Alice's Restaurant and the Guthrie Center
Near Great Barrington, Massachusetts
On Van Deusenville Road stands a small former church with an outsized place in popular music. Built in eighteen twenty nine as Saint James Chapel and later renamed Trinity Church, the building was bought in the nineteen sixties by a couple named Ray and Alice Brock, who made it their home. Alice ran a restaurant nearby, and it was here, one Thanksgiving weekend, that a young folk singer named Arlo Guthrie got into the small town trouble that became a legend.
After hauling away a load of holiday garbage and dumping it, Guthrie was arrested for littering by a local officer. He spun the whole absurd episode into a rambling, funny, eighteen minute talking song called Alice's Restaurant, which became an anti war anthem and a Thanksgiving radio tradition. A film version was shot on location a few years later.
In nineteen ninety one Arlo Guthrie bought the old church himself and turned it into the Guthrie Center, an interfaith gathering place that hosts concerts and community events. The restaurant of the song is long gone, but the church still stands, welcoming travelers who come to see the spot where a piece of American folk history began over a pile of trash.
