Reminisce / Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
In the Detroit Metropolitan and greater Kalamazoo areas of Michigan, and I’m guessing under radio umbrellas in other parts of the nation, around noonish local time tomorrow, classic rock stations will play Arlo Guthrie’s 18-minute protest song “Alice’s Restaurant.” As Guthrie sings the word “Thanksgiving” two or three times during the song, playing it on that day has become a decades-old tradition, at least in two radio markets I know of for sure. As such, I’ve been familiar with the song, released in 1967, since I was a kid, even if I didn’t fully understand what it was about the first few times I heard it.
For those unfamiliar with the song, it’s essentially Guthrie on guitar and telling two seemingly unrelated stories. The first details he and his friends’ farcical attempts to dispose of all the garbage their friends had let build up in the sanctuary of the old church they’d bought.
“Havin’ all that room seein’ as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn’t have to take out their garbage for a long time. We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it’d be a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So we took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the city dump,” Guthrie sings.
Oddly, Arlo and company discover the dump is closed on Thanksgiving and so drove away until they came to a cliff. At the bottom of said cliff, they noticed someone had dumped a pile of garbage.
“And we decided that one big pile is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we decided to throw ours down,” Guthrie continues.
Well, somehow, the cops find an envelope with Guthrie’s name on it in the pile of garbage and they call up where Guthrie is staying and question him on it.
“I said, ‘Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage.’”
Eventually, Guthrie comes clean and admits to littering. He’s arrested and put on trial and ultimately fined $50 and ordered to go clean up the mess.
“…but that’s not what I came to tell you about. I came to talk about the draft.”
And from there, he tells the tale of his experience getting his physical and psychological evaluation by the military for the draft. When asked about his criminal record, he tells them about the “Alice’s Restaurant Massacre” with “full orchestration and five-part harmony,” and is told to go sit on the Group W bench.
“Group W’s where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the Army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly-looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-fightin’ guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean ‘n’ ugly ‘n’ nasty ‘n’ horrible and all kind of things, and he sat down next to me and said, ‘Kid, whad’ya get?’ I said, ‘I didn’t get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage.’ He said, ‘What were you arrested for, kid?’ And I said, ‘Littering.’ And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, ‘…and creating a nuisance.’ And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin’ about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things…”
Eventually, they’re asked to fill out a form detailing their crime, the last question of which is: “(“KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?”)” Guthrie takes umbrage with the question.
“’..I mean I’m sittin here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough join the Army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Kid, we don’t like your kind, and we’re gonna send you fingerprints off to Washington.’”
He then goes on to suggest starting a movement by having people, when summoned by the draft board, go into the Army shrink, sing a bar of the song, “Alice’s Restaurant,” and walk back out.
“You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it’s a movement. And that’s what it is, the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar. … 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…”
The song was, and is, a brilliant screed against the Vietnam War and the horror of military conscription. It was an instant classic that spawned a film adaptation in 1969. It is, obviously, a bit more obscure today, which might actually be a good thing. The average Social Justice Warrior would probably be horrified by it. I mean, first he’s a litterbug, then he’s talking about killing people and eating their dead burnt bodies, then he’s trivializing rape, body-shaming the “biggest father-raper of them all,” and then said “faggots.” And “anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant” probably includes veal and foie gras, and most certainly meat with no vegan alternative. All those micro-aggressions would be more than sufficient to trigger SJWs to the point where they’d be unable to focus on the larger point of the song, which they wouldn’t even have a frame of reference for anyway.
The campus protest movement of Guthrie’s time had an actual point; the government was forcing young people to join the Army and then sending them to a pissant Southeast Asian shithole to die in a vain attempt to keep them from organizing their tiny, insignificant economy in a foolish manner. Today universities, waffling before the might of the imbecilic Social Justice movement, are wasting money offering rooms for little snowflakes to go cry in because their favorite oligarch didn’t win the presidential election. Some are offering black students segregated housing options so they won’t feel “threatened” by the presence of non-Persons of Color. Some are trying to restrict the use of “gendered” pronouns. These are the things that have the kids riled and campuses embroiled in protest today.
Maybe it’s a good thing the kids don’t listen to much broadcast radio these days. Maybe this song will stay under the Social Justice movement’s radar. I for one would hate to see stations pressured to stop playing it, or, worse yet, pressed to edit out half the words.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Go Lions!!!!!
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