Alice’s Restaurant: Arlo Guthrie
Thanksgiving isn’t Thanksgiving without Coffee’s traditional song!
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
November 25, 2010 at 1:24 pm
For my generation it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without Alice’s Restaurant. Thanks.
November 25, 2010 at 6:51 pm
Happy Thanksgiving to you Katz; and to all you wonderful Americans!
November 25, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Us sitting here on the group W bench,wish you a Happy Thanksgiving day too Kat..
November 25, 2010 at 10:55 pm
Happy Thanksgiving Kat, even tho we don’t celebrate it here..and so, once again, here we go:
Running 18 minutes and 34 seconds, this song is based on a true story that happened on Thanksgiving Day, 1965. Arlo was 18, and along with his friend Rick Robbins, drove to Stockbridge, Massachusetts to have Thanksgiving dinner with Alice and Ray Brock. Alice and Ray lived in a church – the former Trinity Church on Division Street in Stockbridge – and were used to inviting people into their home. Arlo and Rick had been traveling together, Arlo working his way up in folk singing and Rick tagging along. A number of people, Arlo and Rick included, were considered members of the family, and so they were not guests in the usual sense. When Ray woke up the next morning, he said to them, “Let’s clean up the church and get all this crap out of here, for God’s sake. This place is a mess,” and Rick said, “Sure.” Arlo and Rick swept up and loaded all the crap into a VW microbus and went out to the dump, which was closed. They started driving around until Arlo remembered a side road in Stockbridge up on Prospect Hill by the Indian Hill Music Camp, which he went to one summer, so they drove up there and dumped the garbage. A little later, the phone rang, and it was Stockbridge police chief William J. Obanhein…. “I found an envelope with the name Brock on it,” Chief Obanhein said. The truth came out, and soon the boys found themselves in Obanhein’s police car. They went up to Prospect Hill, and Obie took some pictures, and on the back he marked them, “PROSPECT HILL RUBBISH DUMPING FILE UNDER GUTHRIE AND ROBBINS 11/26/65.” And took the kids to jail. The kids went in, pleaded, “Guilty, Your Honor,” were fined $25 each and ordered to retrieve the rubbish. Then they all went back to the church and started to write “Alice’s Restaurant” together…. “We were sitting around after dinner and wrote half the song,” Alice recalls, “and the other half, the draft part, Arlo wrote.”
The following appeared in the local paper:
Saturday, Richard J. Robbins, 19, of Poughkeepsie, N. Y., and Arlo Guthrie, 18, of Howard Beach, N. Y., each paid a fine of $25 in Lee District Court after pleading guilty of illegally disposing of rubbish. Special Justice James E. Hannon ordered the youths to remove all the rubbish. They did so Saturday afternoon, following a heavy rain. Police Chief William J. Obanhein of Stockbridge said later the youths found dragging the junk up the hillside much harder than throwing it down. He said he hoped their case would be an example to others who are careless about disposal of rubbish. The junk included a divan, plus nearly enough bottles, garbage, papers and boxes to fill their Volkswagen bus. “The stuff would take up at least half of a good-sized pickup truck,” Chief Obanhein said. The rubbish was thrown into the Nelson Foote Sr. property on Prospect Street, a residential section of Stockbridge consisting largely of estates on the hill across from Indian Hilil [sic] School. Chief Obanhein told the court he spent “a very disagreeable two hours” looking through the rubbish before finding a clue to who had thrown it there. He finally found a scrap of paper bearing the name of a Great Barrington man. Subsequent investigation indicated Robbins and Guthrie had been visiting the Great Barrington man and had agreed to cart away the rubbish for him. They told the court that, when they found the Barrington dump closed, they drove around and then disposed of the junk by tossing it over the Stockbridge hillside.
November 26, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Wanna feel old?
I just found that the draft ended 37 years ago. That just can’t be!
November 27, 2010 at 5:44 am
Seriously, that is crap. Doesn’t rhyme, just a rambling nonsense.
November 27, 2010 at 6:22 pm
Happy belated T.G. Back on the East coast Alison Steele, ” The Night Bird”, on one of the radio stations from N.Y. always played this. It was such a tradition. Thanks for giving it to me this year. Hope you are doing well.
November 29, 2010 at 7:13 pm
You didn’t post today. I hope you are well. Nice that you did leave this song up to play again and again. It’s a homey type song that many of us former hippies clinged to. Enjoy your recovery!
December 1, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Miss you, Kat! Hope you are okay, my friend!
Hugs, Rita