We did this today, and it was undoubtably one of the happiest memories I will ever have of this Club.
Arlo Guthrie's 18-1/2 minute long ALICE's RESTAURANT MASACREE (Mass-a-KREE) was a favorite song of my youth. I loved it from the first time I heard it back in 1967. It told the story of how Arlo got arrested by Officer Obie for littering on Thanksgiving in 1965, and I remember tears running down my face from laughing so hard at it. OK, I admit I was drunk at the time, but I still smile each time I hear it. The story centers around the tiny village of Stockbridge, Mass, a Hippy couple named Alice and Ray Brock who bought an old church to live in, and Alice's unsuccessful attempt to make a good business out of a hole-in-the-wall one room back-alley restaurant, which she named "The Back Room" but which Arlo refers to as "Alice's Restaurant" in his song. Arlo's silly arrest later came back to haunt him when he reported for the Vietnam Draft.
Today 5 of us CTZCC members descended upon the actual restaurant (which is now called Theresa's Stockbridge Cafe) for lunch. All the other customers got up and left when we came in!
I guess we sat at the Group W table? 
The place is decorated with memorabilia about Alice and Arlo.
Having been told that I wouldn't have been very impressed with the place back in 1965, I wasn't sure what to expect today. Alice bought the restaurant on a whim. She wasn't a business woman, and the only restaurant experience she had at that time was having eaten at a few before she bought this one. She didn't have a menu ~ almost anything you ordered required Alice to run to the general store in the front of the building and buy what you wanted, cook it and serve it. She had no regular wait staff ~ customers helped each other, and themselves. In fact, Alice had very little in the way of utensils or china, either. I've heard she used empty soup cans as cups, washing them as soon as the customer left, then immediately pressing them into service at the next table. Please remember, these were the Happy Hippy days, and things were different then. Most of her customers were no older than she was.
Today we were pleased to find a full menu of interesting options and two very accommodating young waitresses taking care of us (of course, everyone else had left when they saw us come in, so they had nobody else to wait on!)
We decided on a huge pizza (which was called OBIE's REVENGE ) and I was surpriZed at how good it was.
In exchange for the pizza, the guys bought me an ALICE's RESTAURANT T-shirt (which predictably reads, 'YOU CAN GET ANYTHING YOU WANT" on the front, and "AT ALICE's RESTAURANT" on the back). We grabbed a fistful of Theresa's buisiness cards, which wisely read, "Dine at the famous Alice's Restaurant", and took some pictures from the Northwest corner, the Southeast corner, and tried some aerial photography. Then, as the tables began filling back up with new innocent, unsuspecting tourists, all 5 of us stood in the center of the restaurant and sang a verse of the Massacree, and walked out!
We were pretty surpriZed to hear laughter and applause behind us!
The villiage of Stockbridge is an amaZing tourist trap! There must have been at least 1,000 people walking the streets in a two-block area. This was also the home of the famous American painter Norman Rockwell. One of Rockwell's most famous paintings depicted a uniformed police officer sitting on a restaurant counter stool, beside a very young boy at the next stool. Beneath the kid's feet is a bag of clothes tied to a stick, and it's clear the kid is a runaway. The officer in the painting is actually the real officer Obie (William Obanhein), and the restaurant is in tiny Stockbridge, somewhere.
At Al Babik's suggestion, we parked the Zs behind the Police Officer's Station and walked a block to Alice's (Theresa's). After lunch, I drove my Z down the narrow alley while Al shot pictures of me parked in front of the famous Alice's Restaurant! Mission Accomplished!
At Alice's, we got directions to the church where Alice and Ray lived, where they threw a "Thanksgiving dinner which couldn't be beat" back in 1965. Arriving there, we parked the cars in the tiny lot and shot some more pictures. A nice, older fellow was single-handedly raking the leaves from the church's corner lot, so we took over and spontaneously spent a half-hour of community service by cleaning up the leaves at the church (which is now the Guthrie Center for the performing arts).
The day was perfect, the weather was perfect, the leaves are turning up there this time of year, the town is quaint, and I had a blast. On the trips up and back we were blessed by several 30-minute intervals when there was almost no traffic but us and no cops in sight. We got to play with the Zs in wonderful wide, hilly, nearly empty ribbons of twisty, smooth roadway thru the Berkshires. Life was good.
I thank Mike, Isaac, Mark and Al for coming along and making this trip so memorable for me. One of my life's fantasies has been fulfilled, and when the time comes, I can die happier now. I have visited Alice's Restaurant, and got exactly the things I wanted.
Frank
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File comment: My Z, in front of Alice's Restaurant! Who would have ever thought this could ever happen? IMG_0392.JPG [ 134.49 KiB | Viewed 12103 times ] |
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File comment: The Z Crew creating a nuisance at the Group W table in Alice's Restaurant. IMG_0378.JPG [ 124.11 KiB | Viewed 12103 times ] |
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File comment: It took me 43 years to stand here! IMG_0371.JPG [ 140.47 KiB | Viewed 12104 times ] |
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File comment: You can walk right in, it's around the back. IMG_0368.JPG [ 141.11 KiB | Viewed 12104 times ] |
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File comment: Al poses in front of the sign for Theresa's Stockbridge Cafe ("formerly Alice's Restaurant") IMG_0383.JPG [ 111.36 KiB | Viewed 12104 times ] |