evel read a lot. You know, we talked about his education. But if he was going to do something with you, Clark, I mean, he would get magazines. He would get up on everything about the radio business he could find out. When he'd walk in, he'd drop names like you could not believe and stuff. Very smart businessman. So he would read a lot and he was staying down at the Sheraton Universal and he'd go down to the bookstore every day and get some books and stuff. In North Hollywood. So he goes in this one particular afternoon and he'd been having a few and the guy in the bookstore said, "Well, here Evel, here's one you're not going to like." And it was this book here. The title of that book was "Knievel On Tour'' written by Sheldon Saltman. So this guy shows him a bunch of spots in there where he hated his mother. And he was a drug addict.

And this stuff. Shelton Saltman happened to be working across the road from there at the time. Evel had two broken arms. He'd just wrecked in Chicago. So he went over to this guy and he said, "Hey, you like making money off the name Knievel? How about you go through a little of the pain?" So he took the baseball bat, Saltman put his hands up and he broke both of his arms. He wasn't by himself, but it's still a little early to be saying who might have been there and who wasn't. That was before I went to work for him.

Grant: Oh, was it?

Dick: Yes.

Little: Saltman wrote the book about Evel when he jumped the Snake River Canyon in 1974.

Dick: Saltman was the publicist that traveled with them to promote the thing. So Evel felt he broke his trust.

Little: And he recorded everything on a cassette recorder. And then he put a lot of it in his book. It might not have been in there, but Evel is the only one that didn't like it. Everybody else thought it was very true. It had the facts in it. When Evel read it, he outlined everything in the book that was lies and what was not accurate, and remarks made against his religion and his family and stuff. So he got pissed. And just a true Evel, the way he was. He went over there and beat the hell out of a guy with an aluminum baseball bat.

Crain: So, Joe, tell us, did you go to Idaho with him?

Little: Yes.

Crain: So I want you to tell how you first encountered him.

Little: Well, in the late sixties, I ran around with Joe Faroni, whose father was Muzzy Faroni that owned the Freeway Tavern. And Evel and Muzzy were best buddies. And they'd golf every day. Evel was running all over the place, doing that. Well, me and Joey were the gophers. "Go over to the house, get one of these toys, take it up to this guy, go get a bicycle, take it to this guy. Here's his address." And back then, he used to have the Evel Knievel Labor Day Golf Tournament in the Butte Country Club. And he invited all kinds of celebrities. Bobby Riggs, Jerry Corey. Uh, Flip Wilson, Joe Lewis.

So during all of them years before the Snake River Canyon, we did a lot of stuff, me and Joey for Evel. Just various things. We were young kids then. We went to Snake River Canyon. And that was absolute Western Woodstock. Nobody expected 40,000 people to show up. Well, they bought everything in the town of Twin Falls, Idaho. And there was one road into the jump site and one road out. And he had a motocross race there for three days before the jump. Well, there was people everywhere, drinking, partying, lighting fires. It was just a big party and here's Evel's ramp sitting there and it's pointing straight up in the air and you look across that canyon to the other side. And there was no way that you could have put me in that rocket for all the money in the world. It was scary looking. And as it was, when it blasted off, it had so much G force, it blew the parachute out of the back of it. A lot of people think that Evel pulled the parachute.

Well, he didn't. It had so much horsepower and thrust, it sucked the parachute right out of the back of it. So as it was, he almost made it across the canyon, but then it went straight down into the bottom of the river. And right at the last second, a little gust of wind blew him over to the side and he landed about 15 feet on the side of it and got out of it and went, "Oh my God, I'm still alive. I don't believe it." So that was another Wide World of Sports deal. And, it didn't go over real good. People thought it was a rip off and all of that. Well, it wasn't. Evel wanted to land on the other side of that canyon. It didn't work out that way.

And then Saltman wrote the book about the whole tour of the Snake River deal. Before he did this Snake River jump, they went on like a 20 city press junket in a Learjet of Evel's. And they hit every major town in the country. And they'd pull into the airports and the press and all would be there and he'd get out. "Oh yeah, I'm going to jump this rocket over the canyon." So when it came time for the jump, the whole world was watching. And when he read the book about Saltman and went and broke his arms with the baseball bat was where his career started going down because he lost his Ideal toy deals. Chuckles candy, Olympia beer, all his sponsors pulled the plug on him. And he was making probably $2 million a year in royalties, just off of the toys from Ideal toys in the seventies.

Crain: And you went to work for him just after this?

Dick: Right. Right after he got out of jail. At one point in the early 80's, when I was traveling with him . . . Fred Bizark was his attorney. Fred was from Chicago. And when he did the toy deal, Fred was actually, it was called Marvin & Glass and associates. They made one of anything. Evel got tied up with this Fred Bizark. So Fred would be in the background, Evel never really. He did all his own negotiating. He did all his own business. Did his own promotions.

I was telling Joe earlier today about a story. When, before we went to Australia, we went and we met with the Australians at the Beverly Hills hotel. Evel would never meet in an office situation. He'd always meet where something, if he didn't understand, he can make an excuse and get up and go around the corner and call Fred, "Hey Fred, what does this mean?" So you couldn't trap him down. If somebody tried to trap him down . . .but they did this contract. So he said, "Jim grab that contract. I gotta copy that. Go to the front desk and have them make a copy of it and bring the copy, not the original. Leave the original at the front desk or in my room." And so he went there and they were going through this contract and he said, "No, not this, this, not this."

Finally, pretty soon he tore up the contract and they'd already fronted him, uh, $50,000 to talk to him when he was still in jail. And $500,000, they were going to pay him at this time to go to Australia. So, he tore up the contract. So he said, "You guys want to get serious about this now?" So they said, "Okay." So he said, "Jimmy go get the other contract." So I go get the other contract, they're going through it. So they go through this whole big contract and they get done. So he goes, "Okay, we went through yours, now we'll do mine. Mine's a lot simpler. One, two, three - upfront, percentage and guarantee. And let's get started working on number one right now."

[00:26:32]

So yeah, he didn't need a lawyer. He had Fred if he needed somebody in the back, but he did all his negotiating. In '79 when Robbie first started performing . . . So Evel had some tax problems. So he was doing some jumps out of the country. We performed in Australia then. So he had a jump lined up in Canada, in Edmonton. So we stopped in Great Falls. He had a real good friend there, Rob Slack that had the Harley dealership. So he said, "Rob, have you been hearing anything about Robby going to start his jumping career, you know, said any word around about everything?" He said, "You get a lot of Canadians down here?" And he said, "No, haven't heard anything about it." So we were heading up there, we stopped. So we would, you know, have the big truck all painted up and everything.

We'd get off the main highway. And we'd go through all these little towns. So we get close to Edmonton and we go into this bar restaurant and we're in there and they hadn't heard much about it. And the person there says, "Well, hey, you gotta be careful with that big truck, that switchback road you're gonna have to get back on the interstate. You're never going to get through that. Where it crosses the big gorge there, a truck won't make it. You can't take that." And he said okay. So where do we go? Straight down into that road. We've got all the traffic blocked. Next thing we've got all three major networks there, the local newspaper and the police. The next morning, the front page "Knievel in town, son to jump". You know, he didn't need a press guy or anything, pull it off on his own. Anybody else would have got back on the highway, but not him. "Alright, Jimmy, back her outta here." So yeah, he had a mind that just worked, you know.

So we'd go like to a town different times. And say he'd be in Kansas City or something and go to a place across from like the Ford dealership. So he'd say to the bartender, "Hey, who's the guy who runs that dealership over there? Do you know him? Does he come in here?" And yeah, call him up. Tell him to come on down. So whatever the new car you, like I say, read. So like I said Ford would have this car, so he'd say, "Hey, do you got one over there? Alright, I'm going to buy it tonight." Let's go over there. So he'd say, "Just a minute." So he'd go in and he'd call the local newspaper and go, "I just went by the Ford dealership down there." He said, "It looks like what's going on down there." He said, "It looked like Knievel was down there. Is he in town for something?" They'd say, "Geez, I don't know." So then we'd head to the Ford dealership, here would come the newspaper. So he'd do an interview and he'd say, "Yeah, here's my artwork. Here's what I've been doing. Here's what they said about me the last time I was in." So he was a genius just to pull that off. You know, most people would have had to spend tens and thousands of dollars with the PR person to go out in front where he would just, just come to him, just like nothing.

Crain: So what were your tasks? What did you do for that half day that you worked?

Dick: A little of everything. Take care of the equipment when we were loading up. But, he liked to golf. You know, I went to a lot of celebrity golf tournaments. He went to several of them to raise money for different charities. So a funny story, we were in Kansas City one time and he'd performed in Detroit a couple years earlier in the early seventies. So we're there and we're going to raise money for the Ronald McDonald house at the children's hospital in Detroit. So we're hanging around. I said, "What's up?" He goes, "We're not going, hang on a minute." We're sitting there in the lounge at the airport. We were going. We're not going. He goes, "I'm talking to Fred. We got some issues here." Then, "Alright, let's go. We're going." So we get on the airplane and he says, "Hey, Jim, don't you ever wear any jewelry?" I said, "No, I'm not big on jewelry." So he goes, "Well here, maybe we'll dress you up a little bit." So, you know, he wore all these jewelry and stuff. So he puts all the jewelry on me and he says, "Geez, you still don't have much of a bankroll." So he used to carry $20-$30,000 cash on him.

So he gives me the bankroll and then hands me the cane when we're getting off the plane. So we're walking down the ramp into the airport. These two detectives come up and they said, "Mr. Knievel, we have a warrant. So we can take any jewelry, any medallions, any cash or anything you may have on you. We've got to serve you with this." He says, "Hey guys, I'm flat busted, but say hello to my friend, Jimmy here." So they said, "Well, you know, we hated to do this." He said, "Yeah, I'm in town, raising money." He said, "Yeah, I was here and performed and a guy came and talked to me in a bar one night about building a motorcycle. Yosemite Sam was his name. He said he built this cycle and he goes, I left town. He goes, and then he sued me. I didn't contest it." So this guy had a $10,000 judgment against him. So he puts the jewelry on me. So you better be careful in Detroit. There was eight murders that weekend in Detroit and we were everywhere. I'm wearing that jewelry around.

Grant: Are there pictures of that? Of you all jeweled up?

Dick: There probably is. I don't have any. Yeah. But when we would go to these celebrity tournaments and stuff, you know, to the Pro-Am, it'd be like before . . . we went to almost every one of them, but I would wear the jewelry or, you know, uh, would have it. You couldn't leave it in the locker, you know, and he'd take the jewelry, most of it off to play golf. And the cash. One time we were playing . . . he played the Houston Open. And Evel used to love to play against the hustlers. And they took a lot of money from him. But he was playing Glen Campbell one day and I'd had to go do some business for him. And somebody cut through the fence and grabbed Glen Campbell's bag and got all his jewelry. And he had like $16,000 cash in there. These guys played for, you know, a lot of money. But yeah, I used to sit in the golf cart with, you know, we'd have that much money and jewels.

Grant: What would you need that much money for?

Dick: Evel just liked money. And he said to me one time, he said, "Jim, I just talked to Fred. He said, they paid me over $50 million on the toys." He goes, "That's a lot of money. Isn't it?" He goes, "Well, how much is it really?" I said, "Well, Evel, it takes 10,000, ten of them to make a hundred thousand and 10 hundred thousand to make a million." He goes, "Boy, I made 50 million." He goes, "I made a lot of thousands. Didn't I?" He was a street kid. A thousand dollars. You know, he kind of based that around what money was. But when you'd travel with Evel, like Joe and I, his rule was, never be even with you and keep you pretty much broke. So no matter what he did, you couldn't leave. I mean, he was a street kid, you know, very street savvy, but oh yeah.

Crain: So you all were always broke.

Dick: You got to use him. You'd flash your cash. He'd usually borrowed off you, but you'd have some money in the other pocket.

Little: Yeah, never let him know how much you really had.

Dick: And there was plenty of money. We lived most places, you know, we'd have a hotel, you know, drinks, you know, food and everything comped and everything taken care of by him or whatever.

Clark: Drinking every day.

Dick: Oh yeah. He liked to drink. He liked to drink that Wild Turkey. So one time I was in Seattle with him and his friend Louis Markovich was out there. So Louis always, he liked to stay in shape.

Crain: Tell us a little bit about Louie.

Dick: Louie Markovich was a childhood friend of his. Louie was on kind of the dark side of personality. Louie is still alive. Good friend of mine. Louie would every few days wouldn't answer the phone. Louie would go work out. So he really kept himself in good shape and everything. So one night we were out and Evel gets in a fight with these . . . Actually this guy had a gym there in Seattle and he hid these guys that did hits like in back East. And they'd bring them out there under a different name and keep them in this gym for like a year or so till the heat was off him. So these were some heavy weight bad guys. So they get in a fight with Evel one night and they're raising hell. And this guy says, "Well, Evel, if it wasn't for our mutual friend," which was Louie, you know, "we'd take you out." So, the next day I was talking to Louie, I said, "Jesus, man, what a night?" You know, I was just a young kid, 23 years old or something. He said, "What was happening?" I said, "Well, he got on that Turkey, the Wild Turkey." I said, "He was going wild. I didn't know what to do." He says, "Jimmy, all you do is when that happens. They bring that Wild Turkey. You drink half the shot. He only gets half as drunk. You're just as drunk as he is. Nothing should bother you." That was Louie's advice on how to handle it. Well, I tried it.

Crain: You really had to be on your toes with those guys.

Little: Back when he was getting the Ideal toy money and all that stuff. Before the Saltman incident, he was rolling. He had two Lear jets with his name on the tails of both of them. He had a house in Fort Lauderdale. He had a 120 foot fed-ship, two other yachts that went next to it. Helicopters, cars, every car in the world, expensive cars. A Stutz Bearcat.

Dick: That Feadship, he leased off the Netherlands. What the rule in the intercostal is there, whoever has the biggest boat has the right of way. So he had to give way to a 110 foot boat. All his boats were the Evel Eye One. So he's coming through in the Feadship one day and they said, "Give way Evel Eye One." So they got in a big fight down there over, over this because there was a bigger boat, but he had that leased from the Netherlands and his neighbor was Jackie Gleason. So they went in there and they took this boat and they cut holes in the tiki wood and put pictures of him and did all this stuff. So after the Saltman incident, you know, he was financially . . . so the Netherlands took that boat back. Well, we went to court down there one day. And they were trying to get Knievel for damages on the boat. And they said to him, "Evel, did you do to this stuff?" He said, "No, I didn't do it. This lady here did it, this decorator." So they said, "Well, you said you owned the boat." He said, "You know, at that time when I was performing, I was drinking so much and on so many pain pills. One night I was out with another man's wife and thought it was mine. I don't know what I could have said." The judge threw it out.

Grant: What about like after the Snake River, when he was in the hospital, would you visit him there?

Little: Evel never went to the hospital after the Snake River. He was fine. With the G-Force, he had some blood coming out of his eyes and nose and his ears. And other than that, he regained consciousness and he was fine.

Grant: When he was in the hospital, would you visit him?

Little: The truth is I only seen him jump a motorcycle one time. And that was in Naranche Stadium in 1966, I believe it was. And the other time I seen him was the Snake River Canyon. So between that, you know, I mean, he was going to London, Kings Island, Ohio, the few jumps that he did after the Snake River Canyon. We were young kids from Butte. We'd have to fly there to see him.

Dick: The last two times he performed were in '82. He and Robbie performed in Florida. He had a product called Innerdine. It was a clothing line, vitamin pills and everything. And he'd gotten it on the New York stock exchange as a penny stock. And he was doing these shows down there. We were trying to get Eckerd Drug to take it on. And then they figured if Eckerd drug would have taken this on, it would have been worth like $12 a stock and he had 110,000 shares of it, penny stock. So we did a show in St. Petersburg where Robbie did a 10 car jump and then Evel jumped the cars at the stadium across it.

And they booed them and stuff and said, uh, he was only jumping the short jump and everything. So the next week we went to Hollywood, Florida, and we did a jump and Robbie jumped 11 trucks and he jumped on the backside. He jumped seven. And I was there and I stood on the ramp. And when he come down there, he was all over the place. I'm watching Robbie, Robbie straight up in the air. It looks like he's going to flip over backwards. Evel is sideways as could be. And you get down there and I just grabbed him right on the bike. He said, "That's it, Jim. Never, ever again. I am done. No joke." So yeah. I was there for the last two jumps he made.

Little: He took Robby in 1979. He thought up this new gig where he was going to get Robbie out and take him on tour. And Evel had a wheelie car and a semi and his motorcycles. And the first two jumps he did was in Edmonton and Calgary with Robbie. And Robbie jumped 10 vans, I think at both places. But Evel would get in his wheelie car and he'd do some wheelies up and down his drag strip and do some wheelies on his motorcycle and Robbie would do a jump. And the one in Calgary, we had Don Garlits.

Dick: Garlits was at both. Garltits had a match race with Terry Cap. He was Canadian champ at the time. So they were out at the Edmonton Speedway and we did the show there. And then the next Sunday we did in Calgary.

Little: And then we ended up going to the West coast tour. We went to Yakima, Portland Redding. We went to LA where we stayed for about a month. Did that.

Crain: So were you two together?

Dick: Yes.

Crain: And this is more where Robbie started off.

Little: Robbie kind of started his career in '79 with Evel.

Dick: Robbie performed also in Australia, when we went to Australia in 79.

Crain: So tell about Robbie.

Dick: Joe traveled with Robbie, which I did for a while, you know, at first. And then Robbie went on his own. We went to Florida, like I say, after that jump, when Evel jumped down there. There was a stressful relationship between the two of them. They were so much alike in some ways. And I went and talked to Linda and I said, "Geez, we've got the greatest thing in the world here. If these two could just respect each other and get along." She said, "It's not going to happen. Robbie's got to go on his own. Bob and I like to be on the road and this is our thing. And Robby doesn't respect them and doesn't want it." So he came back to Butte, Montana, and he actually worked for my father at the sawmill for a short time.

[00:41:21]

And we had the ramp set up behind the mill. We called it Jimmy Legit's Jump School. And so that's Robbie and another guy, Lee Hackman. They went back there every night. And we'd set up these ramps. Well, we decided very early on why Evel wrecked so many times. At the takeoff ramp that he had was just straight up and down and you would hit it. And especially with the bike Evel was riding, it would just collapse the suspension. He had no control. So we did what we called a kicker. We built a big long approach to it and figured out how we could get the front of the bike to come up and move that thing and move the back. And so for months out there every night they would practice. And then they started letting go of the handlebars, you know, "Look, Dad, no hands" and such. Then Robbie started doing that. All the stuff that's getting going now. That's where it kind of got started

Crain: How old was Robbie in 1979?

Little: 17 years old.

Dick: So when he went on his own, like in 82, he went with a guy named Kenny Brown. Kenny Brown promoted the Snake River or not the Snake River, but the shark tank in Chicago. So he started Robbie. He got a hold of Robbie and wanted him to come down. But the first thing he wanted him to do was a world record jump. And I thought, well, you know, I'm kind of in a bad spot here. I told Robbie to leave [Evel], you know, this isn't working, they weren't getting along. So I went down and seen Kenny Brown. I said, "Kenny, here's what the deal is. Whatever happens to Robbie is going to happen to you. So he better not get hurt. He ends up in a wheelchair. You're gonna end up in a wheelchair. So let's start this thing a little slower." So, Robbie performed. What was that called? You guys traveled all over.

Little: Yeah. In about 84. Coors Light Motor Spectacular with monster trucks. Monster trucks had just come out then. And they were doing a show.

Dick: He was performing almost every weekend.

Little: Yeah, they were doing shows all over the country, every weekend.

Dick: But, yeah, so Robbie was . . . and made lots of money. And then not too long after had his own television show, reality show, which was kind of a disaster.

Crain: Did you work for him when he had the reality show?

Dick: Joe did.

Little: I was bartending the night it happened at Dewey that fight.

Dick: Oh that fight. But, no, I mean, Robbie actually had a show. What was the name of his show? The TV show.

Little: Well, he was on CHIPS. Yeah.

Dick: But he had a show of his own and he was doing some shows with . . . But yeah the night Joe was bartending, there was a fight.

Little: Robbie, after he signed up with the Coors Light team doing the monster trucks, he was doing three jumps a weekend. And a lot of these jumps were indoor arenas. You know, some of them no bigger than the civic center, where they had the monster trucks. And it was very, very hard to do this for him because you got to, uh, an arena that you got to come in the back door and make the jump and land and stop before you hit a cement wall. So three of these a weekend, he was hitting the hay bales, every jump. So finally, he got into a pissing match with the guys and told them that . . .

Dick: United Sports, they called them.

Little: United Sports. And he decided, "Well, I'll go on my own." And he had a couple different managers, but I did every jump with him except two or three from 1987 to 2003, which was 69 of them. And I did six live Fox shows. We had the Daredevil Duel. Robbie got his big break in 1987, when he jumped the Silver Bowl in Las Vegas. He jumped over 23 cars at one of these tractor pulls and monster trucks. And that kind of opened the door for him to go back to Caesar's in April of 1989 and jump the fountains. And now it was live on Showtime television. That was a whole couple of weeks of itself, setting up the Caesar's jump because Evel was there.

Dick: That was the first time they'd gotten back together since they left in Florida . . . or no, they did a jump in Portland the year before, and Robbie came out there and they did it. And then it was a disaster because Evel wanted all the money. But they did put the Caesars together, made it through that. But, you know, one of the stories on that - the morning of the jump, we're out there and my father, I know Ellen knows my father, he came down. Half of Butte was down there for Robbie's jump. And my dad's out there walking across that walkway and he said, "What are you guys doing with all that extra scaffolding stuff?" I said, "Oh, the scaffolding company. You know, they use it as a promo. We just brought a bunch in." He said, "Why don't you guys build the ramp a little longer?" I said, "We got so much stuff to do today." And so I said to Joey Faroni, "Hey, why don't you guys build about another 10 foot by 10 foot box and put it in front of that landing." And so they did, and they were painting it black when the lights came on and, uh, took off with the paintbrush and stuff. When Robbie landed, we're standing on there, he goes, "Where did I land?" I said, "Right there." He goes, "That's my back tire?" I said, "No, that's your front tire?" The landing ramp originally would have been about where you're sitting. He came up about three feet short.

Little: He would have been dead.

Dick: He would have decapitated himself. Because the thing is, Evel, when he started doing the jumping, he always puts something in between. So he was basically jumping a bridge, you know, instead of an open gap, but it would make it like I'm going to jump double buses, but if he'd come up short, he'd bounce off the bus instead of into the ramp. So, you know, but at Caesars, with the fountains there, you could not do any practice runs or any things. So what we did is we went out to an old drag strip and reenacted it, but the asphalt at Caesar's is about the top of this table, just completely smooth. And in this old drag strip out there was, the asphalt was real rough because, so we still didn't get a real good. So when he took his runs, he'd get about halfway there and he'd have to shut down. He was having a heck of a time getting enough traction to get his speed up to go there. And then when he landed, he was going right into a parking garage.

Little: They only give them 400 feet to the edge of the property there for his runway. And that's the U shaped driveway in front of the fountains there. There was, you know, a million cars go through there a year. And the pavement was like oil, you know, from all the cars and rubber and stuff in there. So he couldn't get much traction. He was shifting as fast as he could. Luckily, he made it over there. Lived.

Dick: Lucky that Louie put that other piece of ramp there.

Little: If there wouldn't have been that other chunk of safety deck, he would have been dead on live TV.

Crain: So, Joe, you told me about Robbie making a deal to jump two buildings in Vegas. Is that right? Tell that story.

Little: Well, he was down there in Las Vegas, and he was looking for a place to jump the Grand Canyon. So it was, I remember it was Robbie's birthday. He was drunk and him and Bob Winkle flew out over the Grand Canyon and they were looking for a spot and they flew back into Vegas. Well, Winkle was the manager of the Jockey Clubs then.

Dick: It was a timeshare out there.

Little: And the buildings are eleven stories, twelve stories.

Dick: The thing is with the two buildings, they're offset from each other.

Little: So Robbie flies over in a helicopter drunk and he goes, "Hey Bob, you own them buildings? I'll jump there. One building to the other. Okay." So we put this jump in motion and I go to Seattle where Robbie was living and we go down the West coast. We go to LA, we go to Fox, do all these interviews. And, uh, just had a great time in LA doing a press junket. We get to Las Vegas and I pull up in the Jockey Club parking lot. I was driving the van with the bikes and he was driving something else. And we're sitting in a parking lot and I go, "Hey, Robbie, you know that these buildings aren't straight across from each other?" And he looked up at them as he's chewing his thumbnail going, "Oh, you're right. They looked straight when I flew over them." So this turned into a nightmare for about . . .we were going to do a live Fox show in seven days, and we got no idea how he's even going to get across there on top of the buildings with all these air conditioning units and elevator shafts. So we had every scaffold company in Las Vegas come out there. And I think we used every piece of scaffolding in Las Vegas for that jump.

Dick: They took the building like this, and then they took on the backside of it and built the tower with the scaffolding, built all this stuff over top of it. So my buddy, Joe, he's the one that built all the ramps and everything. So we're down there one day and we're going up to look at it. I said, "Joe, what are you doing?" He goes, "I'm not going up on top of that." Here's the guy building ramp. He wouldn't even walk up on there. Robbie was flying up that thing. And it was what about an eight by eight?

Little: Four feet wide.

Dick: Four feet wide ramp. But then on top of that, turn around, stop, turn around and make his runs.

Little: You get on top of that thing, it was all scaffolding. You're looking down at the strip.

Dick: It's behind the building. It's not even part of the building. So he builds this big thing to make this thing down. And like I say, you're jumping into the . . . the building is not really there, it's over here. You gotta make a big sweep.

Little: There is no test runs on that one. It's one and go, but we set the jump up in the parking lot to try to emulate the distance and the length. And as it come out, he couldn't make it across from building to building the way it was all set up. So the day of the jump, we scaffolded up one side of the takeoff tower and pulled his takeoff ramp out there another 20 feet, or he wouldn't have made it across there. He would have went right into the side of the Jockey Club. So a lot of people didn't know that, but we did that the day of the jump, scaffold at the front of it, so that we lengthen it out and he'd get more speed and less distance, or he would have never made it over there. And that's a lot of jumps, we had to do crazy stuff like that to adjust.

Dick: See Robby's career extended from 79 until . . . Joe was talking to the 2000's. Evel's career was from 67, he hit the guy with the baseball bat in 76. Evel's career was like, you know, how much shorter. But you know, Robbie's had a long, long career. Like Joe said, he did 60 some shows he did with him.

Crain: And he really broke himself up.

Dick: Oh Robbie is a mess. He's messing up bad. Just an accumulation, mainly of the compression on the landings. It's taken its toll on him.

Little: Two of his wrecks were out riding. One of them was riding at Homestake. He was going to Delmoe Lake. Him and Weis and Beardsley. And he went off the road there and busted his knee up, tore all the skin off it.

Dick: He took my motorcycle one night, ran into the bridge on Harrison Avenue. Doing a wheelie, flying.

Little: Going up to the M&M to have some breakfast about five in the morning, drunk. So a couple of his wrecks were right around here in Butte that hurt him pretty good.

Dick: I've probably seen maybe a third, maybe a little more of Robbie's jumps. I was never there once when he wrecked. I used to always tell him.

Crain: You've talked about building these ramps. What is your engineering background?

Little: None.

Dick: Here's the first ramps I built for Robbie. We were out in Edmonton. Evel said, "Okay, this will be the take off ramp, Jim. We want that six feet high, make it 20 feet long."

Little: Our blueprint was on a napkin.

Dick: So we went down to a scaffolding company. And I got a piece of angle iron. I'd tack it there. I put a piece of string up there at, uh, six feet and ran it down to the 20 feet and put a screwdriver in the ground, tied it off. I said, "Okay, tack some scaffolding there and then cut those off." So that was my engineering. So we built those ramps. Those ramps are quite the story. Yeah. So we took the ramps out there. So Evel said set them ramps up 200 feet apart.

And so we get them out there and we call the lumber company to bring some plywood to put them on there. So in the meantime, Robbie shows up and this was his first major jump in front of a big crowd and everything. He's a nervous wreck. He is a 17 year old kid. He said, "Hey, what are you guys doing?" Me and another guy were there and said, "Well, your dad said to put them 200 [feet apart.] He goes, "Well, I'm going to practice." He said, "I'm going to start off at like 75 feet." So what we used to do is we'd put the landing ramp where we were going to have it, and then we'd take the takeoff ramp and we'd put it like 75 feet, then 80 feet. And then he would adjust and adjust. And then showtime, we'd have it moved back 10 feet and landed down 10 feet. We'd move it back and you should land right here. That's how scientific it was.

But so, like we say at Caesars, we couldn't do that. So we couldn't keep moving the ramp back. So Evel shows up, we got the ramp, uh, 75 feet apart. Well, here's the greatest promoter in the world. He's telling these guys, my kid is the greatest jumper. He's going to jump two hundred. These ramps, you're not going to believe when you see how far they are, what's going on. So he pulls up and he's got Don Garlets with him and this Terry Capp, the guys that are gonna do the race and all the media and stuff. I'm underneath holding the bolt and the other guy's on top. And he just lets into him, "You stupid son of a bitch, what the hell you guys doing? You son of a . . . goddammit! Screaming and hollering. So I come out from underneath the ramp and I just go right at him and he's thinking, "Oh shit, what's going to happen?" I go, "Come on, let's go!" to the other guy. I said, "We're outta here. You talk to somebody like this." And he's going through his act. And Evel, when he got going, I mean, he wasn't scared of, you know, he let it go and he'd rip into you like you couldn't believe.

But he had respect for me because of our first meeting. So we go over to the tower and I call a cab. I said, "Hey, we're outta here." So here he comes and he says, "Hey, Jim, What are you doing?" I said, "Hey, you're not going to talk to people." He said, "I didn't say anything to you." I said, "Yeah, but the guy working with me, you're screaming at him, he's peeing his pants and upset." I go, "Hey, we're outta here. You set them up however you want." He said, "No, you gotta work on your temper. You can't be doing this. I apologize." So we go back and we set up the ramps. So then we take those ramps and we go down to Calgary the next week and do a show. So, they want to take them ramps and to estimate their worth and everything. So they want to charge a duty to bring them back to the United States. So my guy, Evel, he gets a hold of this trucking company and says, haul them down.

And there was Hill & Hill trucking and they had a depot on both the US and the Canadian side of the border. So he gets a hold of this guy and says, "Hey, bring them ramps down, put them on your Canadian side. And then one day when it's not too busy, nothing going on and get them on the other side. And then we'll come up and get them." So the guy calls, "Yeah, we got them on the US side, Evel." Go up and get the ramps. So he says to me, "Jimmy, you got to go get them ramps." Who else got a CDL? And Joey Faroni and Evel had gotten into a big fight down in Florida over something. And he sent Joey home. But so I'm trying to get Joey back on the crew. I said, "Well, Joey's got a CDL. He can go with me and help me get the ramps." And he said, "Alright. I guess that'll be fine." So we get in the truck and we go up there. So we're goofing around. We don't get there until late. And I get a hold of the guy from the trucking company. He comes down and meets us. He said, "Well, we can't do it tonight. We'll have to do it in the morning." So we're sitting there getting drunk with them.

And he said, "Well, I'm going to take off." This was in Sweetgrass, Montana, right on the Canadian border. I said, "What else goes on in the town?" He said, "Well, I was down at the other bar earlier. They've got a big poker game going on down there." So I'm a poker guy and Joey dealt poker and stuff. So we said, "Well, we'll go down there." He said, "I'll go down there with you." So we go down there and he and I are sitting there having some drinks and every few minutes, Joey, he's over there says, "Hey, give me a couple hundred more. Give me a couple hundred more." So, okay. So the guy leaves. So I said, "Okay, I guess I better go in there and win this money back." So I go get in the game and we're playing a razz. It's a six card low. So this pot gets huge, like a couple thousand dollars in there. So this guy has got a pair, but we only got five cards, but he's got a pair showing. So I bet everything I got. So this guy sitting next to me, "Goes, ah, King for you. And, uh, four for him." Throws the deck. I said, "Hey, you deal to him first and last card down." He goes, "Oh, I think I did. Didn't I?" I said, "No, you didn't." So we're in a border town. We're strangers and we're going to win all their money. So this guy says to me, "Well, do you want to wrestle?" I said, "Yeah." So he stood up and I let him have it. We knocked everybody at that table out. Joey grabbed the money.

We take off running up the street, go to the hotel. I'm up there washing up and Joey's got a little .25 pistol. I said, "What are you doing, Joey?" He goes, "Look out the window, half the towns out there." These guys take a shotgun and shoot holes in the truck, shoot the tire out of it. So I go, "They're not going to find us up here." About that time. I'm getting dressed. And I hear a key go in the door. So the door is like here and the windows here. Here's the door coming in. So I look and this guy's got a shotgun. He goes, "Hey, you motherfucker." I go, "Ooh, this isn't going to be good." So I dive out the window. Second story. Take off out in the field.

Little: And he's got a broken arm.

Dick: I got a broken arm. I run out there and it's like running in snow. You're leaving tracks. It's a wheat field. So Joey hang drops out behind me. He runs over and gets in the telephone booth and calls the sheriff. Sheriff has to come up from Shelby. So the next morning it gets light and I go over there and I knock on the door. There's a restaurant underneath our room there. And I said to the gal, "What's going on around here?" She said, "You're that guy." She says, "Well, you got in a fight with the wrong guy." I said, "No, he did." She said, "No, you did. That's the guy that you punched is the guy that owns the hotel." Their names was Dan and Leo Companion. And they owned the Glocca Morra Inn. So we got loaded up the next day with the ramps. So the sheriff says, "We can't do anything to these guys. They just run across to the other side of the border." He said, "You cannot believe you two are still alive. It's amazing." He said, "Because there's a lot of bad things happen in these little border towns." So he took Joey that night and took him to customs. He goes, "The only thing they won't mess with is US Customs." So he left him here for the night, but yeah, that was the ramp story.

[01:01:25]

Little: The other thing about Evel is . . . uh, you know, he did a couple movies. Viva Knievel and Last of the Gladiators. And back in the seventies, he was into the movie scene. He was on every talk show there was in the country. He was on the cover of every magazine. He played golf with every golfer in the world. Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead, Lee Trevino, uh, all these celebrity golf tournaments. He was in the Hollywood scene with all the actors and people. There wasn't anybody that he wasn't mingling with at that time.

Dick: I went to a golf tournament one time and Shepherd was there for the, you know, the astronaut. So they're there and they're holding the sign. This guy says, "I'm the driver. You guys get in this van." Evel goes, "What are you asking me to do?" He said, "We're your driver." He said, "Yes, they're all actors. I'm Evel Knievel. I'm for real. I don't ride around in no goddamn van with a bunch of actors. Get me and Jimmy a car."

Crain: You both had opportunities to meet some really interesting people.

Dick: Well, you know, talking about the golf. I went to the Houston open. That was one of the first ones in 1979. So we walk into the Woodlands Country Club and here's Arnold Palmer and Chichi Rodriguez. These guys are playing nine ball. So Evel says, "Hey, a thousand bucks a stick. Come on." They go, "Oh, Knievel. You're not that good. We've played with you before what's up?" So they're looking at me and they said, "Well . . ." they're over there. So I said, "Evel, I can't play pool at all." He goes, "No, I got a guy I'm meeting here in just a few minutes, Willie Mosconi." So he was doing all these shots. Oh yeah.

Crain: There's a picture in Joe's collection of you all with Mohammad Ali.

Dick: So Mohammad Ali. We were hanging around the Sheraton Universal. And there was a guy, we called him Fat Larry. He was kind of a con man and he was trying to get in with Ali. So Ali had a Stutz car that he was trying to sell. So he had the car up there. Well, these guys were promoters. This Tommy and Associates. They were trying to get in with Ali. So this Fat Larry says, "Well, if you buy this car, the Champ's car, you'll get in with him.” He tells this Tommy and Associates. So they buy the car. So this Fat Larry, he's in with the champ a little bit. So he says, "Hey, I'm going to go over and see the champ tomorrow. You guys want to go with me? So I said to Evel, I'd met Ali before a couple of times, but nobody else had, so, uh, they said to Evel, "Joey and everybody is going to go meet the champ tomorrow." He goes, "You guys want to meet the champ? We'll go there right now." So he calls up Pat, the limo driver, he said, "Take us down." Ali had a home down there, off of Wilshire Boulevard in LA.

We showed up right down on the patio. His little daughters were out there serving us tea in little teacups and stuff. We had a great conversation. Ali was a great guy. And he told stories about when he got involved in the boxing game, that it was way down. So he said, he'd watched Chicago wrestling as a kid on TV and how they taunted each other and everything. And that's where he came up with the ideas to, uh, to do that. But it was so funny. We were sitting there. Now, this was in 1979 or so. So they were both the stars of the seventies and they're both broke. At that time it was a 90% tax bracket that they both had to work under. So they said, "Between the two of us, what should we do? We're well known enough, we should be able to do something." And Knievel goes, "Well, I'll box you." And Ali goes, "I don't know how to ride a bike." Knievel goes, "Well, you get on the back, I'll do the jump. And we're going to wreck. When we get done, then we're going to fight." And he goes, "We are going to wreck."

Little: At that time, they were both going to invest in a shoe shine, like Kiwi shoe shine stuff. Evel Knievel and Muhammad Ali's shoe shine.

Dick: But in 1983 or 4, Fred called one day and he said, "Evel, they just did a worldwide survey of name recognition. You finished second in the worldwide name recognition." 1982. Number one was Muhammad Ali. Ain't that something?

Grant: You said he was basically a street kid.

Dick: Oh, Evel was absolutely. Yeah.

Grant: I'm curious about his home life, his upbringing. Why did he have those street smarts?

Dick: Well, you know, his mother and father divorced and they both left town. And, so his grandmother raised him and she was as tough as nails. Emma. She was the first one in Silver Bow County, woman, to have a driver's license. She ran the little league baseball thing. She was a real go getter, Emma. She was tough. When Robbie was going to Caesars the night or two before he left, he was staying with her and he called me and he says, "Hey, I need to borrow a few bucks to get to Vegas." Now here this is Robbie's great-grandmother. So she said, "Hey Robbie, come here. I am going to talk to you."

[01:06:40]

So great-grandma's going to give you a talking to. I thought she's going to say, "Now you'd get this money and you save it and go to school or buy a business or something." She said, "When you get that money, you send me the money you owe me. And you get a hold of Jim and pay him." So we were talking about Evel, how he was raised by somebody tough. Evel was, you know, like me, grew up in the sixties. And most kids had both parents and everything, but Evel didn't have either. So like, you know, most kids say, "Yeah, my dad shows up. He's going to bring me the biggest . . . Twice the size . . ." Well, Evel kind of had that attitude, you know, no matter what anybody had, his was bigger, better, you know, he wouldn't back down from, you know, all the confidence in the world for somebody that probably underneath was . . . his confidence was probably really shaken, you know, because of that.

Grant: Did it rub off on you?

Dick: His personality?

Grant: Do you think you are more confident because of him?

Dick: Oh, I seen a lot of things, you know, like I said, you know, I grew up, uh, you know, pretty, my father, he died, a lot of brothers and sisters. Yeah. But I mean, I seen a lot of stuff. Like I say, going to Houston and the next room was staying, was Gerald Ford. You know? I went to Australia with them and a guy named Mike Edgley was the one that put the money up and he had a partner called Kevin Jacobson. Kevin Jacobson was an old rock and roller. Mike Edgley was the wealthiest guy in Australia. He was a sheep rancher. And he and Evel clashed. We were doing these shows. And there was a kid named Dale Buggins. He was a real good motorcycle rider. He was Australian. But Evel was there to use his name, to promote this. And they brought acts from all over the world. It was called the Evel Knievel Thrill Spectacular.

When they would get out there and this Buggins kid would jump, he would start his jump and come out and he'd have his ramp on a ute, like a little pickup. And he'd go flying down the thing and his dad would be driving and then he'd jump it when he was going. And then he jumped off that bike and he had a big ring and he'd drive into that and it had rockets and everything on it and then go down the thing and then he'd go out and he'd just set up a real small ramp and he'd jump like 30 cars. So this Australian announcer would go, "Hey Evel, what do you want to match that?" Evel was just fuming. "I'm here to use my name. If I am going to jump, you're paying me." So the crowd would start taunting Evel, "Come on, Evel." Well, he wasn't getting paid. You know, that wasn't the deal. They're using his name to promote the show. So it ended up in a big fight and we left before we finished there.

But it was funny as Evel was doing an interview in Melbourne, he went over there and this news reporter is interviewing him and he said, "Well, Evel you've insulted Michael Edgley, he's the most wealthiest, famous guy in Australia." He said, "Well, you know, you gotta understand Bill. You're a news guy. You don't make much money. We're both very wealthy and stuff. And you know, we live a little different than you do." He said, "Give me that microphone." So he takes the microphone. He says, "You know, we've been standing here. I've been noticing that you keep waving. These bugs keep landing on you and they're not landing on me." He said, "Either you smell a lot better or a lot worse. This is Evel Knievel signing off."

Crain: I'd like to talk about Evel Knievel Days. Can you talk about when it started and how it started? I think it's interesting. Even though I went, I don't know much about it.

Little: He was on the committee. I was never on the committee. I only helped with the stunts and the ramps and stuff, but I participated in a lot of their meetings. And Jim was on it.

Dick: I was on after about two or three years. Evel called me after about the second or third year. And he said, "Jimmy, you got to get involved with this thing. It's falling apart. You can make a lot of money." So I went to the first meeting and Matt Vincent, who is his son-in-law went also. He said, "You and Matt can get on there and save this thing." So we went to the meeting and they read the bylaws and one person got paid $10,000 plus their expenses. It was the executive director. So there was no money. So I said to Matt, "What do you think?" And he goes, "Well, I'm financially, can't spend this much time or anything at this. I'm probably going to pass. I can't do it." I said, "Well, I'll probably get involved." It's a lot of work and everything. So I did it for like 10 years and, uh, you know, it was a great thing as far as, uh, you know, I got to travel a lot and got to see all the people I'd met and everything. And then look at these little kids, like at the Silver Bow homes and stuff, most of them never got to go to Fairmont far less, get to see, uh, some world record guy coming in and doing a show in his hometown, right on the streets. And then the older folks that, you know, people lived here, you know, it was a great thing. And it took a lot of work.

But there was a group that started it. Christine Hall and Jay Fortune and I can't remember all the names, but Rundle, he was involved in it. He was the executive director. I told this story to Clark earlier. In the mid eighties, Evel was broke and he had sold the rights to the Evel Knievel trademark to a guy named Gary Schreiber. Gary Schreiber owned a steel mill in Cleveland, Ohio. So Gary and Evel went in and then Evel was doing some artwork and stuff. Remember the art stuff? So this Gary Shreiber backed the art business. But Evel, he'd go around. And he was using these prints as bartering stuff. Evel was very generous. I guess it wasn't his money, but he was generous, but he'd give these things. So they ended up in a bad way and they split the company. But Gary Schreiber still owned the rights to the trademark. So in the early 2000's, the popularity of Evel started coming back around. So these movies were coming out again and they were playing a lot of stuff and this and that, and the royalties were going to Gary Schreiber, not to Evel.

So Evel thought that maybe he didn't sign that thing over to him. Maybe it was a forgery. So he sued Gary Schreiber in federal court, but Evel never, ever went and testified. Linda went and testified a couple times. She'd never seen him sign it. Didn't know anything about it, which he probably didn't. But so as time went on, Gary Schreiber passed and Evel passed. So the money during this lawsuit went into a trust. So there got to be quite a bit of money in there. So Evel's son, Kelly, he started harassing the Schreiber family saying, "My dad was a hero. He spilled his blood. He was well known. And your family's got lots of money. And my mother works at Walmart. You're treating our family terrible."

And they're very nice people. And they said, "Our dad was a legitimate guy. I don't think he forged Evel's [signature]. We know he didn't." They said, "What could we do to help?" And they said, "Well, we will split half the royalties with your mother and whatever at this time, until the judge makes a ruling." So it was before a woman judge in a federal court in LA. So the Schreiber family got a hold of the court and said, "Give Knievel's half of the money. It's okay with us." So that day she made the decision that Knievel wins the suit. She said, "Why would they be willing to give up half if they thought they owned it?" So it made her decision easy. So that is in 2013 in about November. So that's when Kelly became the owner of it. So then everything that we were doing, he wanted to come in and change. And you know, some of us on the committee weren't all that happy with the way Kelly treated us. He told us we couldn't use the logo or the emblems or anything, trademarks of Knievel. But then he would always come up and sell t-shirts and everything.

So when I challenged him about it at one point, he said, "Well, I just don't want to get sued because you guys used an inferior product." But this was before he even owned it. So then when he owned it, then he wanted to come in . . . and I felt, make money on him. He challenged us and, you know, left us some terrible message and stuff. So we basically dissolved ours and we were done. And so then the city of Butte with Matt Vincent and them, they got back in and they tried to bring it on and, you know, and I'm sure, uh, you know, knowing Kelly, how he probably made their lives miserable. So they've gone through two or three directors since then, or maybe another one and, you know, hopefully they can keep it together.

But as far as what we went through, I'm done. I mean, it was terrible, such a good thing that, so I don't know where it's at, but that's my little history on it.

Crain: So how did you feel about Evel Knievel Days at the beginning?

Dick: No, it was a great thing. It was so such a unique thing. Unbelievable for what we did, you know? And, this is like a great compliment paid to Chad Harrington and myself. One time, we had Rick Wallenda, they're seventh generation walkers. They live in Sarasota, Florida. Sarasota is where the circus originates. If you're going to be a circus act, you go to Sarasota, Florida. Rick Wallenda calls me up one day and he says, "Hey Jim, what you and Chad do in Butte, Montana. What would it cost to have you to come to Sarasota, Florida and do this to honor our grandfather, the great Carl Wallenda?" I said, "You know what? That's probably the nicest compliment that could be paid. But what we do here in Butte, Montana, we could not pull off in Sarasota. For one thing, I'm sure the city wouldn't let you do it. And we don't have the connections there."

When he walked here, the last year we did, 2013. So Rick Wallenda calls me and he says, "Hey, Jim, I want to walk at least 600 feet." He said, "I got a different sized rope (or steel cable) for the distance." He said, "I don't care how far, even if it's further, I can walk, whatever, find two buildings that will support me." And I said, "Well, I don't know very much about that stuff." I said, "I have a nephew that is a civil engineer, Casey Briggs." I said, "I'll get you and Casey together. And you guys can figure out a couple of buildings and we'll do it."

[01:17:13]

So when Casey got done and they went as a project and they said, "There's not two buildings in Butte that are strong enough to withstand that much pressure. So you guys are going to have to get a crane." So I said, "Okay." So I'm driving back from Anaconda and Chad calls me, he goes, "Hey, how'd you do on that crane?" I said, "Oh shit." The crane had slipped my mind. I look over the Anselmo mine over there. Here's a big crane. So I pull in and I see a truck there. It says Charlie Dally's on it. So Charlie's a friend of mine. I said, "Hey Charlie, what's the deal on that crane?" He said, "I'm redoing these gallows frames." And he said, "What do you need?" I said, "Well, we need that crane on the 26, 27, 28th of July to set up. And we're going to tighten that rope and have Wallenda walk.

He said, "I'll give you the guy's number. You can call him." So I called the guy and he said, "Give me your email and I'll send you what it costs to have a crane." So he sends it. It's like 300 bucks an hour. It's 75 bucks an hour for a guy. There’s moving time. This and that. It came out to about 8,000 or $9,000. I said, "Well, we don't have that much in our budget." He said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Well, we're going to have a guy walk over at Knievel days." He said, "Well, you know, this crane actually belongs to my mother. The company and she owns it. I'll call her and see what she wants to do." So he calls me back. He said, "Hey, could you get us a couple of hotel rooms?" And he goes, "I got another crane operator and myself. We'll come over. We'll do it."

Two hotel rooms. So we get there. So we put the crane up and we're trying to get over the wires. We're still down there on the corner of Park and Main. So we get ahold of Markovich and he's got another crane, but he doesn't have to go as high. And we got him up there by the Hennessy building. So we're looping these things over and everything. So I called a friend of mine and I said, Monty Field. He has Copper City Lawn and Tree. I said, "Monty, how high does your boom truck go?" He goes, "65 feet." I said, "Bring it up. We need it." So I get up there with the crane and the rope. And I said, "How high are you guys?" And they said, "We're 70 feet." We're not high enough. I said, "Well, them outriggers. If I go out to the mill. And get some timbers. Can you jack that thing up another six or eight feet?"

He says, "Sure." So we go out there and we get these timbers, which now I get comp. You know, my brother donates them to us and we take them. So we go out there and we do this. Then we get Northwest energy to come up there and loop over every year wire going up Main Street. So what I'm getting back to is, and Sarasota, where would we be if I got on the phone and started calling somebody. So what we pulled off in Butte, Montana is pretty unique.

And then on the streets doing these stunts, live stunts. That's when this EJ Ellington got involved, you know, and he came in and said, "Well, I'll be calling where these stunts are going to be handled." He came in and worked for the city, park and rec guy. And I said, "Well, you're not going to say where they're going" And he said, "Yeah, I am. I've done concerts everywhere." I said, "You've never done a show where these stunts are. You're going to be saying where they're going to be?" He goes, "Yeah, we'll combine this down. I'm going to change everything." I said, "Well, you're not on my watch." Because as committees we were self-insured. We had to be insured. You know, we had insurance, but as a member, we could be held liable. So, as a committee member, so I said, here's a guy with no experience, never been to it. It's not like we're doing it in an arena. We're doing it on streets.

I said, you know, the number one rule, always, Evel told me is to not get a spectator hurt and to not get a participant hurt. But he said, he broke his rule in Chicago. He got in a fight with the promoters and he went out and they said, you know, "Evel, time to do your jump." He said, "Hey, I'm Evel Knievel. I'm not no actor, nothing. I go, when I'm ready, you don't come and knock on the door." And they said, "Well, you got to come." Okay. So he went and he hit the cameraman. The camera man lost an eye. He said in his performing career, that was the biggest disappointment. He said hurting himself or whatever, but when he hurt this innocent camera man, mainly because of his temper in the fight with that. Yeah. So he always told me no matter what, don't get a spectator hurt.

And Joe, I don't know if Joe wants me telling this. When Trigger Gum jumped was one of the last shows Evel was at. And we'd set the jump up down there on East Park and Trigger is out there doing his wheelies. Joe is standing there. And Evel goes, "What the hell is Joe doing?" I said, "Well, he's right there." He goes, "Tell him to give that guy a chance. He don't need to be out there, of all people." I said, "Well, I don't think Joe is trying to do anything." But you know, that was Evel's point, you know, give the guy a chance. So it's a very unique thing to be performing on the street. When you've got people. And a few times, we had some issues with it, you know, when people would rush the gate. And a lot of times it was Knievel family members. We, you know who I am, you know, uh, that car coming down here at 80 miles an hour, I don't care who you are. So, you know, it's a very challenging thing to put on the streets. It's a lot different than doing it in a stadium.

Crain: Because it was very impressive.

Dick: Oh, absolutely. The things that we did. Yeah. And tried to change it up. I mean that cannon lady and, uh, them stuff. And one thing that made it possible was because anybody in the stunt business, when they heard the name Evel Knievel, and they could come and perform at his hometown, they were all over it. I had Evel's original ramps. Christ, that cannon lady, we're at the Finlen having a few drinks. She said, "You got them? Can I stand on them?" We went out there and there in a pile up at my house. Oh my God, she's over there with her husband. She peeled a sliver off. She goes, "I'm going to get a necklace made." To stunt people, Evel Knievel was, you know, he was the guy that made it all happen.

Crain: Very interesting because his reputation is very different out of here.

Dick: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I would say probably any celebrity within their hometown. It's different, you know, but yeah. You went down the road out of here and yeah, I mean, they couldn't believe that, you know, a lot of times, that it was even him. Really this guy is here, you know?

Grant: So would you say he has a negative perception in Butte?

Dick: He's had some ups and downs, but no, not really. I don't know. I'd say way more support. But you know, no matter what it is, negative is heard way louder than positive. People that have a positive outlook might not say something, but some guy screaming something negative, you know? So, you know, I dunno, it's a tough call.

Crain: So you've mentioned a couple of times about your family business. Would you please speak about what that business is? And how long it's been there. And what you do.

Dick: Well, that was family business. I'm not involved in it any longer. But my grandfather, my father started it in 1948. It's out on South Harrison Avenue, across from Lydia's. But yeah, lumber business. And, uh, I never did work in the mines, but what we did is, when the Anaconda company shut their operations down in Bonner. They had their own lumber mills. So then we started in like the late 60's, 70's making the mine laggins and the mine timbers and all that stuff for the mine. So it's just a small family operation, but we've been since 1948 out there.

Grant: And nowadays what all do you do?

Dick: Still the same stuff. Make guardrail posts, mine timbers. The mines here aren't using any lumber but there is the mine at Stillwater, down there by Columbus and Big Timber. And guardrail posts, we've been making those for years. My oldest brother, John, runs it and he's probably got maybe two employees, three employees.

Crain: And Jim, what is your employment?

Dick: I work construction right now. Yeah.

Crain: When did you give up the card game?

Dick: The card game in 2008. I don't know. Maybe I told some stories on the AP and I don't know if they come in and busted me for not running by the limit right after. The gambling became legal in 72 in Montana. They had that, you know, their new convention. So I did it when I was going to college and I used to do it off and on here. But the hours were tough. With the family and stuff, it's probably easier not to be up until . . . go to work at 5:00 and be home at 6:00 or 7:00 the next day.

Crain: So Joe, why do you live in Dewey? When did you go to Dewey?

Dick: He's the mayor.

Little: I moved there 15 years ago.

Crain: What do you do for a living?

Little: I am a heavy equipment operator. So, um, loved to fish, loved to float, love the Big Hole River.

Crain: Little piece of heaven there.

Grant: Do you prefer these quieter days or do you miss being involved in the shows?

Little: I don't because I did it for so long. I met so many people, you know. I met Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, Muhammad Ali, every country band, every rock band. There wasn't a country. We did shows at drag strips. We did them in indoor arenas, outdoor football fields. You know, a lot of concerts, a lot of casinos, parking lots. Met tons of celebrities and bands. And when Robbie jumped the Grand Canyon in 1999, I kind of always dreamed about that for, you know, 10 or 15 years. Hey, if you can jump the Grand Canyon, I'm done, I've had enough. And that happened in '99 and I pretty much gave it up then and went to work for a construction company here in Butte. And Robbie, he did a few jumps after that, but he's got a bad back from spinal compression, landed so many times, you know. It was nothing to go out and do 20 or 30 practice jumps at half the distance at most of these shows. And that takes a lot on the body. And Robbie is 56 years old now.

Dick: When Robbie jumped at Caesar's, Willie Nelson was playing there. So that was the custom. When they did the fights or whatever, they would have the, uh, whoever was playing there the headliner. So Willy came out to the ramps and he stood there and he goes, "This isn't for real is it? Really?" They said, "Yeah, you're going to sing the Star Spangled Banner." He goes, "I'm not. I've screwed up the Star Spangled Banner before. And looking at this, I'm a nervous wreck. What about America the Beautiful?" So that's what he sang. And who was down there was Super Dave Osborne, you know. That was Bob Einstein, kind of that did all the stunts, you know, that cartoon or whatever. He said, "I can't believe this is happening." You know, for real, Super Dave. So, yeah, we had a lot of fun and everything, but it was very serious business on some hands. I mean, we'd sit there and we'd be goofing off. And then pretty soon you could just feel a little tightness as we get closer to jump day or what's going on. Is Robbie paying attention? And then when we were traveling with Evel, the two of them, you know, getting on the . . . there was some stress. We were young at the time and I'm sure I couldn't handle it now. I wouldn't want to.

Crain: Do you want to tell who else was on your crew from Butte?

Dick: We had Joey Faroni, travelled with us. Greg Bellay. Jack Ferriter at times. Ray Pizani went to Australia. Todd Klimpel was a childhood friend of Robbie's. So when we were going to Australia, it was a funny thing I thought of. So we went there, we were at their signing where I was telling you about doing the contract. Muzzy said to Evel, "Why don't you take Joey?" "OK, I'll take him." So we get down there and we're signing this contract. Well, there was a guy named Abe Lipsey. He was like a talent scout. He'd find stuff. He was a connection guy. So we get down there and we're signing this contract. And Evel's was $500,000. So Abe Lipsey was getting $50,000. Well, that was driving Evel nuts. So he says to this Abe Lipsy, he said, "Abe, who introduced you to me?" And he said, "Huh?" He said, "Don't give me that 'Huh?' It was that black caddy at Riviera country club.

He introduced you to me and he don't work for no 10%. He gets 15 and he's going to get it in cash here today, or I'm not signing this contract." So they said, "Okay." They call this guy and go, "Charlie, you gotta go over to the Beverly Hills Hotel." "What? What's going on?" So he said, "By the way, Abe, you're not going to Australia." He said, "Why are you going, Abe?What do you do a little motorcycle trick or something?" Abe was like, "No, I don't do anything." He goes, "And your wife is going?" He said, "Abe, you're not going." He said, "The only reason you and your wife, you take her everywhere, Abe, is because she is so goddamn ugly, you can't kiss her goodbye. Abe, you're not going." So he said, "Here, Jimmy, give me that ticket here. You got Joey's ticket." Evel's mind was always working. But you oughta see this guy, "Abe, why do you take your wife everywhere? You know why Abe? Because she is so goddamn ugly, you can't kiss her goodbye."

Crain: Clark, do you have anything else?

Grant: I don't believe so. This has been entertaining.

Crain: So do you guys have a favorable memory or a bad memory?

Dick: Of Evel? Good memories. I mean, uh, you know, had, uh, just had a lot of fun with him Uh, Evel was a practical joker. Some of the things he used to pull, I mean, he would go to the furthest, you know, one thing with the celebrities, they do like knockoff costume jewelry, you know, they got to a certain level. So at one point, Evel had this big cluster diamond ring that he used to wear. It's in all these pictures and everything. So he went and got these knockoffs made. They were like brass and glass. I think you'd get them made for like 15 or 20 bucks. But when you dropped it water, it looked real.

So what he would do, the first time I seen this trick, he goes into the bathroom at the Acoma. He says, "I'll tell you what, mind over matter. I'll let you flush it down the toilet. I can bring the son of a bitch back up. My mind is that strong." So he goes, "Okay, how much are you in for? You're in for 10, 10, five, 10." So he's got his ring on, so he takes it off and he drops the other one. So everybody looks. He flushes the toilet. So then he goes, "Okay, I'll be back out at the bar, concentrating, concentrated, concentrating . . . boom." It's back on. So they're all running down in the basement, thinking that he cut the pipe and somebody grabbed it and brought it back up. Well, he flushed it down. It only cost 10 bucks or whatever for that ring. He just took 10 from you, 20 from you, 50 from you. I mean, he just loved doing shit like that. You know, messing with people.

Little: One time when it was just me and Evel playing golf, we were at the Butte Country Club, we were on hole number seven, both hit our drives down there and pull up between the balls and Evel starts laughing. I go, "What's so funny?" He goes, "You know, Joe, I got to tell you something. I'm the only guy in the world that made $55 million and spent $62 million." And he started just laughing, goes over, hits his second shot up on the green. And I'm just sitting there howling, going, "That's the truest thing I ever heard you say." But he knew how much he made and how much he spent.

Dick: Yeah. He used to always say, "Jim I'm so broke that if it cost a nickel to go around the world, I couldn't step off the curb. He'd say, "Jim, you couldn't make a down payment on Amber." He'd laugh. But yeah, he went through a lot of money. But he used to say, "If you were supposed to hang on to it, they'd have put handles on it like they put on a suitcase." Yeah. He said he had no regrets. I don't know if he did or not, but on his money.

Little: But he had a hell of a run in the seventies.

Dick: Yeah. One of his sayings was 'I've been rich and I've been poor. And believe me being rich is a lot better.' You know, for us, hardly seeing anything to go traveling and being at that level and like to say his confidence and, uh, you know, telling these guys, you know. Shepherd had been on the moon. He tells him, "He can ride in the van. I'm not riding in the van."

Crain: Interesting man.

Dick: Always had his mind working, always messing with somebody like making that guy from the IRS, come down and have a shot of Wild Turkey.

Grant: That was crazy.

Crain: And giving him cash.

Dick: Well, Evel didn't dig checks. He had cash. We'd be in Vegas and if he'd win, take the chips right over and cash them in. He wanted cash.

Little: If he'd win.

Dick: Yeah, he usually didn't end up winning.

Grant: Thank you guys.

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