“Alice’s Restaurant” – A Thanksgiving Tradition

“Alice’s Restaurant,” Arlo Guthrie’s beloved musical ode to garbage, small town policing, and military conscription, celebrates many anniversaries. The song – its full name is “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” – has its conception on Thanksgiving Day, 1965, when Guthrie, then 18, and friend Rick Robbins, 19, were clearing out the Stockbridge, Massachusetts, home of Alice and Ray Brock.

The Coney-Island-born Guthrie, son of folk icon Woody Guthrie (who named him Arlo because it seemed “a good name for a professional”), attended the private coed boarding school where Alice was a librarian; Ray taught carpentry. Drawn to the Brocks’s laissez-faire lifestyle, Guthrie and other students spent much of their free time at their home, a former church. Eventually, Alice, a Brooklyn native like Guthrie himself, opened a small restaurant just off Stockbridge’s main street

Alice” has become its own Thanksgiving tradition: radio stations still air it over the holiday and Arlo performs an annual Thanksgiving concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall. No surprise. Our local public radio KRNN fulfilled the tradition today courtesy of volunteer on-air host Ricky D.

“Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago
Was on two years ago on Thanksgiving…”

“So we took the half a ton of garbage
Put it in the back of a red VW microbu.,,”

“Just a half a mile from the railroad track
And you can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant
Da da da da da da da dum
At Alice’s Restaurant

SOURCE: Smithsonian Mad and songwriter – Arlo Guthrie,.