<\/p>\n
My older brother and I were pulling into our gravel driveway after morning football practice when we heard the news on the radio. \u201cLadies and gentlemen,\u201d the man said, \u201cthe king of rock and roll is dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my god,\u201d I thought. \u201cAlice Cooper.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t Alice, of course, much to my relief. It was another rock \u2018n’ roller who had once been considered a threat to society. It was Elvis. But it\u2019s no wonder Alice first came to mind.<\/p>\n
Three nights earlier, my friend Greg Moore and I had seen Alice Cooper in Oklahoma City. We were just shy of our 14th birthdays. The fact that we had gone to the concert by ourselves may have been a sign that we were growing up. More likely, it was a sign of the times.<\/p>\n
This was the tail-end of the free-range childhood era. Parents would push their kids out the door and tell them to disappear until dinner time. So, the kids got on their bikes, rode across creeks and through alleys, snuck into movie theaters and pool halls, played baseball with sticks and rocks, started fires and threw snakes at one another. Kids were feral. They ran wild. If you shot your buddy in the thigh with a pellet gun when you were trying to kill a squirrel, well, he shouldn\u2019t have been standing there.<\/p>\n