Alice's Restaurant

In Barrington, Massachusetts there is a restaurant called Alice's Restaurant. This restaurant is located inside a church where owners Alice and Ray Brock live. Alice has a friend named Arlo Guthrie. Arlo writes songs about protests, composes music, is a lifelong political activist, and a musician. He also named her restaurant for her. In the year 1965 Arlo and his friend Roger Robbins were trying to do something nice for Alice, so they illegally dumped some of her garbage on Thanksgiving Day. Then they loaded it all up in their red Volkswagon Microbus and headed to the city dump, but little did they know the garbage dump was closed on Thanksgiving. When Arlo and Roger found out the dump was closed they kept driving, searching for another place to dump the garbage. They soon found a side road where they saw someone else's garbage sitting there, on the other side of the cliff they discovered some more garbage, so they came to a conclusion and dumped their garbage there also. Then Arlo and Roger then went back home to have a nice Thanksgiving dinner that they could not miss.

The reason why Arlo and his friend had so much garbage to dump was because there were not any pews in the church, so this is where the trash was collected until they ran out of space. The morning after Arlo Guthrie and Roger Robbins dumped garbage on a side road Arlo got a phone call from Officer Obanhein saying that he found an envelope under the dumped garbage with Arlo's name on it and asked him if he had any more information to tell him about the garbage. So Arlo confessed saying that there is no way he could tell a lie and said that he did dump the trash. Unfortunately, Officer Obanhein ordered Arlo and Roger to pick up the garbage, gave them fines, and imprisoned them. When Arlo was released from jail, Officer William "Obie" Obanhein placed Arlo Guthrie in a room with people that Arlo referred to as "mother and father rapers". The reason why Arlo named Alice's Restaurant after Alice Brock is because it was her garbage that he dumped and she paid his court fines for him in the approximate amount of fifty dollars. Since Arlo was being drafted to the military, he had to go for his physical but he was denied and declared "unfit" because of his criminal record that they discovered. Actually it turned out that Arlo dumped the garbage with and envelope with his name addressed on the front so he would get caught and could not be drafted to the military.

Soon enough Arlo wrote a song which was a protest against the Vietnam War Draft and against hippies. Then later, not only was Alice's Restaurant a restaurant, but also a song and a movie. He wrote so many things, the song ended up being just slightly over 18 minutes long. This real story turned out to be a famous movie and piece of music.

Some of the lyrics to the song that Arlo wrote about Alice's Restaurant are:
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile to the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant

I think that Mr. Neuburger chose Alice's Restaurant for our Applied Communications class to blog about because I believe that once upon a time he was in a slight different state of mind when he and a friend decided to do something illegal on a holiday so they would not have to be drafted into the military.

To read the song and more about Alice's Restaurant on your own click here or here: