Because of the date of the original incident, this song has become a minor Thanksgiving tradition on many modern radio stations. This should also bring back a few memories for our Vietnam-era readers; hopefully, at this point, the passage of time has made them reasonably mellow ones. Enjoy.
For what it’s worth: the song actually is based – loosely – on a real event. Alice was a real person (Alice Brock); Alice had indeed purchased an old church (Trinity Church) and lived in same with her husband Ray as depicted in the song.
Arlo Guthrie and a friend, Richard Robbins, really were arrested for illegal littering in Stockbridge, MA, on Thanksgiving Day, 1965 – after they hauled off some of the Brocks’ garbage, found all local dumps closed, and illegally dumped the trash elsewhere. The arresting officer actually did look through the garbage to find a clue (the Brock’s address on an envelope), leading to Guthrie’s and Robbins’ arrest.
The judge that later heard the case actually was blind, and the arresting officer was named William J. “Obie” Obanhein – sometimes referred to as, yes, “Officer Obie”. (The judge’s use of a seeing-eye dog, the famous “twenty-seven 8 by 10 color glossy photos”, and much of the rest of the song’s purported dialog and/or events may well be satirical exaggeration on Guthrie’s part). They pleaded guilty to littering and creating a public nuisance and were indeed fined $25 each – or $50 total.
Guthrie was later called for the draft (some accounts say he tried to voluntarily enlist). Whether his attempted entry into the military was voluntary or not, he was indeed disqualified for military service based on his criminal record (his guilty plea to the crimes of littering and creating a public nuisance and resulting in the payment of a $25 fine).
Though the song was at the time considered anti-war and adopted by the antiwar movement, Guthrie has long said the song was not written as an antiwar song. Rather, he says he wrote it more as an “anti-stupidity” song.
I have to say he has at least a partial point. Disqualifying someone for military service because of a guilty plea to the crime of littering at a time of manpower demand so extreme it led to Project 100,000 (AKA MacNamara’s “Moron Corps”) does seem to fail the “WTF?” test. Then again, all of us who’ve served already know that the Five-Sided Asylum often seems to regard common sense as a disqualifying trait for, well, pretty much anything. (smile)
Happy Thanksgiving, all. And remember:
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
(Excepting Alice)
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
Walk right in it’s around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant