Arlo Guthrie
and
Alice's Restaurant
Massacree
On August 29, 1969, Life Magazine - the #1 magazine in the United States - carried two major articles. One was about a massive rock concert on the farm of Max Yasgur from August 15 to the 19th near Bethel, New York, a town about 45 miles southwest of the small hamlet of Woodstock. Then there was the other story by famed writer Norman Mailer. This covered the first landing of men on the Moon on July 20. Probably more than any other, these two events exemplified the decade of the 1960's that was about to close.
And sandwiched in the magazine and scrunched to the right of an ad was a fairly positive review of a recent film, Alice's Restaurant. The movie was directed by the top notch director Arthur Penn who only two years earlier had a major hit with Bonnie and Clyde. Alice's Restaurant starred Arlo Guthrie and told the story of what was (and is) Arlo's most famous song.
Arlo was born in New York City in 1947, the eldest son of Woody Guthrie1 and his wife Marjorie and grew up on Coney Island. After high school he enrolled in Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana, majoring in forestry. But naturally he returned to the east coast to visit friends and family.
Footnote
Woody, as everyone knows, was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, on July 14, 1912, and after living as a teenager in Pampa, Texas, he relocated to California where he began singing on Radio Station KFVD. After moving to New York City (where he wrote "This Land is Your Land"), he achieved considerable celebrity during the 1940's as a performer and composer of folk songs. But due to the Huntington's Disease he had inherited from his mother's family, by the mid-1950's he was no longer able to sing and was confined to Greystone Hospital in New Jersey. He died in 1967 age 55.
A brief review of the events celebrated in the song - officially titled "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" - is all that's needed here. In 1965, Arlo and his friend Rick Robbins were invited to Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Ray and Alice Brock. Ray and Alice worked in a private high school and lived in an old church near Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The church had become a place for young and often itinerant people to hang out. This situation didn't sit well with the townspeople who called the church a "beatnik commune".
It was true that with the extra space provided by a deconsecrated church, Ray and Alice "didn't have to take out their garbage for a long time." They asked if Arlo and Rick would take a load in their Volkswagen microbus to what the less polite call the city dump2.
Footnote
In the mid-20th century it was common for smaller towns and cities to avoid the costs of regular waste pick-ups (recycle was virtually unheard of). Instead, it was the responsibility of the homeowners to take their trash - usually on a weekly basis - to the "city dump" and toss it all onto one of the piles. True landfills were relatively rare and much of the wastes were simply burned, not in incinerators but as piles of refuse. This left huge mountains of unburnable material, chiefly tin cans which as most people know aren't really tin.
Also if you can get the following joke, then you're showing your age.
Where do Tonto and the Lone Ranger take their garbage?
Ta-da-dump
Ta-da-dump
Ta-da-dump-dump-dump.
Arlo and Rick were agreeable but when they arrived at the gates they found there was "a big sign and a chain across the dump saying 'Closed on Thanksgiving'". So they drove away until they found a side road where the land sloped away to where lay another pile of garbage. And since they decided "one big pile was better than two little piles and rather than bring that one up" they decided to throw theirs down.
What wasn't clear in the song or the movie is what ended up as "one big pile" was not just on private property but was in a well-off residential section of Stockbridge. Soon the crime was discovered and Arlo and his friend were arrested for littering. The second part of the song tells the story that because of this "criminal record" when Arlo was called up for his draft physical he was told to sit with "Group W" and so was designated morally unsuitable to serve in the military.
The arresting officer was William "Officer Obie" Obanhein and he played himself in the movie. He later said that he, as with most of the residents, didn't have a lot of sympathy with the "beatniks" that gathered around Ray and Alice. If there hadn't been so much garbage, Obie added, if it had just been a couple of bags, he would have picked it up himself. But since there was a lot - a half a ton is not an exaggeration - he decided to arrest Arlo and Dick as a deterrent to future would-be litterers.
Arlo asserts that the story in the song is true although as in all historical accounts details vary when related by different participants. For one thing Obie said he didn't handcuff the pair ("Obie, I can't pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on"). And in court Obie did produce photographs for evidence although they may not actually have been "twenty-seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was" to be used as evidence against them.
And no, Obie didn't take the toilet seats out to prevent the prisoners from self-harm (although he did in the movie). Instead as he put it, "I didn't take the toilet seats off because we don't have any seats. I told the architect who designed the cells you can't have things like that because when people come in here, they're like to rip them off3." But after some hours Alice arrived and posted the $50 bail which was mostly paid in quarters and dollar bills which she obtained by going to all their friends. Her rage at Obie in the movie reflected the reality. She said Obie came close to arresting her as well.
Footnote
Obie meant "ripping off" literally as in physically tearing the seats from their moorings and not figuratively as in sneaking them out of the cells to install in their homes. Disgruntled prisoners have been known to destroy the fixtures in their cells.
Many people assumed it was another of Arlo's humorous embellishments that the presiding judge was blind and so couldn't see the photographs. However, Special Justice James Hammond was indeed blind and he also played himself in the movie (and yes he also had the guide dog that was with him). The deposition of the case was as told. Arlo and Rick both pled guilty and Judge Hammond considered the $50 bail sufficient for a fine of $25 apiece. And they had to pick up the garbage.
We said that the garbage very well may have been half a ton like Arlo said. Obie thought it had might have been hauled in a pick-up truck (there was even an old sofa). And according to the contemporary news accounts, it was not Arlo's name that Obie found on the paper that led him to the perpetrators. Instead it was Ray and Alice's. Obie said sifting through the garbage was not pleasant and this may have solidified his decision to teach the two kids a lesson.
In the song and movie we see that Obie speaks on the phone directly to Arlo. But actually since Obie didn't even know Arlo was visiting, he spoke to Alice. Alice later said it was a rough conversation - Obie had a reputation for having a temper - and at one point she tried to cover the phone with her hand as she asked Arlo where they dumped the garbage. But Obie overheard her and now Obie knew the "perps".
Strictly speaking the church is not in Stockbridge proper but in Great Barrington a few miles to the south. Great Barrington is also the birthplace of the famous African American leader and activist W. E. B. Du Bois. And of course Stockbridge was the long time residence of artist Norman Rockwell.
You'll read in some places that Arlo was not really kept out of the military because of his arrest for littering. Instead, they say his lottery number was simply too high. This claim, though, doesn't fit with the time when all this happened. The draft lottery wasn't implemented until the end of 1969 - at least two years after the song was released. Earlier Arlo had written a letter to the draft board saying he thought war was wrong. Their reply was an order for him to appear for his physical. So Arlo was deemed "not suitable" for the military well before the first lottery.
Although Obie said that he had little sympathy for the hippies around Stockbridge, he learned to respect Arlo as they worked on the movie. Officer William J. Obanhein died in 1994 at age 69. Ray Brock had died in 19794.
Footnote
In the film Ray was played by James Broderick, the father of Matthew Broderick. James is best known for starring in the television series Family. James also appeared in stage productions and films.
Yes, the church is still there and serves as the Guthrie Center at the Old Trinity Church. There has even been a "Garbage Trail Walk" where participants trace the path that Arlo and Rick took to dispose of the garbage with the proceeds - monetary, that is - going to research for Huntington's disease.
References
Alice's Restaurant, Arlo Guthrie (composer and performer), Reprise Records, 1967.
Alice's Restaurant, Arlo Guthrie (author), Marvin Glass (illustrator), Grove Press, 1968.
"Movie Review: Alice's Restaurant", Richard Schickel, Life Magazine, August 29, 1969, p. 8.
"Arlo Guthrie Gets Arrested for Littering", New England Historical Socieity.
"Arlo Guthrie Looks Back on 50 Years of 'Alice’s Restaurant'", Patrick Doyle, Rolling Stone, November 25, 2014.
"Youths Ordered to Clean Up Rubbish Mess", The Berkshire Eagle, November 29, 1965, p. 25.
"Alice and Ray and Yesterday's Flowers", Saul Braun, Playboy's Music Scene, Playboy Press, 1972.
"'Alice’s Restaurant' Revisited, 50 Years Later", Dan McCue, Court House News, November 25, 2015.
"The True Story Behind Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Staple, 'Alice's Restaurant' - With Four-part Harmony and Feeling", Constance Grady, Vox, November 28, 2019.
"Arlo Guthrie Convicted of Littering" Mass Moments, ", Richard Schickel, Life Magazine, August 29, 1969, p. 8.
"William J. Obanhein; 'Alice's Restaurant' Lawman", Associated Press, September 14, 1994.
"Stockbridge Police Department History, 1739 - 1989", Stockbridge Police Department.
"What Happened To Alice? Where Are Arlo Guthrie's Famous Characters Now?", WBAB, 102.3, November 13, 2019.
"Arlo Guthrie's 'Alice' Is Alive, Glad To Be Here", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 22, 2006.