Alice Brock Passes But She and Her Restaurant Will Be With Us Forever

Reading the news that Alice Brock, the restauranteur who inspired a timeless Arlo Guthrie class song passed away recently at age 83 didn’t make me feel sad. Alice was 83 years old.  She lived not only a long, but full life that included some not at all sought fame. That fame also resulted in a lifelong friendship with a quirky singer/composer who immortalized her, the Stockbridge Massachusetts eatery she founded with her husband and even ole ‘Officer Obey’ who would eventually embrace his own bit of infamy for his role in the tale told in the song Alice’s Restaurant.

I think of Alice and the song she inspired and I smile. I always will. Such is the power regular people can have without ever doing anything more than just being a regular, good person who loves people and is loved back by them. If one of those loving back happens to have a platform, say a talent for being a songwriter inherited from one America’s beloved storytelling musicians (Arlo’s father was Woodie Guthrie), unsought fame comes along. Despite her time or two in the spotlight Alice Brock just lived a regular life. Making art and making friends. We all should be so lucky. But due to Guthrie she and her restaurant are immortalized in song.

I listen to it every Thanksgiving. Usually more than once in fact. I also listen to it at times during the year when I just need to take a break and dive into the world of absurd humor and how seemingly simple, minor things can have profound impacts down the road. You never know.

As the linked article from Unlimited Class Rock tells us it all began a few years before the famous Thanksgiving described in the song.  I’d had a vague notion Guthrie’s connection to Stockbridge went beyond his knowing Alice and her husband. Now, I know he went to high school there and Alice wasn’t a restaurant owner at the time. She was the school librarian in 1962 when she and Guthrie met!  He moved on after school and Alice had moved on to a different career. A few years after meeting her, 18-year-old Guthrie and his best (also lifelong) friend Rick Robbins chose to head back to Stockbridge to spend Thanksgiving with Alice and her husband.

They were living in an old church with hopes of renovating it into a home. There was a lot of junk and garbage in the main area so Guthrie and Robbins decided to be helpful and haul some of it away in the van they’d come in. Alas, they did so on the holiday and the local garbage dump (a common spot in small towns across the country in those days) was closed so they dumped it nearby. The aforementioned Officer Obey figured out who the ‘culprits’ who’d dumped the garbage ‘illegally’ arrested them the next day. The whole thing amounted to ‘a fifty dollar fine and we had to pick up the garbage. However that arrest and court appearance would be fateful (in a good way) as all led to a scene that, when Guthrie was drafted led to him being rejected for military service!

Yes, the song Alice’s Restaurant is long. Eighteen minutes. But it’s entertaining beyond measure. Worth every minute to listen to.  Both the half about that fateful visit to Stockbridge and the spectacle of the arrest for ‘littering’ created and the second half which became back in the 1960s and anti-Vietnam war anthem.  It’s a combination of storytelling (very little singing – Guthrie tells the story by speaking) that’s poignant and funny at the same time.

Brock would eventually move on in life to other things. She became an author and artist and in his recent tribute to her Guthrie notes over the decades they worked on projects together even if they didn’t keep up regular contact. But they never stopped being friends and stayed in touch. I’m sure Guthrie will always be glad he and Alice talked one last time a couple of weeks before her death:

“This coming Thanksgiving will be the first without her,” Guthrie continued, describing Brock as a “lifelong friend.” “Alice and I spoke by phone a couple of weeks ago, and she sounded like her old self. We joked around and had a couple of good laughs even though we knew we’d never have another chance to talk together.”

All of us old farts remember the song well. I can damned near recite it and there are just too many wonderful lines/parts for me to go into them all.  But as I said it’s a Thanksgiving tradition with me to cue it up.  And also as I said sometimes when I just need to smile and even laugh a bit. So my friends, do yourself a favor. Take a little time to enjoy yourself when we all need help finding something to make us relax for a bit and smile.

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