Pizza Joe was closing in on 30, way past the age of knowing better when he decided to jump the duck pond in his southern Ohio hometown of Cambridge.
Perhaps, like so many guys who grew up riding spider bikes and watching daredevil Evel Knievel jump buses and cars and fountains on a motorcycle, Joe figured it would be fun. Or maybe he just wanted to experience flight, a dream he attempted decades later using a compact car with a sheet of plywood strapped on the roof for lift.
As with so many of Joe’s adventures, the motivation remains fuzzy.
Joe says he knew he wasn’t going to clear the 800-foot-long pond. (The world-record motorcycle jump is 350 feet. Evel Knievel was only trying to make 150 feet when he crashed at Caesar’s Palace in 1967.)
Joe may have tried jumping the pond’s width (200 feet) instead of its length, but he was using the 10th Street hill for momentum and the hill runs parallel to the length of the pond, so that angle of approach wouldn’t work.
Joe leaned a piece of plywood on a picnic table for a ramp. Starting at the top of the hill aboard his Schwinn ten-speed, he came barreling down past the Don Coss Stadium, past the Cambridge town pool and the three basketball courts, hitting the ramp and flying – by his own estimate – about 10 feet before splashing into the pond.
By then, onlookers had gathered and started egging him on to try again, but with more momentum. He tried twice more, eventually making it about 12 feet into the pond. After his third attempt, the cops showed up.
About 20 years later on a trip back to Ohio, Joe was playing in a pick-up basketball game at the park. When one of the players called him “Crazy Joe,” a light bulb came on for a bunch of the other, younger players. “Wait,” one of the kids said. “You’re Crazy Joe. You’re the guy who jumped the duck pond.”
It seems that over time, Joe’s big splash had grown into a soaring achievement, a milestone, a legend. In the storied version, Joe had cleared the duck pond and landed on the other side, then moved away forever to Alaska, reckless stunts that kids from Cambridge could only dream of.
I didn’t ask Joe if he set the kids straight. I’d like to think he just gave them a shrug and a “Yup” and got back to the game.
Everyday life can be a daunting task or an endless chore, even for youngsters. To achieve much, young people need to imagine, and to imagine, they need to hear accounts of others who achieved the unimaginable. We have legends because we need them.
Later in life we learn that most legends don’t match up well with the truth. Human beings are vain, weak, and fearful creatures. Even the greats have hang-ups that are impossible to explain to a child.
So let’s not.
Let the young people believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and a guy from their hometown jumping an 800-foot pond on a ten-speed. They can learn the disappointing truth later, when they’re older and stronger, long after they’ve taken their own crazy shots at glory.