Alice's Restaurant

Alice M. Brock was a Painter and designer, in 1964 she and her husband Ray bought a church in which they would live in with 2,000 dollars that was given to her by her mother in Great Barrington Massachusetts. Alice and Ray had done alot of work to the old church, things like taking the pews out and cleaning out old things. Thier friend Arlo Guthrie which was a folk singer had stoped into town to see them. When Arlo Guthrie gets to their house he sees alot of garbage. So he decided it'd be a friendly gesture for him to take the garbage down to the city dump. So he took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW microbus and went off. When they got to the city dump there was a big sign and a chain across the city dump saying, "Closed on Thanksgiving." He had never seen that before so Arlo just went off trying to find another dump. He drove and drove and he didn't find one. Until he came to a side road, and off the side of the road there was a fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the cliff there was another pile of garbage. So Arlo decided that one big pile of garbage is better than two little piles of garbage. So Arlo decided to throw his garbage down the cliff. So Arlo got back into his car and drove back to the church for a Thanksgiving dinner. Arlo then recived a phone call the next morning from officer Obie He said " We found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half ton of garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." Arlo said "Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage." After Arlo was done speaking to officer Obie on the phone, Obie told Arlo that he had to go down and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the police station, so Arlo got into the car with the shovels and headed on toward the station. When Arlo arrived at the station officer obie handcuffed him, Arlo then asked " Obie, I don't think I can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on." Officer Obie said, "shut up, kid, get in the back of the potrol car and drove to the so called crime scene, when Arlo and officer Obie arrived there were five police officers and three police cars being the biggest crime of the last fifty five years , and everybody wanted to get the story. So officer Obie took Arlo back to the jail house Arlo wasn't there four or five hours when Alice showed up. Alice came by and with a few nasty words to officer Obie on the side, bailed Arlo out of jail , and they went back to the church , And had another thanksgiving dinner. So the next morning Arlo got up and went to the court house. when Arlo arrived at the Court house he walked in and sat down, officer obie was there to. Awhile later a man came in and said, "All Rise." Arlo stood up and officer Obie stood up . Then the Judge walked in with an seeing eye dog and sat down. Officer Obie told the judge what had happend and the judge fined Arlo $50 dollars and to pick up the garbage in the snow. Not shortly after this happend Arlo got drafted and had to go and get checked out so Arlo went to a building down New York city it's called WhiteHall street. Arlo went down to get his physical examination, he walked in and they gave Arlo a piece of paper, and said, "kid see the phsychiatrist, room 604." So Arlo went up there, and said, "shrink I want to kill. I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on Arlo and sent me down the hall, and said "You're our boy." But Arlo didn't feel too good about it. Arlo proceeded on down the hall it seemed like he had been there for two hours, three hours. Arlo finally came to the see the last name , he walked in , sat down the man asked him " kis, we only got one question. Have you ever been arrested?" So Arlo proceeded to tell him the whole big story and then the man said " kid, did you ever go to court?" And Arlo said yes so the man said go and sit on the bench. Arlo sat there for a long while then the sargent asked him " kid have you rehablliated yourself?" Arlo was mad and said that it was pretty low . Not to let him in because he got a ticket for garbage. So then Arlo wrote a song and there was later a movie produced about this.

In my opinion I think that Mr. Neuburger named our class blog after this because Arlo Guthrie was a strong person know matter what was thrown his way he made something of it and I think that is what he wants us to do be a strong Person. If something stupid like a trash ticket don't let us be in the military then go and do someting about it don't set and be a baby go and make something happen. So in closing that is why he picked the theme Alices Resturant for our blog.

By Brittany Rickman

Information From- http://www.arlo.net/resources/lyrics/alices.shtml