The Massacree Is Over!

“Is it around the back?’ Rachel asked. “I want it to be around the back.”

We walked. It was, indeed, around the back.

And it was about half a mile from the railroad track. We checked it out.

Things were looking up.

—

Rachel and I are visiting friends in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the yellow-tape crime scene for the 1965 littering arrest that created “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.” That was Arlo Guthrie’s archetypal 18-minute antiwar hippie anthem about Thanksgiving dinner, the Vietnam draft, creating a public nuisance, blind justice, and dubious camaraderie with father-rapers.

We are Arlo Guthrie fans. Between us, Rachel and I have attended six Arlo concerts; I account for five of those, including one at a small coffeehouse in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. in 1975 at which Guthrie launched into “Alice,” which he almost never played in concert. He did this for maybe 50 people. Rachel and I still have, and listen to, the original vinyl “Alice’s Restaurant” album, the one shown in the jacket above.

This is a travelogue of our visit to Alice’s restaurant, and it includes an incredible update on my weight loss under a GLP-1 drug based on an experience I had with a robot doctor in an airport, and a picture of the fattest cat you will ever see. We’ll do this chronologically, starting with the cat.

Because this is a four-day trip, we had to leave our four cats in our house for that time, and they’d only be looked on intermittently. So just to be sure, we left an enormous tub of cat food on the kitchen floor. Here is a picture of Grandpa, our fat tub of a cat, delightedly confronting the kibble when we placed it down.

Rachel immediately sent this photo to my daughter, Molly, a veterinarian, who dryly opined that Grandpa would polish this off “by 9 a.m.”

We flew to Hartford, Conn., where we rented a car for the drive to Stockbridge. Hartford, as you know, is “The Insurance Capital of the World,” which is the worst city slogan ever. (The best city slogan ever belongs to Fruita, Colorado, which is “The Home of the Headless Chicken.” But I digress.)

The airport at the Insurance Capital of the World is the only place I have ever seen a vending machine that cleans and disinfects your eyeglasses, which is apparently a good thing for preventing car accidents, something of which insurance companies approve.

There was also a glass-enclosed kiosk — disinfected after every use — that does a basic medical check on you. Weight, blood oxygen level, blood pressure, etc.. It is a free service, though it also has a scanner to read your insurance card, should they need to make a “referral.” This kiosk told me I weighed 155 pounds, which surprised and delighted me because just that very morning I had weighed 186. This drug apparently just strips those pounds off.

—

On the road to Stockbridge we encountered the following sign: '

We resisted the loaves. We did not break bread with Jesus.

Alas, Alice’s Restaurant — which was just off Main Street — does not exist anymore, technically. It has been replaced by a place called Theresa’s Cafe, which I approached here,,,

… But which was closed and, apparently, not in the greatest shape. Here’s another door to it:

Still, that is not the point. The point is Alice’s restaurant was around the back, and was about a half mile from the railroad track. These are important things because of something bad I once did to Arlo, something for which I felt I had to atone.

Many years ago, when I was re-listening to Alice’s Restaurant, I heard something dissonant. Not musically dissonant — Arlo’s voice was, and is, at 78, still great — but dissonant in veracity. This was a song that spoke Truth to Power, a resonant antiwar anthem of its era. But something seemed … wrong. So I called Arlo up for a column, and this is what transpired.

Me: So, you were arrested for illegally dumping a half-ton of garbage that you scooped up from the floor of Alice’s home, and took away to dispose of as a favor, right?

Arlo: Right.

Me: And you were nailed by the fuzz because Officer Obie found your name on an envelope in that half-ton pile of garbage and phoned you. And in the funniest line of the song, you solemnly admitted to Officer Obie that you had put that envelope under that half-ton of garbage, right?

Arlo: Right.

Me: Why was your name in the garbage from Alice’s restaurant? Wasn’t that all Alice’s garbage?

Arlo: In 40 years, no one ever asked me that.

Me: Well, someone is asking now.

Arlo: Bravo. I will hate you forever for this.

Me:

Arlo: Okay, we have to attribute that line to creative license. Obie actually found a paper with Ray’s name -- Ray was Alice’s husband -- and Ray directed them to me. But it worked better in the song the other way.

Me: So, no biggie? A misstatement is okay because it “worked better”?

Arlo:

Me: I don’t want to overstate my disillusionment here. But this is like hearing Jesus say, “Okay, I didn’t turn the water into wine, exactly. Actually, I just added some Kool-Aid powder and turned it into a nice, refreshing beverage.”

Arlo: I don’t know what to say, man.

Me: Are there any other untruths in the song?

Arlo: There’s one. The twenty-seven 8-by-10 color glossy photographs with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was? They were not in color, they were actually black and white.

Me: Did you learn your ethics from your dad? Might it be that this land was really made for just him and a few of his cronies?

Arlo: You know, it’s possible!

—

I feel bad about this! He knew this was satire, a parody of a gotcha interview, and he had been a real sport about it. He played along. But still, there were … implications. My column carried the headline “The Trashing of a Legend.” The headline in The Tampa Bay Times, which also published it, was even harsher: “So, Arlo, Was Her Name Even Alice?”)

—

So, we’re back to the present now. I’m re-evaluating the song at a time in America when actual truth is a rare commodity.

I’m here to tell you that, yes, her name was Alice, and virtually everything else in song was dead on. There’s the original news clipping about his arrest, right there on the outside wall of what was once Alice’s restaurant but is now faded in time and place. Yes, there was an officer Obie. His name was William J. Obanhein. He was the chief of police in Stockbridge. He died in 1994.

This is him:

And there’s something else.

There was another line in Alice’s Restaurant that didn’t ring true to me. It was too perfect. When Arlo went to trial, he said in the song, the judge was sitting there in court next to his seeing eye dog. It gave Arlo the perfect metaphor — the fine line that he was facing “blind justice.”

I’d never asked Arlo about this.

Well, it was true. The judge was James E. Hannon. His dog was Susie. And here they are:

We’re square now, Arlo — right?

—

Good. Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll: