Dear Gene: This one did it. I play Alice's Restaurant on vinyl every Thanksgiving Day. This one finally got me to pay. I love your stuff. I used to be a faithful reader in the Post, and now am a faithful reader of Substack. But as a semi-retired journalist myself, so many of my (semi- or fully) retired journalist friends are on Substack that if I subscribed to them all I would spend every bit of my retirement income on Substack subscriptions. (I'm a journalist, so really not so much). So today, you made the cut! Congratulations.
Well now, a quick check uncovered all sorts of extraordinary official (and "semi-official" 🔺 ) municipal slogans:
* Hooker, Oklahoma — “It’s a Location, Not a Vocation”
* Climax, Michigan — “Experience Climax”🔺
* Boring, Oregon — “The Most Exciting Place to Live”
* Hell, Michigan — “Go to Hell”🔺
* Dildo, Newfoundland — “Get Hooked on Dildo”🔺
* Colma, California — “It’s Great to Be Alive in Colma”**
* Bellingham, Washington — “City of Subdued Excitement”🔺
* Gas, Kansas — “Don’t Pass Gas — Stop and Enjoy It!”
** Approximately 73% to 75% of Colma’s land area is zoned for cemeteries. In fact, the town is largely known as the "City of Souls" because the deceased outnumber the living by a ratio of about 1,000 to 1.
Great list. I wonder why Colma's demographics are, uh, thus? I found this NYT article (gift link) which sorta kinda explains it -- San Francisco's 1900 ban on cemeteries (?!?) -- but offers no hint that I can see why, exactly, so many of SF's dead ended up in Colma instead of being scattered to the other three winds. A geological anomaly, maybe -- interment-friendly soil, or something?
I think it's just that it's close to SF, for people who like having their loved ones kept close so they can visit. And, personally, I always refer to it as the city of the dead. Also, I believe they outlawed cemeteries simply because the land was too valuable for above ground usage.
Royal Couple, if you're listening... It appears that it's been 17 years since the last "Jestinations." Maybe next time with fanciful municipalities --- though it may be tough to come up with any that are not already in use --- as odd as they may be. For example, a quick look tells me there are two "Keisters," neither one however encourages you to "Enjoy. Come Make an Ass of Yourself."
We attended a "concert" by Arlo in Bethesda several years ago where he didn't play "Alice's Restaurant" but did posit this theory: During the Nixon administration, the Library of Congress provided the White House with a selection of LPs representing current culture. During the period of the Watergate scandal, one of those albums was "Alice's Restaurant". The title cut is about 18-1/2 minutes. The gap in the tape is about 18-1/2 minutes. Coincidence?
Our family has listened to this song every Thanksgiving since forever. And every year I have been asking my kids, "you know this is a true story, right?" and proceeding to pontificate about the Vietnam war. Now that both kids are grown ups they still come for Thanksgiving and the first thing they ask when they arrive is, "Have you listened to Alice's Restaurant yet?" I've also hosted a few of their friends over the years whose families are not American and thus have no Thanksgiving tradition. Both my kids have assured me that once I'm dead or otherwise unable to host Thanksgiving they will continue the Alice's Restaurant tradition with their own families. They and a couple of the friends have let me know that for the rest of their lives Thanksgiving will not be complete without listening to the song and asking their kids, "you know that this is a true story, right?" So Arlo Guthrie's legacy is safe!!
I have loved that album, and that song, since shortly after it was first released in 1967. Back then (well, shortly afterward) we were very fortunate in the Washington, D.C. area to have this radio station, the greatest music radio station of all time anywhere, WHFS FM 102.3 (later 99.1), now only an increasingly remote but extraordinarily fond memory. Despite its excessive (for commercial radio) duration, they'd play "Alice's Restaurant" from time to time amid numbers by the Grateful Dead, Leo Kottke, the Jefferson Airplane, Michael Hurley, John Fahey, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Traffic, Joni Mitchell, Dr. John, and about a million others from all over the spectrum -- as diverse and eclectic a mix as you could ever hope for. They'd sometimes even play a classical number here and there.
I remember their first night on the air. Somehow we had gotten wind that something was going to happen at 6:00 p.m. on a Sunday evening on this obscure, mostly Farsi-language radio station and we tuned in. After listening for a couple minutes to what to us was gobbledegook, all of a sudden the song "Fire" by Arthur Brown came blasting out of my hi-fi followed by the voice of "Freaky" Frank Richards, and "Home Grown Radio" was born.
I also remember how happy it made me to learn that Arlo had been spared the Huntington's Chorea that he had a 50-50 chance of inheriting from his dad Woody. What a terrible cloud to have lived under for so long!
I heard it aired not too long ago on WTMD 89.7, the Baltimore station which can be received in the northern half of the Washington region, and anywhere online.
I hope your house is in one piece when you get home. 4 cats probably need a little supervision, poop scooping and such. I’d do it for free but I live in Texas….. we’re hoping to turn this thang BLUE baby. Thanks for the memories of Alice’s Restaurant, I must have listened to it hundreds of times in between Frank Zappa and Janis Joplin. Those were the good old days!!
Arlo Guthrie famously points out that the infamous erased gap in the Watergate tapes is 18 1/2 minutes long—the exact same duration as side one of his classic satirical song, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree"
What he neglected to point out is that Bob Cratchit arrives exactly 18.5 minutes late to work on the day after Christmas (December 26th) in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
I have no explanation. Gene, can you ask Arlo? For science!
I used to know the words to Alice's Restaurant. All of them. The whole thing. I ran through the rap part once for a friend, who needed a 10 minute long sound check on an amplifier he was working on. When the ten minutes were up, I still had some part of the rap to finish, it takes about 15 minutes or so. I didn't set out to learn it by heart; I just listened to it that often. He dared me to finish. I did.
Don't think I could do it today. That was close to 50 years ago.....
My son used to work out his teenage angst writing song lyrics. One was about his parents' divorce and one line was "They even sold my horse." I cried foul. Hey, that was my horse. He replied, yeah, but not many words rhyme with "divorce." Had to give him that!
Since the draft was a recent subject of discussion Poolside and the second half of "Alice" deals with same, it is perhaps only fitting and proper to point out that Arlo being rejected for service because of his littering conviction — is not exaggerated or entirely fictional as many seem to believe. In fact, the core story is essentially true. When he went for his physical in 1966, the recording officer at the induction center in New York really did make a fuss about his criminal record — the littering conviction — and he was classified as unfit for service, at least in part due to that.
I believe this is wrong, Dale. Arlo got out of the draft by having a very high draft number. Check it out. If you think about it, it makes no sense you could avoid the draft by littering. Everyone would have done that.
Not a matter of even being arrested for littering --- it was getting convicted that made Arlo "morally" unfit to serve. Criminal convictions (yes, although a misdemeanor it was classified as criminal offense, lowest level though it was) --- even minor ones --- could be treated as evidence of poor character or unreliability either by a draft board or by a military personnel or legal officer at an induction center. Remember, he did have to go through a pre-induction physical which, to hear him tell it, was a also prominent factor in him getting rejected. In interviews later he mentioned he was underweight, had vision issues, and was generally not in ideal physical condition at the time of his physical. He also joked for decades that he “didn’t make a good impression” during the psych evaluation. So, a combination of factors, including that criminal conviction for littering as I said, but which many thought was an artistic exaggeration or fiction in "Alice" --- my whole reason for bringing it up. There is also the fact that the lottery system with its "draft numbers" wasn't put in place until 1969, three years after Arlo's physical so, he couldn't have had a draft number to begin with. The old Selective Service System operated on the basis of alphabetical order and age and local boards routinely summoned 18‑year‑olds for pre‑induction physicals and classification reviews (1‑A, 2‑S, 4‑F, etc.). This was done so they could be classified before the prime induction ages of 19-26. He was a little more than 18 at the time. His Nov 28, 1965 littering conviction also triggered a “moral character” review, which required a physical and classification update. So, Arlo Guthrie was classified 4-F and found both physically and morally unfit for military service under the rules in place in 1966.
I saw Arlo Guthrie play at the Birchmere I think in 2003... they played Alice's Restaurant, and at the time I didn't realize that this was only part of the show every decade or so.
I blush with shame to confess that while (a) I am moderately familiar with "Alice's Restaurant," and (b) I love the Berkshires area of Massachusetts, and have visited that area many times, nonetheless, I have never ever tried to hunt down the location of Alice's restaurant. For the record, I don't remember Theresa's Cafe, either. On the other hand, I DO fondly remember a cafe in either Stockbridge or West Stockbridge -- this was in the '80s -- called Miss Ruby's. (I think they later relocated to one of the avenues on the West Side of Manhattan, actually. That's probably gone, too.)
When The Missus and I had cats, whenever we went on vacation somewhere, we -- well, *I* -- left complex multipage instructions for whoever was catsitting in our absence. These involved not only feeding schedules, but descriptions of favorite toys, how best to approach the different cats to avoid injury, litterbox notes, and so on -- and it was all complicated further by our having adopted (or been adopted by) as many as nine feral cats as well as the three indoor ones. I salute your and Rachel's much simpler solution: "Here's your food, here's your water, knock yourselves out."
Texas is OK. "The Lone Star State." But I really like Oklahoma: "Oklahoma is OK." And for all the time I have been living in Maryland, I have no idea what it has for a motto. "We have the crabs?"
Wikipedia says it's "Fatti maschii, parole femine": "It literally translates as 'Deeds are males, words are females', but Maryland's official translation has variously been 'Deeds are manly, words are womanly' and 'Manly deeds, womanly words.'" Huh.
If the “small coffeehouse in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.” was the Caffe Lena, you should’ve named it. It’s even more famous than you are. I am another who plays the song every Thanksgiving.
My local public radio station has a tradition of playing Alice's Restaurant in its entirety on Thanksgiving Day Eve, just before the 3 PM news break. I listen every year. Five years ago, I passed through Stockbridge during an October leaf-peeping road trip in New England. The restaurant was gone but there were arrows pointing the way down the alley where it had been located.
Dear Gene: This one did it. I play Alice's Restaurant on vinyl every Thanksgiving Day. This one finally got me to pay. I love your stuff. I used to be a faithful reader in the Post, and now am a faithful reader of Substack. But as a semi-retired journalist myself, so many of my (semi- or fully) retired journalist friends are on Substack that if I subscribed to them all I would spend every bit of my retirement income on Substack subscriptions. (I'm a journalist, so really not so much). So today, you made the cut! Congratulations.
Thank you!
Related to the late great Shirley Povich?
I also just subscribed because of Arlo Guthrie and Alice's Restaurant. Thank you Ms. Povich, Mr. Weingarten and Arlo for pushing me over the edge!
Or Maury?
Or David?
Richard Weiss, your are NOT the father.
Well now, a quick check uncovered all sorts of extraordinary official (and "semi-official" 🔺 ) municipal slogans:
* Hooker, Oklahoma — “It’s a Location, Not a Vocation”
* Climax, Michigan — “Experience Climax”🔺
* Boring, Oregon — “The Most Exciting Place to Live”
* Hell, Michigan — “Go to Hell”🔺
* Dildo, Newfoundland — “Get Hooked on Dildo”🔺
* Colma, California — “It’s Great to Be Alive in Colma”**
* Bellingham, Washington — “City of Subdued Excitement”🔺
* Gas, Kansas — “Don’t Pass Gas — Stop and Enjoy It!”
** Approximately 73% to 75% of Colma’s land area is zoned for cemeteries. In fact, the town is largely known as the "City of Souls" because the deceased outnumber the living by a ratio of about 1,000 to 1.
Apparently people are just dying to go to Colma!
It's always nice when a loved one comes out of a Colma.
George Romero is known for several movies expressing the exact opposite of that sentiment.
(laughing)
Great list. I wonder why Colma's demographics are, uh, thus? I found this NYT article (gift link) which sorta kinda explains it -- San Francisco's 1900 ban on cemeteries (?!?) -- but offers no hint that I can see why, exactly, so many of SF's dead ended up in Colma instead of being scattered to the other three winds. A geological anomaly, maybe -- interment-friendly soil, or something?
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/06/sports/football/the-town-of-colma-where-san-franciscos-dead-live.html?unlocked_article_code=1.n1A.Qn-q.G-FFjHYNdz2w&smid=url-share
I think it's just that it's close to SF, for people who like having their loved ones kept close so they can visit. And, personally, I always refer to it as the city of the dead. Also, I believe they outlawed cemeteries simply because the land was too valuable for above ground usage.
I sense an Invitational coming.
Royal Couple, if you're listening... It appears that it's been 17 years since the last "Jestinations." Maybe next time with fanciful municipalities --- though it may be tough to come up with any that are not already in use --- as odd as they may be. For example, a quick look tells me there are two "Keisters," neither one however encourages you to "Enjoy. Come Make an Ass of Yourself."
As I supposed, it looks like Dildo is definitely a fishing village. Now you don't have to check.
Do they use their namesake as fishing lures?
We attended a "concert" by Arlo in Bethesda several years ago where he didn't play "Alice's Restaurant" but did posit this theory: During the Nixon administration, the Library of Congress provided the White House with a selection of LPs representing current culture. During the period of the Watergate scandal, one of those albums was "Alice's Restaurant". The title cut is about 18-1/2 minutes. The gap in the tape is about 18-1/2 minutes. Coincidence?
Our family has listened to this song every Thanksgiving since forever. And every year I have been asking my kids, "you know this is a true story, right?" and proceeding to pontificate about the Vietnam war. Now that both kids are grown ups they still come for Thanksgiving and the first thing they ask when they arrive is, "Have you listened to Alice's Restaurant yet?" I've also hosted a few of their friends over the years whose families are not American and thus have no Thanksgiving tradition. Both my kids have assured me that once I'm dead or otherwise unable to host Thanksgiving they will continue the Alice's Restaurant tradition with their own families. They and a couple of the friends have let me know that for the rest of their lives Thanksgiving will not be complete without listening to the song and asking their kids, "you know that this is a true story, right?" So Arlo Guthrie's legacy is safe!!
I have loved that album, and that song, since shortly after it was first released in 1967. Back then (well, shortly afterward) we were very fortunate in the Washington, D.C. area to have this radio station, the greatest music radio station of all time anywhere, WHFS FM 102.3 (later 99.1), now only an increasingly remote but extraordinarily fond memory. Despite its excessive (for commercial radio) duration, they'd play "Alice's Restaurant" from time to time amid numbers by the Grateful Dead, Leo Kottke, the Jefferson Airplane, Michael Hurley, John Fahey, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Traffic, Joni Mitchell, Dr. John, and about a million others from all over the spectrum -- as diverse and eclectic a mix as you could ever hope for. They'd sometimes even play a classical number here and there.
I remember their first night on the air. Somehow we had gotten wind that something was going to happen at 6:00 p.m. on a Sunday evening on this obscure, mostly Farsi-language radio station and we tuned in. After listening for a couple minutes to what to us was gobbledegook, all of a sudden the song "Fire" by Arthur Brown came blasting out of my hi-fi followed by the voice of "Freaky" Frank Richards, and "Home Grown Radio" was born.
I also remember how happy it made me to learn that Arlo had been spared the Huntington's Chorea that he had a 50-50 chance of inheriting from his dad Woody. What a terrible cloud to have lived under for so long!
WHFS really was the best commercial radio station I’ve ever listened to. WFUV (Fordham University public radio) is still the best overall.
We had WBCN in Boston, which announced its switch from strictly classical music with Cream’s “I Feel Free.”
I heard it aired not too long ago on WTMD 89.7, the Baltimore station which can be received in the northern half of the Washington region, and anywhere online.
I hope your house is in one piece when you get home. 4 cats probably need a little supervision, poop scooping and such. I’d do it for free but I live in Texas….. we’re hoping to turn this thang BLUE baby. Thanks for the memories of Alice’s Restaurant, I must have listened to it hundreds of times in between Frank Zappa and Janis Joplin. Those were the good old days!!
I agree with you about the cats. I also hope that kibble is not the only food the cats get to eat. And where is Lexi?
Arlo Guthrie famously points out that the infamous erased gap in the Watergate tapes is 18 1/2 minutes long—the exact same duration as side one of his classic satirical song, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree"
What he neglected to point out is that Bob Cratchit arrives exactly 18.5 minutes late to work on the day after Christmas (December 26th) in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
I have no explanation. Gene, can you ask Arlo? For science!
"the day after Christmas (December 26th)": best parenthetical of the week!
That's AI for you. But I am the one who identified the connection, not AI. Plus, not everyone knows when Christmas is.
Some places have as many as 12 days of it, I hear.
I used to know the words to Alice's Restaurant. All of them. The whole thing. I ran through the rap part once for a friend, who needed a 10 minute long sound check on an amplifier he was working on. When the ten minutes were up, I still had some part of the rap to finish, it takes about 15 minutes or so. I didn't set out to learn it by heart; I just listened to it that often. He dared me to finish. I did.
Don't think I could do it today. That was close to 50 years ago.....
You and me both. However, if someone played the song, we would be reciting the words along with Arlo.
My son used to work out his teenage angst writing song lyrics. One was about his parents' divorce and one line was "They even sold my horse." I cried foul. Hey, that was my horse. He replied, yeah, but not many words rhyme with "divorce." Had to give him that!
Since the draft was a recent subject of discussion Poolside and the second half of "Alice" deals with same, it is perhaps only fitting and proper to point out that Arlo being rejected for service because of his littering conviction — is not exaggerated or entirely fictional as many seem to believe. In fact, the core story is essentially true. When he went for his physical in 1966, the recording officer at the induction center in New York really did make a fuss about his criminal record — the littering conviction — and he was classified as unfit for service, at least in part due to that.
I believe this is wrong, Dale. Arlo got out of the draft by having a very high draft number. Check it out. If you think about it, it makes no sense you could avoid the draft by littering. Everyone would have done that.
Not a matter of even being arrested for littering --- it was getting convicted that made Arlo "morally" unfit to serve. Criminal convictions (yes, although a misdemeanor it was classified as criminal offense, lowest level though it was) --- even minor ones --- could be treated as evidence of poor character or unreliability either by a draft board or by a military personnel or legal officer at an induction center. Remember, he did have to go through a pre-induction physical which, to hear him tell it, was a also prominent factor in him getting rejected. In interviews later he mentioned he was underweight, had vision issues, and was generally not in ideal physical condition at the time of his physical. He also joked for decades that he “didn’t make a good impression” during the psych evaluation. So, a combination of factors, including that criminal conviction for littering as I said, but which many thought was an artistic exaggeration or fiction in "Alice" --- my whole reason for bringing it up. There is also the fact that the lottery system with its "draft numbers" wasn't put in place until 1969, three years after Arlo's physical so, he couldn't have had a draft number to begin with. The old Selective Service System operated on the basis of alphabetical order and age and local boards routinely summoned 18‑year‑olds for pre‑induction physicals and classification reviews (1‑A, 2‑S, 4‑F, etc.). This was done so they could be classified before the prime induction ages of 19-26. He was a little more than 18 at the time. His Nov 28, 1965 littering conviction also triggered a “moral character” review, which required a physical and classification update. So, Arlo Guthrie was classified 4-F and found both physically and morally unfit for military service under the rules in place in 1966.
Woody had three influential sons in music: Arlo, Pete Seeger, and Bob Dylan.
Although Arlo didn’t write “City of New Orleans,” I think that was his best.
Steve Goodman, one of Chicago's finest.
I saw Arlo Guthrie play at the Birchmere I think in 2003... they played Alice's Restaurant, and at the time I didn't realize that this was only part of the show every decade or so.
I blush with shame to confess that while (a) I am moderately familiar with "Alice's Restaurant," and (b) I love the Berkshires area of Massachusetts, and have visited that area many times, nonetheless, I have never ever tried to hunt down the location of Alice's restaurant. For the record, I don't remember Theresa's Cafe, either. On the other hand, I DO fondly remember a cafe in either Stockbridge or West Stockbridge -- this was in the '80s -- called Miss Ruby's. (I think they later relocated to one of the avenues on the West Side of Manhattan, actually. That's probably gone, too.)
When The Missus and I had cats, whenever we went on vacation somewhere, we -- well, *I* -- left complex multipage instructions for whoever was catsitting in our absence. These involved not only feeding schedules, but descriptions of favorite toys, how best to approach the different cats to avoid injury, litterbox notes, and so on -- and it was all complicated further by our having adopted (or been adopted by) as many as nine feral cats as well as the three indoor ones. I salute your and Rachel's much simpler solution: "Here's your food, here's your water, knock yourselves out."
Texas is OK. "The Lone Star State." But I really like Oklahoma: "Oklahoma is OK." And for all the time I have been living in Maryland, I have no idea what it has for a motto. "We have the crabs?"
And Natty Boh
"The Land of Pleasant Living"
Wikipedia says it's "Fatti maschii, parole femine": "It literally translates as 'Deeds are males, words are females', but Maryland's official translation has variously been 'Deeds are manly, words are womanly' and 'Manly deeds, womanly words.'" Huh.
If the “small coffeehouse in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.” was the Caffe Lena, you should’ve named it. It’s even more famous than you are. I am another who plays the song every Thanksgiving.
I bet it was!
My local public radio station has a tradition of playing Alice's Restaurant in its entirety on Thanksgiving Day Eve, just before the 3 PM news break. I listen every year. Five years ago, I passed through Stockbridge during an October leaf-peeping road trip in New England. The restaurant was gone but there were arrows pointing the way down the alley where it had been located.