WASHINGTON – Robert Craig “Evel” Knievel Jr. jumped the Snake River Canyon in that souped-up X-2 Skycycle on a Sunday afternoon in the September I started first grade, 1974.

Snake River was a seminal moment of hype, working a psychological number on little boys back then that is in X-treme evidence around us now: You see it in Mountain Dew commercials, or during those 11-day searches for overconfident millionaires who get lost on Everest, and in seven-figure endorsement deals for professional skateboarders.

Did he make it across? Technically, no. The drag chute malfunctioned and opened early. Remembering Evel Knievel requires us to broaden our definition of almost.

He died Friday at 69, in Clearwater, Fla. Which is another way of saying something more remarkable: Evel Knievel died in bed. After all those star-spangled compound fractures, concussions, cracks to the pelvis, comas, tractions and multiple surgeries; after the liver transplant, the diabetes, the hepatitis; after prison, after bankruptcy, after familial disruptions and woe.

His survival story still invites others to the edge. Jumping cars and buses and the fountains of Caesars Palace on a motorcycle is one of the true American folk arts.

Any time ABC showed a Sunday afternoon Knievel stunt on “Wide World of Sports,” you could expect half the neighborhood to show up in the cul-de-sac immediately afterward, in an act of instant emulation. Someone would get a piece of plywood or a couple of 2-by-4’s and a cinderblock. Everyone had their bikes (bicycles, that is) and would perform jumps.

More kids started asking Santa for dirt bikes in the 1970s. The Evel Knievel action figure saw a lot of abuse. Vacant lots became theaters of preteen drama – wheelies and jumps performed off earthen mounds while girls in tube tops watched and chomped Bubble Yum. (Then the girls got dirt bikes. Then it got interesting, very Pinky Tuscadero.)

Every episode and movie version of “Jackass” owes a large debt to Knievel, not because of how he succeeded but how he failed. His completed jumps may in fact have outnumbered his failures, but all we really remember are the spectacular crashes, the press conferences held from hospital beds, the resolve. Soon enough he’d be back, thumbs up to the crowd, revving the engine, getting ready to jump seven, 13 buses in a row.

Hold your breath. Go, Evel! Go, Evel! Gooooooooouhhhhmmmm – hissssssssss. Ouch! Crash! Let’s look at that a thousand times in slow motion: Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. The life and pain of Evel Knievel; the stretcher, the ambulance, the faith.

He jumped in the Astrodome, he jumped in the Kingdome, all those ’70s arenas and domes. The very sort of building you take your kid to now, to watch it get imploded.