The LuLac Edition #5, 209, November 28th, 2024

  

THANKSGIVING 

2024

 

I wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving. In a year of tumult, we find peace in the fact that are individual roots are strong bonds of our survival. I thank all of those who made my life and me better.

You know who you are!

 

 

THANKSGIVING SANS ALICE

I was George Graham's newsman during Watergate. Here we are at his induction into the Luzerne County Entertainment Hall of Fame.  

And here of course is Alice Brock.

When I worked at WVIA FM, I came away with many fond memories. But one I’ll always remember was a warm May day in 12973 when on my second day of work, I sat in a studio with other young people bring taught the board operations by George Graham. The subject turned to music and the work of Arlo Guthrie's came up. Graham, for those unfamiliar with the piece, (after our training) pulled "Alice’s Restaurant” out and played it for us. It was odd to hear it before Memorial Day but we insisted and he put that needle on the turntable and let it fly. 

On his “Mixed Bag” program it became a holiday tradition one which I’m sure will be enduring  in this year too. But it will be without Alice. The real Alice passed away a few days ago.

Even though Arlo Guthrie’s epic 18-minute Vietnam War protest song, “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” better known as “Alice’s Restaurant,” has improbably become a Thanksgiving standard, many listeners don’t realize that the titular Alice was a real person: restaurant owner Alice Brock, who over the years owned several eateries in Massachusetts.

Brock was a librarian at Stockbridge School in Massachusetts when she first met Guthrie, who was a student there at the time. Both had an interest in left-wing politics. She opened her first restaurant location, called The Back Room, in 1965, closing a little over a year later. The stories told in Guthrie’s song originated in that location, resulting in the composition – much of which, Brock said, had no basis in reality – and the 1969 film of the same name. 

She earned enough from the film and the sale of an accompanying book, “The Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook,” to open a new restaurant in the early 1970s. Originally called Alice’s Take-Out, its name was changed to match the song in 1973. Her third and final establishment, Alice’s at Avaloch, followed in 1976.

Brock never loved the restaurant business, however, preferring art. She pursued art while working as a cook in the 1980s, and also penned two other books: a 1976 autobiography, “My Life as a Restaurant,” and a children’s book, “How to Massage Your Cat,” as well as doing illustrations on another children’s book, “Mooses Come Walking,” written by Guthrie. She retired as her art sales slowed and health worsened by the late 2010s.