Prepare yourself for an Evinrude
If you like skateboarding, then you just might be ready for an Evinrude boat motor, later on in life, when you grow up. You know Evinrude owners are born, not made. Right? It’s not like a choice. When you get to college, it’s OK if you experiment a little. Nobody is going to judge you if you try riding a Razor scooter. If you’re worried, just keep it on the DL. 1989 advertisement for Evinrude motors, complete with Gonz skateboard after the jump.
This came from an unnamed boating magzine. Sellers usually don’t list the title because they don’t want you finding the magazine intact somewhere else cheaper. This one was less than $5 delivered, but when you add up all of these that I’ve bought over the years… I could have bought an Evinrude instead! What is going to happen to these (landfill) when I pass on? I’m going to have to set up trust to donate this part of my “estate” to the Smithsonian. Will they even take it? Betsy, help me out here. Meanwhile, someone else better help this kid out. He’s clearly about to fall off the ski jump.
Woulda been funnier if Evinrude’s sister company had run the ad (“How to Prepare Early on for the Thrill of a Johnson…”).
Johnson outboards actually prepared one for the thrill of SKATING, though, rather than vice-versa, in my experience. When I was 14, my 20 horsepower was on the fritz, so I had the bright idea that I would simulate water skiing behind a friend’s motorcycle. “Only” problem was, the skateboard that my grandmother had bought me not only had a plastic deck, but had what seemed suspiciously like plastic wheels. I just remember towing up the street until I started to get speed wobble right after my buddy had shifted his dirt bike into fifth gear. To this day I don’t remember coming off the board, or anything, at all, between speed wobbling and waking up in the hospital the next day. Apparently a good samaritan on a bigger motorcyle happened along and they slung me over it and pushed me back home to present to my parents. And apparently when my folks were washing all the blood off, I kept asking for hotter and hotter water until I started screaming… so they started asking me questions, which I supposedly was getting right until they got to what month it was, whereupon I was off by several.
The moral being, kids… first get your Johnson squared away, then go skateboarding… or you might do something rash.