Alice Cooper Saved My Life

Another true story from the annals of my bizarre life...

Alice Cooper saved my life.

Not kidding, he really did.

So I may have mentioned that if a friend has to move, my husband and I are there with bells on to make sure that said friend is well and truly MOVED. If said friend is in danger, my Fierce Protective Friend Meter ratchets itself up to eleven, and you'd better believe that, come heck, high water, or vagaries of life, you WILL be moved.

So when a friend who was avoiding a rather abusive ex-husband wanted to move to a different state, place your bets that I was involved, and ready when those vagaries came with some extra punches below the belt. (And usually with a box of cleaning supplies, food for two meals, and a camera to take picture proof that we left a clean vacant building behind.)

My friend is bipolar and has fibromyalgia. This makes for some Interesting Times, since the meds for the one cancels the other med's effects out. She tries to be a meticulous planner, but with her hyperfocus on the very next step to take, life tends to flick her poor gyroscope into next week with curve balls.

She measured all her stuff three times, she had everything packed, she had the proper size truck rented, she had movers scheduled, she had a pet-friendly hotel for herself and all helpers on the far end of a day's travel, she had a mob of helpers on the far side ready to put in her new digs...

And the truck she rented was too small. The movers couldn't fit everything in the truck.

Cue an acute meltdown, which, honestly, is perfectly understandable.

I was the only one brave enough to drive the truck that far, so I trundle it back to the rental with her to have a closed hitch attached to the back. The movers had already taken off, but they said they'd come back free of charge if we got the hitch when they finished their current job, so we charged ahead.

They came back, they packed...

And our poor friend suddenly couldn't function.

To be fair, she had Reasons, but three cars full of helpers and drivers are now cooling heels while she dithered. We're losing daylight, so we finally got her and ourselves on the road.

When I'm traveling, I need a wing man. This was an eight hour trip – because we learned very quickly that the truck had a governor on the engine, and I could not go over 65 miles an hour. Instant extension to ten hours! Oh, this was gonna be a loooong one -

Which got longer because suddenly our friend realized that the sun was setting, and she can't function alone in a car in the dark without a companion. I'm driving the truck, the other friend is allergic to smoke and our friend's car reeked of smoke. She had recently switched to vaping and patches to quit, but tell the car that, with many many years of pent-up tar / nicotine frustrations to vent. So that leaves my hubby... and I'm now alone for another six to eight hours.

At night.

Item the first: arrange the console so that All the Caffeine is within reach.

Item the second: turn on the radio, and crank the volume.

Item the third: learn how to spin the dial on said radio from the giant wheel that I'm wrestling, while only going 65mph down the turnpike.

Item the fourth: sweat bullets.

For a while things were okay, I could pull in enough stations with rocking music to keep myself going. Follow that particular set of red taillights, glance in the rear view a few times for that particular set of headlights. Sip the caffeine, try not to get tunnel vision.

Stop for dinner-

Pay attention to the needle scratch in my head when everyone hops out to get turnpike pizza.

Because I'd just heard it mentioned on the news that there were trailer thieves patrolling the turnpike, and would slide in and steal a hitch and contents when they were left unattended. When I take a trip with others, one rule I have is that someone stays with the car at all times. In a restaurant, we're seated within sight of the vehicle. So I sent husband in with my order, and sat my prodigious tushie right on top of that hitch.

Just in time for the raider to try.

The way I sat, I was not visible from either the direct back or front. But I still couldn't believe the audacity. I watched that little weasel drive a truck in two full circles around the upper end of the parking lot. Lead car parked in one space, last car parked right behind them, me double parked with one set of parking spaces between them and the truck with hitch. No one near us for at least four spaces in any direction. Guess which two spaces they decided to target?

Until they saw me stand up, glaring rage in my eyes. Suddenly they realized they needed to get gas in the next county, because they burned rubber leaving the parking lot and getting back on the road.

Hunh. Didn't think so.

My friends were quite surprised to return with my food to fresh rubber skid marks between the vehicles, and my hair still standing up in anger. I chewed out some serious frustration on that poor innocent personal cheese.

We got back on the road. In the dark.

Now, there are loads of nice areas of the great state of Pennsylvania. We have woodlands, museums, bucolic farms, gorgeous gorges, flowing rivers. Friendly and unfriendly people, sometimes side by side.

But the area west of Happy Valley? So named because they put the bleeping campus in the middle of varking nowhere? There ain't nothing there, folks. When the sun sets, the color leaches out of the world, and there ain't nothing off the blacktop but the void, mercilessly staring back at you, waiting for you to twitch.

Radio signals cut out an hour out of Happy Valley when you're in a rental moving truck.

Ask me how I know.

I spun that dial frantically, hoping for some thread of airwave to keep me from zoning out. At that point, I'd been up for fifteen or sixteen hours.

And then I heard it.

One radio station, in the middle of that great gaping audio hole.

Alice Cooper.

Did you know he has a radio show?

I was not aware. I am now.

Because as the hallucinations set in, I heard Alice Cooper doing a Porky Pig imitation.

You. Have. My. Complete. Attention.

And for the next two hours, Alice spun the tunes, with anecdotes of his life and interactions with the singers. And reading fan letters, using strange voices to emulate what he thought his fans might sound like.

Wait, did you read "hallucinations"?

Yep.

Remember, I'm in a rental. I did not change any setting but the rear and side mirrors.

So the front headlights, on regular setting, should not have produced an angelic figure that was bobbing its headlike object along to the beats Alice Cooper was sending out.

But they did.

Running alongside the road, but very clear on the bridge abutments and in the tunnels, was this angel. Body, wings, head, and one arm and hand up in a "stop" motion, head banging along to the music.

It was a very good hallucination, because the person in the car behind me could also see it, plain as anything.

Unnerving. But I guess I got someone riding shotgun for me, after all.

That station stayed with me just long enough to get to the next rest break, where I tanked up on more caffeine than I should have. And babbled my experience to the others, who didn't quite believe me. It was enough caffeine and walking and fresh air to get us across the border, into a hotel, and rested just enough to go round the corner the next day and greet the welcoming committee and let them take over, so we could turn round and head home. At a much faster speed than we arrived.

Look, I won't lie – that was freaking weird. And I've had some weird experiences, if you've read my stories. And that angelic figure kinda vanished when the radio petered out, so there was no proof when we landed.

But Alice Cooper's radio show still exists, and I like catching it on the internet late at night.

Did Alice Cooper send an angel to protect a lonely listener?

Here's the better question:

Are you gonna tell him he didn't?