Kid, we don’t like your kind!

Just in case you think that all this nonsense with the cops is something new, Arlo Guthrie has left us with irrefutable evidence that we’re very nearly running in circles. Let’s go back in time to that fateful Thanksgiving of 1965 when 18-year old Guthrie and his friend Richard Robbins, 19 of Poughkeepsie (a short drive from where I am now) took out the trash and ended up in jail.

Since then, Arlo has succeeded in conflating Thanksgiving with ending the draft, ending the war (whatever war might need to be ended) and reminding us that Lt. John Pike comes in many forms. This is one of the quainter among them.

Before the official lyrics begin, Arlo introduces us to the song’s most important quality: its powder-dry logic that sticks to you and never comes off. Then this subtle fact seeps through, which is that Arlo’s life is lived in four-part harmony. It’s just who he is.

This song is called “Alice’s Restaurant.” It’s about Alice, and the restaurant, but “Alice’s Restaurant” is not the name of the restaurant, that’s just the name of the song. That’s why I call the song “Alice’s Restaurant.”

And then there is…

I filled out the Massacree with the four-part harmony. Wrote it down there just like it was and everything was fine. And I put down my pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there . . . on the other side . . . in the middle of the other side . . . away from everything else on the other side . . . in parentheses . . . capital letters . . . quotated . . . read the following words: “Kid, have you rehabilitated yourself?”

I went over to the sergeant. Said, “Sergeant, you got a lot of god-damned gall to ask me if I’ve rehabilitated myself! I mean . . . I mean . . . I mean that you send . . . I’m sittin’ here on the bench . . . I mean I’m sittin’ here on the Group W bench, ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough to 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! We’re gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington”!

Here is an archival news story telling what happened that day. Enjoy your visit to the Group W bench.