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At age 13, Bobby Peters' ambition was to become a Hollywood stunt man and he was always doing bold and risky (others might say foolhardy and just plain lunatic) stunts on his bicycle with me as his, sometimes unwitting, accomplice.As, for example, when he tried to jump his bike off a low ramp through a flaming hoop. The hoop was the iron rim of a large cart wheel, wrapped in rags soaked in kerosene. Well, the rim was larger than the bicycle, but not with Bobby on it. I played no part in this stunt except to watch in horror as Bobby got entangled in the hoop and set his clothes afire. He managed to extricate himself and had the presence of mind to roll on the ground and put out the flames. Still he got some rather bad burns out of it. I worshipped the ground Bobby walked on. I admired his boldness and, hampered by a mild case of cerebral palsy, I couldn't do many of the things that he could. Often Bobby didn't tell me what he was going to do. His instructions might merely be "Here, Marky, hold this rope and don't let go 'til I tell you to." These were his words when he attached "wings" made of the sides of a wooden wheelbarrow to his bike and launched it off the garage roof, with him aboard, intending to fly it down the driveway . The rope, of course, kept the bike from rolling down the roof until he was ready. So, I let go of the rope when he told me to and his cycle-plane flew like a rock, straight down. This time, Bobby broke his right arm and knocked out a couple of teeth. His mother told me "Look, Marky, if Bobby tells you to do something, anything, DON'T !" Sometimes I did, anyway. The one thing that Bobby loved even more than stunting was watching western movies. The Leonard Theater had a kids' matinee with continuous showing on Saturday. They were supposed to shoo the kids out after the first show, but they usually didn't. When there was a double feature of westerns, Bobby would stay there all day, watching them over and over. Bobby's last stunt (Now, don't get upset. Last time I heard of him he was still alive.) was one done by every movie cowboy since William S. Hart (or by his stunt double). The hero jumps out of the window or off the roof of the saloon onto the back of his waiting steed and rides off while the bad guys impotently fire their 50-shot six-shooters after him. I had gone over to the Peters house to see Bobby. I saw his bike set up with its kick-stand down on the walk leading up to the front porch. Bobby called to me from the open window directly above the porch roof, "Hey, Marky, watch this." He ran down the porch roof, jumped off, and landed on his faithful steed, squarely on his crotch on the hard bicycle seat. I had never heard Bobby cry out before no matter how badly he was hurt. This time, he screeched like a factory whistle, fell off the bike, and writhed (I'd never seen anyone writhe before, either.) on the ground screaming and then puking. His mother came running out of the house and shouted at me "Marky, why didn't you stop him ?" I replied in astonishment, "Stop him ? How ? I didn't even know what he was going to do." Mrs. Peters dashed back into the house and phoned for an ambulance, as it was obvious that he was seriously hurt this time. Bobby, curled up in a fetal posture, was only moaning feebly by the time the ambulance arrived. Bobby spent a week in the hospital and another week in bed at home. After that, all he seemed to want to do was sit in a rocking chair on the porch. I was amazed at the changes in his personality. He had become very quiet and subdued. He never rode his bike again and tried to sell it to me. With my cerebral palsy, I can't maintain my balance on a bicycle, so it would have been of no use to me. Besides, I'd come to think of that bike as jinxed. Bobby got fat, apathetic, and rather dull to be with. In time, my voice changed, but his didn't. I began to shave, but his face was as smooth as a baby's skin. When Bobby was 16, the Peters family moved. Bobby still looked like a fat boy rather than a teenager.By that time, I was a tall, lanky, hairy, horny adolescent.Needless to say, but I shall, anyhow, Bobby Peters never became a Hollywood stunt man. The last I heard, he was an insurance agent . |