Walking a Thin Line : A Special Blend of Dedication, Daring Keeps Jay Cochrane, Now at Knott’s, Up on That Wire

At 6:03 p.m., the noisy crowd of onlookers went silent, their faces turned toward the sky, their video cams whirring.

Some 20 stories above, gingerly tapping one foot several times to test the wire, Jay Cochrane stepped out onto the tightrope, which extends at a 42-degree upward slant to the top of Knott’s Berry Farm’s 187-foot-tall Sky Tower parachute ride.

With nothing but a tangle of steel roller coaster coils and palm trees between him and the asphalt, Cochrane carefully began to ascend the 400-foot-long ligament no thicker than an index finger. It’s the same path he’s been traversing once a week since coming to Knott’s in late June for “Snoopy’s Great America Celebration,” a summer festival of live shows and events commemorating 100 years of American entertainment.

Steadily and gracefully, with his red and white sequined jump suit glinting in the sun, Cochrane made his way across the slim life line, his gaze intently focused on his feet.

Suddenly, he stopped dead still, one foot frozen in front of the other. The wind had picked up, buffeting glistening palm fronds and balloons. Seconds passed like hours. At least one park official began to squirm. In 1965, Cochrane was left bedridden for four years from a fall.

On this day, however, even his 30-foot-long balance pole didn’t seem to quiver and within moments he resumed his climb, having paused only to ride out the breeze, he said later. Moments after that, he reached the end of his 10-minute journey, as spectators throughout the park clapped, cheered and hooted.

“It was great!” said Forest Long, an Orange County Transit District bus driver from Garden Grove. “He made it look easy.”

Ditto from Bob Miller, an engineer from Northridge.

“He looked like he was at ease,” Miller said. There was something that Miller wanted to know, though: “When I saw the man go up there, I thought, ‘What type of idiot would do that?’ ”

That sort of question doesn’t bother Cochrane, who has heard them all.

“Crazy I may be, but stupid I’m not,” he said in an interview just after descending the wire. “I’ve been doing this for a long time--38 years to be exact--and I’m still around. Plus, I earn a comfortable living, I get to travel all over the world, and I work where I want, when I want and how I want.”

On the other hand, he also risks death every time he reports for work.

“We do every day when we go sit in a car” was his quick retort. “Especially in (Southern California).”

Does he rely on any aerialist “tricks” hidden from observers’ eyes?

“No trick,” not even a groove on the bottom of his shoe to grab the wire, he replied, offering the bottom of a leather slipper as proof. Only a thin black mark from the wire, five-eighths of an inch thick, dirtied its smooth, flat surface.

“If it were easy, everybody would be doing it,” he said with a smile.

Cochrane, who said he made the Guinness Book of World Records in 1975 for a 4 1/2-hour walk on the high wire, has also traversed the rope at a height of 820 feet and tackled tall structures throughout the United States, Canada and elsewhere. He is making his Southern California debut at Knott’s, where he will walk every Saturday at 6 p.m. through Sept. 2.

After nearly four decades in the business and endless interviews, he’s glib with the press and a regular font of tightrope jokes and puns.

“I tell people my initials are J.C., but I walk on wires, not on water,” he said with a wink.

Tall, trim, blond and blue-eyed, this Ontario, Canada-born showman is warm, affable, optimistic and anything but flippant when it comes to how to work the wire.

“I’m always glad when (a walk) is over,” he said, “but I’m always glad when it’s about to start. In the middle, it’s total concentration. When you walk, you are always prepared for something to happen. That’s what gives you the edge. But I have to make it look like I’m out there for a stroll.”

Describing himself as a “typical Toby Tyler” (the title character from the 1960 Disney movie), Cochrane ran away from home at 14 to join the circus. Years before, he had seen a circus performer do a high-wire somersault and said to his mother “that’s what I’m going to do when I grow up. And she said, ‘Oh, no you’re not,’ and I said, ‘Oh, yes I am.’ ”

From his first job tending horses for 50 cents a day, he went on to learn high-wire techniques in Toronto from his mentor, Struppi Hanneford, who used the stage name Princess Tajana. She was an aerialist with the Hanneford family circus, who taught him to walk and cycle on a tightrope, hang from a trapeze bar by his heels (he has never flown the trapeze) and perform other stunts.

He honed his skills working for various circuses. One day, he readily agreed to walk over a wire between two buildings, never realizing that his agent meant the wire would be suspended atop two 50-story skyscrapers. But Cochrane accomplished the feat and has been walking between tall structures ever since--not once with a net.

“Nets are for two things: They catch fish, and I have a 96-year-old grandmother and they keep her hair in place,” he said.

Cochrane never performs without public liability insurance, however, which he says is as “sky-high” as the wire he walks, about $100,000 a year. He would not reveal his annual income, but said his performance fees include the cost of insurance. He also knows when to say no: If the wind is too strong, he won’t go up, for instance.

“If (management) doesn’t understand that, it’s their problem. I never take safety for granted. The first time you do that, you’re in trouble.” (Knott’s carries its own insurance as well, but a spokesman could not provide details about the coverage.)

He also insists on setting up and maintaining his own apparatus. At Knott’s, where his walk begins at the 110-foot-tall tip of the Boomerang roller coaster and ends atop the parachute ride, he anchored his tightrope with 22 taut guy wires attached to park roof tops and other sites.

Cochrane, who also produces a dozen aerial acts, nearly died the one and only time he allowed someone else to install his gear. That was more than 25 years ago. The equipment collapsed, and he plummeted 90 feet to the ground.

“I was a paraplegic for four years,” he said, and told by doctors that he’d never walk anywhere again without crutches or a cane. Five and a half years later, however, after painful physical therapy with “Anglican nuns who had no mercy” and single-minded determination, he was back on the wire, “and it’s been uphill ever since.”

“I only have one direction--steady forward. Tell me I can’t, and I’ll show you I will. To be successful in any field, you have to be an optimist. If you can talk about it, you can do it.”

* Tightrope walker Jay Cochrane performs every Saturday at 6 p.m. through Sept. 2 at Knott’s Berry Farm, 8039 Beach Blvd., Buena Park. The park is open 9 a.m.-11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday; 9 a.m.-midnight Friday and Saturday. Admission is $21.95 for adults and $9.95 for children, ages 3-11. Information: (714) 220-5200.