Thanksgiving at “Alice’s Restaurant“

“You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant…”

It was November 2019 when the family and I were headed out for our biennial Branson Thanksgiving family gathering when a simple radio advertisement opened my eyes to a new awkward Thanksgiving tradition.

Heading south on Route 13 highway near Clinton, MO the airwaves called out “Join us Thanksgiving day at noon or 6 pm when we will be airing Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaraunt Masacreee!’ There was a tone of excitement in this announcement that intrigued my curiosity similar to that feeling you get when your friends are all excitedly talking about something from the past weekend but you have no clue what they are talking about and feel like you have just missed out on something big?

It was something a bit like that.

There was a tone of excitement in this announcement that intrigued my curiosity…

From the sound of it, it “sounded” like lots of people listen to this song. And these people who like to listen to this song listen to it around Thanksgiving. And as a matter of fact, so many people like to listen to this song around Thanksgiving that the radio station is airing it 2 times on Thanksgiving day!

How had I never heard of this “Alice’s Restaurant” tradition?

So, my curiosity engaged, no place to go, and plenty of miles to Branson ahead of us yet. I searched up Alice’s Restaurant on Apple Music and for the next 18-minutes and 37-seconds, I listened to what may be the most awkward, funny, and thought-provoking song I had ever heard.

What the heck are you talking about?

Well, to get everyone up to speed I’m talking about singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie’s song titled “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” in which Guthrie details the real-life chain of events that led to him being rejected from the draft due to his lack-luster criminal record. It is truly a case of a “you just can’t make this crap up” type of story.

Guthrie presents the song as a story-teller, which is one of the main reasons I’m drawn to it. A good story-teller can tell the same story time and time again and it never gets old. I think I appreciate great story-telling so much because I am absolutely terrible when it comes to telling stories. I can make the most exciting story sound about as interesting as vanilla ice cream.

In the first half of the song, Guthrie gives us the run-down of Thanksgiving at his friend Alice’s home in 1965. Alice and her husband happen to live in an old church building and had collected a large amount of garbage. Guthrie helped get rid of the garbage but due to the local dump being closed on Thanksgiving they disposed of the garbage off a cliff where it appeared others had already done so.

As it would turn out, their choice of a dumping site was not an approved disposal location and Gutherie wound up being arrested for littering. The ensuing sequence of events surrounding the arrest and court proceedings seem like they could have been taken right out of the script of a Branson comedy show.

It’s at this point in the song when Guthrie transitions the story to what he really wants us to hear… and that’s his experience with the draft for the Vietnam war and how ironic (or stupid) it is that he was declared ineligible to be drafted due to his criminal record of being a litter-bug.

The chorus of the song “You can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant” can get stuck in your head but really doesn’t tie in with any of the events. in the story. There is an Alice, but no restaurant, so you are left with this chorus humming in your head and it just seems to tie into the absurdity of the entire chain of events.

Why Thanksgiving?

It isn’t really clear to me yet why this song has become a Thanksgiving tradition nor when that started to become a thing. According to Guthrie in a Rolling Stone interview he doesn’t know how that started nor does he partake in listening to the song on Thanksgiving. It just seems to be a coincidence that the events of the song occurred on Thanksgiving so at some point it became a “thing”.

Why do I like this Song?

I envy people who are free-spirits and who harmlessly go against the grain of social conventions. The type of people who aren’t afraid to take up residence in a building that previously was a church as opposed to a house or who drive a red VW Microbus and carry implements of destruction (shovels and rakes) to haul off some trash rather than a pickup truck. The type of people who get arrested for harmless mischief and go to trial where a blind judge has photos presented to him as evidence of the crime.

I have no interesting stories like these in my life. I’ve always been the rule follower and gone down the safe and “socially expected” path which doesn’t generate too many funny tales to tell. I went to college got my degree, got married, entered the workforce, and started a family. We live the suburban American lifestyle of working, earning, consuming…. keeping the economic machine running.

I love the hilarious chain of events that unfold during the course of the song… I love the fact that it is 18-minutes and 37-seconds… I mean, I mean, who writes a song that is nearly 20 minutes long and expect people to listen to it? I love the fact that the chorus really has nothing to do with the song… I love the fact that the song is also a statement about the absurdity of the draft selection process and the reason in which he was not deemed fit to go to war and “kill” was due to a “criminal record”.

More than just Entertainment

What I like most about the song is it makes you think. I’m not sure there has been any other song that has spun the wheels in my head as much as this one has. My eyes have been opened to another time period, the 1960s, where there was a lot going on in America. I think I may spend some time in future posts exploring the draft, Vietnam, protests in more detail and try to understand better what life was like during that time in America.

2020 has been crazy. We are in the middle of a global pandemic with Covid-19 killing thousands of people each day. We have a president who is undermining the foundation of democracy in ways we have never seen before by not conceding defeat in the election. Racial tensions are at an all-time high with protests and rioting in cities across America.

I wonder a little bit if the adversity we are facing now is the same type of adversity that generates movements like there were in the ’60s. Racial tension was high. Anti-war protesting and people who were fed up with the direction our leaders were taking the country. I can’t help but think we are on the brink of something really bad happening (what can be worse than a global pandemic right?) where irreparable harm is going to be caused either within the country that seems to be splitting apart or from an external adversary taking advantage in our time of vulnerability… or both.

Conclusion

What is eye-opening for me is that this song was written over 50 years ago and is still impacting people like me who have finally heard it for the first time.

There is really a lot to unpack from this masterpiece of story-telling. It really is more than just a goofy song. It is art. It is a statement. This is something you can sit back and let your mind wander and really explore every nook and cranny of.

I plan to keep playing this song on Thanksgiving for my family. My kids may never fully appreciate it as much as I do but maybe one day when I’m gone and they hear “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” it will remind them of their father, “The Awkward Man”.

Yours Truly.