Have a Rocking Thanksgiving at Alice’s Restaurant

Arlo Guthrie celebrates the life of good friend Alice Brock, who passed one week before Thanksgiving.

During my adult life, I have made a ritual of listening to Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” (the actual song title) during some part of the Thanksgiving holiday. I’ve never grown tired of it. There’s a song video at the end of this article to boost your holiday spirits.

The album Alice’s Restaurant was released in October 1967. Guthrie performed the song at the Newport Jazz Festival that prior summer and it became a big hit on the radio (no small feat considering its 18-minute length) even before the album was released. Arlo is the fifth and oldest surviving child of the great Woody Guthrie, who knows something about writing satirical protest songs.

Now comes word that Alice Brock, the Alice in the song’s title, died on Thursday, November 21, one week before Thanksgiving (we’ll get to Alice).

The Movie

The song was made into a full-length movie directed by Arthur Penn (Little Big Man, Bonnie and Clyde, The Left Handed Gun, The Missouri Breaks, Night Moves). Guthrie appeared as himself. The movie Alice’s Restaurant was released in August 1969, just days after Guthrie performed at Woodstock.

Here is a trailer of the movie, clocking in at three and a half minutes, published by Movieclips Classic Trailers via YouTube:

Talking Blues

“Alice’s Restaurant” is a satirical folk monologue, in the tradition of “talking blues,” that is neatly divided into two parts. The first part recounts a Thanksgiving Day in 1965 when Guthrie and a friend take part in a Thanksgiving feast in a deconsecrated church in Stockbridge, Massachusetts owned by Alice and Ray Brock.

After the feast, the grateful Guthrie and friends volunteer to take the accumulated garbage to the local dump. After seeing the “closed” sign, the two notice a large heap of trash elsewhere and add theirs to the pile. Guthrie is busted for littering and we get an amusing tale of hometown justice.

Part Two: The Draft

Guthrie starts the second part of his monologue by revealing the real purpose of the exercise: getting drafted into military service. Filled with cartoonish heroes and villains, Guthrie’s recounting approximates the worst fears of young men at that time. (As someone who was drafted, I can testify to the stereotypes.)

Spoiler alert: the induction officer concludes by gritting, “We don’t like your kind.”

Alice Brock

An alert listener will realize that none of Guthrie’s monologue takes place in Alice’s Restaurant or any restaurant for that matter. The truth is, Alice’s Restaurant is just a fictional line in the song’s chorus.

The real Alice did own a restaurant, called The Back Room, when “Alice’s Restaurant” was written. In fact, she’s owned three of them.

As a rebellious girl growing up in Brooklyn, Alice May Pelkey did a stint in reform school before attending Sarah Lawrence College. She described herself as eternally politically active.

After graduation, she married Ray Brock, a shop teacher and woodworker a decade older than Alice. By 1964, they found work together at the Stockbridge School, he as a shop teacher and Alice as a librarian. That is where they met Arlo Guthrie, an aspiring forester with a guitar strapped to his back. The next year, they had that famous Thanksgiving dinner.

The Aftermath

Arlo Guthrie has since acknowledged that he was never in any danger of getting drafted because he had a high draft lottery number.

Alice Brock, who divorced Ray in 1968, wrote a cookbook the next year. With the proceeds from book sales and the film (said to be about $12,000) plus selling the former church, She opened her second restaurant in Housatonic, Connecticut in 1973. She named it Alice’s Restaurant to capitalize on her fame.

 Success and Hard Luck

Unable to secure a liquor license in Housatonic, Alice opened her third restaurant, Alice’s at Avaloch, in 1976. The place had a disco dance floor, swimming pool, and a performance venue. Alice’s at Avaloch became an instant success. But then bad location, bad infrastructure, bad weather, and bad luck forced her to close the restaurant in 1979. The loss of her property left her “bankrupt and shellshocked.”

Alice moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts in the ’80s. A three-pack-a-day smoker until her fifties, Alice suffered from COPD. She reluctantly opened a GoFundMe campaign to help with the medical bills and reportedly collected over $180,000. “It’s very embarrassing to me because I’m always on the other end,” she said.

Abandoning the restaurant business, Alice devoted her time to writing and illustrating cookbooks and children’s books. Declining health forced her into a nursing home in 2018.

Arlo Guthrie on Alice Brock

Alice Brock died in a hospice facility on November 21, 2024, at the age of 83. Arlo Guthrie had this to say to the Berkshire Eagle:

This year, we get to add one more to those whose life we celebrate–an important one. Alice was a lifelong friend.

Happy Thanksgiving, Alice. Rest in peace.

Here, then, is the original recording of “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” published by Stiletto via YouTube:

Happy Thanksgiving to all!