Alice's Restaurant Masacree - An Overlooked Thanksgiving Tradition

Image result for alice's restaurant
Thanksgiving has its own many traditions: stuffing (or rather overstuffing) ourselves with turkey, gravey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and pumpkin pie, a Dallas Cowboys football game, and did I mention Black Friday shopping the next day after camping outside the shopping center for hours all through the night?

But, there is STILL one tradition that is overlooked by many - and that's the Alice's Restaurant Masaree as written and performed by Woody Guthrie's son Arlo Guthrie. The album of the same name was released in 1967 with the accompanying movie coming out in 1969. This talking blues classic gets played on American classic rock radio at least once during Thanksgiving

The Story:

 This real-life, but heavily exaggerated story involves Arlo Guthrie spending Thanksgiving with his friend Alice and her husband Ray. Although the song says Stockbridge, Massachussetts, Arlo was actually in Great Barrington, Mass. when the massacree happened. Arlo and his friend offered to take Alice's garbage out but ended up dumping it out near a cliff because the dump was closed. The next day they were arrested by Stockbridge Police Chief William Obnien (aka Officer Obie). Obie had prepared "Twenty-seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaning what each one was to be used as evidence against us." However, the judge presiding was blind and so Arlo and his friend were fined $25 each and had to pick up all the garbage after a heavy rain.

However, as Arlo says himself, "That's not what I came to talk about." Instead, what MANY people don't realize is that the song is a deadpan protest against the Vietnem War. In the second part, Arlo has to go for a physical to the infamous building at 39 Whitehall St. in New York City for a military examination. He gets drunk the night before and then acts homicidal in front ot the "shrink."

Later he is told to sit on the Group W Bench and tells the sergeant there "You got a lot of damn gall to ask if I've rehabilitated myself. I mean I'm sitting on the Group W Bench because you wanted to know if I'm moral enough to join the army burn women, houses, children, and villags after bein' a litterbug." The sergeant sends Arlo's fingerprints out to DC where the FBI kept a database of all military applicant fingerprints there before releasing that data in 1971.

Then Arlo gets to the point of the song, "The only reason I'm singing this for you tonight is because you may know somebody in a simillar situation, or YOU could be in the simillar situation." Arlo encourages the listener that if they or someone they know is in such a situation just to alk into the military psychiatrist's office, sing the opening line of the song's chorus (You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant) and then leave. If 50 people do it the phsyciatrist would think it was some sort of movement which it is, and all the listener has to do to join in is "To sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar."

The song has been rerecorded numerous times with revised lyrics through Arlo's career. It is his signature song and folks, in 2017 it was filed in the National Registry of HIstory Artifacts as being culturally or historically important.

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